Almost 8 hour long video about why Sonic CD is a masterpiece

I love Sonic CD so much, but I just can't sit down and devote 8 full hours to watching someone gush about it. What sort of topics does the video go into? If it's just 8 hours of some guy giving his opinion on what he thinks is or isn't good game design, I don't feel like devoting that much time to it. But if it's got a legitimate technical slant, like he's explaining disassembles and such, then I'd be willing to devote more time.

 

Failing to understand how a technical slant would, much less should factor in an admittedly personal opinion on game design video that even starts out with a personal story. I'm in for the thorough, multi layered game design analysis, especially if it's grounded on actual theory and not just internet discourse. Will watch it, maybe a bit slowly but this greatly interests me.

(Because I know I'll agree with it)

 

Sonic CD is one of my favourite platformers of all time, possibly even one of my favourite games of all time, but 8 HOURS...? lmao that's crazy. At a certain point I really think video essayists should learn to split their videos into multiple parts. I think that's part of what made the Sonic Spitball so easy to digest.

 

You can play Sonic CD like 16 times in the time it would take to watch this

 

Thanks for saving me 8 hours.

 

Decided to watch this piecemeal to see if I could finally be convinced on this game's merits. I'm nowhere near close to done and won't be for a while but I have to try and be fair.
Got through the level design portion the other day and so far I'm still not convinced but it does have me wanting to give the game another full playthrough, something I said I wouldn't do.

The arguments it makes about emergent, explorative gameplay vs the other titles is compelling, but I think it's a good idea that sadly works against the limitations of the tech.

Simply put, 2D gameplay with screen crunch this aggressive makes navigating levels like this at this speed kind of a pain in the ass. It starts to get better once you get a feel for where everything is and what spots are actually good for time travel but at that point it's no longer explorative or emergent.

It feels like an idea better suited for a 3D game.

 

Hm, his speaking tempo is relatively moderate... *sets the playback speed to 2*

 

I'll try to summarize his points in the level design part of the video, which is bound to be the most contentious, so that you guys don't really have to:

• Sonic as a series is unique in the way you have to find new interactions between Sonic and the geometry to go forward, and in the way you get to feel responsible for the game world via its storytelling;
• Sonic CD's level design in particular is great because it has rich moment-to-moment decision-making that allows self-expression, creative usage of the geometry and interesting choices at every corner. He mentions how it's referred to as the "exploration" Sonic game, but he prefers the term "interaction";
• This approach is an evolution of Sonic 1, a game that had a lot of moments when you could play around with the levels, but that never saw much application. It gets rid of the low ceilings in Sonic 1, in order to allow space for Sonic to jump around. It also greatly expands on the level design puzzles that the first game had, allowing many ways to traverse a single section. This makes it so that Sonic CD has the lowest skill floor and the highest skill ceiling in the series;
• On addition, the levels actively avoid fail states -- that is, being locked in a path because you couldn't react in time to reach a path at an intersection you can only reach only, especially when it comes to mid-air intersections. He directly compares this to Sonic 2, which is more streamlined and guides you a lot more through paths;
• Much of Sonic CD is focused on controlling Sonic in the air, rather than on the ground, and each stage has multiple different ways to launch you in the air to make those decisions, taunted by objects you can see but can't immediately reach;
• The time travel mechanic ties this all together, because it turns apparent obstacles in the stages into assets for maintaining speed for long enough and demands creativity and mastery of each stage's specific gimmicks to succeed. Every stage is a big puzzle with multiple solutions;
• The position of Past and Future signposts teaches different things at each stages, the Bad Future being a playable fail state so you know how not to play;
  • He gives many examples across many stages, but he talks at greater length about the first Future signpost in Collision Chaos: you can fly over it with the speed you got in the tunnel just beforehand, but that demands you to not hold right at that time. This kind of controlled movement is repeated in other instances in the stage, and is the key to go through it effectively;
• The position of the generator in each level is always deliberate to create a negotiable challenge, which makes you develop the intended game rationale in your own terms;
• For all this, Sonic CD is the game that offers emergent gameplay the most in the classic series;
• The reason for most criticism of its level design is that it offers too many choices, which may make it confusing and overwhelming, whereas Sonic 2 and 3&K favor a more streamlined experience that can be more satisfying;
• Besides, since Sonic CD nullifies absolute fail states as often as it can, you can eventually reach the goal without enjoying yourself at all. In Sonic 1 and 2, challenges are more readable, because there are less variables, and you will die if you don't measure up to it. That rarely happens in Sonic CD, which makes it feel more punishing because punishment happens more often, but is less decisive;

Now these are all his words; I'd never ever use some of these to describe something I like, much less something I love like Sonic CD. "Puzzle" above all. But there you go.

 

I like to compare CD's level design to that of Frontiers in that it basically feels like a bunch of random shit thrown into an open map you're meant to explore with little rhyme or reason for the setpieces and level design choices. But for both of them, the game ends up being fun anyway because the core movement and the feeling of exploration are enough to satisfy on their own. Of course, that alone won't make everyone happy, which is why both games are contentious.

 

I agree, its always been the best 2D Sonic game in my view. I so wanted SEGA to remake it for the Saturn's USA/Pal launch back in the day.

 

I largely agree with the conclusions he reaches about how Sonic CD works, especially when compared to other games in the classic series, but I have a few criticisms of his methodology. In the end, I feel it was very much a piece of internet discourse, responding to common criticisms of the game without trying to analyze much outside the parameters that gave birth to that same criticism. Of course, he does it really well, but I think it makes it so that he skims over details that would merit a much larger discussion according to his own arguments, but he doesn't do so because the internet usually doesn't do so.

