That's how I interpret it. The post talks about Sonic having a hard time, dealing with Zavok and the "Egg Dragon" simultanously. The picture shows exactly this scene here, kinda: I bet a strategy guide could give us a definitive answer. Edit: https://dengekionline.com/elem/000/000/723/723119/ also mentions Egg Dragon amongst others (Egg Moon, "Gun Man", Mecha Fruits, Trap Tower). Have they been modified by Eggman?
I remember in one of the cutscenes Eggman tells them "I supply you with the most powerful mechs I create" or something along those lines, but it's easy to assume he's just talking about the Badniks (which are also in that cutscene)
Eggman either created or modified them. I don't know how accurate the translation is. Either way, these mechs look really untypical for him. Was it elaborated in a comic maybe?
This is actually a super interesting little difference, assuming it's intended this way. In the English version of the scene where Sonic throws the conch away, it's: "I hone your abilities, I equip you with the most powerful mechs I can create, I even give you a giant sandwich, and you still disappoint me" Windii's translation of the same lines in JP: "I revived you all and even gave you the best machines! I even gave you a huge sandwich, yet you're completely useless" So there's two ways I can think to take this: "Revive" just means the same thing as "Hone your abilities" or "Restore you to full power", they WERE active and he just powered them up, OR one implication that maybe they were dormant / dead before Eggman found them and activated them and then took control of them with the magic conch shell. I guess that could give the Deadly Six another dimension, maybe the Zeti race as a whole has been dormant that same way, so the reason they were continuing to siphon the world's energy was to bring the rest back. But who knows, they never bothered to flesh it out that far. Either way I guess it is said that the mechs are made by him, because of course Eggman can't let them defeat Sonic without being "enhanced" by him.
I made a post in the hacking Q&A thread a year ago breaking down the code of how that obscure "shooing" animation is triggered in Sky Sanctuary in S3K. I decided to make a more digestible version here for those who may want it. To trigger Knuckles' obscure "shooing" animation in Sky Sanctuary, Sonic's center position must be within the highlighted area, he must be facing left towards Knuckles, and he must be ducking. Funnily, every time you duck, Knuckles' animation will reset. This seems to actually be an oversight stemming from a half-implemented check. Before checking those conditions, it checks if a flag is set, and if it is, then it skips the other checks. However, that flag never gets set. Here's the routine that handles these checks, fully commented if you also want to take a look: Spoiler Code (ASM): sub_65FDE: ; There is an oversight where this flag is never actually set, so you can ; repeatedly reset Knuckles' shooing animation every time you duck. btst #3,objoff_38(a0) ; Is the shooing animation already set? bne.w locret_6206C ; If so, branch ; After this, d0 will be set to 0 if the player is left of Knuckles, ; or 2 if the player is right of Knuckles. d1 will be set to 0 if ; the player is above Knuckles, or 2 if the player is below Knuckles. ; d2 will contain the absolute horizontal distance, and d3 will ; contain the absolute vertical distance. lea (Player_1).w,a1 ; Get distance between Knuckles and the player jsr (Find_OtherObject).l ; The trigger area is centered at Knuckles' Y position cmpi.w #32,d3 ; Is the player >= 32 pixels above or below Knuckles? bhs.w locret_6206C ; If so, branch ; The trigger area is offset by 48 pixels to the right by subtracting ; 48 from the absolute horizontal distance. If the player is < 48 pixels ; away from the area, d2 will be a negative number, which makes it ; a massive number when treated as unsigned. If the player is > 48+32 pixels ; away from the area, d2 will be >= 32 subi.w #48,d2 ; Is the player inside the area, horizontally? cmpi.w #32,d2 bhs.w locret_6206C ; If not, branch ; These are the non-position specific checks tst.w d0 ; Is the player right of Knuckles? beq.w locret_6206C ; If not, branch btst #0,render_flags(a1) ; Is the player facing left towards Knuckles? beq.w locret_6206C ; If not, branch cmpi.b #8,anim(a1) ; Is the player in their ducking animation? bne.w locret_6206C ; If not, branch ; All conditions are met lea byte_6672A(pc),a1 ; Make Knuckles do the shooing animation jmp (Set_Raw_Animation).l
It's a match made in heaven: According to Game Informer #49, Sonic X-treme was planned for the Game.com. And Virtua Fighter 3 too. Imagine the world we could have lived in. (yes these probably became Sonic Jam and Fighters Megamix)
The game.com was so bad that a kid in my fifth grade class had his stolen during the school day and it wound up back in his mailbox that evening.
I still have my Game.com; the Lights Out game it comes with is genuinely one of the best versions of Lights Out (it has harder puzzles where you can only press lights that are currently on and different shapes etc. to mix things up). The built-in Solitaire game is decent enough as well. The main problem is that the screen is so blurry that anything that requires something actually moving becomes basically impossible to see. They did a half-hearted job at trying to market it towards business people with the phone book and calendar functions; if they'd just gone all out marketing it that way and made exclusively puzzle games for it then there was at least a chance of it becoming a niche success as a PDA. Minesweeper on the go with a touchscreen would've been a godsend in 1997. As a gaming device it's utter shit though.
sonic question time what do you guys have on bean the dynamite and bark the polar bear circa sonic the fighters/fighters megamix i'm asking since there seems to be some contention on whether or not bark is meant to be mute. allegedly some sort of material for the us or european release of sonic the fighters has a blurb for bark that says that he's quiet and shy. do we have anything like this for japanese releases? what about fighters megamix?
What's the point of the question, exactly? Yasuhara-san immediately jumped to address camera systems. I mean, even after all these years, there's still uncharted territory for the series. Take Super Mario 3D World's semi-top-down perspective and less dynamic approach, for example:
I just think it's funny that despite the staunch contemporary pushback against the journalistic cliche of Sonic having had a 'rough transition' to 3D, and despite the notion that it's a contemporary thing being applied retroactively, the sentiment was around at least as far back as 2003. I wonder how much farther it might go back. I also think it's interesting that here it's referring specifically to commercial (rather than critical) success. I wonder if this was the original (or something close to the original) emphasis of the sentiment. Granted, the interviewer is implying that Sonic had (as of 2003) yet to "work" in 3D, and that this is the cause of the relative lack of commercial success, so it's not like commercial success is the only thing on their mind.
I dont think the camera is really an issue for the series anymore. It had a tendency to misbehave a lot in earlier titles, but everything from unleashed to now has pretty consistently functioned and has never really gotten in the way for me. I guess in Frontiers there's a bit of camera jank occasionally, but it's not anywhere near as bad as something like SA1 and doesn't really pose much of a problem 99% of the time.
This is interesting: you'd think Yasuhara made Sonic and then formulated the more refined game design philosophy he talked about in 2008 and which he teaches today, but the words he uses don't change much. The "amusement park" framework is ever present, and I think "making the player constantly get amazed" has many faces in Sonic. So it was a great read.
Fun Fact: Searching up "Endless Possibility" or "Endless Possibilities" in a search engine will almost certainly get you the Sonic Unleashed song. That song is so popular it's the top search result when you search such a vague term.
