Sonic the Hedgehog Thread

I don't play modern Sonic games, but my bro picked up Sonic Mania a while back, and I now find myself lamenting the fact Michael Jackson wasn't around to belt out some funky beats for the project. Putting aside common controversy and focusing on his art, the man was a major influence in the conception of Sonic, and as we now know, he was indeed the captain of Sonic 3's musical helm, as confirmed by his old team on the project last year. [Just in case you missed it: http://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/michaeljacksonsonic/#]

I reckon getting MJ on board for this retro throwback would've been perfect, and perhaps quite possible, as he was especially fond of the original games back in the day.
The real kicker is, there would have been no frustrating hardware restrictions or limitations today - something that discouraged and dampened his vision back in '93.

playing-games-michael-jackson-11720477-500-354.jpg


Speaking of Sonic Mania, how did the young/modern Sonic fans gel with the game, @TB100 ? I've read that the Sonic community is pretty divided, so I'm guessing some of the old lore and characters in Mania was lost on a large chunk of the younger fanbase? Or did everyone welcome it, young and old?
 
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Angler of Lake Asparagus said:
I reckon getting MJ on board for this retro throwback would've been perfect, and perhaps quite possible, as he was especially fond of the original games back in the day.
The real kicker is, there would have been no frustrating hardware restrictions or limitations today - something that discouraged and dampened his vision back in '93.
Click to expand...
As I was compiling my list for the "Tunes that Spark your Spirits" thread, I came across something rather peculiar if not all that interesting.

This is what Launch Base Zone Act 1 if the samples were not as heavily compressed and constantly cutting each other off. It doesn't sound all that different but still it's pretty interesting. Maybe I'm just too used to hearing those rough sounding samples after all these years so I don't think this sounds too good. Maybe I can find a way to do this with other tracks from the game as well as other Genesis games...
 
Angler of Lake Asparagus said:
I reckon getting MJ on board for this retro throwback would've been ideal, and perhaps quite possible, as he was especially fond of the original games back in the day.
The real kicker is, there would have been no frustrating hardware restrictions or limitations today - something that discouraged and dampened his vision back in '93.
Click to expand...
In order to do that
We'll need to get an Ouija Board and a necromancer to contact his spirit from within.
Angler of Lake Asparagus said:
Speaking of Sonic Mania, how did the young/modern Sonic fans gel with the game, @TB100 ? I've read that the Sonic community is pretty divided, so I'm guessing some of the old lore and characters in Mania was lost on a large chunk of the younger fanbase? Or did everyone welcome it, young and old?
Click to expand...
DHUEv_CUMAEiaOy.jpeg

I think this image alone should speak for itself.
It is the most popular Sonic game in fifteen years and has been acclaimed
By a good majority of the fandom so far.
Now of course, there is a chunk of the fandom that doesn't care about Mania for various reasons, But when looking at the bigger picture overall, Mania has been a pretty big hit so far.


Magma said:
As I was compiling my list for the "Tunes that Spark your Spirits" thread, I came across something rather peculiar if not all that interesting.

This is what Launch Base Zone Act 1 if the samples were not as heavily compressed and constantly cutting each other off. It doesn't sound all that different but still it's pretty interesting. Maybe I'm just too used to hearing those rough sounding samples after all these years so I don't think this sounds too good. Maybe I can find a way to do this with other tracks from the game as well as other Genesis games...
Click to expand...

Wow that is very interesting, Launch Base is a pretty sick track and to hear a uncompressed version is while offputting a bit,
is actually pretty neat to hear. (Now I wonder what the rest of the Sonic 3&K soundtrack would sound like uncompressed.)
 
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I really wish SEGA could dig up the original 41 unconverted studio tracks that Jackson and his team composed/sent to them. Have any of them ever been leaked or heard in public? Do the original studio recordings even still exist? It would be swell if they could cut a deal with the Jackson Estate, and release them to the public.

@TB100 Splendid to hear that about Mania. Getting the old style and sensibilities right is something most throwbacks fail at these days, which really turns me off the whole retro reboot craze. As they say, "beware of imitations".
 
Angler of Lake Asparagus said:
I really wish SEGA could dig up the original 41 unconverted studio tracks that Jackson and his team composed/sent to them. Have any of them ever been leaked or heard in public? Do the original studio recordings even still exist? It would be swell if they could cut a deal with the Jackson Estate, and release them to the public.

