/vr/ - Retro Games

>>1352079
It was a rush job man. For what it is, it's decent.

None of things you just said are true.
Nothing went wrong.

>Horrific level design
Nigga wat?

They just went a little overboard trying to exploit the storage advantage of the disc format. They wanted bigger, longer levels, and the level design suffered for it. The ideas that went into it were about hardware instead of gameplay.

Also, the Sega CD add-on expanded the Genesis pallet beyond the SNES's and added hardware scaling and rotation, which were big selling points for SNES over Genesis.

And to highlight both those things, they added features the OP is specifically complaining about.

I know this is a troll thread but the game is really like a re-imagining of Sonic 1 with CD music.
The levels are more vibrant than the Mega Drive counterparts but they have a forgettable design.
Boss fights were just horrible.
Metal sanic was a let down too.
It had so much potential but it fell short at the end.
Either way very few people bought the MegaCD and this game back then.
Sega could have fleshed out the story about little planet and the time stones in other games instead of the chaos emeralds antics.

>>1352165
This sounds like the most logical answer to me. Plus different directors taking the series different paths.

>>1352079
>Dat stupid perspective change when you go on a loop
wat
That happens like two times on the first level and that's it...

Speaking of Sonic and things going wrong, why is marble zone in the first sonic so bad? I've spent most of the levels waiting for platforms to move while I twiddle my thumbs.

I thought I was gonna get to go fast. ;_;

>>1352186
Design is more abstract than 3, but it doesn't make it good. Sonic 1's art direction was good, because it was not just abstract, but also GOOD. CD looks like shit.

Your ass is a troll thread.

>>1352219
Sonic is not, and never was, about going fast on your first playthrough. First and foremost, the games are platformers.

>>1352219
>why does a platformer have platforms?

>>1352219
The original Sonic games had a focus on platforming instead of going fast. The going fast stuff is possible but was mainly a marketing gimmick.

>>1352165
Pretty much. No substance, just "TECHNOLOGY!"

Single most game ruining thing right here

>>1352401
They're meant to be obstacles that prevent you from getting good futures.
How could anyone NOT notice this?

>>1352079
because it takes place in a post apocalyptic future

I quite enjoyed it. I'd consider it on-par with the first "3" (Including "Sonic & Knuckles)

>>1352738
That's no excuse for some of the worst looking graphics ever. Seriously the level graphics look like they were drawn in a day by a colorblind 6-year old.

Compared to Sonic 1, which actually had an artistic style, this garbage is an embarrassment.

pic very much related

>>1352746
Looks fine to me.

>>1352801

Yeah, I have no idea what that Anon is playing it on.

>>1352151
>>1352145
keep drinking that kool aid fanboys

>>1352969
I really don't see the issue.

>>1352165
not really.
the Sega CD only has small chunks of memory that can be used at once and each individual level fits completely into memory.

The levels themselves aren't really all that much bigger than in the other sonic games, except that they have different versions.

>>1352978

>CD based game
>has the worst music of any of the 16bit sonics
>Sega

>>1353023
Whoa wait, what?
I don't understand how that's possible when every other 16-bit Sonic game doesn't sound as good.

>>1353023
based YM2612

>>1353023
This nigga's trying to be funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_TcDzS7ZwU
but he ain't

>>1353023
>Sonic CD
>Bad Music

>>1353027
has nothing on Sonic 2 and 3

>>1353029
Maybe not 2 (but 2 is my favorite Sonic so that might be bias speaking)

As for 3, I disagree, I think its better than that.
Then again I don't like Sonic 3 that much, I do like Hydrocity Zone though.

>>1353029

Sonic CD > Sonic 1 > Sonic 2

sonic 3 has the worst music

DEFINITIVE 16-BIT SONIC SOUNDTRACK RANKING

CD > 3D Blast > 3&K > 1 = 2 > Spinball

>>1353039

spring yard and scrap brain are way better than anything in Sonic 3

>>1353039
>3D blast

>>1353048
He's talking about the soundtrack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MrP51YTWak

>>1353045
I can't agree with that at all, even though I really fucking love Spring Yard Zone's music.
I don't have to go any further than the file select screen to make that judgement.

>>1353048
I can only assume you haven't heard the music.

>>1353050
>>1353053

Oh I know what he meant, I found that the 3D Blast OST is half good and half bad.

>>1353053

best music in Sonic 3 wasn't even used in the main game, which is retarded

>>1353057
The half that isn't as good is Jun Senoue's

>>1353064
Seriously. The man is good -- really, really good -- at playing guitar and that's it. He needs to stay away from composition.

