Sonic CD Re-release

[Rökkan]

The reason why I am saying "Re-release" instead of "Port", is because this game is as much of a "port" as Sonic 1, Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 were "ports" on Sonic Jam.

Basically, Christian Whitehead, a.k.a. The Taxman, creator of Retro Sonic and the Retro Engine, in which Retro Sonic and this Sonic CD re-release works on, pitched SEGA an iPhone port of Sonic CD in which he had completely re-created the game on his engine.



As you can see, he was hired. And the advantages of having the game completely re-created instead of emulated are:

- No emulation errors or slowdowns, running always smoothly at 60 frames per second
- Complete widescreen support - no stretching or "blue bars" on the sides
- Soundtrack edited so that it loops right
- Because the coding is more based upon Yuji Naka's programming efforts in Sonic 1, 2 and 3, this version of the game will not have some bugs and weird behaviors that were present in Sonic CD, such as the diagonal spring sometimes launching you in a weird fashion
- Possibility of extras and other tweaks. So far, it is confirmed the option to toggle between Sonic CD and Sonic 2's spin-dash and camera behavior. However, only the japanese soundtrack has been confirmed so far, apparently they're having some legal issues with getting the american one in.


Apparently, Sonic 4 Episode II will have references to Sonic CD, and this is why Sonic 4 is sorta tied with Sonic CD on the official trailer. I don't know if it's just because of Metal Sonic or if there will be other Sonic CD references on Episode II. SEGA's PR also said that Sonic CD never sold or got as much popularity as the main classic Sonic titles, so SEGA hopes that with that Sonic 4 relation on the marketing for it will help make Sonic CD sell to the newer audiences.

W/e, as long as it stays on the marketing and not on the game itself, it's alright, although I think the original video Taxman made is a better trailer, honestly.

[DadNier]

However, only the japanese soundtrack has been confirmed so far, apparently they're having some legal issues with getting the american one in.

I find this amusing considering the entire point of the american soundtrack, originally, was because the japanese one would cause copyright issues (I believe due to some stuff they sampled)

but yeah as a big fan of Sonic CD I am looking forward to this and will probably get it!! I haven't played this game in quite a while

[Cobalt Blue]

the american soundtrack is terrible anyway

[Rökkan]

Well, it always seemed to me like the point of the american soundtrack was more to "inaugurate" and show off the american SEGA sound team, with Spencer Nielsen and all, but yeah, the boss theme uses samples from the Xavier music "Work That Sucker To Death", which I guess could have spawned legal issues at the time.





If anything, SEGA might have just asked Naofumi Hataya to do a new version of the song without the samples... Or used his remix of it for the Sonic CD Remix album:



I prefer the japanese soundtrack too, but the american one isn't bad, I learned to appreciate it.


Features I'd like this new version of Sonic CD to have would be:

- Toggle between both soundtracks individually (like putting the past version of certain stage american or japanese and all)
- Time Attack with Past, Good Future and Bad Future stages
- Toggle having or not the "time travel" loading sequence. Naoto Oshima originally wanted the time travelling to be instantaneous, in a flash of light you'd be in another time period, but the programmers couldn't do it, so that's why you have that sequence of Sonic flying through this time tunnel, as some sort of "loading screen" while the game loads the Past/Future level. So it'd be cool to have a more fast-paced time travelling, the way Oshima originally intended.
- General tweaks. There are a lot of things on Sonic CD that are somewhat incomplete and/or don't work as well as they should have, partially because the programmers weren't as awesome as Yuji Naka (Naoto said that if Naka was on their team, he'd probably manage to get around that time travelling loading screen), but also because the game didn't have as much attention and budget as Sonic 2 had (and Sonic 2 was still left sort of incomplete too, but because it was rushed)
- Have the whole official soundtrack available in mp3 to listen to? Maybe even the Sonic CD Remix album?

[Vipershark]

Sega making a legitimately good decision on a Sonic game?
SOLD.

Sonic 2 style spindashing is in this game, YES.
Hope they did the Super Peel-Out the same way.
This is now a must-buy for me.

Not only that, but since they now have access to the engine, hopefully they use it on other games (Sonic 4 ep 2) and start making good sonic games again.

I find it hilarious that sega had to resort to outside help just to figure out how to reverse engineer their own game, but at least they're doing something right now.
Because this isn't being ported by the terrible people that ported the other sonic games, (or ported at all) this is A-OK.

[Cobalt Blue]

i am still trying to understand how hard could it be to port something like sonic on a DS and still make it look like crap.

[DioShiba]

Sonic 2 style spindashing is in this game, YES.

which probably would be useless since the levels are designed solely for exploration rather than speed.

anyways I'm glad that Sega is giving Sonic CD the attention it needs, I'd give my cash just for supporting the game itself.

[Vipershark]

Sonic 2 style spindashing is in this game, YES.

which probably would be useless since the levels are designed solely for exploration rather than speed.

Going by that logic, the super peel out is completely useless then since it makes you go /faster/ than the spindash.

Besides, I simply prefer the method of tapping to charge rather than holding the button down.
in s2, you can cancel out of a spindash at any time (at the cost of a slower spindash) simply by letting go of the button
in cd, you have to wait for the dash to charge and if you let go at any time, you instantly stop all movement.

I prefer charging it myself, that's all.

