/vr/ - Retro Games

>>5852202
ok, faggot.

There's a complete edition that lets you customize your experience.

>>5852202
I feel this. Sonic 3 is my favorite 2D Genesis experience

>>5852202
Sonic 3&K is way too long. Sonic 3 alone is better imo. Sonic & Knuckles is too hard to me.

>>5852202
I always quit Sonic 3 after the first few levels, lock-on or not. It's an ugly mess. 2 is by far the best Sonic game.

>>5852214
That's besides the point, I'm mostly talking about pacing here, not cosmetic changes, but yeah that too, in order to have Sonic 3's unique set of music tracks and final boss, you have to resort to a romhack.

>>5852309
I don't understand how pacing can be here nor there if you can save the game and continue at your own pace. You must be one of the people who can't pace themselves? Why run through a game all in one session and act like that's the best way to do so?

>>5852325
This. Like I agree with op in that it feels like two games mashed together but nobody is forcing me to play it all at once. Where the fuck does that attitude come from?

>>5852325
>>5852327
You guys are getting my point from the wrong angle. I never stated that somebody's forcing me or anyone. It's totally fine if you prefer to play the games combined, I mean most people do and that's fine, the game is highly regarded and praised for the lock-on novelty. But I'm just giving some honest thoughts, which are 100% my opinion, but nowadays if I feel like playing Sonic 3 or S&K, I go for the standalone version. I have no real incentive to do 3&K, Hyper Sonic is just a slightly more OP Super Sonic.

>>5852262
I can get through all of S3 alone without feeling like just quitting, assuming I can be arsed to not drop the game at CNZ act 2.
S&K is brill, apart from Sandopolis act 2 doing the same.
When they're both locked on, there's a pretty good sense of progression... that's kind of murdered by Mushroom Hill. Not a bad stage, but it really makes the seam obvious with how easy and basic it is.
as for pacing, the game has saving, it is very literally not designed to be played in one go, unlike S1 and S2

Also, as much as I like Sonic 2, the game jumps off a cliff and never recovers after Mystic Cave, and I'm willing to say the game's quality begins to decline after Casino Night.

Trust me, the pacing is WAY better with Flying Battery slotted between Carnival Night and Icecap where it's supposed to be. The night theme is also awesome.

>>5852340
But if you research/watch the making of the games you come to understand that S3&K is the game itself and it had to be split to make the deadline, the lock on feature is a compromise the devs agreed on. You're essentially enjoying the game cut in half, it just seems weird to me to like it that way instead of the definitive or 'actual' game product.

S3&K def isnt meant to be played through in a single sitting like the other old Sonics.

Wether you want the ‘epic adventure’ or a quick arcade experience is a matter of taste.

The real genius of the lock on system is that it lets you choose your preference between the two depending on your tastes or even just your mood.

>>5852387
The game went through several changes from the initial draft to the complete, final released version.
The games were originally released stand alone, so to me it doesn't feel like a game cut in half, but 2 separate games, that can me matched together. Still feels like playing 2 consecutive games.
Again I'm not saying this is bad or wrong, I think it's an epic experience the first time. On subsequent playthroughs though, I do prefer the standalone experience. I was sharing my point of view and see if anyone agrees or disagrees. I think a lot of people just play 3&K with lock-on by default, and I'm just saying, give the standalone version a try. Especially Sonic & Knuckles is pretty nice to start fresh, feels different than playing it right after Launch base.

>>5852450
No one is going to get the authentic experience though because they were cut in half with the add on feature, they're going to see it from your perspective where they're two distinct games that mesh well.

Me run fast me jump duh wow this game gud

>>5852586
>me speak words, me opinion valid

http://shmuplations.com/sonicteam/

Here, Naka explains a bit what happened during the development of Sonic 3 & Knukcles.

>>5852684
Does he explain why the series took a nosedive after 2?

S3K was designed as one game. There are no advantages to having the games separated. With the save feature, you can make your way through it at your own pace. The lock on features unlocks additional features, such as knuckles and tails being accessible in both parts of the game, while taking nothing away...

>>5852202
Imagine working this hard just for bait

>>5852202
You're partially right. Playing S&K standalone is the superior experience because it means you don't have to slog through Sonic 3 first.

>>5853076
As a stand-alone game, S3 is garbage. As the first six levels of S3&K, its okay, but really is skippable outside of Angel Island. S&K on the other hand is fantastic whether you play it stand alone or with the first six levels known as Sonic 3 or not.

