#dreamsaturn

[luvdsaturnn]

just bc my entire life revolves around pink lightning doesn’t mean i don’t enjoy some good sapphics every now and then

[blazehedgehog]

Why do you think Dimps Sonic games made getting the Emeralds so obtuse and frustrating?

I always blamed it on the fact that, as far as I've heard, Dimps is made up of former SNK and former Treasure staff. Or, at least, they were at the time.

This is why the Sonic Advance games have such good animation, because some of those guys came from the Metal Slug team, apparently. And what else did Metal Slug have? Extreme difficulty! A lot of SNK Arcade games did, really. And Treasure was spun off from Konami, and Konami games were known for extreme difficulty as well. Treasure games weren't exactly pushovers, either.

So you have a bunch of dudes who value a stiff challenge. And you say it's getting the emeralds, but honestly I think the Dimps Sonic games are know for big, weird, random spikes of difficulty in general. A bottomless pit in a place you weren't expecting, or a boss that can suddenly kill you in one hit regardless of how many rings you have.

Or the simple fact that, like, the Sonic Advance games have power-ups, but you almost never find them. You might get lucky and stumble in to a green shield, but invincibility? Speed shoes? A magnet shield? May as well not even exist, because they're hidden in very difficult, obscure places.

This philosophy extends to special stages, where I'd assume the logic is, "if you want to do this, you're going to have to work for it and earn your right." Old, old, old school game design, where challenge is gameplay, so more challenge equals more gameplay.

At least in Sonic Advance 2 (and 3, I guess), once you open a special stage, completing it is relatively easy. All the difficulty is in getting there. They at least had a little mercy.

[speeps-highway]

Not sure if you'll take this (but I would greatly appreciate it if you did) but could you replace the "Aw yeah this is happening" text with "Saturn is pretty rad!"?

Sure:

[isitepic]

Is It Epic? Sonic Mania (Plus) Review

Sonic Mania is a pretty special game, from it’s creation story to the end product we see before us today. During the days of the Dreamcast and the days following after, there would be several attempts to recapture Sonic’s glory days on the Genesis. Though none of them quite matched the quality of those games, for many, Sonic’s handheld adventures such as the Sonic Advance trilogy would be Sonic’s only 2D games for several years.

But that’s just for official Sonic games, meanwhile, there was a steady, lively community for Sonic mods and fangames, yet again trying to recapture that Sonic 16-bit magic. While many fell flat on their face, some of them actually came quite close. Enter Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley.

Christian Whitehead, also known as the Taxman, had coded his own engine, dubbed the Retro Engine, and showed it off at SAGE of 2009. This engine would of course, be used for his pitched remake of Sonic CD. Whereas games like Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 were available on iOS at the time, they ran on rather crummy emulators. This was different. This was a complete remake from the ground up.

Enter Simon Thomley, aka Stealth, who worked on several well known Sonic fangame projects like Sonic MegaMix, and possibly most famously his own version of Sonic the Hedgehog on Gameboy Advance Hardware. Being friends with Christian, he provided his own advice on the Sonic CD remake before joining him on the remakes of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2.

After a failed pitch for a Sonic 3 and Knuckles remake, the two would not be deturred. Enter Sonic Discovery, after a lengthy meeting with Takashi Iizuka, Sonic Mania was born. After it’s reveal at San Diego Comic Con 2016, people were excited, and I was right along with them.

After a frustrating delay for the PC version and dealing with the fallout of Denuvo, many people, including myself, were completely enamored with the game. But that was a year ago, and a lot can change in a year. I’ve certainly changed a lot in the course of a year.

With the new Sonic Mania Plus DLC that was released in July of this year, the game has changed quite a bit and the hype has died down significantly. With this in mind, I figured now is as good of a time as any to sit down and really analyze Sonic Mania, especially with the new 1.4 update.

The plot of Sonic Mania is unfortunately a lot of wasted potential. After discovering a mysterious power source on Angel Island that teleports whoever it is you’re playing as to Green Hill Zone, it transforms the surrounding EggRobos into the new Hard Boiled Heavies. Through one big adventure, The Heavy King faces off with the Egg Reverie and Super Sonic. After defeating them both, a portal opens up and Sonic is sucked in, kicking off the events of Sonic Forces.

In essence, the story only exists to advertise Sonic Forces and that ends up working against it. The original story saw Dr. Robotnik falling into a deep depression after the events of Sonic 3, with the Hard Boiled Heavies taking over, but that was scrapped for reasons I’m not entirely sure of.

But story was never the drawing point of Classic Sonic the Hedgehog. While games like Sonic CD or Sonic 3 had something of a narrative, it was never the heavy focus of the game. What really sold Sonic was his gameplay, and luckily, Sonic Mania excels in that regard. What made Sonic work in the original Genesis games were his physics and level design.

