The GHZ Forum

A year-and-a-half is considered old nowadays? Good grief. This five-year-old computer may as well be a fucking abacus, then.

Only for gaming!

I mean, this thing is basically a glorified tech demo so one should expect no less.

So how does it play? Are the physics less fucked than Sonic 4 or something?

Maybe the newer laptop can take it... might give it a go later.

The physics are not as good as Retro Sonic but are close enough. They seem a bit slow at first but you can quickly get used to them and it is mostly correct (more than Sonic 4 or anything else made in about a decade by Sonic Team).

Overall I thought it was great and hopefully this gets finished or at least updated more, even if it is mostly remakes of level design. My only complaints are the lack of item boxes and a boss, but I am entirely sure that this is just due to the phase the game is in; in addition, the enemies merge into the background art too much, the 'pow!' noise is too loud/obnoxious, and it feels weird not having Tails/coop in Emerald Hill. If they fix up all this then it will definitely be better than Sonic 4. I actually had fun playing this game, unlike that.

Also the Sonic Retro logo at the end is like taping a picture of an old man's ball sack to the credits.

Indeed, it's not perfect but it's close. My main gripe is that jumping while running up a quarter-pipe feels off somehow. I seem to end up jumping forwards where I feel I should be getting propelled upwards due to the slope physics. Also you can't jump off the moebius strips, but that could be something they simply haven't got round to yet. You can also control Sonic midair after jumping while rolling, but I think that's a conscious choice rather than a mistake.

As for the rest, basically what Kogen said. The level design confuses me somewhat though, since while the first act is definitely Emerald Hill act 1 (with a big extra at the end for the orca spectacle), the other two acts seem to consist of bits from other levels and maybe some original stuff as well. For example, the start of act 3 seems very similar to the start of Green Hill Zone act 1!

Yeah, when I began Act 3 I thought it would be Green Hill 1 as well. I think it goes to show that they are able to do some level design themselves.

I just love watching that background man... it's pretty awesome. I think the only thing that gripes me is that enemy/background thing. That's a design flaw that could be fixed in future iterations. If this were an XBLA demo I'd buy the game without even thinking.

I start the game and immediately fall through the world and die. :<

Xyton wrote:I start the game and immediately fall through the world and die. :<

You suck at video games.

Kogen wrote:

Xyton wrote:I start the game and immediately fall through the world and die. :<

You suck at video games.

Clearly.

I'm guessing no one else had that issue, then?

I doubt mine (a 4-year-old laptop) will even run it.

It was quite enjoyable. Much better than Sonic 4, even in the one zone in the demo. The physics felt much closer to the original games than Sonic 4's, and the level design felt a lot more natural than anything in Sonic 4, even without items and spikes. I liked the models and animations a lot too.

Segaholic2 wrote:It was quite enjoyable. Much better than Sonic 4, even in the one zone in the demo. The physics felt much closer to the original games than Sonic 4's, and the level design felt a lot more natural than anything in Sonic 4, even without items and spikes. I liked the models and animations a lot too.

Pretty much this. I finished and actually wanted to play through it again. And did. The little details --like the fact that the Hollywood-style sign in the background gets nearer to completion as the acts progress, or that the searchlights in the final act project an Eggman logo when they swing past the closer bits of the background-- show that it's clearly a labor of love. I really hope these guys finish it.

I just played the Mac demo. It wasn't too slow for me, but that's probably because my desktop is from '09.
The game really does feel like a labor of love. If you took a time machine to '94 and showed this and the S4E1 demo to a Sonic fan anyone, which would they think was the fan game?

I played it on my Mac. No slowdown issues at all, running on an early '09 MacBook Pro.

What immediately struck me was the attention to detail. 3 weather conditions, one for each act, incredibly detailed models, a fluid running animation, even searchlights on the badniks at night. What was really quite exciting was how the acts seemed to tell a story. The ruined machine in the background of Act 1 and the ROBOLAND sign in Act 3 hint at a continuity and it made me really curious about what was going to come next. I don't think that sort of thing has been attempted since Sonic & Knuckles.

This game is quite clearly light years ahead of Sonic 4 in a lot of areas and if I was SEGA I would be offering these guys a job, like, yesterday.

Even if Sega did hire them, they'd probably be crushed under the weight of unfair deadlines and apathetic management. But it's fun to dream.