Sonic the Hedgehog Appreciation Thread

[Falksi]

Fuck SMW and its ice skates physics, overly cutesy art and dumbing down/removal of awesome SMB3 content. All the classic Sonics are better, but have nothing on SMB3. Also, no mention of the DKC games?

I think Gastrick had a point also. Sonic is one of if not the fastest platformer of the 80s/90s, so the speed crybabies' arguments feel kind of moot.

Bollocks. Only a fucking blind spastic with no thumbs would put Sonic 1 faster than SMW.

Sonic 2's a different story, but Sonic 1 doesn't even come close.

 

[Ash]

Even Sonic 1's max speed is clearly far exceeding SMW. Labyrinth and Marble Zone in particular slow things down a bit, but otherwise even S1 is faster bud. Check the speedruns.
Damn this feels gay arguing over Mario and Sonic.

 

[Falksi]

Even Sonic 1's max speed is clearly far exceeding SMW. Labyrinth and Marble Zone in particular slow things down a bit, but otherwise even S1 is faster bud. Check the speedruns.
Damn this feels gay arguing over Mario and Sonic.

Nah mate, speedruns allow for Sonic to get hit, which isn't the objective of the game remember? That's judging the game from a perspective which most people won't play it, certainly when they first start out.

The majority of people playing both games from scratch will get way more speed out of playing Mario than they will Sonic IMO.

Fancy a bum?

 

[Ash]

The majority of people playing both games from scratch will get way more speed out of playing Mario than they will Sonic IMO.

Perhaps.

Fancy a bum?

Come again?

Edit: oh rite we gay now

 

[seco]

We get it Codex, you suck at a children's game.
Maybe it's true RPGs are for low skill casuals after all compared to arcade games.

 

[Morenatsu.]

We get it Codex, you suck at a children's game.
Maybe it's true RPGs are for low skill casuals after all compared to arcade games.

holy shit did you just make a post that wasn't about half-life? that's incredible. i'm so proud of you

 

[Gastrick]

The Codex has a homosexual problem in wake of the buck breaking meme. I wonder what the solution is, aside from divine destruction.

Damn this feels gay arguing over Mario and Sonic.

I thought just autistic.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

buck breaking

Leave him alone.

https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Friar_Buck

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I love Sonic, i have no idea what you guys are talking about it, i think you guys are taking the "gotta to go fast" way too seriously, on your first playtrough you need to play the game carefully because there's a lot of traps and enemies you can't really avoid if you go too fast. However, the more you play on multiple playtroughs, once you start memorizing the level design, enemies and traps placement... you can play faster, lose less Rings, find secrets and improve your score.



So it's really like any other momentum-based platformer but in Sonic is worse because of the limited field of view and high speed. But fuck it, i love it, maybe because i played Sonic a lot as a kid and there's no "initial barrier" of frustration for me. Sonic is also pretty easy, the easiest platform game series out there, and funny thing is that i find the Mario ganes stupidly hard, like really hard, harder than Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden. I could never get used to Mario physics/momentum for some reason, i always manage to fuck up even the most basic platforming.

Also The best Sonic game for me is neither Sonic 1, 2, 3, CD or Mania. The best sonic imo is the fangame Sonic Robo Blast, why ? well, if you play this game for the first time, you'll find this game unplayable, it's really hard to get into because of the controls, physics/momentum and camera. But once you "git gud", it's so much FUN ! you feel like a god playing it:


Btw this level is extremely hard. Seriously, this game skill cap is huge, it feels like you really mastered what looked at first, an unplayble game. Plus you can be creative and take a lot of shortcuts through the levels, it feels non-linear at times.

And the music and level design is all fantastic too, the best in the series. i've played and beat Sonic Robo Blast 20 times.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

I'm not sure there is much worth playing from that 3D era honestly, even the handheld titles lacked the original aesthetic of the 16-bit games. Sonic Mania is the only good Sonic game since the Mega Drive. I think Sonic could probably make a good Metroidvania, if you ditch the concept of time limit stages, and just made a 2D side-scroller with exploration.

