Finishing Sonic CD (in Sonic Origins (PC/Steam)) – starting with the third Act of the second Zone or whatever you’re supposed to call them in this one.
OH so to switch Sonic CD soundtracks (JP/US) you have to start a new Anniversary/Classic game to get to the Sonic CD original game-style menu, scroll it to the right to reveal the “SOUND TRACK” item, select that, and then you get to the JP/US OST toggle screen. : P Looks like I had it set to the US soundtrack. Which was pretty good, definitely my favorite part of the game! According to Wikipedia, the JP composers were inspired by house and techno, while Sega of America decided the game needed something “more ‘rich and complex’” (which ended up being a lot more chilled-out).
I sure sucked at the final Metal Sonic sequence. Thought I had to memorize his scripted movement, which I’m terrible at; finally realized I might as well see if I could stay ahead of him, since if he jets into me it only knocks some rings out, whereas Eggy’s beam behind me kills me instantly ; P, probably because it was much easier just to kill the player than to try to figure out how to let them live while also making sure they don’t fall behind the scripted actors.
Oh, hah, it wasn’t the Metal Sonic battle from Generations of which I’d been thinking sort of fondly, it was the Shadow battle – that 3D race mode worked all right I think. Or am I just getting rose-tinted glasses?
Was getting depressed about this game for a bit there, the last stage or so(?) wasn’t maybe so bad though? But a lot of other parts were feeling stuck for a while in holes or lost wandering around shapeless stages, that wasn’t super; and most of the boss fights were still kinda bad. The final stage and boss fight were pretty easy, so it felt like the game just ended pretty abruptly–and it really lacked a sense of pacing overall, I suppose. But it was a lot less terrible to me than Sonic 2, so, could’ve been worse. CD is the odd one out where programmer/director Naka and gameplay designer Hirokazu Yasuhara weren’t involved. Will 3 be a return to the delights of 1, or the horrors of 2? = o
Yasuhara worked (but maybe not still?) in recent years at Unity. Here’s his first public English presentation on game design, in 2017–with host Brandon Sheffield of insertcredit / Necrosoft:
According to 6’35 in that, Sonic 2 was going to be a time travel story originally, before its schedule was cut down. (Hm so Sonic 2 had a severely cut schedule and significant team friction, maybe that helps explain why its art and boss sequences were noticeably inconsistent.) So, maybe it was up to Sonic CD to do the time travel. ; )
Buuut Sonic CD’s Yasuhara-free time warping between four different time zones thing sure didn’t work for me; it just seemed to shift me to uglier versions of the stages so I ended up trying to avoid it entirely. It also meant the stages sort of share the same four tilesets. : P
I made an animated GIF of the ending animation: Supermassive Black Hole A*: The Sonic the Hedgehog CD ending animation (from... Finally found out that’s what that sweet Sonic / Metal Sonic pixel art GIF animation
was based on.