The GHZ Forum

No, Whale Lagoon is one of the circuits for Seaside Hill, not a 2006-based stage. It's the first track, in fact. The full list is:

(Series: Track Theme: Circuit Name)

Chao Cup
Sonic: Seaside Hill: Whale Lagoon
Billy Hatcher: Blizzard Castle: Icicle Valley
Sonic: Casino Park: Roulette Road
Samba de Amigo: Carnival Town: Sunshine Tour

Graffiti Cup
Jet Set Radio: Tokyo-to: Shibuya Downtown
House of the Dead: Curien Mansion: Outer Forest
Sonic: Final Fortress: Turbine Loop
Super Monkey Ball: Jumble Jungle: Treetops

Egg Cup
Billy Hatcher: Blizzard Castle: Rampart Road
Sonic: Final Fortress: Dark Arsenal
Samba de Amigo: Carnival Town: Jump Parade
Sonic: Casino Park: Pinball Highway

Horror Cup
House of the Dead: Curien Mansion: Sewer Scrapes
Sonic: Seaside Hill: Lost Palace
Super Monkey Ball: Detritus Desert: Sandy Drifts
Jet Set Radio: Tokyo-to: Rokkaku Hill

Samba Cup
Samba de Amigo: Carnival Town: Rocky-Coaster
Jet Set Radio: Tokyo-to: Highway Zero
House of the Dead: Curien Mansion: Deadly Route
Sonic: Seaside Hill: Ocean Ruin

Monkey Cup
Sonic: Casino Park: Bingo Party
Billy Hatcher: Dino Mountain: Lava Lair
Super Monkey Ball: Pirates Ocean: Monkey Target
Sonic: Final Fortress: Thunder Deck

If you were bored enough to read all of that, you'll notice that Sonic isn't the only franchise with multiple visual areas, but it still has by far the most stages (Super Monkey ball has 3 different visual themes, Billy Hatcher has 2, and there are enough changes to the Jet Set Radio and Samba de Amigo ones to feel pretty different). A couple things that stood out to me from watching videos:

• The Monkey Ball stages are full of 90 degree turns, mimicking their inspiration, making them extremely hard. Monkey Target, in particular, has this spot.
• Though they're called "Seaside Hill" and "Casino Park", the latter two circuits of each start to get a bit of thematics from their counterparts, Ocean Palace and BINGO Highway. There's even the Bingo cards on the final Casino Park stage, albeit 4x4 instead of 3x3, and the BINGO Highway music track itself is unlockable, unlike Ocean Palace or Egg Fleet.
• Seaside Hill: Lost Palace is the stage from the 360, PS3, and DS demos.
• Though all the Samba de Amigo stages are listed as Carnival Town, the Rocky-Coaster circuit has much different thematics.
• Seaside Hill: Ocean Palace is mostly underwater transparent tunnels, which is pretty cool.
• Final Fortress: Thunder Deck is referred to as an "out of this world spaceship" by the announcer, and indeed, it does remind me of Unleashed's opening...
• The DS version is rather impressive, especially with how they translated the rehashed music.
• Only the menu and ending music aren't rehashed. Everything else is from other games, no matter how unfitting (such as "Blaze Appear" from Rush as the track complete theme for Casino Park).

The last Monkey Ball track ends with a series of very difficult 180-degree turns. I still haven't mastered it.

Segaholic2 wrote:The last Monkey Ball track ends with a series of very difficult 180-degree turns. I still haven't mastered it.

Try driving full speed into the walls, then smacking into each side as you drift everywhere until you get to the top.

What is up with Sega's obvious fear of remixing music from the Mega Drive games anyway? Super Smash Bros Brawl gave us one such remix and so did the winter olympics game and (as much as we would like to forget it) Chronicles. Then of course there is the drowning music, stage clear jingle, and buttloads of Green Hill Zone remixes, but that's pretty much it, unless im forgetting something. Just compare this with how the Mario series keep re-using the tunes from it's classic installments again and again and again.

Consider that a good deal of the music was written either by Dreams Come True or the late Michael Jackson.

Things starting to make sense?