There is ! Sonic Robo Blast ! trust me, this is the Super Mario 64 of Sonic:


100% skill based, no hand-holding.

Beware though, the controls are hard and is really easy to fuck it up, but still, once you git gud, the game is a blast to play.

 

[Zlaja]

 

[Ezekiel]

Ugh, finally succumbed and made a cosplay folder. Collection: 1 picture.

 

[Tavar]

Just in case you didn't know: A "new" Sonic game will be released on the 7th of September: Sonic Colors Ultimate. I've never played the original as it was only available on Wii and DS. This time it is available for all current platforms (the PC one is epic exclusive, but who cares?). It is 3D Sonic, so it will probably suck, but I might play the "demo".

 

[aweigh]

 

[Jacob]

You guys should try Sonic GT. It's probably the best 3D Sonic game. Huge levels and movesets, momentum-based gameplay, and in general it feels good to play as Sonic. It's probably beatable under an hour, but hey, it's free.

I loved the Adventure games as a kid, and revisiting the first few levels once in a while is always a blast, but I must admit they suck. The games in the style of Sonic Unleashed ("boost" games) are more polished but it seems like they just gave up on making a great 3D platformer. It's kinda funny the one 3D game that I think still holds up today is the spinoff Sonic Riders, and that game is pretty lacking in content.

Meanwhile the fangames have ambitions. Being fangames a lot of them are just tech demos and unfinished ideas, but on rare occasions we got something like Sonic GT that tries to go a little further with the polish and at the very least look like a decent and creative budget title.

We will never get the Sonic equivalent to Mario Odyssey but if I ever a craving for Sonic I'd just check out the latest trend on the fangame community.

 

[Jacob]

Anyway this character bio format is pretty cringe and I will always associate it with Sonic OCs:

Name: Faggot The Cocksucker
Age: 99 (real) 15 (Physically)
Friends: Jonny Buttfucked, Cunty The Femcel, Anal The Fister
Enemy: Dr. Ballsack

Likes: Sucking cock, wrestling, Freddie Mercury, wiener sausage
Dislikes: Big boobs (Gross), females, being raped by Dr. Ballsack

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Spindash in Sonic 1?

It is 3D Sonic, so it will probably suck, but I might play the "demo".

Colors is not a 3D game but it does in fact suck. Shadow the Hedgehog stomps Colors any day of the week.

 

[Falksi]

I love Sonic, i have no idea what you guys are talking about it, i think you guys are taking the "gotta to go fast" way too seriously, on your first playtrough you need to play the game carefully because there's a lot of traps and enemies you can't really avoid if you go too fast. However, the more you play on multiple playtroughs, once you start memorizing the level design, enemies and traps placement... you can play faster, lose less Rings, find secrets and improve your score.



So it's really like any other momentum-based platformer but in Sonic is worse because of the limited field of view and high speed. But fuck it, i love it, maybe because i played Sonic a lot as a kid and there's no "initial barrier" of frustration for me. Sonic is also pretty easy, the easiest platform game series out there, and funny thing is that i find the Mario ganes stupidly hard, like really hard, harder than Castlevania and Ninja Gaiden. I could never get used to Mario physics/momentum for some reason, i always manage to fuck up even the most basic platforming.

Also The best Sonic game for me is neither Sonic 1, 2, 3, CD or Mania. The best sonic imo is the fangame Sonic Robo Blast, why ? well, if you play this game for the first time, you'll find this game unplayable, it's really hard to get into because of the controls, physics/momentum and camera. But once you "git gud", it's so much FUN ! you feel like a god playing it:


Btw this level is extremely hard. Seriously, this game skill cap is huge, it feels like you really mastered what looked at first, an unplayble game. Plus you can be creative and take a lot of shortcuts through the levels, it feels non-linear at times.

