The GHZ Forum

Shadow Hog wrote:I didn't play Sonic Blast when I was a kid, though, so that game's shittiness shines right through.

Sonic now spits loogies.

Both Blast and Labyrinth have really awesome and underrated final boss themes.

The Master System "Sonic the Hedgehog" was very popular at the time (in the regions Master System was going strong) but has been unfortunately overlooked in more recent years.

I think the biggest reason it worked was because it was developed alongside the original Sonic the Hedgehog game, so there were no expectations of what it should be. The developers were smart in realising that the Mega Drive Sonic game formula was simply unworkable on Master System hardware. They just made the best Master System platformer they could, whilst retaining all of the Mega Drive Sonic elements that actually were workable. It was a solid game. I think it stands the test of time as a game in its own right, despite not being particularly representative of the series as a whole.

Master System's Sonic 2 is a game that must have seemed fine on paper. It had good stage concepts, good enemy concepts, good music and so on. The problem was the actual level design. Every single aspect of it seemed designed to trick the player. From balls hard first boss to the hang glider to the second Chaos Emerald to the spring stage to the underwater pipe maze and all culiminating with the secret end boss from hell. Even the presence of Tails in the Zone title cards felt like a bait and switch. It's like they were actively trying to piss you off in as many ways as possible. It's worth playing, in a "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" kind of way.

Sonic Chaos had its own novelties, but by that point they were trying too hard to be the Mega Drive Sonics, and showing exactly why it doesn't work.

I still haven't the faintest idea how that hang glider is supposed to work.

Hold back and it works, kind of.

And about that stuff I was arguing of concerning Sonic Chaos, I lost interest, so yeah. I also think Gamefaqs is full of liars and these games are not even in it (I see no proof of it).

Also this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/cgiE-hKuLb4

Just listen to all that Jam! Delicious! And you can even touch Miles in the concept art section using your stylus.

What is up with Knuckles animation in that video? When he hits certain springboards (the ones that make him "flip" through the air) he seems to run through a random cycle of animations instead of the correct ones. It's not Sonic Genesis, but what the hell happened there?

j-man wrote:I still haven't the faintest idea how that hang glider is supposed to work.

Alternate between pressing left and right; press left once to slow it down and point up, press left again to resume at previous speed and angle. Press right once to dive, press it twice to cancel.

(I think...it's been a while since I flew that thing.)

When grabbing one suspended in mid-air from the bottom, do note that its default direction is up, so you'll have to cancel it almost immediately (by pressing left or right), or risk Sonic taking it to the ceiling and letting it go.


About the game being designed to piss you off - maybe, but that's still just mean. Sonic Advance 2 pissed me off more thoroughly than this ever will, because as much as it hurts to land in that inescapable spike pit in the second-to-last zone, this game has not even once had me run into a badnik and fall back into a bottomless pit with no chance to react. Leaps of faith due to crappy screen size are one thing, but cheap insta-condemnation/death scenarios are very, very rare here (baring act 3, where it's all one-hit-death anyway) ... and when I see people complain my god this is a very unfair game and crappy hand glider won't listen to me ... I can't help but being reminded of generic barrel won't move, Sonic 3 sucks newbs. Grit your teeth, learn the control, familiarize with the levels and rape this game, or don't - any sort of psyched "what were they thinking" playthrough of this game will probably make you bleed through teeth.

(Difficult-while-not-crap Sonic games are extremely rare, and I happen to like this one a lot. *shrug*)

Crazy Penguin wrote:Master System's Sonic 2 is a game that must have seemed fine on paper. It had good stage concepts, good enemy concepts, good music and so on. The problem was the actual level design. Every single aspect of it seemed designed to trick the player. From balls hard first boss to the hang glider to the second Chaos Emerald to the spring stage to the underwater pipe maze and all culiminating with the secret end boss from hell. Even the presence of Tails in the Zone title cards felt like a bait and switch. It's like they were actively trying to piss you off in as many ways as possible. It's worth playing, in a "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?" kind of way.

I agree completely, in every way.


And holy shit Silver you're right. What the hell is going on there?

Am I the only one really irked by the way they used the "drowning" sound effect for a "warp"? THAT'S NOT WHAT THAT SOUND IS FOR!

Also, am I to take it that "Knuckles in Sonic 3" is actually just "Sonic 3 & Knuckles", given that it doesn't seem to actually force you to play as Knuckles?

And what the hell was up with that Bonus Stage?

Also, the speed up music is higher in pitch now (unlike the originals, where it's just faster).

I got the game, and I must say--it's definitely not "Sonic Jam" or "Mega Collection" perfect, but the controls are really quite solid. Unfortunately, there are a few graphical errors all around, and not just counting the fact that the vertical resolution's been squished. The most noticeable of them that I've spotted so far was after failing to get a Chaos Emerald in Sonic 2 w/ Knuckles, a huge patch of glitchy pixels (it kind of looked like Missingno.'s gay cousin from Detroit) showed up under the "SPECIAL STAGE" text.

Also, ALL of the boss battles are bigger than the actual screen size (yes, even the very frist Green Hill boss), which results in left-right scrolling whenever you're trying to waste Robotnik. And it looks like the Sonic Chronicles trailer is an (sigh) unlockable.

I played around with this a bit today. Sonic 2 and Sonic & Knuckles feel about right to me, but Sonic 1 feels off--though to be fair, that's the one I know the best. There's a lot of slowdown in the GHZ, but later on that seemed to happen less (maybe I was just adjusting). The thing that really gets me, it could just be my timing is off, or maybe it has to do with the screen losing so much to the horizontal borders, but the jumping just doesn't feel quite right to me. It's close, but somehow not quite there. I could be wrong. I have to say that besides the boss encounters and end-of-stage screens, I didn't really even notice that the screen had shrunk. The vertical squishing is also rarely apparent, it's only really noticeable on certain curved surfaces and didn't bother me at all.

I didn't probe too deep into the other games but they felt close enough, though with odd graphical glitches(?) here and there. I didn't try to replicate Knuckles spastic springboard launches, but they removed Sonic's shadow in the special stage for 2 (and I think 3 as well). Small stuff, but what the heck?

The spaz glitch is an emulation glitch on part of no$gba. It isn't present in the actual game.

Also, I hear the slowdown is much, much less prevalent if you play it on a DSi.

G.Silver wrote:I didn't try to replicate Knuckles spastic springboard launches, but they removed Sonic's shadow in the special stage for 2 (and I think 3 as well). Small stuff, but what the heck?

Hardware feature of the Mega Drive to "shade" (or highlight) a region of the screen which whatever emulator they used didn't support. I remember Genecyst used to paint them white.

Well, while I used to like Tails, I am not a fan of Sonic 2, maybe are the special stages, maybe that it fells shorter, I dont know, I just like the first game more. Now about Sonic 3, I loved that game...

Of course I am talking about the Genesis, Sonic was made to be of 16 bits...