Angel Island 1: Great
Angel Island 2: Good
Hydrocity 1: Great
Hydrocity 2: Good
Marble Garden 1: OK
Marble Garden 2: OK
Carnival Night 1: OK
Carnival Night 2: Shit
Ice Cap 1: Great
Ice Cap 2: Good
Launch Base 1: Shit
Launch Base 2: OK

Mushroom Hill 1: Great
Mushroom Hill 2: Good
Flying Battery 1: Good
Flying Battery 2: Great
Sandopolis 1: Good
Sandopolis 2: OK
Lava Reef 1: OK
Lava Reef 2: OK
Sky Sanctuary: OK
Death Egg 1: OK
Death Egg 2: Shit

The pattern is that all the stages that have a pretty constant pace are the best. If it changes gears too much it's not good, Launch Base 1 is the worst offender in this regard. A stage can have obstacles and still be decent like Marble Garden or Lava Reef, but I find these stages are never the best ones; I dislike as much as I like in those.

Sonic 3 is actually both games put together. But they do feel a bit different so it makes sense some people might have a preference for one over the other.

>>5853941
Addendum: I find it weird that the Sonic 3 Complete people act like there is a consensus that S3's aesthetics were superior. I agree that it's better with no music during zone transitions, but the miniboss/invincibility/Knuckles themes are way better in S&K.

>>5853953
Well you see, if a patch adds an option, you have to justify it to shill said patch. So no matter what the change is, it's clearly positive.

>>5853941
Pacing is everything in SONIC. That's why 2 was so great and everyone shits on metropolis zone because its overly long and fucks with the games flow.
Sonic 3 just really short and has shit levels like marble garden and carnival night which are bad knockoffs of levels from 2. Although Ice Cap Zone 2 has has the best music out of any game in my opinion. Love that song.

In a way, the transition from Sonic 2 to Sonic 3 reminds me of mortal kombat II to mortal kombat 3.
The MK3 hype was unreal. I don't think I was ever that hyped for a game as a kid, MK II was like, the best thing ever (for my edgy 10 year old mind), so you're telling me 3 is going to be even better? crazy animalities? sonya and kano are back? a playable female goro? ROBOT NINJAS? sing me the fuck up, and yeah it was a disappointmnet. I mean still playable and all, but it didn't live up to the hype, and I felt the same way for Sonic 3.
Funny too because even graphically I felt a similar disappointment. MK II had this perfect aesthetic, they nailed the atmosphere, color scheme, character designs. It was better than MK1 in every way. Then MK3 appeared with a weird mishmash of concepts, dry color palettes, goofy-looking characters. Felt the same way about Sonic 3 compared to Sonic 1 and 2.

>>5854139
Sonic 2 had shit artstyle
CD is the true sequel to Sonic 1

>>5854142
Sonic 2's art style isn't as solid as Sonic 1's (then again, no other Sonic game ever matched Sonic 1 in terms of aesthetics), but it still followed suit with Sonic aesthetics. Both Sonic CD and Sonic 2 maintain Sonic 1's art vision. The difference is that Sonic CD is more sugary in its color palette, while Sonic 2 is more dry, neither nailed the balance of Sonic 1, but still close enough.
It was Sonic 3 that deviated way too much, starting from completely redesigning Sonic's sprite.

>>5854112
I love marble garden desu

>>5854152
Sonic 2 has a really bad flat design that doesn't work with Sonic

>>5854168
Sonic CD has the best aesthetic

>>5854171
What is Sonic CD like, guys? Never played it.

