it’s the most likable for sure it’s just really flawed
on balance I do think it’s the best of the megadrive installments if you consider S3&K as one game, which is the discussion most people are having
S&K on its own has a pretty fucked difficulty curve, can attest from never having gotten past flying battery zone as a kid
(which is different from fucked pacing, which 2 is also really good about not having (its water level is actually pretty good? or its two water levels i guess since chemical plant zone probably counts))
in retrospect i find it kind of charming that the zones in 2 have no relation to each other until they come up with the idea of transitions at the very very end
No game is singularly about something or doing something but I think there are a lot of moments in these earlier Sonic games that see him turning into a pure kinetic object, reduced to a sphere, with some amount (maybe all) of player control taken away or made less easy. That’s the biggest distinction for me of Sonic 1-3 compared to most other platformers of and prior to that time. Sonic has his own agency, but he can just as quickly be subsumed into the level design’s mechanisms. The trick is how do you maintain that design without automating a stage’s makeup.
I’m willing to accept that there may be more to these games that I don’t get, but I think that if you have to spend hours upon hours with a handful of fairly short, cute platformers to discern their truest and most flattering design principles, then there is probably an issue of accessibility and/or conveyance. You can blame the marketing that’s emphasized the speed element since forever for getting that idea into people’s heads, but only to a degree; there are aspects native to these games that could misdirect anyone.
- fuck you, I got those emeralds, let me break the game
- literally the only change between 2 and 3/S&K is that there’s more control over activation
- no, Super Sonic is actually a bad thing because it represents the first steps into Yuji Naka’s crazed fever dream of storytelling that finally blossomed in Sonic Adventure
the only joy left in my life is watching people who have never played 3 hit the Carnival Night Zone and are completely bewildered by the things, which still happens 24 years later, a sure indicator of Good Design
I’m going to have a child and show them the game one day and get to that zone and hand them the controller and just watch
also I think people calling act 2 of Chemical Plant a “water stage” is a stretch
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I loaded up Sonic 2 last night on my emulator. It’s set to auto-load a savestate generated when I quit last time.
it’s a pink screen. I’m in the water section in Chemical Plant act 2
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in the 5 or so minutes since I read this, I have booted up my Saturn, loaded Sonic Jam, launched Sonic 2 and cleared through Chemical Plant Zone. act 2 took me 2:17 as per the timer. 10 seconds of that were spent underwater, at the section where you platform up the moving blocks while the water rises
it’s a water stage if you fall back in or dilly dally
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After a flush of remembered hesitation I reset the game. The music was better than I remembered; for the first time I noticed the stereo panning on the ring pickup sound. I looked at the beautiful blues, decided that Sonic is not suited for computer monitors unless you sit really far away.
I zipped through Emerald hill zone, indulged in Chemical Plant and only fell down once at the water trap in act 2. In about fifteen minutes I got to Mystic Cave zone, my 2nd-favorite zone and the most mysterious one as a child; fell shy of the drawbridge and called it.
I like Sonic and I’ve beaten all of them! I don’t think I’ve ever appreciably seen my skill improve, though; I still take 3+ hits per level and just roll with it because the game doesn’t seem to care, either. It’s that very Sega-like gulf between ‘play adequately’ and ‘play with skill’ caused by an overabundance that I can’t parse.
It’s so easy to put slow, staid, methodical Nintendo up against Sega; learnable Mario against buzzing Sonic, Afterburner against Star Fox – Nintendo always cares about every single hit and insists you can learn how, Sega keeps pushing you from behind so you can see more, and better things, even if it’s becoming a blur
I was with you there until you compared Afterburner to Star Fox and then I blacked out from rage
I think the greatest irony of people stacking Sonic up against Mario is that Mario is actually faster since he never has to work for his speed and can do anything he wants at his fastest speed, where as Sonic will always be subjected to stop and go pacing, regardless of game
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bwahaha I can run with Galaxy Force 2 if you’d prefer
really, can you elaborate?
for the record:
you see that @Felix
Afterburner is the child of Yu Suzuki’s infatuation with scaling sprites and the world’s love affair with Top Gun. it’s aim is to be not about dogfighting, but flying a jet really fast and shooting stuff down. it is Space Harrier with lock-on missiles and a lack of obstacles. Star Fox, on the other hand, is a game littered with obstacles and its slow(er) pace is owed to the low framerates of the original and the design objectives were kept (which might have changed if SF2 came out instead of going straight to SF64).
Afterburner is as playable a rail shooter as Sega has made before just totally devolving into virtual rollercoaster (like, say, Rail Chase) and Star Fox was kind of a misguided attempt (at first) to replicate that hamstrung by technological limits. I think they tipped their hat at this a bit by straight up ripping off bits and pieces from Sega’s catalog (the Corneria theme from SF is pretty much the After Burner music track and SF64 rips off the fire planet from GF2). Star Fox probably owes as much to the Super Scaler games as does latter day Mario Kart owes to Sega’s brand of arcade racing.
Sonic Adventure 2 is the best sonic game don’t @ me
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I agree with all that; I’m just saying Afterburner’s overload is characteristically Sega while Star Fox’s measuredness (we can stub in Star Fox 64 here since it fully expresses SF1 ideas) is built on low scores and players able to hit everything, dodge everything.
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