awesome writeup, i‘ve never tried sonic on energy drinks but now i’m gonna!
3/k is my favorite and i'd been saving a replay of that for years - there's great hacks like you mentioned, but i was thinking sonic origins would be the way...shame how that one turned out
i finally beat sonic adventure 1 with all the characters recently! i'd decided to replay the bigger 3d ones to hype up for frontiers (and finally try shadow haha) but the 2nd to last stage of SA2 is just killing my momentum, ughhh
>
@“treefroggy”#p82283 A point I want to bring up is for some reason the groupthink of Sonic Fans is that Sonic & Knuckles is bad by comparison in every way, from stage design to music?? But I couldn’t disagree more
i couldn't agree with you more. actually, i don't know if i've ever heard that, but to me _sonic & knuckles_ has always felt like the better part of the one game _sonic 3_ was supposed to be.
yeah having played the balls off of 3 when it dropped (i still don‘t know why so many folks stopped at 2?), when the knuckles add on showed up, it was like christmas - i spent so long on the old games with him (not to mention sonic 1 unlocking tons of sonic 3 bonus stages if you just tried), then the game itself was just such a joy. agreed that both the music and level design don’t get the love they deserve - and damn, the real final stage after you get all the chaos emeralds in both games is still an all-time great moment for the series
now sonic CD was always something else - i was floored by that intro (and still prefer sonic boom, having grown up with it) and the time travel angle for the good ending felt so cool - but even in the day , some levels definitely felt designed by their b team.
i absolutely get most folks not having had access to a sega-cd back then (though now even genesis everdrives give you access to the peripherals full library!!), but seeing popular online takes over the years go from calling it the secret best one (rather than a somewhat hidden gem) and digital rereleases getting it called shit was so...widely disproportionate. its very much neither of those things
the one i need to finally run through one day is knuckles chaorix - it just looks and sounds so good! but even past the gimmick, it feels so barren. i need to check if any mods fixed that over the years...also anyone who enjoyed part 2s special stages owes it to themselves to see what they became
I beat launch base zone pretty easily this morning, just shows I was fatigued yesterday haha
… and I did it with 6 emeralds… arghh, so close to having a perfect run my first time through!! All that orb collecting in mania really helped me recognize the patterns right away and nail it.
The momentous occasion that is the transition at the halfway point is nothing short of fucking genius. The way SEGA made these two games combine back in the day is insane, and I wish I’d have experienced it on a real cartridge as a kid… would have been totally mind blowing. No wonder sonic is such an obsession for so many peeps.
Back on ~~Pumpkin~~
Super Emerald?? I knew nothing about this before, wow. But the lava ridge zone act 2 theme still hittin.. so good.
The way the mushroom spores come up out of the grass is so next level. Sega really squeezed the mega drive to do some amazing things unlike anything else dude….
Having played sonic adventure a ton as a kid, since that’s what came out when I was 9, playing these zones on angel island in that context Im thinking of the future of angel island, this epic mystical place with Chao and Chaos and it rising up into the sky…
and to the haters who think the themes from S&K are inferior should always be replaced by S3 songs....
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/ul6btWW.png]
@“Chopemon”#p82172 the tone and story are insane, but as a game it’s totally fine! some of the better locations and level designs are quite late in the game too, so most people probably missed the best stuff.
@"billy "#p82380 I quite liked the running and jumping and flamethrower. I think I might go back to it and push through the first boss.
honestly yeah, i think i enjoyed my time with forces more than unleashes? the latter isn‘t a bad game & i didn’t even mind the werehog levels, but locking me out of the next stage until i collect enough things…i know mario 64 got away with it in the day but i‘ve hated it as a requirement in so many games after that…i don’t see this complaint about often though so maybe it's just me
@“IrishNinja”#p82395
It's not just you. Unleashed is a great game and that one little requirement keeps me from coming back to it. This last playthrough I realized you find most of the medals if you check _every nook and cranny_, but that's kinda stressful and doesn't lend to gameplay that's fun to repeat.
Today I played a couple of hours of this and I would describe this as being to Sonic Adventure what Sonicmania was for Sonic 2D.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1629530/Spark_the_Electric_Jester_3/
Very insert credit pick overall, even in the type of unevenness and lack of polish in certain areas.
I used to think that Sonic always frontloads the best stages, only the first zone or two is ever any good or fun… But now that I have 100%‘d Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic Mania, and 90% of Sonic Mania Encore, my opinion has changed…… I am a Sonic freak now. Makes me wanna replay Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 again, but first, I’m gonna keep chilling on my Mega Drive.
I also picked up the first Sonic SMS/GG game for the first time since I was a 10 year old with a Game Gear in 2001! It's so easily breakable now that I have real sonic skills. I passed the screen and none of the enemies were loading in so I was running along the terrain all the way to the end of the course, skipping the majority of the stage.