>>1352079
>Horrific level design

Reposting from a past thread:

>What you need to understand is that CD's level design emphasizes exploring rather than platforming or speed, and that it's the first Sonic game to have a core mechanic based on speed - time travel.

>The goal in each level is to hit a Past sign, then go fast for an extended period to travel into the past. Once there, find the robot generator and destroy it.
>This is how you get the good ending.
>or you could just do the special stages and not bother with any of this

>Because going fast for extended periods is part of getting the good ending, the levels are designed to prevent just that with "segments that serve to annoy".
>To time travel, you either need to know the levels well, or find an area designed for you to go fast repetitively, like pic related.

>So again, the goal is exploration.
>>search for past sign
>>search for area where you can go fast without worry
>>search for robot generator
>Most levels are very tall, and all of them are designed so that you can backtrack and reach any area if desired even if you missed it the first time, further emphasizing the focus on exploration.
>If you play the game like it's about exploration, it works just fine.
>If you try to play it like the other classics, it doesn't.

>You don't have to like that it's about exploration or that it deliberately stops you from going fast, I don't care for it myself, but it's not a flaw in the design.
>Sonic CD is perfectly designed for what it sets out to be.

>>1353091
Oh hey, that's my post.
I was sad I didn't save it somewhere to be able to repost myself.
Saving now. Thanks man.

the level design in sonic CD is good only when playing for a high score

it's worse than the other games when ignoring that

Sonic CD's biggest issue is that it started development when Sonic 2 did, but was released a year after and not long before Sonic 3. By the time most people played it, the idea of a Sonic game was a momentum-based platformer, and so Sonic CD seemed like a downgrade due to the emphasis the level design places on exploration and comparatively-slower more conventional platforming. Most people just tried to breeze through the present stages, complete the special stages and that's it, so the level design seemed frustrating as it acts against such a playstyle most of the time.

I would argue though that even if you play the game the way it was "meant" to be played, the level design is still clunky and the overall graphics feel worse than Sonic 2's. As a whole, the game feels like it tried to take advantage of the Sega CD's abilities and ended up trying to do too much, which makes it feel incomplete and unfocused.

>>1353112
High Score? What?
...Are you talking about the Time Trial mode?

>>1353116
The capabilities of the Sega CD are just better music and sprite scaling. The busy visuals are just a result of bad art design, they could have been on the Genesis just as easily.

>>1353128
The visuals aren't busy the majority of the time, though. Moments like pic related (most awful screenshot of the game I have) are rare. They're fucking awful when they happen, for sure, but it's just so infrequent, and so fleeting when it does happen.
And on the flipside, you have a ton of areas like >>1352801 which look fantastic.

>>1352183
>Also, the Sega CD add-on expanded the Genesis pallet beyond the SNES's
It didn't, which I consider one of the main problems. There was so much storage space, but the graphics were still shit.
>and added hardware scaling and rotation
The scaled and rotated graphics still had to be copied to video ram, which was painfully slow.

>>1353169
If only the Sega CD and 32X were one single add-on.

>>1353169
>which was painfully slow

What do you mean by that? I don't see slowdown in many Sega CD games that do large amounts of scaling. On the contrary, games like the 2 Batmans run extremely fast.

"Massive storage space" is somewhat misleading. Most Sega CD games use all of the CD's space on music/voice acting. The reason Sega CD games often sound better than say, Playstation games, is because they are using huge redbook audio music tracks.

>>1353169
The graphics weren't "shit" unless they were trying to do digitized video.

>>1353178
The VDP doesn't have enough bandwidth to main RAM to transfer an arbitrary frame full of pixels every frame. If you're loading new character data from it, you can only pull about 240 characters' worth of data (under a quarter the screen) each frame.

>>1353189
>>1353169
Well, it's not that slow, considering that's more than the SNES could do ;)

It could have been better, but I don't believe it was supposed to compete with the SNES (of which it has worse graphics, but better scaling), but with the PC-Engine CD. But unlike that addon, Sega fucked things up as usual.

>>1353196
Holy shit you're right. According to the manual it's 6Kbytes/frame to the S-PPU. The figure Sega gives for the VDP is something like 204 bytes/line during blanking, so perhaps there's overhead. A naive calculation gives well over 7Kbytes/frame for the VDP though.

