Sonic the Hedgehog demo on XBL Marketplace

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:42 pm

It's good that you've achieved self-awareness regarding your fanboyism.

I'll rent the game and see if I hate it less.

Ngangbius · Post by **Ngangbius** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:00 pm

Why do people buy games even if they know it is or is hinted as crap? That only rewards those developers that you are a-okay with this and that you want more of this crap?

At least Baba has the right idea of renting it instead of blindly giving ST all of your money.

Frieza2000 · Post by **Frieza2000** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:19 pm

I've decided to make this the last Sonic game I play religiously, unless they release a collection with the WakuWaku Patrol games, and whether or not I buy it will depend largely upon the speed and convenience with which I can play it without buying it on whichever console I'm able to borrow.

Shadow Hog · Post by **Shadow Hog** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:27 pm

Same as Baba. I was pretty much ready to buy the PC version, but at this point I'd rather rent the 360 version to see if it'd be even worth it.

Post by **Green Gibbon!** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:37 pm

whether or not i buy it will ultimately depend on if elise shows tit

Gaz · Post by **Gaz** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 4:44 pm

I just can't be bothered with this crap anymore. I'll admit I'm still a little curious to play this game but I don't have an Xbox 360 and have no plans to buy a PS3 at launch(which won't be until March over here anyway) either. I'd probably rent it if I had a 360 but post-E3 I wasn't at all happy with the direction this game was going and after the dire demo I just wouldn't waste my money buying it. In fact I actually hope this games flops as it's the only thing that might make Sega realise they can't keep screwing around with the series and might actually force them into focusing on the right things in the next big Sonic game.

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 5:48 pm

That does it, i've got to let this out.

It's lovely how you all make excuses for "giving up" on the franchise you all are so obviously unwilling to let go of under any circumstances whatsoever. Grow up already, and if you're going to remain or stop being dedicated to anything, quit being pansies about it and going "FUCK Sonic Team forever, this game will suck suck suck for absolute certain, but I GUESS i'll play it. But NOT BUY IT, you hear me?!"

I also believe you're making utter fools of yourselves calling this game things like the death/end of Sonic or whatever like it can possibly be anything like that, and you're liking it because you don't want to know better. Biggest example is unquestionably Pep's front page update. "The world we love teetering on the brink of absolute collapse!" "Violent whoring!" "Exemplar of absolute destruction!" Will you people listen to yourselves for two seconds and how ridiculous this sounds? If you were ever wondering how the forums have had the lack of, shall we say, "diversity" from the rest of the Sonic community, i'm thinking it's because no one wants to argue with a bunch of whiny wankers. It's why I lurked for 6 months before registering during a period where the gloom and despair was at a minimum and didn't give me that choking feeling.

I have yet to see or hear anything that convinces me that the buggy demo is truly a snippet of the final game as it will be. As for you guys, cut the pretentious melodramatic crap and hiding behind bad news to avoid reason because you "don't care anymore". Maybe you think it's a smart or comfortable thing to do, but the rest of us are rolling our eyes.

That said, i'd like to know from anyone who's been around the community long enough: Did the tension get anywhere close to this level during SA1's development? Go into as much detail as you can, i'm curious about it what with all the negativity flying about now.

Double-S- · Post by **Double-S-** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 6:48 pm

Well, typically, demos are put out to show off a game. Not say "Look this is pretty terrible BUT! We might fix some of the things here! Who knows?"

WW · Post by WW » Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:30 pm

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 7:51 pm

Double-S- wrote:Well, typically, demos are put out to show off a game. Not say "Look this is pretty terrible BUT! We might fix some of the things here! Who knows?"

You can say the same for any E3 or TGS demo of a game that's in an early state and running an engine that hasn't been extensively bug tested or finalized. Given the evidence presented to me, I think it's certainly possible that Sega literally polished up an old demo and shoved it out the door because Sonic Team couldn't be bothered. Let's not forget that it was supposed to come up during the TGS promotion but it got taken off the list for some reason.

Ngangbius · Post by **Ngangbius** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:04 pm

Well, it will be a stupid move on Sega's part(lol no surprise) because I've seen and played some really fine demos that made me anticipate the games.

Also as it was mentioned many times here, Sega really isn't known for polishing their Sonic games--just rushing them.

Baba O'Reily · Post by **Baba O'Reily** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:16 pm

It'd be stupid to get your hopes up wildly for this game at this point. It's not giving up on a beloved francise, it's showing some discretion with my tastes. I can read the writing on the walls. Even assuming that this is a demo that's over a year old, it does not bode well for the final product. If it's even more recent than that, it's a shameful attempt at a game, especially one that's almost being put out for release.

