Question, was anything beta like found in the wii version of colours at all? all I know of is some unused area in one of the water stages like the act was going to be 30 seconds longer then planned, has there been nothing else? No surprises like unleashed had for unused acts or anything?
I happened to see a copy in some store down here in a local store where they sell comic book back issues and various collectable merchandise. Of course, it was in a display cabinet with various anime action figures and DVDs so I could be mistaken.
The last Sonic soundtrack to get a dumbed-down American import was Complete Trinity: Sonic Heroes Original Soundtrax. The Planetary Pieces you saw was most likely an import. (Or a bootleg, ones of P.P. exist.)
Completely excellent news. This will hopefully encourage Sega to keep GOING in this same vein of game =P
I have to admit that Sonic Colours has interested me to give it a go because of the decent effort put into it (that's if I get a Wii). I only play classic style Sonic games because I think the jump to 3D ruined the franchise. But in this they did a good mix of 2D with 3D based off the Sonic 2 special stages with appealing stages and decent gimmick wisps. It's not perfect but for me to have some interest in this type of Sonic means that they got alot of elements right. Maybe they could release this for the PS3 now that it's got the Playstation Move. It would definitely boost sales.
Hopefully this is enough sales to condone a port. I'd definitely buy it again if it looked nicer (If only this game was as vibrant and beautiful as Unleashed... it'd be just awesome)
OR they will simply do another poll regarding levels to be in the supposed anniversary, and vote on levels from Unleashed and Colors to be done with it!
Or maybe you guys are fantasizing too much. The reason why Colors is a Wii title is because Unleashed and Sonic 06 didn't sell as well as Sonic titles made for Nintendo platforms, remember? We can only hope that the sale numbers mean that they will do less of Black Knight and more of this.
No. The reason why Colors is a Wii title is because it's cheaper to develop for, and were able to flesh out Sonic-only gameplay much more than they could with Unleashed, due to development costs and time being much longer for a 360/PS3 game.
Can I get any source on this? All the interviews said that it was a Wii title due to the reason I cited.... Although the one being interviewed was Iizuka, so my source isn't very reliable either. (It's a feature, not a bug!)
Get the fuck out. It costs the same. Music is the same cost, programming is the same cost, art is the same cost. The only difference is the artists get to slack off more because they don't have to make any normal maps for any of the ingame assets.
Music I'll give you. But the Wii is cheaper to develop for, with it using the same development kit as the Gamecube's. Art is not the same cost either. Artists can complete low poly work quicker than they can complete high poly work, and with generally less effort too. Not to mention that there is no lighting to spend days calculating for the sake of Global Illumination. It was decided early on during development that Sonic Colors was going to feature Sonic and Sonic alone as a playable character, and the paltry number of daytime stages in Unleashed wasn't going to cut it. So being able to concentrate more time on designing stages than creating the assets and such for them was something that made the Wii look desirable as a target platform. Sorry I can't recall the exact source of that information, Rave, but I do remember reading an interview where it was stated that one of the reasons Colors is Wii exclusive was because it's cheaper to develop for. I also remember this interview creating some discussion on other boards, so maybe someone else can remember the interview I'm talking about.
High poly work is not harder at all when it comes to level models, and the enemy models are fine, and Sonic was just using an optimized version of the Unleashed model so that can easily be replaced. Most of the stage model parts in Colours are about the same low poly count as the Unleashed ones anyway, and the lighting was fucking retarded in Unleashed and there are much better and faster ways of doing it anyway now that give the same results in real time with less lag. Sega owns the devkits for 360/PS3 so that costs nothing, it is not more expensive also the Wii/Gamecube do not use the same devkit even if they are based on the same hardware. The only extra work they would really need to do that would cost any money would be to make normal maps for some of the textures ingame. They have highres HUD assets from the source before they downscaled them for the Wii, same with the stage textures, and the objects that are flat planes in the background have a high poly version that they prerendered that could be used in place of the flat plane. So it does not infact cost more money to make this same game for the 360/PS3. HD ? More $$$.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by stage model parts? Because I don't see anything like what's in Asteroid Coaster anywhere in Unleashed. And as for the backgrounds...I'm not in any position to argue with you. But I'll just say that I don't think it's as simple as swapping out the planes for the actual hi-poly artwork they used to create them....if they were created exclusively in 3D and not touched up with image editing software afterwards.
Here's some examples of both Unleashed and Colours. Red dot = Low Res Texture. Green dot = Low Poly Model. Basically Sonic Unleashed is a Wii game with high poly character models and shader effects to try and hide the fact it looks like shit. A lot of the background parts in Unleashed are 2D flat planes with a texture applied to it. Same thing with all the plantlife in the game, they are flat planes with a texture. I'm not sure if everyone fell into the marketing scheme Sega was doing, or just no one here has an actual eye for art, but Unleashed it a terrible looking game, with dark muddy textures, and low poly artwork everywere. That's not to say it can't look nice in motion, but in still shots it looks terrible compared to most games this generation, it is given way to much credit. Some examples. And here is the exact same thing in Colours. As for the cars in the first stage, here is the flat place version, and the texture the non-flatplane version uses. Both versions are ingame it's just Sega were dumbass's and used a flat plane in the background even though the cars are only like 15 polys, while the flat plane they use is 12 polys anyway. Hope that clears it up for you. Edit: As an added bonus to back up my line about Unleashed using terrible dark muddy textures, here's a comparison between a grass texture from Unleashed, and Colours. Unleashed: Colours:
I see. Doesn't change the fact that that's what I read in an interview. Whether something got lost in translation or not is up for debate (especially since I can't remember where I read that interview). Thanks for clearing things up.