>>1353173
Trying to get data from the Sega CD to the 32x is a nightmare. The 32x typically has direct access to the cartridge, so it can be doing cart->SH2 transfers while the 68000 works from its RAM. There's no way for this to work with Sega CD though - the main 68000 bus has to spend all its time shuffling data between the CD RAM and the SH2 RAM.

>>1353219
I think he just means he wishes there was something like the CDX, so that he doesn't need 2 power strips and half a desk just to fit the console, not a desire that there were more CD-32X games.

>>1353219
No no no, I'm saying it would have been better if instead of two different add-ons we got a single add-on with the good parts of both.

>>1353226
>>1353225
Yes, my point was: if the SCD and the 32X were in the same unit, there would probably be a good way to get data from the CD directly to the SH-2 RAM.

>>1352079
Sonic development (including design) became a major trainwreck after Sonic 2, which becomes pretty obvious if you read any article about the franchise's development history.

One of the main reasons was increasing clapper involvement in the franchise, including development - Sonic CD was the first Sonic game where SoA had a major say in design and development. Another reason was every director and producer having their own ideas about how a Sonic game should be and trying to push them.

I remember we had an identical thread a few months ago and back then almost everyone agreed to this conclusion (it wasn't even mine). This time it seems to have gone a different way.

>>1355137
>Sonic CD was the first Sonic game where SoA had a major say in design and development.

You're thinking of Sonic 2. Sonic CD was entirely developed in Japan, whereas Sonic Team moved to STI for Sonic 2 and 3's development.

>>1353035
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYxlqTpZ-24

Motherfucking Ice Cap Zone, Nigga.

But in all seriousness, it's a great game, but the music is fucking atrocious.

>>1355159

the 2 player stages have better music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseIASl1Pbk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SKcTZNeRnQ

why

>>1355189
Because Michael Jackson

>>1352401

this. you could get the good ending and never have to travel to the future. what was the fucking point?

>>1352460
Someone who didn't give the game much of a chance. People don't understand that Sonic CD is meant to be played in all directions, rather than just going to the right. It's an exploration game with pinball rolling and going fast. Not a typical sonic offering, but still a good one in my opinion.

>>1352978
cyrstal and snow levels were the GOAT sonic zones.

>>1352746
The level needs to be palette-swapped 3 times and look distinct in each time period.

>>1353091
>Sonic CD is perfectly designed for what it sets out to be.

I would hardly call it perfect. The level designs are fine, it's how Sonic moves that is the problem. Sonic's acceleration curve is just not suitable for exploring large multidimensional levels. Others may overlook the problem or are simply unable to adequately articulate what they felt was wrong, but for me it's a glaringly obvious and frustrating design flaw.

>>1352219

I remember reading in an interview that the devs were worried it might be too much for people, as in giving people motion sickness, and that pure goes fast might not be entertaining by itself for the whole game, so they broke it up. It's similar to how Devil May Cry and Bayonetta have puzzles to break up the action so it doesn't get monotonous.

Also, slowing it down means less assets are required. A big reason for the Werehog, the Knuckles gem-hunting and mechs in later games was to slow the game down so the player didn't burn through the whole game in two hours.

Playing it over again, I really gained an appreciation for it.

There's much less speed and more intricate platforming, but if you go into it without expecting it to be like a normal Sanic game, you'll enjoy it more.

>>1353039

God, Sonic Spinball's music was pure ear rape. Literally unlistenable.

>>1357808
>implying this isn't a masterpiece
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGWSijvWxFI

>>1352231
then what the fuck is the point of sonic? I can never get a straight answer. When I say the platforming is shit, people tell me it's about memorizing levels and going fast, now 3-4 people in this thread are saying sonic is, in fact, about the mediocre platforming and not about the speed gimmick. Seriously fuck the whole Sonic series, I'm sick of hearing about these games and the empty soulless characters and the autism that surrounds them.

I beat this back in 1994 and I feel almost no nostalgia for it aside from the music.

These levels are just a fucking mess, and you just don't get that Sanic Speed. And those bosses were too easy and just plain weird.

>>1358079

It's not about speed, it's about momentum. This basically means you have to earn your speed by learning the level layout and how to avoid obstacles that will slow you down.

Sonic 1 explicitly gives over half the Zones to slow, methodical platforming. Later games tried to do this more subtly, mixing in slower portions within acts and levels. This is because they need to have variety, because people would get bored of the same thing for the whole game. So I guess Sonic games aren't purely about one thing. Hell, even Sonic R and Riders had exploration elements.

>>1357808
More like awesome grundgy rock. Sonic Spinball was all up in that shit.

>>1353050
One of the best Sonic tracks period.