The nostalgia was hitting though. Game Gear was also the first time I'd ever disassembled a game console. I got it at a random garage sale in my neighborhood for only $20 from a newlywed couple that had moved in.... Quite serendipitously, and blew my little 10 year old mind.
@“treefroggy”#p82670 Okay fine I admit it I’ve never beaten Sonic 1, 2, 3, & Knuckles, or CD! I played them as a kid at my neighbor’s house and again as a slightly older kid via an emulator, but the only Sonic game for the Genesis that I’ve finished is Sonic 3D Blast. I’ve come close to finishing Sonic 2 plenty of times, but I always lose at that dang final boss.
I’ve loved 3D Sonic since I first saw Sonic Adventure (again at my neighbor’s house, thank you cool neighbors), but I’ve never enjoyed the 2D games as much. However!! Your recent Sonic posts give me hope that I can make that same journey to Sonic freakdom, and it is here that I formally announce that I will be playing Sonic 1 tomorrow until I emerge victorious. If I fail to achieve victory, I will change my profile picture in shame.
Here is the Gamescom trailer for Sonic Frontiers. With the recent delay of the Hogwart game, November 8 is a pretty comfy release window for the moment, Pokémon excepted.
https://youtu.be/zDZAbmxP7Yw
@“chazumaru”#p82683 looks a lot better. i think sega figured out how to market sonic: show a trainwreck, then deliver something pretty good.
@“deadbeat”#p82681 i‘ve been a sonic freak from wayback, and i’ve never finished sonic 1 with all the emeralds.
@“deadbeat”#p82681 I would recommend going the route I‘m going, Sonic Mania -> Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Having a save files helps a lot, and those games are the most refined, and fair.
There’s a reason why, after an entire 25 years of playing stuff like Sonic 1, 2, CD, Pocket Adventure, Advance, finally Mania and S3&K were the first ones I finished for realsies, lol.
Alright it’s just about midnight my time and my partner is in bed and the Genesis is in our bedroom which means…I lost. Sonic 1 wins this round. I gave it two solid attempts. Both times I was bested less by the game and more by the stress it caused me in certain situations which led to me turning off the console despite having plenty of lives and continues left. That part in Chemical Plant Zone in Sonic 2 with the moving blocks and the rising water must’ve hurt me real bad as a kid, because I still get irrationally tense when around things that will crush Sonic and when Sonic is in water with no air bubbles nearby. Once I fell behind in the Labyrinth Zone boss, it was over. I got too nervous to go on after my second death there and called it quits.
I had fun for the most part though! And since it’s been a long while since I’ve played Sonic 1 it was great to rediscover how nice that game looks and sounds. Despite having to slosh about in the water for lots of Labyrinth Zone I actually quite liked it because the song there is so chill. And while I don’t think this is true, it seemed like the caterkiller enemies moved to the beat of the Marble Zone music which had me falling in love with them immediately haha. I think I’m gonna see it through to the end, but I’ll probably play a version that lets me use saves of some kind so I can pause it for an extended period and take a breather after I spot some menacing slow moving blocks.
Quick side note: after quitting at the Labyrinth Zone boss I decided to play through Bonk’s Adventure on GameBoy. First off, wow what a nice relaxed time that was! Secondly, dang I gotta check it out on PC Engine it looks so goooooood
Edit:
@"treefroggy"#p82687 I would’ve taken your advice had I not already finished Mania back when it came out! It would have led to a smoother arguably more enjoyable experience, but I wanted to start with something less familiar since I already know I enjoy Mania enough to finish it! Probably coulda done 3&K though oops lol
I will always defend Knuckle Chaotix, but this is interesting to learn
https://twitter.com/Tracker_TD/status/1562554294884507648
Lots of cheap deaths, but getting this far in sonic 2 was super easy after all the sonicking I’ve done this month.
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/gi44iOW.jpeg]
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/RrJe0si.jpeg]
@“pasquinelli”#p82685
As a kid, I had beat all the other 2D Sonic games with all the emeralds and when I went back to beat Sonic 1 I was _sorely_ disappointed at the lack of Super Sonic. Same with Sonic 3D Blast.
Still worth the bragging rights though.
Sonic 2 was easy enough. I didn’t even use the tails assist patch I forgot I put on my flash cart.
Sonic 1, I can now say I had never gotten beyond spring yard zone before tonight. Before & as a kid, I hated the casino style sonic levels and thought the theme was so boring, I was frustrated with sonic in general. Now I relish in it.
Labyrinth zone was really cool, they are super forgiving with the air bubbles unlike every other game in the series. But then the boss ate all 12 of my lives and 3 more on a continue. I had 3 continues left, but decided to save it for another day.
Sonic 1 & 2 have stage select codes that essentially would have it function as though it has sonic 3 style saves. You can even go straight to special stage. Another really awesome thing I love about hardware is that with sonic, once you get an emerald or enable a cheat, it saves to RAM and if you reset the console, it persists! That’s so baller.
