General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

Did you see the Maria boss fight?

That shit is funny.

The entire narrative that Sonic fangames are better than Sega's official products being flipped on its head in light of Omens and Frontiers is the funniest thing I've seen in a minute.

Sonic fanfiction has always been 90% awful, and 10% good.

At least we got Sonic Triple Threat 16 bit.

It was super fun.

GOAT fangame.

Made me like Fang all over again.

Love his schtick in the game.

Like a reverse from Mania and Forces, right?

I mean, Mania is technically an official game by fans.

It does suck that Omens kind of overshadowed Triple Threat 16 bit because of how bad it was as well as the drama surrounding it.

Triple Trouble 16-bit.

Ahh fuck, my brain mixed it up with another one.

Ehhh, keeping it anyway.

I don't think that's too big. The original Kirby's Epic Yarn, for comparison, had an OST of over 90 tracks, and Frontiers is probably going to be a much bigger game than that even before we get into stuff like cutscene music and the possibility of there being multiple tracks for the same thing (IE, possibly more than one battle theme).

There's probably some fun mathematics someone could do to try and guess how long the game is going to be based on how much music there is - but I may be a nerd, but maybe not that much of a nerd.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Oct 7th 2022 at 4:40:22 AM

So…I finally got all Time Stones in CD.

Those Special Stages are HARD.

I find them to be among the easier Special Stages. If you start running low on time, just chill around the center for awhile where the UFO that gives bonus time will spawn.

I think my favorite Special Stage is the one from Sonic Advance 3. Maybe not entering them, because finding all the lost Chao can be pretty annoying, but the stage themselves.

Okay, so I won't bore people with an in-depth review of Sonic Omens now that I've finished watching it and gave it some thoughts. The game looks great and level design looks pretty good as well, like a marriage of Adventure and Unleashed. The voice direction is an overall miss, but I liked Sonic, Shadow, and The Exiled's VA work. Story is decent at first then becomes worse as it gets more overtly serious until it turns blandly edgy. Side characters are REALLY pushing that term to the next level, only getting cameos and nothing else. Even Chris Fucking Thorndyke gets this, which is weird because he's half the reason the story exists. Shadow feels like his bland Fanon self with what the story does with him.

I can't play it personally so this is the best I can say while giving it a fair shake.

Its basically a mishmash of a bunch of ideas but with no cohesion whatsoever...which isn't unlike a lot of the Sonic games from the era it's explicitly referencing. I feel like a lot of the fanbase really don't understand why those games had such a controversial reputation to begin with, and just zero in on the "cool" ideas.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Oct 8th 2022 at 10:11:59 AM

To be honest, I feel like 90% of this game's hatedom comes from the fact that the developers are scummy.

If you allow me to share my thoughts on the story, I'll offer my honest thoughts:

I appreciate the respect Chris gets in Omens. I always found Chris to be over-hated for a lot of reasons, and the fact Omens takes him seriously reminds me of how Archie dealt with Tommy Turtle's death. There weren't meta jokes, winks at the camera saying how much he sucked. It was built with genuine interest towards the characters relationships.

That being said, fusing the game continuity with Sonic X is a genuine disservice to both continuities, as the writers attempt to write a story around Shadow that frankly makes no sense for either version of the character. Game! Shadow left his past behind to fight for what he believes, not for what anyone tells him to; X! Shadow left for space to fight for peace to honor Molly's sacrifice against the Metarex. Yet Omens! Shadow decides to work with an individual associated with a race he was determined in destroying just for the sake of seeing Maria again, contradicting both previous Shadows.

And while I understand the intent with Chris being The Ghost, building suspense and intrigue, the fact he is killed off-screen just to have Sonic on a revenge quest is such a waste.

And random monster guardians of the Chaos Emeralds. Never mentioned before but apparently they always existed and Eggman knew of them. This is bad.

Edited by Tomodachi on Oct 8th 2022 at 8:03:30 AM

Yeah that's what I thought as well, it's an Overshadowed by Controversy issue. There are things that deserve criticism, but Omens as a game isn't really bad enough to cause that much backlash without something bad happening in the dev time. And I already know what all those issues were, so again I don't want to bore the thread over old news.

Yeah, I was going to mention the story not making sense because of the ways it attempted to use both game and anime continuities, but I felt I wouldn't get the issue with it right. You explained it better than I would have.

Edited by VeryMelon on Oct 8th 2022 at 11:10:35 AM

I already had problems with the game long before this controversy showed up in my defense.

The "Contra"versey is irrelevant to what randomness has seen of the game.

Do you guys remember the odd way the characters in Sonic Adventure 1 moved their jaws? Well, this video provides a "realistic" portrayal of that.

Haha I needed that.

Been having the feeling that my gaming tastes, which tend to align pretty well with how most Sonic games are designed, are pretty outdated and that depresses me a bit.

Okay, here's something that's always bugged me about Sonic game design: what's the point of having multiple paths and hidden secrets if you're incentivized to fly through the levels as fast as possible? In a single playthrough, you go through each level once, and with three paths, that means you only see 1/3rd of each level and miss out on multiple secrets.

When I enter a level in any game with multiple paths and secrets, I want to get everything on my first go, I don't like having to backtrack and revisit a level for a secret I missed. But that sort of meticulous collecting doesn't mesh with Sonic's speed and the level design always pushing you forward, so it always feels like you're missing things. You can't really "complete" Sonic levels, and that's always bothered me because that makes finishing the levels always feel incomplete.

Like, yeah, I could take the rail or spring and go the top path, but then I'll miss stuff in the middle and bottom paths and if I want that stuff I'll have to go backward to collect them. I don't like replaying stages in games, if I have to replay a stage, ever, that feels like a failure on my part for not beating it "the right way" the first time and getting everything.

This sort of level design has always bothered me about Sonic, and maybe it makes me more forgiving of the Boost style, since at least you're not missing secrets when the level is a straight path.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Oct 10th 2022 at 4:27:18 AM

I guess to reward dextrous players or curious ones? Its just Sonic's general gameplay isn't exactly suited to vertical exploration the same way Tails is with flying, Knuckles' gliding or even Lilac's Dragon Dash.

I don't think most people, most relevantly the devs, consider paths to be secrets or collectibles one is supposed to care about. Conversely, stuff like the red star rings are, at least in most levels, possible to get all in one run with a specific route.

Its to incentive replay value. Sonic games are meant to played multiple times so that each playthrough is different. More to the point, each path is mostly skill-based.

The top path is the quickest way to the end of the level but itd hardest to navigate as one mistake puts you on a lower, and slower, path so have to work to stay in the top portions of the level.