The key to good Sonic level design is fluidity, keeping Sonic moving is as important and his speed itself. Take Sonic 1 for example, all the best levels in that game are filled with slopes and loop de loops that Sonic can roll around and pick up so much speed that he can outrun the screen itself. Sonic Mania keeps such design mentalities in mind, as even in more rigid levels such as Titanic Monarch, skilled players can speedrun it as easily as something like Green Hill Zone.

What’s also important is Sonic’s physics, and by extension, his momentum. This is where Sonic Mania succeeds and something like Sonic 4 fails miserably. How Sonic reacts to the terrain below him is cruical, because if he doesn’t react properly, then the game won’t function right.

Sonic Mania is the first “Classic” Sonic game since 1994 to truly feel like it understood why the Genesis trilogy was so beloved, expanding on what people liked about them in every way. That’s not to say the game is without it’s flaws, however. Some of the bosses way overstay their welcome. Hydrocity Zone Act 2 in particular can really feel like a slog, being two full bosses back to back. Metal Sonic also can be a bit of a drag, but thankfully in the recent 1.4 update, it’s been updated to be slightly more forgiving, adding a checkpoint right before the final phase, which has also been updated quite significantly.

Some of the levels in general can also go on for a really, really long time, and that’s especially a bit of a problem when the save system saves only by Zone and not by Act. What’s especially strange about this is that the Sonic Advance trilogy, Sonic Rush games, and the Sonic 1, 2 and CD remakes all had this figured out, save by Act, and those levels are significantly smaller than those found in Sonic Mania. If I stop playing at Mirage Saloon Act 2, I shold, at the very least, be able to pick it back up again at Mirage Saloon Act 2.

While it’s nice to see the Elemental Shields get some more creative usage, they don’t really get enough of that creative usage. I mean, yeah setting fire to Oil Ocean Zone is pretty cool, and yeah, sticking to the ceilling in Flying Battery Zone is a pretty creative idea, but aside from setting fire to a bridge here or there in Green Hill Zone, that’s kind of it.

Sonic Mania also got paid DLC in the form of Sonic Mania Plus, adding two new characters, Mighty and Ray. It also adds some new Bonus Stages, new Special Stage layouts and a brand new Encore Mode, with new stage color palletes and slightly altered stage layouts. But that’s the operative word: slightly. Mighty is essentially the easy mode of this game, with a ground pound that can destroy certain objects and occasionally lead to different paths, and his shell protects him from certain dangers. Ray is essentially Super Mario World’s Cape Mario in the form of a Sonic the Hedgehog character, allowing him to glide over large distances.

The new level layouts don’t really lend themselves well to the new character’s abilities. By and large, aside from different entity placement, the levels are basically identical. The Special Stages have also seen a significant overhaul, with all new, much more difficult to find Warp Ring placement, the Special Stage design aesthetics going in reverse and being BRUTALLY unforgiving. One slip up, and at that point you may as well throw yourself off the track because you aren’t getting the Emerald.

The only reason I got all the Emeralds in my playthrough of Encore mode is, what I assume was a Debug feature left in the PC version by mistake that allowed you to instantly go up a speed level and the press of a button.

But as cool as it is to see these characters return after over 22 years of absence, and as fun as they are to play, these levels aren’t entirely built around these characters’ abilities. We have fewer Warp Rings and those are moved around quite substanstially, and we have a lot more harsh enemy placement, but that’s all, really.

To be completely honest, I am beyond the point of burnout with Sonic Mania. With over 100 hours on record, gathering all the footage for the video review and getting 100% clear on all files in Encore Mode, I am Mania’d out. I am taking a long, long break from Sonic games until Team Sonic Racing comes out.

Though I sound pretty negative in this review, don’t take that the wrong way; Sonic Mania is a gorgeous, beautiful game that serves as a love letter to fans of Classic Sonic. While not a perfect game, for the first time in many years, we finally have a worthy followup to Sonic’s adventures on the Genesis. If you fell in love with the potbellied hedgehog like I did, Sonic Mania serves as a beautiful reminder of why Sonic set the world on fire.

[blazehedgehog]

Is OverBite still in stasis?

Sadly, yes. I was cleaning up the design document a little a few weeks ago, and I still think about the game a lot, but... I wish I had more to say or more answers or more anything.

I know it was more than three years ago, but moving like we did really threw a wrench in to my entire life and I’m still trying to sort things out and recover from that. I made a lot of promises and there’s a few I haven’t kept yet. It weighs on me a lot.

But I’m also just... burnt out, on a lot of things, I guess. Some of that is just this time of year, some of that is everything that happened last year, and things that have yet to pass this year...