>>5854178
Play it yourself, but get the good ending

>>5854168
I think it works, it's just not as polished as Sonic 1. But the aesthetic direction is still there.
Compare that screen to any screen on Sonic 3 and you'll notice a huge difference. Sonic 3 was like a whole overhaul of the Sonic aesthetic, it tried to go for a more semi-prerendered 3D aesthetic, influenced by Donkey Kong Country. Look at the CGI Sonic on the title screen, look at Sonic's own sprite, compared to the older Sonic sprite, Sonic 3 seems more round, and he's tilted at a 3/4 angle so it gives more of a fake 3D impression. The way he's drawn with more rounder shapes and the way the shading and color grading is done, it's obvious the devs wanted to go for a more modern 3D approach, I mean, it's what was in at the time anyway: Cool Spot Goes to Hollywood, Mario RPG, even Sonic went full isometric pre-rendered with 3D Blast, but they started working that aesthetic on Sonic 3. Look at Angel Island's assets and compare them to any other older Sonic 1st green level. Angel island goes less for a fantasy machine-nature fusion with psychedelic colors like the past games, and goes more for a realistic jungle with irregular terrain ala DKC.
>>5854178
It's an odd one, it follows Sonic 1's paths in many ways, but adds an exploration focus (where time traveling is involved). If you expect a gotta go fast game, you're going to be disappointed, level design is designed around that exploration element. If you would like an exploration classic Sonic, then yes CD is pretty good, unique in its kind.

>>5852262

2 for me either. The comfiest of them all.

>>5854168
I feel like the early levels of Sonic 2 are amazing to look at but the game starts to look worse as you go. Like they stopped giving a shit or didn't expect you to get that far, or something.

S3&K>S2=S1>CD.

>>5854287
The game pretty much tanks at Hill Top Zone. After all the excitement and glitz of Casino Night, going into a shitty palette-swap of Emerald Hill just kills the momentum.

>>5854142
this bait is so low quality I didn't even bother fetching the image

>>5854178
Level design is shit, backgrounds are a mess, time travel mechanic is beyond dumb, spindash/peel out feels like a prototype, soundtrack is sometimes good but often completely out of place in both versions, special stages are even worse than Sonic 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPlNkyoku7w

>>5854351
Yet it's still better than 3.
2>1>CD>3

>>5854389
see>>5854328

Sonic 1>2>S&K>CD>3

>>5854461
>S&K...3
This is what I was talking about earlier, dude is comparing the first half of the experience to the second half due to separate releases.

zoomies gonna zoom zoom >>5854442

>>5854178
Stages are built around time travel, or rather, preventing it. Your goal is to go to the past in each stage, find the robot generators, and destroy them to get Good Futures in each stage, rather than to just get to the end of each level.
Like, you can play it straight through like a normal Sonic game, but you'll wonder why the stage design cuts your momentum every 10 seconds.

Graphics are great, music is great, Sonic controls more tightly than in the other Genesis games. Special stages look cool, but they suck, and they're just there for if you don't destroy the robot generators (beat all the special stages to automatically get Good Futures in every stage).
I really don't like the stage design. Time-travel is a bit annoying. Many stages look and feel like a random assortment of parts.

play it for yourself, and remember that the game isn't designed to be blitzed straight through like all the other games, you might still like it

>>5854470
That's how the games were released.
Each also have their own unique bonust stages and certain music tracks (mini-boss)

>>5854378
why would i ever listen to a fucking zoomer lmaooo

>>5854835
Because he's wiser than you'll ever be? lol

>>5854838
He's also colorblind, Sonic CD is obviously going to be a miserable experience for him.

>>5854919
I don't think that's what caused him to have such a negative experience. It seemed like he picked on the level design the most.

Remember, e-celebs are always wrong.

>>5852202
I agree with you, but the inclusion of a save feature helps alleviate the issue almost entirely.

>NOOOO STOP PLAYING THE ORIGINAL GAMES! PLAY SONIC 3 COMPLETE REEEEE

>>5854948
Seeing the video again, yea he makes a big point on the sloppiness of the level design. Although the level design is very scattered, I feel like it compliments the abstract backgrounds and stage themes of CD in a way. I don't think CD is better than 1, 2, or 3&K but I do like the game very much.

>>5854139
It's weird but I don't remember having so much hype for Sonic 3. The game started showing up in magazines when it was almost complete (no weird or discardes zones like in Sonic 1 and 2) and I believe people in general had the atention in other things like the new 3D consoles or games like Donkye Kong Country.

I was a kid but I could see already that the graphics and of the game were much worse than Sonic 2 just looking at the previews in magazines. I believe that's the reason I didn't feel the game had as much hype as Sonic 2.

>>5852586
Don't (You) be upset, now,

>>5854378
It's amazing that even painfully boring dweebs like this with nothing entertaining or insightful to say can find an audience willing to watch for 10 minutes at a time. He's the kind of guy who gets stuffed in a locker and even the kids who hate bullying are like, I get it. Milquetoast incarnate.

>>5855131
...yeah you're a dumbass

>>5855135
Don't try to be mean, Scott. Your wheelhouse is being boring.

