General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

My favorite soundtrack in the series is Colors. It did an amazing job of fitting in with each level (except Sweet Mountain, I don't get how that fits). And Reach for the Stars is my favorite vocal theme in the series, and Speak with your Heart isn't far behind.

I can't take anyone who says the story's been on decline seriously. The story's never been THAT good, Black Knight aside.

For me, it's a three-way tie between S3&K, Sonic Colors, and Sonic Adventure, though the other games have some amazing tracks as well.

Problem is Generations didn't have a story, missed out on a lot of potential, and suffered because of it.

The adventure games, the rush games, sonic 3, sonic CD and Sonic 2 had the best soundtracks IMO. Unleashed was also really good. I don't care much for Colors aside from Sweet Mountain, really.

edited 26th Feb '13 4:58:04 PM by Vertigo_High

Sonic 2006, Sonic Unleashed, and Sonic Generations had the best music for me. I liked the night themes for Sonic Unleashed, they remind me of the night themes of Pokemon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum. Also Sonic Unleashed sort of reminds me of Pokemon Platinum and it helps they were released for the first time in the same year.

Holy crap, Egg Rocket Zone in Sonic Advancve 1 is one hell of a Marathon Level.

The gameplay is slippery, but I loved that goddamn level. Here's hoping Act 2 is even better.

EDIT: Cosmic Angel Zone? What treachery is this?

EDIT 2: I preferred Egg Rocket Zone. Here's hoping this thing can be salvaged with Act 3!

EDIT 3: X Zone... Uh oh.

EDIT 4: OMGOMGOMGOMG

Edit 5: I'll have to go through and get the Chaos Emeralds. The issue is that I am TERRIBLE at the Special Zones, and the only one I found was in Cosmic Angel Zone which promptly kicked my ass.

edited 26th Feb '13 10:54:14 PM by MrMallard

I've never been good at any of the special zones in any of the games. If I've ever been able to complete them, it was through cheating.

In fact, if I recall correctly, I got 'em on the Xbox 360 rerelease of Sonic 2 by abusing the fact that it lets you save at any point you want—essentially, think of it as the Xbox 360 being an emulator and what I was doing as essentially abusing save states

Oh jesus, I'm just as horrible at the Sonic 2 special stages. I'm half-decent at the Sonic 1 levels, and I'm alright at Blue Sphere (and 3D Blast's Special Stages are a cakewalk) - 2's special levels are the only ones I'm terrible at.

They still have the best music, though.

The special stages, other than the fact that you pretty much have to remember them if you want to get anywhere, rely mostly on luck for completion, honestly.

The Sonic 3D Blast stages are perhaps the only ones I can wing for the simple reason that I find them incredibly easy, somewhat. Perhaps because even at top speed they're never really on par with Sonic 2's in terms of "ludicrously fast forward motion", or because the draw distance is put so damn far is almost impossible to stumble upon the landmines.

Sonic CD's special stages I never even understood. To this day, I still can't figure out whether or not the controls are supposed to be extremely slippery in it, if that was some technical limitation, or if they just suck.

lolsonicCD

I had the exact same opinion before I really got down and played them to death to get under the requested overall time limit to unlock god knows what in the XBLA version. I've figured out it's just bad design really, once you get used to the controls you can pretty much expect to do the exact same thing each time, since most of them have one und precisely one way to clear them quickly. It's all about figuring where each UFO will be at a given time. The thing is, when you're in normal gameplay, the fatal flaw is that stepping into the water takes out much more time than necessary, I'd say it's almost broken as is (one second in the water takes out at least 3/5 units off the timer, haven't timed it precisely, but it's pretty crazy).

And Sonic CD's my favorite entry in the series bar none... But yeah even considering this I still have problems with the special stages.

edited 27th Feb '13 12:14:54 AM by Akalabth

You were able to figure out how to beat them? Wow. I never even was able to figure out what I had to do and ended up just bouncing around until I ran out of time or landed in the water...which confused me even further, since I've had times where I landed on the water but was able to get back into the playing field just fine without any penalty.

Most of them are actually pretty easy, especially since if you screw up the game spawns time bonuses. On the other hand... a couple of them (#5 and #7, if I remember right from my XBLA playthough) are downright controller throwingly evil.

Even from when I was a kid, I remember them as some of the easiest - or I suppose more precisely some of the more doable in my opinion - special stages of the series.

I can't stand Sonic CD: the colours are saturated like no-one's business, the english soundtrack is terrible and the Super Peelout is, to put it frankly, meh.

Sonic 2 is my favorite classic-era game: the music's better than Sonic 1, the Spin Dash makes it's first foray into the series, the colours are brighter than Sonic 1 without being eye-piercingly garish and while there was a fair bit of content left out (such as the last zone), the game is definitely over the halfway mark, which is more than I can say for Sonic 3 (Yeah, yeah, Sonic & Knuckles lock-on, yadda yadda). My only real complaint is the special stages.

edited 27th Feb '13 12:25:14 AM by MrMallard

It's funny I have the exact same color problem with 3D Blast. Actually it's more related to the permanent two-color tiled-floor, which for some reason always gives me one hell of a headache after 3+ stages (especially since they're very long).

As far as CD goes, I really love the color scheme for one. The soundtrack is also one of my favorite points about the game, I love both (JP and US), but I prefer the US one in the game vastly, because the JP soundtrack is so sugary and bombastic it completely takes me out of the game, especially in the quieter stages. The US one, with it's more atmospheric and sometimes melancholic ambiance I think suits the game better, but I've long made my peace that I'm completely alone on this one.

Honestly I love all of the classic ones, apart perhaps for a couple of the 8-bit ones (namely, G-Sonic, Skypatrol and Labyrinth), I think they're all solid to varying degrees.

I like all the 16-bit games except for CD. 32 Bit wasn't kind to Sonic, but 64-bit was a little better.

Until the singularity...

(Hah, jk. Apparently the other paths are -relatively-bug-free, and that soundtrack is awesome as it the tradition)

I think everyone pretty much agrees on the fact that 32-bit Sonic lacks a certain title to be considered of any interest.

As far as recent Sonic goes, I think Adventure 2 and Colors are exceptional, the rest is really all over the map to me : Heroes I like alright, but the more recent like Secret Rings, Unleashed, Black Knight and so forth I really don't get. Let alone 06, although if it had been all patched up it might have been ok, but as it stands the only good thing about it is the music, which I'll admit I find really damn amazing.

edited 27th Feb '13 12:52:48 AM by Akalabth

I like Unleashed for the music and the story. It's not the best story, but the whole adventure with chip, and then the ending cutscene... Without that story, the second vocal song (Dear My Friend) would have lost its effect.

Come on, we all know the greatest Sonic game of all is Sonic Shuffle. What other game features Eggman hatching such dastardly plans as shaking up a can of soda and then putting it back into the vending machine?!??

The fans should polish that up and make a patch or something. I'd play the hell outta that.

You know what, thinking about that specific minigame for a second, I just realized, wouldn't it really not matter at all whether or not you got the can that was shaken up at all? Every time I've ever opened up a can of soda right after taking it from the vending machine, it's always been plenty shaken up just from going through the machine!

I daresay, this is the one flaw with that game.

Eh, my only complaints with CD are the level design snafus and the inherited S1 engine bugs that didn't get winkled out. Also, I miss R2 and want to see the assets they had planned for Dusty Desert.

Bleh, are Chaos Emeralds in the Sonic Advance series really necessary? I've read about the special stages and the way to access them, and they sound like far too much trouble to go through for a high rate of failure.