@TB100 Splendid to hear that about Mania. Getting the old style and sensibilities right is something most throwbacks fail at these days, which really turns me off the whole retro reboot craze. As they say, "beware of imitations".
Click to expand...
In regards to the music...sadly that kind of thing doesn't seem like it wouldn't be preserved. Already in general this kind of thing is rarely preserved but considering the fact that Jackson wasn't even credited would mean that these tracks don't hold a lot of value I'd say. But who knows, Masato Nakamura's demo tracks for the first 2 games were preserved and even got an official release.


In regards to Mania..modern Sega I would hardly trust to really do much justice to anything having to do with Classic Sonic. Dedicated Sonic fans have pretty much completely replicated the Classic Sonic engine and is better than anything than say, Dimps has ever done. Sonic Mania is pretty much a glorified fan game. I think it's sad that fans know Classic Sonic better than Sega does but then again it's not the same Sega.
 
I’m interested in how japanese development studios work in Japan. Because I do believe their is a very big difference between SEGA and The Sonic Team. One or the other is at fault here.

and Sonic forces was a very good sonic game.
 

So this is something interesting I found while browsing on the internet, it's basically a version of Sonic 3's mini boss that's a bit more advanced then the original version.

Original for comparsion.

Now there's not too many differences between the two
outside of the lack of compression and some additional notes here and there
But it is interesting to hear nethertheless.
 
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So I realized I never really talked about Sonic Forces.

Overall, It's simply one of the most mediocre Sonic games i've played.
There's nothing bad about it, but there's nothing really great about it either.
That's not to say there isn't anything I didn't enjoy here as I think the presentation is great (The artstyle is probably the best artstyle as it combines the fantasy realistic look of Unleashed-Generations with the simplistic look of Lost World and it looks great.)
the avatar is fun to customize, the soundtrack is unsurprisingly great (Except for a majority of Classic's soundtrack as the only tracks I really enjoyed there was Ghost Town and Casino Forest with the others being either decent or meh) Sonic's writing here is pretty great and some of the voice actors/actress are definitely showing some improvement, Modern and Avatar's levels are fun to go through.
Plus while I don't mind the lighthearted and comedic fare in previous games, it's admittedly refreshing to see a story with some stakes again. (Even if the execution wasn't great.)

However, Classic Sonic is pretty bad (His gameplay is a step backwards from even Generations) and feels just unnecessary in the grand scheme of things,
It's excessively overautomated even compared to previous Boost games, the controls are very stiff with Jumping not being very fun, some characters are written pretty poorly here, (Eggman and Tails are the worst examples of this as Eggman is not nearly as entertaining as he could have been and Tails has been downgraded to a wimp that's obsessed with Classic Sonic.) There's a severe lack of enemy variety overall and the game is generally very easy as a whole with enemies not serving much of a threat even compared to previous boost games and levels being at times ridiculously short. (Plus the Avatar's wispons are ridiculously overpowered)

Overall: If I have to personally rank the Boost Games, this will be on the bottom of the list
As I find this to be the weakest of the bunch. That doesn't make it a bad Sonic game by any means, and there's still fun times to be have here despite it's overall mediocrity. (The fact that I completed it should mean something.) But I doubt i'll come back to this one often as overall, it's just

And nothing more really.
 
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Here's a pretty neat remix of Ghost Town from Sonic Forces :

The Classic Sonic tracks in the game are by far the ones people are most mixed (and outright negative) on, thing is I actually don't think the compositions themselves are that bad, it's just the instrumentations that miss the mark, because while yes; they do sound like Mega Drive music, they also happen to go for the kind of instruments that Mega Drive Sonic (mostly) avoided, in order to sound different from other games on the system.

Speaking of remixes here's a acoustic cover of Dreams of an Absolution which I just found and there's no way I'm not sharing it, because it's simply gorgeous :
 
TB100 said:
So I realized I never really talked about Sonic Forces.

Overall, It's simply one of the most mediocre Sonic games i've played.
There's nothing bad about it, but there's nothing really great about it either.
That's not to say there isn't anything I didn't enjoy here as I think the presentation is great (The artstyle is probably the best artstyle as it combines the fantasy realistic look of Unleashed-Generations with the simplistic look of Lost World and it looks great.)
the avatar is fun to customize, the soundtrack is unsurprisingly great (Except for a majority of Classic's soundtrack as the only tracks I really enjoyed there was Ghost Town and Casino Forest) Sonic's writing here is pretty great and some of the voice actors/actress are definitely showing some improvement, Modern and Avatar's levels are fun to go through. And I did enjoy Infinite and the little we got of him (I feel he was very underutilized though.) Plus while I don't mind the lighthearted and comedic fare in previous games, it's admittedly refreshing to see a story with some stakes again. (Even if the execution wasn't great.)