And the music and level design is all fantastic too, the best in the series. i've played and beat Sonic Robo Blast 20 times.

Thing is measuring Sonic 1 at it's fastest played by an expert on the first few levels isn't a true measure of the game's speed.

Most players will spend ages trying to get up to that standard, and even then you can't hit those speeds in zones which contain water and other such obstacles etc. You're showing a brief snippet here of what is possible. Not what is most common. That vid is also 1 snapshot of 1 run. I can guarantee he fucked up and lost his rings many times before that snapshot.

It's a piss easy game, but it just doesn't lend itself to what it promises.

 

[Lutte]

The sanic were always strange platformers. The ring system in which you can basically keep getting hit on traps and enemies and keep getting your "shield" back as there's always a few rings bouncing around again is just bad game design. You need some very basic level of tension to make a game engaging, even though the mario are also meant to be children's games they understand this and don't make you feel like you're constantly invulnerable to anything that's not an empty void down below. Although, even that void down below will be taken very seriously in marios every time you get an autoscroll level, which are always a great change in pacing from the more leisurely cruising around.

The speed thing is a nice reward for doing rote memorization of level layout but to get there you need to replay the game enough times, which is something most people won't achieve if they get bored of the game right at the start. Games that use an arcade type design - short play session, but high replayability/ceiling of mastery need to be immediately engaging, you can't say "the game gets good after you replayed it 10 times". Streets of Rage is fun even when you know nothing and get your first play session going. Good shmups always delight me on my first failures. I can't be arsed to replay sanic enough times to master going fast just to say that I can do a level fast. The speed element is a failure if learning the levels and memorizing them is soporific.

Ultimately, and this is going to earn me ire here, but I also feel 2d platformers is one of the few genres that has seen major improvements rather than decline over the years, and while, say, I prefer Mario over Sonic, I also prefer Super Meat Boy, The End is Nigh, Tobari 1&2 (and the various touhou platformers the same devs made), Celeste and many others over both of these classic franchises. I've played the classics back in the day, but I don't feel much nostalgia for them. While action platformers like Castlevania, Mega Man or Contra retain some very high qualities that make them great to replay even today, I don't feel like the original pure platformers games aged all that well. Though, SMB3 and SMW would be very excellent introductions to the genre to anyone who is inexperienced with platforming games.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I've never played a Mario game, but they always seemed too generic and frivolous.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Thing is measuring Sonic 1 at it's fastest played by an expert on the first few levels isn't a true measure of the game's speed.

Most players will spend ages trying to get up to that standard, and even then you can't hit those speeds in zones which contain water and other such obstacles etc. You're showing a brief snippet here of what is possible. Not what is most common. That vid is also 1 snapshot of 1 run. I can guarantee he fucked up and lost his rings many times before that snapshot.

That clip isn't even that crazy. Sure, the part where he bounces off the robot into the monitor in the tree takes memorization, but it's an easy trick once you know how to do it. I discovered a similar trick in Sonic 2's Emerald Hill on my own, on the second day I spent playing that game. You can reach a similar standard in just a few runs of the game, and the giant levels means there's always a new way to speed through things (not so much in Sonic 1 but hey it's the first game)

The sanic were always strange platformers. The ring system in which you can basically keep getting hit on traps and enemies and keep getting your "shield" back as there's always a few rings bouncing around again is just bad game design. You need some very basic level of tension to make a game engaging, even though the mario are also meant to be children's games they understand this and don't make you feel like you're constantly invulnerable to anything that's not an empty void down below.

I dunno, I remember people talking about how hard Sonic Mania was when it came out, and not just journos. In Sonic 2 at first I played like a fag getting hit all the time so I never got any extra lives or continues via the 10,000 end of level point bonus nor did I get the Chaos Emeralds, and so I got a big fat game over at the final boss. With all that, it's not like there's no challenge when you have to avoid getting hit both to get the good ending and get enough extra lives to survive the bottomless pit heavy end-game.