>>5854178
It's wacky as all fuck. The level design is a mess on purpose and doesn't have the flow of other Sonic games because you need to be able to backtrack all the way to the beginning if you're going for 100% completion. Time travel mechanic is neat but could've been handled better. Graphics and music are 90's as fuck and JP version music is God tier.

I had Sonic 3 for 2 or 3 years as a kid before getting Sonic and Knuckles from Funcoland.
The way S&K built on top of the original was amazing.
I don't think I ever played through Sonic and Knuckles by itself. Can you still get the hyper emeralds?

>>5856649
>Can you still get the hyper emeralds?
No, if you play S&K standalone, you just get the regular emeralds, but you play the new blue spheres stages from S&K though, and you still get Doomsday Zone. You just don't get Hyper Sonic, just regular Super Sonic.

>>5856649
no you can't, Hyper Sonic is a combined effort only

>>5852684
Thanks for posting this anon, it was really interesting to read through.
About Sonic 3:
>Naka: The development began in late January of 1993, and up to June, we were doing tons of programming for the SVP. The SVP chip itself was still, at that time, being developed in parallel with Virtua Racing, so our team got to go to technical meetings in Chicago, which was really fun. Unfortunately, in June we realized that development of the SVP chip probably wouldn’t be finished by the end of the year. So we abandoned all the programming and work we’d done up to then. In the remaining 6 months we had for Sonic 3, we had to start entirely from zero and re-do everything. So while it might seem like it took us a long time between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, the reality is that we really had no time at all to spare.
So basically, Sonic 3 was originally going to be an isometric game with polygonal graphic effects using the SVP chip. That would explain the noticeable change in art direction between Sonic 1, 2, CD and Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
Also, they only had 6 months to finish Sonic 3, which makes me wonder if they really did all of Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles in just 6 months. The idea of the lock-on came at the very end, and it gave them some extra time to release S&K later, so maybe not all of S&K was ready, they don't go further about that so that's just my speculation though.

>>5856917
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdvtssb10Q8

>>5856917
I believe they say in the interview they had more time for S&K because they weren't rushed, like with Sonic 3. Sonic 3 was rushed because of the SVP experiments.

I enjoy Sonic unironically, but I also enjoy his misery and cringe moments.

I love the masterpiece that is Sonic 3 just as much as I love the trainwrecks of Sonic 06 and Boom. I love to cringe at Shadow's game.

The fact that Sonic shit the bed with Sonic 06 on Xbox and Sonic Genesis on GBA, the fact that he shat out those absolute turds as a CELEBRATION OF HIS 15TH ANIVERSARY is fucking hilarious. With 06, he shat on the future of his own franchise, guaranteeing that the series would be viewed as garbage forever no matter how many good games came out, even 10 years later. With Sonic Genesis, he shat on his own past and legacy, turning his revolutionary first game into a legitimately unplayable piece of shit.

No wonder Mario won. Sonic is a clown.

Nude

>>5857310
I love the classic Mega Drive Sonic games, they are genuinely good games. But yeah the rest of the franchise was a roller coaster... mostly of shit.

>>5856917
Sonic 3's level select screen confirms the rushed nature of its development.
>3 unplayable levels from S&K
>Mushroom Valley
>A lot of icons are recycled from Sonic 2
>2P VS 3 times
>Knuckles playable in Competition mode but not in the standalone game
Standalone Sonic 3 with Debug Mode and Level Select enabled is interesting. A lot of Knuckles' parts of the stages aren't entirely put together yet.
Enabling it is notoriously a pain in the ass. It's much more easily accessible in every other Sonic game.

>>5857654
>>Knuckles playable in Competition mode but not in the standalone game
Knuckles also plays the same as Sonic, it didn't have his unique moves like he did on S&K.
Speaking of the 2 player mode in Sonic 3, those were really fun actually, one of the best things out of Sonic 3, the music tracks are also better than many of the main tracks from the game.

>>5857310
Why

>>5857668
2P Sonic 3 was very fun. I used to play it with my siblings all the time.

>>5858396
I played it with a friend but I absolutely wrecked him all the time.

>>5854276
What does 'either' mean in this context?

>>5854345
retard

Is Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic 2 the first actual main Knuckles game before chaotix?
The title is Knuckles the Echidna, with "in Sonic 2" being the subtitle.