I mean, it really depends on your definition of "preservation". You can do a lot more with a decomp, but running Advance in an emulator isn't a bad way to play it, and we've already gotten hacks to make lots of things about those games better. I have to imagine the effort that goes into fully decompiling and creating a PC port is higher than just digging into the ROM and forcing the changes yourself. All the games with deeper, fundamental issues are stuff like Shadow and Secret Rings, which are more complex than typically get decomp'd anyway.
It's not a bad way to play it, but emulation more often than not isn't accurate to the real thing. And when it tries to be, it requires a strong computer. A matching decompilation is accurate, and can be run on many more platforms.
From the Generations interviews it just seems not to occur to them that they could do a collection of games that are simple enough to get emulated. It doesn't even seem to occur they could just see if they could get them on Switch Online or even something like getting the Sonic Rivals games on PS classics, which has PSP games emulated on PS4 and PS5. (But I would prefer a collection that is ported across multiple platforms...) IDK if a source port (If they even still have the sources, which they probably should) would actually be much better than emulation. Decomp is just how us mere mortals cope with a lack of source.
Id rather they not re-release the Advance and Rush games if all they do is run them on a built-in emulator. They desperately need some QoL enhancements, mainly making the resolution at least 240p like Mania (upscaled to 1080p ofc for output display) so hazards can be somewhat visible and we don't have to make a new generation suffer the good old Blind Jump over secret Death Pit™️
Yeah. I've only really played through SA1 so far, but I feel that the level designs are very much not optimized for the GBA's resolution. Sonic Advance Revamped shows how much the simple addition of a larger FOV can change the game.
Really I only see two possibilities for the Rush Trilogy/Duology being ported to modern consoles: A complete remaster of the game that's redesigned to get rid of the usage of both screens/stylus controls. A no-thrills re-release on Nintendo's Switch successor for their Virtual Console/Classics section. I think the difficulty in mapping swapping screens/stylus controls to a controller is why Sega hasn't bothered with it. I think the former possibility I suggested would eliminate those concerns entirely and is what I'd love to see. You'd also have the excuse to use the uncompressed music tracks from the CD releases for the games, and add some QoL additions (Colors DS stomp, larger FOV, etc.). I'd love to see Colors DS as well (especially since TSR made the somewhat bizarre decision to acknowledge Mother Wisp too), but like someone said there are naming convention concerns that I think would confuse the general public.
I prefer the Sonic Generations drift animation over the Unleashed/Colors/Frontiers one. If you're gonna do a gameplay style where rolling isn't a thing at all, the least you can do is implement it as a visual feature.
I'd like to know how unpopular is it to find it absolutely baffling that we (almost) never got alternative exits to stages? It seems like one of the possible logical follow-ups to S3&K's level transitions -- just have other playable transitions available. It's not even like we never got close to that! Sonic Advance's special stage access method is basically just an alternative exit that takes you back afterwards. I understand exploration based on single, fixed points isn't exactly what Sonic does best, and instead it historically invests in alternative routes in a level. That's cool and we all love it. But are "hidden levels" like 2013 Hidden Palace or Mario-styled level warps so antithetical to Sonic they never even thought of it? Except in Shadow I guess. Not sure how much the idea was explored in fangames either. Although, then again, this does make me think (again?) how that one You Have Only Experienced 25% of Sonic 3 video gets something about Sonic fundamentally wrong? The crux of the argument there is that you should play Sonic for score to experience it fully, but there really is no other way to play it to begin with. The game will never allow you to not face your results, and pure survival relies on it a lot (like... any other arcade game I guess). So the ranking system, yet another logical followup to Sonic 3 & Knuckles's survival/scoring/replayability systems, comes up very naturally whereas shortcuts etc. don't. Anyway these are just contradictory thoughts about stuff in Sonic games we may take for granted I guess. Dunno if people would actually like these which is why I'm posting here.
I've been wanting stuff like this in Sonic games for ages. It's one of the things I do enjoy about Shadow 05, and I especially agree that it's a logical progression from 3K's interconnected world and stage transitions. There are a lot of things people claim are antithetical to Sonic that I don't think are at all, and this is one of them (of course, what is antithetical to Sonic hinges on what is essential to Sonic, and that's going to vary from person to person). I think Mania's Encore Mode gives us a small taste of this in Lava Reef Act 2; if you have Knuckles in your party you have the option to complete the level via his exit, because you can play as him and access it. I think certain levels locked behind certain exits is a cool idea, especially if they're exits that aren't necessarily accessible to every character. This has me thinking of Superstars' character-exclusive Acts, and how much cooler it could have been if they were accessed via alternate exits that possibly only that character could have reached (in the case of Tails or Knuckles, at least).
Playing Sonic 3 for score would require me to hoard as many rings as possible and land the finishing hit on the boss at the last second (9:59) for the best time bonus. No thanks.
If the game is setup similar to Sonic Colour...Colors, hidden exits would provide a useful resource. Mario Games have 80+ levels which allows for such a thing to not really be a detriment to the overall experience. In a 2D Sonic game...going through an alternative exit leading to an alternative act in the same Zone or a completely original level that only has a single act that skips full level sounds kind of interesting. Sonic doesn't really have much use for this sort of thing.
They did alternate stage finish with one level in frontiers, so who knows. They might have some ideas.
If I remember correctly, Sunset Star Zone in Sonic BTS had two different Act 2s you could play by way of alternate exits.
Actually playing Sonic 3 for score requires entering every special stage and collecting all the rings but deliberately avoiding the blue spheres so you can keep doing the special stages for 50k points a time, plus spending hours hitting the signpost because they never bothered to put a limit on how many points you can get from it. When they're fixed such that score attacking isn't as grindy (see: Sonic 1 Score Rush and Sonic 2 Score Rush (EDIT: and Sonic 1 8-bit!)) then score attacking is an amazing way to play through the game, and I definitely recommend it.
It's funny that you mention this as a potential evolution of how S3&K handles its levels, as Hirokazu Yasuhara actually toyed with implementing such a structure into Sonic X-treme.
Having alternate exits in the final horizon's Cyberspace was definitely a really cool addition. Having them in a more traditional linear game where they funnel out into different levels ala Shad05 would honestly be sick and it's one of those things were I'm surprised it hasn't been done more often. I guess from the POV of the developers it's better to not do that though since making entire levels missable would feel kind of like a waste of resources when you could make them required to increase the game's playtime, which is understandable.
According to most of the achievement/trophy tracking sites, most people don't even beat games at all. Only 32% of players made it to Planet Wisp on the Xbox version of Generations. Only 41% of people completed Sonic Frontiers on PS5. Forces most popular version is PS4, but the data is skewed there because it was free on PS+. That has a completion rate of about 24-28%. If we take these stats at face value, devs are already wasting resources making full games people don't finish. That's probably why they've been selling us games in parts these days. I'm with Palas on this. I'd like to see something along the same lines as Metal Slug 3. We're always going on about multi-tier level design, where are the multi-tier goals?