The speed thing is a nice reward for doing rote memorization of level layout but to get there you need to replay the game enough times, which is something most people won't achieve if they get bored of the game right at the start. Games that use an arcade type design - short play session, but high replayability/ceiling of mastery need to be immediately engaging, you can't say "the game gets good after you replayed it 10 times". Streets of Rage is fun even when you know nothing and get your first play session going. Good shmups always delight me on my first failures. I can't be arsed to replay sanic enough times to master going fast just to say that I can do a level fast. The speed element is a failure if learning the levels and memorizing them is soporific.

For me, the good music, good visuals, and most importantly, the fantastic controls, were more than enough to make me want to replay the game. If you thought it was boring then maybe it just isn't your kind of game.

Celeste

 

[Jacob]

The sanic were always strange platformers. The ring system in which you can basically keep getting hit on traps and enemies and keep getting your "shield" back as there's always a few rings bouncing around again is just bad game design. You need some very basic level of tension to make a game engaging, even though the mario are also meant to be children's games they understand this and don't make you feel like you're constantly invulnerable to anything that's not an empty void down below. Although, even that void down below will be taken very seriously in marios every time you get an autoscroll level, which are always a great change in pacing from the more leisurely cruising around.

The speed thing is a nice reward for doing rote memorization of level layout but to get there you need to replay the game enough times, which is something most people won't achieve if they get bored of the game right at the start. Games that use an arcade type design - short play session, but high replayability/ceiling of mastery need to be immediately engaging, you can't say "the game gets good after you replayed it 10 times". Streets of Rage is fun even when you know nothing and get your first play session going. Good shmups always delight me on my first failures. I can't be arsed to replay sanic enough times to master going fast just to say that I can do a level fast. The speed element is a failure if learning the levels and memorizing them is soporific.

Ultimately, and this is going to earn me ire here, but I also feel 2d platformers is one of the few genres that has seen major improvements rather than decline over the years, and while, say, I prefer Mario over Sonic, I also prefer Super Meat Boy, The End is Nigh, Tobari 1&2 (and the various touhou platformers the same devs made), Celeste and many others over both of these classic franchises. I've played the classics back in the day, but I don't feel much nostalgia for them. While action platformers like Castlevania, Mega Man or Contra retain some very high qualities that make them great to replay even today, I don't feel like the original pure platformers games aged all that well. Though, SMB3 and SMW would be very excellent introductions to the genre to anyone who is inexperienced with platforming games.

The ring system is a weird decision, it's true, and they could have gone with a standard health bar (I think Sonic's movements and level design is not very suitable for one-hit kill life system like Mario), but in no way it's a bad game design. The amount of rings you're carrying will determine how vulnerable you are to getting hit. You will almost always lose some of them when getting hit, and when you got hit while carrying only one, you're suddenly worrying if you'd lose it the next time you get hit. This is especially true in boss fights. Of course you'll usually have enough retries, but the same goes for Mario.

While this game is more "arcade" than modern 40-hour games, it's not really a game made with arcade play in mind. Levels are longer and slower paced (Which I think is the reason of the "misleading gotta go fast" criticism, but it's not entirely misleading, since the character IS fast). It's definitely a game made for home console in mind, it just came from an era where home console game design isn't fully cemented yet. Personally, I found that the biggest sin of the classic Sonic games is the character's slow acceleration from full stop. It makes the game much more painful to play, and I feel that the little tweak Sonic Mania does to fix this makes that game much more enjoyable to play, even if there are other issues with Sonic Mania itself.

And really, I don't think there are many platformers like Sonic. Comparatively large level, with a sense of exploration reinforced by the player character being pretty large compared to the screen, with lots of verticality, but it's ultimately linear. Most just go for a Mario-like experience, for better or worse. The closest one, Freedom Planet, started as a Sonic fangame, and honestly, it's hard to not think of it as such when playing the game.