But I'm not foolish enough to call it the end of Sonic. Sonic, as a character, is infinitely marketable.

However, if we're going to call it the end of an era, I'd call it the end of the era where it was believed that a fully 3D Sonic could come out flawless. I doubt it'll happen within the next two years.

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:25 pm

Ngangbius wrote:Also as it was mentioned many times here, Sega really isn't known for polishing their Sonic games--just rushing them.

Oh yeah. Otherwise we'd be playing Hidden Palace like it were no big deal and they would have gotten SA1 right the first time.

Ritz · Post by **Ritz** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 8:54 pm

FlashTHD wrote:That said, i'd like to know from anyone who's been around the community long enough: Did the tension get anywhere close to this level during SA1's development? Go into as much detail as you can, i'm curious about it what with all the negativity flying about now.

I wasn't around at the time, but I think it's fairly safe to assume that things were much more tense back then. Not just here, either, but in Sonic communities the world over. Just, you know, not with the sort of negative tension you have in mind. It was Sonic's first true foray into the realm of 3D; expectations were high, as we had little reason to suspect that the quality of the series would spontaneously stoop, what with the past few canon titles having been increasingly more enjoyable than the last.

And I take it that most everyone was pleased in the end. Sure, the game was a bit rough around the edges, but it was still an enjoyable game regardless, and besides, the series had plenty of time to improve, right? Thus, we were excited about SA2. We were pretty excited about Heroes, too. 'Course, we wizened up after that. We're as jaded and cynical as we are now because we have reason to be; we've been dealt enough smart blows as it is, and the series just grows more and more mediocre with each subsequent title (Granted, Nextgen looks to be a step up from Shadow, and possibly Heroes, but still).

Personally, the only issue about this game that truly concerns me as of now is Sonic's pitifully slow speed, but I imagine that's a simple problem to fix, so perhaps there's still a sliver of hope. Perhaps. Probably not, though. You can never be too positive about these things!

DackAttac · Post by **DackAttac** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:13 pm

I don't recall much tension at all. Hell, I had figured Sonic was dead until I got the internet and found out about the Dreamcast, so I was willing to take anything. Plus keep in mind that in the canon series, Sonic was batting a thousand. There were four titles on the Genesis, all of them classics. Maybe it wouldn't be amazing, but it couldn't be BAD.

I can't imagine how many preview movies I saw, screenshots I checked out. I was psyched. I even rented the Dreamcast from Hollywood video before it was released and played an "international version" of Sonic Adventure 1 that had a few glitches intact, yet garnered slightly better reviews than the commercial version. I immersed myself in it, my first real 3D experience. What hurts is looking back on it, what seemed gorgeous then is blocky and ugly and glitchy now. But I can still appreciate the look and feel of Emerald Coast and what it signified.

The only reason there's so much tension is Sonic Team's sitting on two strikes right now. If this game's a failure, it won't mean the end, but a lot of people will stop taking the series seriously. Not like "crack a joke, and hope the next one's better"-not-seriously, full-on "it's doubtful we'll ever see another good Sonic game and I'm not holding my breath"-not-seriously. I'm not "giving up", but you have to admit a pattern is forming. Nonetheless, I'm gonna stay optimistic. I've heard that the demo is just the E3 shit dumped online, and it wasn't indicative of the rest of the game. If it's true or not is something I'm not really planning on racking my brain over, but it'd be nice if this was an outta-left-field pleasant surprise.

Post by **Esrever** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 10:32 pm

Look, Flash... we get it. You don't like people complaining about the new Sonic game. Trust me, you have "let it out" about ten times already before now. It's the subtext of every post you have ever made. Hell, you lunged into a rant in the "Shorts" news thread, not because someone actually complained, but because you suspected that someone might complain about something, at some point, some day in the future.

Here's the thing... people are not genearlly critical here until they are given cause. Many of us, maybe even most of us, were excited about the new game until recently. But we're not blind. When things started to turn ugly, we didn't just ignore that and keep blindly holding on to that wishful thinking.

The demo... is bad. And the demos of SA2 and Sonic Heroes were fairly indicitive of the final product, weren't they? Besides, many of the problems with the current demo stem not from bugs or glitches, but from level design and control decisions and other, more deeply-rooted aspects of the game. And many of these problems were also problems with previous titles, indicating that they probably won't be addressed this time either. It's pretty disappointing all around.