There is an inherent contradiction in the way he praises Sonic CD for presenting "negotiable challenges", that is, obstacles that you can overcome in many ways, but later acknowledges the way these challenges are presented have so much choice that, if you don't know what you are doing already, just seems like random bullshit, like @charcoal said. He constantly compares CD to 2, praising the former for the way it allows emergent gameplay and self-expression, but then acknowledges you have to meet the game where it is, and kind of force yourself to learn its syntax. Well, for such a wide usage of the word "negotiable", he certainly doesn't make Sonic CD seem very "negotiable". It's especially important how he briefly talks about the role of death in Sonic 1 and 2, and how the lack of decisive consequence for failure in CD makes it confusing, but then pins the blame on the player for not noticing how, if you're in the bottom path of Collision Chaos Act 1, "you've already failed" -- his words. That certainly doesn't seem negotiable. How are you supposed to know? Either the perceived freedom of choice is always a virtue, in which case there is a larger discussion about freedom to be had and his concept of choice was sort of ill-defined, or it isn't -- like he seems to imply -- which forces you to clarify the context in which Sonic CD works for those who do like it.

That's where I think there's an even deeper discussion to be had about the role of the life system in the skill curve for Classic Sonic, but also the circumstances that make this "leap of faith" in Sonic CD possible at all. Some may not be in the game, strictly speaking, but in the environment when it was made, or in cultural aspects now lost to time but that 100% deserve attention. One thing you'll notice if you watch the video is that the essayist is ridiculously good at the game. He underscores this fact, mentioning how much fun can be derived from the mastery at any Sonic game, but how consequential it is to know how to pull tricks off in CD specifically. But if learning is so elusive, why then did he do it? Although he talks about watching first-time players having opened his eyes about why people criticize Sonic CD, he never investigates the fact that he was once a first-time player too. What, then, separates people who want to put in the work to learn the intricacies of CD from the ones who refuse?

There's also the fact that he constantly uses Sonic 2 as a point of comparison, but I'm not sure if it's a good or fair point of comparison -- especially given every time he shows Sonic 2, he shows Chemical Plant. Just about every single time across the 8 hours, except when illustrating specific points. But Sonic 2 isn't just Chemical Plant even if Chemical Plant is quintessentially Sonic 2. Had he given Sonic 2 the same careful analysis he gave Sonic CD instead of always going for the Sonic 2-est out of Sonic 2, I'm sure he'd reach more sophisticated conclusions about the core tenets of the series and of each game.

 

3. Falling In Love with CD [0:21:21]

At 21:29 he tells of his first time getting a good future and how it blew his mind. He didn't know about this feature until then.

 

Sure, but how do you extrapolate that analytically? His account touches on important things (the aesthetic experience, the notion that the game is expanding before your eyes -- which @DigitalDuck very neatly talked about earlier this year when talking about replay value -- the themes etc.) but doesn't really have the same tension in it. He already liked and pushed through the game regardless before. What made him push through it even though it seemed weird? I think there's a lot to talk about in player predispositions and conditions, or how the dialectic process between game and player happens so that the player makes that "leap" that seems so unnatural to make, that goes far beyond what the game teaches or how it rewards you (an analytical model that sort of foregoes the player as an agent).

 

~The Art of Resonance in Video Games: An Analysis~

A very personal and intimate topic that needs more discourse in general.

 

I can play and beat sonic CD in like 30 minutes if I’m going at a brisk pace, instead of wasting 8 hours of your time deciding if you should “give CD another chance” just play the game like 6 times memorize the layout and come back with your own opinion :v

 

@Palas, I agree with your take about how much of the video is more a response to internet discourse, as much as I like and enjoy how he presented the video. In particular:

This reminds me of another part of the video, where he dismisses the critique of Quartz Quadrant Act 2's robot generator being obtuse to get (the one where you have to stand on the crusher, despite that being counterintuitive as hell) because the game, apparently, gives you enough clues, but later on, when talking about Knuckles' playthrough in S3&K, he says the game has "arbitrary rules" in cases like which wall Knuckles can climb. He never directly addresses this, but it immediately stuck out to me as hypocrisy, one he probably didn't notice because that point was more about addressing a common critique and not really asking the question "why does the game suddenly, for this one level, not only decide that getting crushed doesn't count for this one level, but it is necessary to know this to 100% the game".

Like, sure, you could probably learn that the crusher doesn't kill you, but just like how there's no real reason Knuckles can't suddenly climb on this wall when he could others, there's no real reason why crushers suddenly don't kill. But only one of these is framed as a critique of such design.

Also I felt his critique of Mania in particular was too harsh and negative, even if I agree with the general point that it is less original and innovative than the classics. And generally, a critique of later games being too reliant on nostalgia in an 8 hour video about how this 35 year old game is a masterpiece raises my eyebrow a bit.

 

This threw me off aswell, until I realized he was arguing against some folks calling Mania "the true Sonic 4", rather than against the game itself.

I found it funky when he called NiGHTS a sequel to Sonic CD.

 

I've started to heavily dislike the growing trend of Video Essays being absurdly long for no real purpose. I doubt this needed to be 8 hours beyond the spectacle of "WOW! An 8 hour long review of Old Video Game! Isn't that Crazy?!"

For my own unneeded two-cents, I like Sonic CD, I think it's fun, but it's just kinda clunky in a way the other Classic sequels aren't. Like I'm old enough to remember the era of the internet where Sonic CD was considered the best Classic game by quite a number of people, there's a reason that stopped being the case when it was re-released.