[DioShiba]

Sonic 2 style spindashing is in this game, YES.

which probably would be useless since the levels are designed solely for exploration rather than speed.

Going by that logic, the super peel out is completely useless then since it makes you go /faster/ than the spindash.

Besides, I simply prefer the method of tapping to charge rather than holding the button down.
in s2, you can cancel out of a spindash at any time (at the cost of a slower spindash) simply by letting go of the button
in cd, you have to wait for the dash to charge and if you let go at any time, you instantly stop all movement.

I prefer charging it myself, that's all.

true.

then again, my memory to playing sonic CD is sketchy, but I found it more of a nuisance to try and go so fast.

EDIT:while we're at it I kind of wish that they will keep this for shits and giggles.

[Shadowth117]

While I can't say I need another copy of this game, I'd love to see them use that engine for some Sonic games that, unlike Sonic 4, stay true to the classic gameplay. Hell, with something like that, they could do something awesome like everything from Sonic 1, 2, and 3K in one game. An idea like that seemed pretty farfetched until this came along honestly.

[Kriven]

I think Sonic 4 is pretty fun, honestly.

[Shadowth117]

I think Sonic 4 is pretty fun, honestly.

I wouldn't have minded as much if it weren't a Sonic game, or at the very least if it wasn't supposed to be a DIRECT sequel to the original games. To me, the jump to me was like the original Metroid to Metroid Fusion in differences ignoring the fun factor. Its not something that I don't like when newer games add things, but sometimes they'll change a game to the point where I can't enjoy it like what happened with me and Sonic 4. Or what happened with me and Halo Reach. Granted I find Reach far more tolerable in comparison to its sequels than Sonic 4, but I just can't enjoy its core gameplay as much Halo 3.

Its opinion really, I'm just stating mine. Change can be good; for me personally in that case it was bad.

[Ngamer01]

I would love Sonic 4 Ep. 1 more if it wasn't for the fact it takes Sonic far too long to get up to running speed.

Spoiler

This lag really hits home at a couple of points during "Impending Doom" where you have to outrun things trying to crush you and when you're fighting Eggman during the final zone especially that columns part of the fight where you have to haul ass to avoid being crushed and attack Eggman in the process.

I had hoped SEGA would send out an updated Ep. 1 that fixes the problem, but nope. Back on-topic, it's a shame SEGA is stifling Wii owners out of Sonic CD, but I at least still have Sonic Gems Collection on Gamecube for Sonic CD.

[Rökkan]

I wouldn't have minded as much if it weren't a Sonic game, or at the very least if it wasn't supposed to be a DIRECT sequel to the original games. To me, the jump to me was like the original Metroid to Metroid Fusion in differences ignoring the fun factor.

See, but the difference is that Metroid Fusion wasn't designed to be a lazy iPhone game to cash in a "retro" trend with games.

Sonic 4 being fun or not is subjective. It being lazy and being made with a small budget as a side side project, having wonky controls and being extremely short, specially considering its high price are factual.

If they called it "Sonic Portable" and released it for the iPhone only, it'd be a pretty good iPhone game, but of course, SEGA really wanted to cash in on nostalgia, without any consideration to the quality of it when you step it up by making it a XBLA/PSN title and by having a whole fucking year of SoA spouting how it plays exactly like the classics and it is the most true sequel to Sonic 3. But even without it trying to try to convince us that it's exactly like the classic titles, it still falls short specially because it's a really tiny title beatable in less than 2 hours with few replay factor.

I'll admit that some levels, like Splash Hill acts 1 and 3 were kinda fun to play, although still falling short in some aspects due to, well, Dimps. And while just a couple of them are truly shitty, most of them are just, idk, I guess the best word to describe it is passable. It wasn't a frustrating experience, but once you're done with it you cannot come up with any reasons to replay it. And, you know, this is incredibly bad for a short game to be beaten like this.

Having an alienated fandom that doesn't demand from SEGA better designed games are what makes them keep fucking getting away with re-using the same fucking things without any serious thought to the design of the gameplay other than "how to make Sonic look cool while running. oh let's add a loop here and a rail yeah they'll love watching (not playing) our game". I suspect they might have even unlearned how to design levels in any other way that isn't the way that Modern Sonic levels are designed, look at Classic Sonic's levels in Sonic Generations. They are designed exactly the same like Modern Sonic (straightforward, lots of running, enemies are just static sandbags, blandness, item monitors are scarce and seem to have been added as an afterthought, since Modern Sonic doesn't have items in his gameplay). The only thing that is classic Sonic about it is the way that they have designed the levels in "layers" cleverly, but Modern Sonic kinda has that too, Sonic Unleashed already did that, and Sonic Colors did it even better than those two games.


Also: Sonic CD is not available on WiiWare because Nintendo has a shitty size restriction that doesn't allow the game to fit in. Remember that Sonic CD's soundtrack is made out of actual music files and not MIDI. The only way to have Sonic CD on the WiiWare would be to have the soundtrack sound like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSNJYMmMZpg

Still, the game is going to be available on Steam, come on, are you going to say that you cannot have access to a PC and you're typing from the Wii Opera Browser?

[DioShiba]

I'm at lost with how sonic CD can't be on the VC despite the fact that N64 games have a shit ton fuck of memory.

I mean come on, I'm sure the size restrictions for that game can't be that bad.