 

[Jacob]

And hey, the ring system is such an iconic part of Sonic games! Even 3D Mario games have a health bar. But no mainline Sonic game is without the ring system!

 

[Falksi]

Thing is measuring Sonic 1 at it's fastest played by an expert on the first few levels isn't a true measure of the game's speed.

Most players will spend ages trying to get up to that standard, and even then you can't hit those speeds in zones which contain water and other such obstacles etc. You're showing a brief snippet here of what is possible. Not what is most common. That vid is also 1 snapshot of 1 run. I can guarantee he fucked up and lost his rings many times before that snapshot.

That clip isn't even that crazy. Sure, the part where he bounces off the robot into the monitor in the tree takes memorization, but it's an easy trick once you know how to do it. I discovered a similar trick in Sonic 2's Emerald Hill on my own, on the second day I spent playing that game. You can reach a similar standard in just a few runs of the game, and the giant levels means there's always a new way to speed through things (not so much in Sonic 1 but hey it's the first game)

[QUOTE="Lutte, post

Yup, and it is only the second stage. Like you say, "Spindash in Sonic 1", load of bollocks.

Later Sonic games speed up more, but Sonic 1's initial slow pace is incredibly dull IMO. Fair fucks if you can be arsed to persist mastering the routes until they become fast. But I have no idea why anyone would bother with a game which is supposed to be about speed from the off, to only have to slowly plod your way through the levels before you can do that. As Lutte says, these games need to buzz you from the off to be up there with the best of them IMO. In essence they serve as my palette cleanser between deeper games such as Baldurs Gate, and did back then too.

Maybe I'm just impatient. I want this type of game as a instant hit. And the difficulty to come from tests of skill not so much as memorization.

But like I've always said, I do have a hatred for Sonic 1 due to being majorly disappointed by it on release, which probably colours my opinion a bit.

And if Sonic 1 was so good, then why does what's regarded as the best in the series, Sonic 2, make all the necessary changes which I wanted Sonic 1 to make? Essentially, Sonic 2 is what Sonic 1 should have been. Hence why we see spindash in the Sonic 1 clip.

 

[Lutte]

, I remember people talking about how hard Sonic Mania was when it came out, and not just journos.

Really? Mania pretty much hands you the super sanic form on a plate, very early in the game without trying much and the form invalidates so much of the content. I played it like twice and uninstalled because I found it extremely fatiguing, too long, way too fucking long for what it is, with too many retread of old levels. I guess, someone who has been autistic about replaying Sonic 2, 3 and CD for hundreds of hours might be happy to see those levels again with some changes in layout but I was just tired by the time I finished the game. It's as long as playing 3&Knuckles in one go but nowhere near fresh enough to justify the length.
Sonic 2 had a few interesting levels, but overall it's not really a franchise known for being engaging mechanically.

Personally, I found that the biggest sin of the classic Sonic games is the character's slow acceleration from full stop. It makes the game much more painful to play, and I feel that the little tweak Sonic Mania does to fix this makes that game much more enjoyable to play, even if there are other issues with Sonic Mania itself.

That tweak naturally requires a change in level design which I'm not sure could have happened on Genesis. Sonic Mania accommodates the ease with which you can regain momentum even if you play badly by making the levels larger. A newbie longplay of Mania is comparable to playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles (which are double cartridge) in play time despite the added mobility.

I can't bring myself to like Mania, if anything I hate it more than the classics because I see it as low effort nostalgia bait. Old levels, music, some tweaks here and there, with a few sparse new levels in between. Yeah, the old levels aren't 100% identical in layout but it doesn't change that feel of been there, done that, please stop.
It's a complete joke that the only new Sonic game that gets any respect (and indeed, even if I dislike mania, it's at least a playable game, unlike all the trash sega puts out) is that sort of low effort thing that makes you feel like you're playing a mashup of 2+3+Knuckles.