A demo is released to give people an impression of the full game. The impression this demo gives is that the full game blows hard. If it turns out the game is actually much better, great! I hope it is, that would be swell. But it's ridiculous to expect that will happen, especially with so little time between now and the release date.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with playing a demo and passing judgement on it. That is the reason they give out demos in the first place. This demo is a train wreck, and it's a perfectly good reason to assume the worst of the final title. If the final game is great after all, I promise you, the mood on this board will completely turn around and all will be forgiven. But if the full game is as bad as the demo, the reaction will be much more severe than what you've seen so far. That is how it goes when people actually care about something. It's called emotion!

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:18 pm

Esrever wrote:Look, Flash... we get it. You don't like people complaining about the new Sonic game. Trust me, you have "let it out" about ten times already before now. It's the subtext of every post you have ever made. Hell, you lunged into a rant in the "Shorts" news thread, not because someone actually complained, but because you suspected that someone might complain about something, at some point, some day in the future.

Here's the thing... people are not genearlly critical here until they are given cause. Many of us, maybe even most of us, were excited about the new game until recently. But we're not blind. When things started to turn ugly, we didn't just ignore that and keep blindly holding on to that wishful thinking.

To be honest I might have lost it a bit there, but you know, release helps and all. *cough*

People are entitled to complain, but I have to speak up when it starts getting berserk. To elaborate on one point:

if you're going to remain or stop being dedicated to anything, quit being pansies about it and going "FUCK Sonic Team forever, this game will suck suck suck for absolute certain, but I GUESS i'll play it. But NOT BUY IT, you hear me?!"

What I meant: Decide one way or the other. Making posts that give me this impression immedeately make it too obvious you're an angry fanboy or generally not wise.

Biggest example is unquestionably Pep's front page update. "The world we love teetering on the brink of absolute collapse!" "Violent whoring!" "Exemplar of absolute destruction!"

And I still stand by this. I mean, they sound like flim teaser taglines more than anybody's offense.

But if the full game is as bad as the demo, the reaction will be much more severe than what you've seen so far.

I just hope then that folks will put a moment of thought into who's to blame and possibly why it sucks before shouting "RARR SERIES OVER".

Dack's given me an idea, i'll ask around the CulT and see if anyone can turn up some concrete evidence of the demo being based on the E3 build. Worth a shot.

Double-S- · Post by **Double-S-** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:35 pm

I can put up with most of the crappy stuff in the demo, but the fact that the level design still revolves around platforms suspended over a bottomless pit is just terrible. Any time I took a couple steps off in a different direction to try and 'explore' I fell to my death. I couldn't even complete the demo on my first try. I think it was my third run that I finally got to the goal, and only because I (essentially) held forwards the whole time.

BlazeHedgehog · Post by **BlazeHedgehog** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 5:12 am

Against my better judgement I downloaded the demo (I don't have a 360, I mean I downloaded a rip of the demo) and used x360 tool to extract some stuff. Ran through kdv_a0.arc in a hex editor. Spoiled myself on quite a bit of the gameplay from text of the hints Sonic or the announcer tells you. And now, you can spoil yourself too!

Some scripting language bits. "mission_event_start" "mission_event_end" "mission_is_battle" - that last one there looks like it might be for multiplayer?

Level header. "stage_name KINGDOM VALLEY", "timebonus_base", "timebonus_rate", "ringbonus_rate"... seems it lets you set how big of a bonus you can get at the score tally, as well as what point values you need for, say, S rank, or B rank, etc.

BUTTLOAD of text now. Starts in german. Then french. After that, spanish... eh, decided to skip ahead to find english. Obviously, this is text for what Sonic says and the tips you get. There's like 10 variations on each phrase. For example, the first one:

- "Gotta be careful not to fall off here."
- "Be careful not to fall."
- "Falling here would be bad news."
- "I can't fall off here!"
- "It's dangerous here!"
- "Be careful not to fall." (repeated?)
- "Falling here means instant death..."
- "Be careful not to fall." (again!)
- "Make sure you don't fall..."
- "If I'm not careful, I'll fall!"
- "If you aren't careful here, you might fall!"

Other things Sonic says include:

- Variations on, "Let's go up there."
- Variations on, "Let's go down there."
- A character calling out each Amigo's name: "Tails!" "Knuckles!" "Sonic!" "Rouge!" "Omega!" "Shadow!" "Blaze!" "Silver!" "Amy!"
- Directly following that, variations on "Leave it to me!"

Amigo text:

"Yahoo!" "Whoa!! My head's spinning!" "It's like a roller coaster!" "Let's get moving!" "Hey! Isn't this a bit much?" "Balance Control Unit Operational." "C'mon, I'm getting dizzy!" "This is a little intense."

Also: Variations on finding an item ("Just as I thought, an item hidden in this place.")