But Classic Sonic is bad (His gameplay is a step backwards from even Generations) and feels just unnecessary.
It's excessively overautomated even compared to previous Boost games, the controls are very stiff with Jumping not being very fun, some characters are written pretty poorly here, (Eggman and Tails are the worst examples of this as Eggman is not nearly as entertaining as he could have been and Tails has been downgraded to a wimp that's obsessed with Classic Sonic.) There's a severe lack of enemy variety overall and the game is generally very easy as a whole with enemies not serving much of a threat even compared to previous boost games and levels being at times ridiculously short. (Plus the Avatar's wispons are ridiculously overpowered)

Overall: If I have to personally rank the Boost Games, this will be on the bottom of the list
As I find this to be the weakest of the bunch. That doesn't make it a bad Sonic game by any means, and there's still fun times to be have here despite it's overall mediocrity. (The fact that I completed it should mean something.) But I doubt i'll come back to this one often as overall, it's just

And nothing more sadly.
Click to expand...

I haven't tried forces yet though as mediocre as it is I do plan on doing so someday as this is one of the few series I would do that for. However, knowing that it's quite a drop from Generations for me makes it a lot worse. I mean I know we got Mania and all that I've played through a lot of it and it is quite fantastic but I was looking forward to this a little more. Though looking at what Glowsquid posted the necessary resources just didn't seem to be there...
 
wonder what sega will do now that the download-only spriteart professioanl fangame is a success and the mainline game from the dedicated developers is a massive bomb
 
TB100 said:
So I realized I never really talked about Sonic Forces.

Overall, It's simply one of the most mediocre Sonic games i've played.
There's nothing bad about it, but there's nothing really great about it either.
That's not to say there isn't anything I didn't enjoy here as I think the presentation is great (The artstyle is probably the best artstyle as it combines the fantasy realistic look of Unleashed-Generations with the simplistic look of Lost World and it looks great.)
the avatar is fun to customize, the soundtrack is unsurprisingly great (Except for a majority of Classic's soundtrack as the only tracks I really enjoyed there was Ghost Town and Casino Forest with the others being either decent or meh) Sonic's writing here is pretty great and some of the voice actors/actress are definitely showing some improvement, Modern and Avatar's levels are fun to go through and I did enjoy Infinite and the little we got of him (I feel he was very underutilized though.) Plus while I don't mind the lighthearted and comedic fare in previous games, it's admittedly refreshing to see a story with some stakes again. (Even if the execution wasn't great.)

However, Classic Sonic is pretty bad (His gameplay is a step backwards from even Generations) and feels just unnecessary in the grand scheme of things,
It's excessively overautomated even compared to previous Boost games, the controls are very stiff with Jumping not being very fun, some characters are written pretty poorly here, (Eggman and Tails are the worst examples of this as Eggman is not nearly as entertaining as he could have been and Tails has been downgraded to a wimp that's obsessed with Classic Sonic.) There's a severe lack of enemy variety overall and the game is generally very easy as a whole with enemies not serving much of a threat even compared to previous boost games and levels being at times ridiculously short. (Plus the Avatar's wispons are ridiculously overpowered)

Overall: If I have to personally rank the Boost Games, this will be on the bottom of the list
As I find this to be the weakest of the bunch. That doesn't make it a bad Sonic game by any means, and there's still fun times to be have here despite it's overall mediocrity. (The fact that I completed it should mean something.) But I doubt i'll come back to this one often as overall, it's just

And nothing more really.
Click to expand...

i didnt read all of ur post i mostly agree
 
warelander said:
Here's a pretty neat remix of Ghost Town from Sonic Forces :

Speaking of remixes here's a acoustic cover of Dreams of an Absolution which I just found and there's no way I'm not sharing it, because it's simply gorgeous :
Click to expand...

I kind of wish that had lyrics.

Does anyone here like the inclusion of Infinite? Because all Sonic needs is more edginess right? His theme is decent but it's more modern Sonic music.
And is Sonic Chronicles any good? It's kind of an obscure game I've only read about in Nintendo Power.
 
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