This might just be because I left my nunchuck attachment elsewhere and thus am forced to rely on motion controls, but I'm having more trouble with the Sandy Drifts stage than the Monkey Target one. In Monkey Target, there's just this one (admittedly long) part at the end of the course where you have to let off the gas as you drift, and that's OK with me, especially since if you fail you just bump into something (it's pretty annoying to back up, but at least you have a chance to bump off). In Sandy Drifts, you have several tighter turns (90 degrees instead of 180, less room to drift) that criss-cross each other as they let out (causing you to bump into other racers in mid-air) at both the start and end of the track, not to mention the really odd turn through the sand on a platform with no rails (180 degrees left, then straighten out, then something like 120 degrees right in a much tighter space, all while dodging banana peels).

Also, regarding soundtracks, isn't that the reason the Japanese Sonic CD soundtrack hadn't made it to the US until now? I wonder what changed to include it in Seaside Hill.

K2J wrote: Also, regarding soundtracks, isn't that the reason the Japanese Sonic CD soundtrack hadn't made it to the US until now? I wonder what changed to include it in Seaside Hill.

Sonic the Screensaver.

Oh god I know Sonic minutiae

Oh yeah, I forgot. Also makes sense a bit due to the developer being European.

Sonic the Screensaver was awesome. Best screensaver I had since Johnny Castaway and After Dark Disney.

Johnny Castaway is the best only good thing Sierra ever made. I still have it as my screensaver after all these years.

Shadow Hog wrote:Consider that a good deal of the music was written either by Dreams Come True or the late Michael Jackson.

Things starting to make sense?

Oh. Right.

I hate these situations when franchises are able to freely make use of pretty much everything from their older installements except their music, due to copyright reasons or whatnot. And they seem to occur a lot; for instance, the iconic TMNT theme is still owned by that "Wolfenstein" guy or whatever the hell his name is (you know, the guy that owns the company that produced the original cartoon series) that thus couldn't be used in Turtles Forever, and Disney supposedly owns everything from the original Power Rangers series with the sole exception of the theme song. Nothing else can invoke feelings of nostalgia as much as music can, so for franchises that thrives greatly on exactly that, it's a quite a shame when thee sorts of things happen.

Fred Wolf, I think?

Blount wrote:Johnny Castaway is the best only good thing Sierra ever made. I still have it as my screensaver after all these years.

Loderunner: The Legend Returns
The Incredible Machine
Phantasmagoria
Betrayal at Krondor

Oh yeah, TIM was awesome! I used to spend hours coming up with contraptions that had no useful purpose whatsoever (but I did break a lot of fish bowls). Never played those other games, though.

I had the Tex Avery-styled Incredible Machine. Many an hour spent blowing up cartoon cats.

I don't think it's a copyright or monetary issue that keeps them from using classic Sonic tunes. After all, they tossed a few tracks into some pretty insignificant games like Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Battle and Sonic Pinball Party... not exactly the kind of games that have a huge budget for music royalties.

Esrever wrote:I don't think it's a copyright or monetary issue that keeps them from using classic Sonic tunes. After all, they tossed a few tracks into some pretty insignificant games like Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Battle and Sonic Pinball Party... not exactly the kind of games that have a huge budget for music royalties.

Sonic fans have a sense of denial where they will never admit the developers are just idiots. Everything needs an excuse that is 'beyond SEGA's control'.

To be fair, though, SEGA supports these rumours.

I only owned The Even More Incredible Machine and both Contraptions games (the first of which is more or less The Incredible Machine 3, but prettier). Still a damn fine series. I regret that Activision is more concerned with running Call of Duty into the ground (seriously, wtf are they doing to Infinity Ward?) than they are reviving franchises that they inherited from the merger with Vivendi (themselves having merged with Sierra much earlier on), TIM being one of them.

At least you can get all the entries in the series off of GOG.com for $10. Worth something, I guess.

I remember first seeing The Even More Incredible Machine and blowing my head off. Sequels were such a big deal back then.

Still on Sierra territory, the King's Quest and Space Quest series were some fine point and click adventure games. I loved their 6th and 4th games respectively. They made great adventure games, even EcoQuest was good. Never as good as Lucasarts though.

Which reminds me, who here ever played the Kyrandia series from Westwood? Those were AWESOME.

Highly relevant:

But Sonic canonically doesn't like racing all that much.

Ha ha ha?

Also, fuck yeah quick reply.

Could someone circle the jokes in red? I cannot find them.

this comic is great. Hush up naysayers.

Is it me or you guys are getting more pedantic by the day? Geez...

Funny how that Sonic looks a lot like the one I used to draw when I was in school.