Bad Sonic Adventure 1 flashbacks: "Uh oh! Gonna crash!" (and variations thereof)

Variations of "Jump now!"

Amigos bitch at you for not having the camera centered? "Recenter the camera with the $ trigger".

Variations of "You can grind on this rail."

Some tutorial text on how to control the amigos. Tails can Fly. Knuckles can glide. Amazing information, I know. After that, it gets a bit tricky who's moves fit who:

- Hovering (Rouge?)
- Double Jump
- "Accelerator Tornado"
- "You can jump higher than usual."
- Levitation (Silver)
- Homing attack (Sonic)
- Laying a Dummy Ring Bomb (Amy?)
- "Dummy Ring Snipe"
- "Heat Knuckle attack", "Back Claw" and "Stone Breaker" punch combo (Knuckles)
- "Omega Shot" for close range attacks, Laser-Lock-on for Long-range (take a guess who this is for)
- "When you don't want to become discovered, hold the $ button to turn invisible."
- "Spinning claw attack".
- "When jumping, hold the $ button for a long time and release to perform a homing smash."
- "Press and hold the $ button to do a screwdriver."
- "Chaos Attack" (Shadow)
- "Press the $ button in mid air to place a bat cracker."
- "While jumping press the $ button to use your omega launcher."
- "Press the $ button to throw a bomb, or hold the $ button for a bomb snipe."
- "Ground shake"
- "press and charge the $ button to do a chaos smash"
- "use the left stick and press the $ button to do an edge attack"
- "Cling to a wall and press the $ button to place a bomb"
- "Press the $ button twice quickly to do a teleport dash"
- "press the $ button to do a chaos spear"
- This one is mysterious: "Combine the strength of two with the $ trigger and use this new power to remove anything that blocks your path."
- "If you jump as a bomb is exploding, you should be able to do a blast jump."

- Variations on "I need to have rings, or I'll die."

- Variations on, "That container looks like it will explode."

- Variations on, "That container will emit a flash of light, which I can use to blind enemies."

- Variations on, "You can hold this handle to move."

- "Looks like I can replenish the energy of my custom shoes with the chaos drives dropped by enemies." Other variations on this are tailored to Shadow and Silver, sometimes refering to them as "light cores".

- Variations on, "Touching a warp hole will send me far away in a flash."

- Variations on, "Those enemies seem to be protecting that cage, we need to take care of them first." Also: Protecting that door.

- Variations on, "We can't move on until we defeat all the enemies."

- More Sonic Heroes flavor yakking. Various characters talking about fighting Eggman's "mechs".

- More Heroes-style Amigo blabbing, telling you how to use the controls and what they do. ("Homing smash can blast away whole groups of enemies!")

- "The vulcan cannon shots don't hurt too much, but you'll still lose your rings, bit-by-bit."

- "I can't grab the vulcan cannon shots, but I can block them with my psychokinesis."

- "The laser shots are fast! I've got to dodge at the same time they're fired."

- "It looks like I can only avoid them, they'll charge without warning."

That's where I stopped reading because I felt guilty and dissapointed.

There certainly are shades of Sonic Heroes in that dialogue.

M.C.Dillinger · Post by **M.C.Dillinger** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:01 am

!
^Game Trailers "TGS Producer Interview"

bolt7 · Post by **bolt7** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:08 am

^Game Trailers "TGS Producer Interview"

Didn't a fan produce that image of the Shadow CG from Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic CG from SA:DX merged together about a quarter way through the vid?

Post by **G.Silver** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:54 am

I wonder if all the falling warnings are done as some kind of half assed solution to the bottomless pit problem. Maybe he should say "why does this game have so many bottomless pits?"

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:14 am

"Be careful not to fall off" has been around since SA1.

Ugh, I just hope they don't flood every stage with hint signs for things you figured out on your own 6 stages ago.

Frieza2000 · Post by **Frieza2000** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:21 am

Here are the front page updates leading up to the release of SA1 (bottom left of the page). It was a very different website back then. It had fanfiction.

http://web.archive.org/web/199902082136 ... m/ggibbon/

Omni Hunter · Post by **Omni Hunter** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 12:45 pm

FlashTHD wrote:"Be careful not to fall off" has been around since SA1.

Ugh, I just hope they don't flood every stage with hint signs for things you figured out on your own 6 stages ago.

Yes, but not to the extent of what it is now. SA1 only had easy falls all over the first parts of the Speed Highway and Windy Valley, plus during some parts of Lost World.
That considered, there were alternate routes in most cases where a fall was particularly easy, and the platforms were based around key landscape points (certain skyscrapers, large mountains, etc).
I haven't played the demo though, so I can't really compare.