The Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Megathread

I think you've put more thought into this than the writers of any game in the franchise have. Don't over-think it. Gameplay concepts such as the number of chaos emeralds or super emeralds for each characters super forms, or even how many there are... Things like that are decided before a story is put into place, especially in the 2D games. If Tails and Knuckles get super forms in episode 2, it will be from the seven regular old chaos emeralds, with no extra explaination given.

 

not to get off topic, but man, that is one of my favorite levels in Sonic CD. Once you realize it's a giant jumping puzzle it becomes so much fun. I mean that literally, it's basically a level over a giant bottomless pit, but instead of the pit equaling instant death, it shoots you up to a platforming puzzle as your punishment.

I love abusing the physics in Sonic CD

So fucking much.

 

I fucking love Sonic CD, and those videos make Wacky Workbench look really enjoyable. I never actually bothered to learn the layout of it, I just kept falling down and forcing my way to the goal.

 

I don't really know the layout to the level either. I was just kinda going with the flow when I made those.

Well except the trick I used to time travel in act 2. I do that every time.

 

I didn't say it wasn't going to sell. I don't know where you came to this conclusion from. But don't tell me that they didn't overhaul LLZ for no reason. The leaked build was going to BE the final. They fixed it to save sales; to give a reason for people to buy the retail version. It has nothing to do with what fans want, nor was that what I was implying.

 

Okay, well let me clear a few things up. They overhauled LLZ because we were complaining, not only for sales. The amount of people who weren't going to buy the game because of LLZ 2 was probably less than 1%. Our community makes up a really, really small amount of the sales. So little that it wouldn't be worth delaying the game 3 months. Do you really think they delayed the game 3 months for a small part of the community to get better sales? It would be a stupid decision and wouldn't make sense from a sales standpoint. Delaying the game would make it much harder for them because sonic colors would distract from sonic 4, and people would be confused about the release date. The delay definitely wasn't a benefit on THEIR end. The changes are there because they genuinely want this to be a decent game.

Secondly, RubyEclipse specifically stated that the build of LLZ act 2 that we saw was incomplete. He would have no reason to lie about that, since we already knew at that point the game was going through some changes.

 

This is the last thing that I'm going to say on the subject, I don't want to derail the thread too far.

You just contradicted yourself. Why did they listen to our complaints about LLZ? It certainly was not because they "genuinely want to make this a good game." They could care less. I'm not speaking bad about Ruby or any of the other SEGA reps here, that's their job to clean up the messes Iizuka and his team make, or at least make it look like they are. The reason they are fixing LLZ is two-fold: 1. Because we got word out of the terrible minecart level and made a big uproar about it. In that you are correct. And what happens when we complain about it? People listen. Word gets out and *bam* bad PR. SEGA doesn't want this. Why is this? It will hurt more sales than our relatively small Sonic community. It'll hurt the sales from whoever would have given a crap beforehand and no longer because we made a big enough stink.

The second problem is because the build that was released was the FINAL build. Basically, a huge, huge paycheck opportunity for SEGA was basically out there for free. Why would anyone pay for something readily available online? Granted, you have to hack the 360 to play, but still, there's a whole big chunk of money they won't get because all their merch is right there on the table right for the picking.

So what did they do? They differentiated this build from that one under the guise of listening to fan feedback, but that's just an afterthought. They want to make the game different enough so that people who would just get a pirated copy will shovel out their digital bucks to buy their version. They want their money and that's it. Period. The fact that we're getting a better game out of it is great and I'm not complaining at all, but don't mistake their intentions. They will rip apart your childhood memories and defecate on them, as they have been for the past decade without batting an eye. This is a business move, nothing else.

 

Wacky Workbench is awesome and one hell of a challenge. It's a great feeling when you finally find the damn Past posts.

I really hate Stardust Speedway though - the level is a bitch if you can't manage to get all the Time Stones before you get there, because the level likes to throw those spikeballs everywhere, as well as being very lax on rings overall. Still, it's one of the best levels aside from Quartz Quadrant and Wacky Workbench in my opinion.

Here's hoping Sonic 4 has creativity like Wacky Workbench and Stardust Speedway.