I know what I need to do and I’m still pointed in a general direction, but it’s also hard not to feel rudderless right now. I’m used to following my inspiration wherever it goes, but lately that just feels like it’s getting me in to trouble. The institutions I was once proud to be a part of don’t want me anymore.

There was a feeling there, like I was part of something bigger, and therefore it made me bigger, too. It proved that I had worth. Now I have to prove that to myself, and I’m not great at doing that. It’s like this blog, right. I write a lot because of this blog, and often about subjects I’d never even consider writing about unless somebody else prompted me to. And I’ve thought about that a lot, about what I’d do if I was ever tasked with just... thinking up articles to write, without having anyone specifically prod me and say, “Write about this, please.”

I never came up with an answer for what I’d do there, and now I’m faced with a scenario where it feels like I’m stuck in that reality and I’m starting to panic. I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know what to do. I feel a little lost, these days. I’m sure it won’t last forever, but it’s not exactly something I can give an ETA on. I know what my brain is doing, I’m aware of the problem, it’s just hard to grab on and not slip further down.

I’m sorry for disappointing everyone. I’ll get through this.

[blazehedgehog]

Why do you think of all the games to port to PC, Sonic Team chose Lost World? My only working theory is that it's because it would be cheap and they wanted to make up for the fact that LW Wii U didn't sell especially well

From my point of view, I’d say what happened is that Sega poured a decent amount of money in to Sonic Lost World, after striking the three-game exclusivity deal with Nintendo. The game apparently tanked hard on Wii U. I’d heard a rumor that it was under 200k sales in its first month, which is pretty bad for something like a Sonic game.

This most likely spooked them pretty bad. BigRedButton asked for more time and more money for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, and Sega said “No.” Partially because they had to meet the deadline of the TV show launch, but also because I assume Sega kind of sent it to die, knowing it wasn’t worth the effort after Sonic Lost World did so poorly. There was no point in saving Rise of Lyric.

I seem to remember after Lost World came out, it was retroactively declared that some other game, like Mario & Sonic Sochi, was part of the three game exclusivity deal. I think that behind the scenes, Sega might have panicked and asked Nintendo to renegotiate their contract. By declaring Sochi part of the deal, Nintendo let them out early rather than lock them in for a third new game.

Given that Rise of Lyric was a Sonic-06-level disaster, there was no point in salvaging it. But Sonic Lost World wasn’t a dumpster fire. Well, I mean, comparatively. That game has a lot of problems, but it’s not especially buggy or broken or even really that unfinished. It just had some weird, dumb, clumsy design decisions made by people who did not seem to know what they were doing.

So a PC port was probably just Sega trying to recoup their losses, somewhat. They knew not a lot of people played Lost World, and there was already precedent for porting Hedgehog Engine to PC, so they slapped something together on the cheap.

Makes sense to me.

[blazehedgehog]

With your leaning more intro retro games for your reviews, do you think a Mario Sunshine review could be in the cards? I remember you mentioning not liking it and I'm interested in hearing your thoughts more in depth

Among some of my earliest game reviews on the internet was one for Super Mario Sunshine. I suppose it could stand to be updated, though. I did finish my replay in late 2018, so it’s kind of fresh in my mind, still.

Though, like, the short of it is that Super Mario Sunshine is a very repetitive game and isn’t as polished or varied as any of the 3D Marios around it. It was from a brief window where people were complaining about how long Nintendo took to make its games -- they were promising a new Mario platformer and it had been, like, four since Super Mario 64 and they hadn’t ever even shown anything of the sequel.

So with the launch of the Gamecube, Nintendo vowed to find ways to speed up development.

I always attributed this to why we got, like, the triforce hunt at the end of Wind Waker. It was a quick, easy way for them to add another two or three hours to the gameplay clock, especially after they cut several islands from the game.

I also attributed to this to a feeling of, like, “cheapness” to their Gamecube output. There wasn’t as much “Nintendo polish” in a lot of their games from this era. Like, you look back on it now, and Mario Kart Double Dash is a very ugly, weird, messy game.

In Super Mario Sunshine this just manifests itself as the game being very repetitive. All the levels blur together because they all look very similar, the music isn’t very memorable, and they have you repeating the same level objectives over, and over, and over again. It’s not devoid of fun, but the unique, interesting and enjoyable parts of that game only make up maybe 20% of the experience. The rest of the game is being lead around by the nose and doing the same stuff again and again.

I’d actually started writing out all my specific problems, but the post was getting kind of long, so that just says to me that yeah, I should probably just re-review it. My last review is probably 15 years old at this point.

[blazehedgehog]

Dracula OverBite is totally the surprise character for the next Smash reveal, right?

I love that his full name is “Dracula Overbite.”