Titanic Monarch has grown on me over the years, its music included. But Egg Reverie remains a very disappointing finale.
Funnily enough, I've never thought about that before. Even though Titanic Monarch is literally a giant Eggman mech, I've only ever considered it a base to be explored like any other level. But no matter which way you slice it, yeah, Egg Reverie was a bit of a let down. The fight felt kind of confusing and anti-climatic.
Titanic Monarch looks like it's going for a Castlevania-style church clock tower. Makes me wonder if they were forced to change tact and stick a big robot in there mid-way through, because the vibe doesn't completely come through in the end product.
Honestly, I wasn't expecting to fight the Giant Robot as a final boss. It was nothing more than a decoration. If it was repurposed as said final boss, it could be distinguished from Sonic 2's (or Sonic & Knuckles') Death Egg Robot fight. Nevertheless, it is what it is.
I was just wondering what a fusion of American Robotnik and game Eggman would look like, so I did this: I don't completely hate it? The conehead combined with the mustache gives him a very clown-like look, which is somewhat fitting given his love of circus/carnival motifs.
I remember lurking on Tumblr and coming across an artist who came up with a similar concept. I gotta find it again.
They gave him a walrus head to suit the walrus 'stache and yet got rid of the walrus outfit that would've made it kinda work. I at least see what they were going for with the Metal Sonic eyes, they wanted visible pupils without just giving him normal eyes. But the goggles are iconic and it's not like we needed to see Eggman's pupils to begin with. Either way they don't bother me nearly as much as those stubby Cartman legs he has. They make him look so silly which works in AOSTH but feels outright unacceptable in SATAM and some of those Archie appearances where he's supposed to be intimidating. Canon Eggman's goggles and gangly limbs actually do a lot for his villain presence so I really don't know why they even bothered.
Titanic Monarch Robot is on an entirely different scale from Death Egg Robot (it's like 100 times bigger if not more), so the only way to give a fight against such a behemoth justice, would be to give up the traditional "side view" of 2D games for a behind the back view (e.g. Sonic Unleashed final boss or Frontiers' Titans) or any other 3D or faux-3D view. This does feel like a stark deviation from what we regularly see, but IMO it works given historically Super Sonic boss fights are already a big deviation from regular boss fights anyway (different set of physics, different lose condition, etc) A huge wasted potential, just like the wet fart of a zone preceding it
I'd go as far as to say that I don't really like a single one of the western reinterpretation of the characters we had back then. I always found the side content for this series (comics in particular) to be repulsive to look at, with ugly characters and gross "vibes".
(While listening to Holy Summit) Damn Holy Summit is my favorite post-classic song. I really love the slow-moving melody, how it calls back to Altar Emerald but with a more minimalist instrumentation that leaves more room for the adorably crunchy GBA sound, especially the percussion. Well not an aggravating position but I guess an uncommon one anyway
I do think it would've worked as a MegaHuge Multiple Sprite behemoth with the free flight introduced from both S3&K Doomsday Zone as well as the actual final boss Mania had, with you attacking parts of it piecemeal while trying to conserve rings. The one we got just feels so small-scale by comparison, which also makes the free flight kinda annoying.
When I first saw the Titanic Monarch robot I thought we were going to have a traditional boss fight against Eggman as regular/Super Sonic, but then switch to the 3D gameplay of the special stages to fight it. But just structured as a boss fight.
As an elementary school kid in the late 90s/early 2000s, I liked Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (AoStH) better than SatAM. There's nothing rational about it, I just always enjoyed dumb and absurdist humor. As an adult, I can also now appreciate the way the voice actors and animators said "This show will probably be forgotten in 3 years, and they don't pay us enough to give a fuck. We'll draw Robotnik wearing a bikini, give Sonic disguises, and do whatever dumb thing comes to mind." I would never allow my children to watch this show because I want them to be doctors or senators someday, but it's good for a few laughs when you've had 2-3 beers. Nothing against SatAM, but I was just never that into it. By the time I discovered it, Teen Titans was on the air and had much compelling main characters and more engaging plots. AoStH on the other hand, was my gateway drug into Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy: it was dumb and the humor carried a tinge of sociopathy.
Wow. Why has SEGA never done this? Having the final Super Sonic boss be based on Special Stage gameplay makes so much sense I can't believe neither SEGA nor myself ever considered it before.
We've got to have a special stage format with enough depth to allow for that though, and admittedly Mania's would have been perfect. A lot of people seem to greatly dislike Special Stages though, and I'm sure it's got more to do with the execution of them than their mere existence.