 

I hope they don't bring back that stupid bouncing floor from Wacky Workbench. But of course they won't, because it seems like, aside from Gems Collection, SEGA doesn't seem to be aware of its existence anymore.

 

One year has passed and I still think that trailer implies classic Sonic. Then again, it also said the game was built from the ground up. Things really did change.

 

Why buy the game when it's out there for free? Well, let's see. 70% of people who know about sonic 4 don't even know it's leaked, and most of the rest don't know how to get the game. In fact, I don't know how to get the game. You need to know how to download and play the game in order for this to be a problem, and very few people know how to do that. In fact, most of those people are in our small community. If this was only for sales, why go through the trouble of changing the running animation? Why decrease the time it takes to accelerate to top speed. Why not just change a bunch of crap around, and then call it a day? Why would they spend more money and resources making new sprites for LLZ when they could just move stuff around? That's what they'd do if this was only about sales. Instead, they added a bunch of new graphics and gimmicks to a stage we didn't like. Is that the easiest thing to do? No. But they did it to please the fans. Developers wanting to please their fans isn't such a strange and wild concept.

The biggest problem with this, is the people who downloaded it will ALSO be able to get the final version for free through download. So WHY would they change the version so that the small amount of people with access to the game can wait to pirate it again when it comes out later?

 

Also I want to add to this, motion blur sure is a difficult task.

 

Courtesy of Jason at TSS, footage of the Wii version at least. E3 build of course, but with the little oddity of S3 jingles instead of the S4 remakes. Just a leftover presumably.

 

I thought this too. Tails couldn't use the Emeralds in S3K 'cos he's too young / inexperienced to tap them.

As for him suddenly being 1337 Emerald knowledge man in SA2; there's 2 ways you could interpret that. Either that 1) now, several adventures after S3K, he is experieced, so if you gave him 7 Emeralds in SA2 he'd be able to go super from them, or b) that scientific emerald knowledge != ability to use them. If you're a biologist and a biomechanics expert, you might understand better than a pro footballer how his muscles work, but that doesn't make you a pro footballer. Likewhise, Tails might know more about the physics of the Emeralds than Sonic or Knuckles, but that doesn't mean Tails can actually use them.

Finally... wasn't there an S3K proto or concept art somewhere that did have Super and Hyper Tails?

 

It's really been a year since Project Needlemouse got announced? Wow...

Many people expected something great out of Needlemouse but ended up being mostly disappointed in what the true product was after it was revealed. Sonic 4 wasn't "built from the ground up", it used an old engine designed for DS games.

SEGA has tried to please many into this game, but they have generally angered people over things such as the direction of the game, the production team, the bad engine, the horrible music, the levels, the list goes on. SEGA wanted to make this downloadable, episodic title the main game from the Sonic franchise this year yet mostly everyone prefers Sonic Colours over it. People have waited 16 years and got revisited levels, objects, bosses and a level select screen instead of a new, great game.

You have to appreciate the leak though, if SEGA didn't have to submit to PartnerNET, it wouldn't be leaked and the final product would be the leaked game, making reactions similar to Sonic 06. However, they have already made a mess of this game anyway and even if a few levels are different, it's not Sonic the Hedgehog 4 as you truly imagined it.

Later episodes have to take in fan input from all areas, not just some. A lock-on mode would be good as it could essentially patch Episode I of the various bugs it has. As for Iizuka, he really needs to shut the hell up and realise what people want, which isn't the majority of Episode I's content. He made a bad decision to use Dimps, Jun Senoue and the rest of the bunch which made this game look and act mediocre.

I'll expand upon this on my blog later.

 

ok what the fuck. You can jump into walls to break them? Wow....

And that fucking rev sound effect used incorrectly is going to drive me fucking insane. If you are a sonic fan...how in the FUCK CAN YOU GET THAT WRONG!?!?

EDIT:


And since when did free lives just end up on the random path you were taking?

 

If jumping at walls to break them bugs you, then worry not. You can just run at them if that suits you better. Seriously.

 

Every track sounded different, although if these were supposed to be new they're still using the horrible Sonic 2 DAC.