Hardware Mania

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Emperor Omochao
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Hardware Mania

Post by Emperor Omochao »

It used to be so much easier buying games consoles to keep up with Sonic games up and until around Sonic Heroes. I didn't feel bad about losing track of the games because from what I gathered most of the ones after that were even more sub-standard. I've always wanted to play Sonic Generations, but I felt it wasn't worth buying a console just for one game.

However, due to the upcoming Sonic Mania, I've finally decided to get either a PS4 or XBOX One. My question is, what should I do if I want to play all of the following games?:

Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Generations, Sonic Mania

This will be the first time since I bought hardware just to follow a sonic game since I bought a GameCube...

The sad thing is, last year I bought a Wii U just so I could play the latest Mario game and also play Super Mario Galaxy 1&2... not sure if that was the smartest decision, so I want to be a bit more thoughtful this time... advice?

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Frieza2000
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Re: Hardware Mania

Post by Frieza2000 »

Sonic titles tend to get Steam releases. All of the other games you named are already on Steam. Sonic Mania will probably end up there too, if you're willing to wait. Or buy a used console, play the games you want to, and sell it when you're done. You might even be able to find a way to rent one. I've got an retro game store near me with a small arcade section where you can pay by the hour to play any console you want on one of their big screen TVs.

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Jingles
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Re: Hardware Mania

Post by Jingles »

Yeah, I'd say pick yourself up a half-decent PC (if all you plan to play are Sonic games, you don't need anything beyond, at the absolute maximum, a mid-tier machine) and either buy the games through Steam or emulate the Dreamcast games through, I dunno, nullDC or Retroarch. Mania has apparently been confirmed for Windows, which means it'll be on Steam, but I'm hoping for a DRM-free release, too (not that I'd buy it, I use a Mac, but it's the principle of the thing).

Neither the Xbone nor the PS4 runs any Sonic game natively at the moment, but you can stream Sonic Generations and Taxman's Sonic CD remake on Playstation Now and Mania is coming to both.

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G.Silver
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Re: Hardware Mania

Post by G.Silver »

I agree, go PC all the way here. If you've got one already it probably can handle all those games (mine can and it's pretty old) and of course you have that level of backwards compatibility that consoles can't match. Though I think the SA titles on Steam are based on the Gamecube versions (correct?), if you've still got them I'd probably stick with that unless you're really itching to play them in HD. If your computer is really old or you aren't comfortable with gaming on the PC, then you can probably grab Sonic CD from Steam for about $3 and get a good idea of how the Sonic Mania experience is going to go without taking much risk.

Based on my own highly-specific taste I think you made the right call picking out the WiiU. :)

Emperor Omochao
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Re: Hardware Mania

Post by Emperor Omochao »

Thanks for this guys! I think the PC i had before was really old (2011) when I tried out sonic adventure on steam as it was very slow but I do have a newer one so maybe that will be fine. I wasnt sure how good my pc had to be to allow e.g. Sonic generations to run smoothly. ?

Emperor Omochao
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Re: Hardware Mania

Post by Emperor Omochao »

Okay so I managed tor reactivate my Steam account from 3 years ago (which already has SA, SA2 and Sonic Generations) and also found my old XBox 360 controller.

My PC specs are as follows:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TMi) i5 CPU M 450 @ 2.40GHz 2.40 GHz
Installed RAM 4.00 GB (3.80 GB usable)
System type: 64-bit OS, x64-based processor

(Windows 8.1 Pro)

As I had with my old PC, I tried to play Sonic Adventure and while it did seem okay at first this time, the frame rate during the actual gameplay makes it borderline unplayable. The same is true with Sonic Generations. However, what's really strange is even the Genesis games are extremely slow (which wasn't the case before).

Is my PC too feeble to handle all of this? Is there something I should be downloading to enhance...something? :<

I was told a while ago, that only PCs dedicated for gaming allow smooth gameplay, but I also heard my PC should be able to handle it...

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Frieza2000
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Re: Hardware Mania

Post by Frieza2000 »

That sounds roughly the same as my 2007 laptop. I never bothered trying to run the Adventure games or Generations on there because I had access to a much stronger PC, but I remember having to turn the graphics down on just about any game made after 2001. It couldn't even handle Half-Life 2 on medium settings. On my current PC I've got an AMD 3.80 GHz, 8 gigs of RAM, and an AMD Radeon R7 200, and I just ran SA2 at 1920x1080 60fps and it was silky smooth. So you probably can't handle 3D Sonic games, but Mania is just a 2d platformer. I doubt it would be a problem. At worst, you may have to turn down the graphics settings.

Emperor Omochao
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Re: Hardware Mania

Post by Emperor Omochao »

Thanks for the good advice guys!

I at least managed to get my genesis games working better on Steam. It turned out it had everything to do with how the game was being loaded (either the Simple Launcher or some other weird hub thing they have). The Adventure games are still choppy, so I'll try to tweak the graphics - I'm also surprised that these games aren't available on PS4Now in North America if they are in Japan...

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