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Sonic the Hedgehog Community Thread: Green Hills and Laughing Iizukas

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Sciz

Member
I don't think Eggman's entirely above some mild subterfuge, though. I mean, he tricked Knuckles into thinking Sonic was a villain, like, three times (S3&K, Triple Trouble, SA1) - and while the latter two are largely because Knuckles can be a bit of an idiot, the first one actually worked, since Knuckles wouldn't have known about Sonic and Eggman beforehand to know any better.
Yeah, like I said, he's not above a small ruse here and there. The biggest one he's ever pulled was probably Unleashed, where there was apparently an entire game's worth of conflict that happened offscreen just so he could bait Super Sonic into letting his guard down.

But he immediately followed up on that by blowing up the planet, so I'm still not inclined to award him points for subtlety. And he threw out the Chaos Emeralds in the process which came back to bite him in the ass. Similarly, the whole amusement part schtick in Colors might've worked out if he hadn't gone around chasing wisps right in front of Sonic, or if he'd done a quick error check before hitting the fire button, or if the entire place wasn't a thinly veiled deathtrap. The point is that Robotnik is not the kind of person who plays the long game, and he invariably makes fatal mistakes when he tries.

He's also an incorrigible egomaniac and almost certainly globally notorious after the events of SA2 and Unleashed, so I'm really hesitant to buy an infiltration plot as plausible. It only ever happened in the comic in the first place because he was a powerless, unknown exile stuck in the middle of a war, and getting in good with the enemy was the only option that wouldn't get him shot.

It can work here, too; Eggman, strapped for cash,
There might be a counterexample I'm forgetting about, but it is probably safe to say that cash is no object for him. Not necessarily because he's filthy rich, but because he doesn't have much use for it. He's clearly got the facilities to manufacture whatever he wants, and we've torn through enough production and transportation facilities over the years to suggest that raw materials and shipping are also not concerns.

If you really wanted to set up the whole freedom fighter routine, it'd be much simpler to say that Robotnik just rolled in because they were supposedly hiding some powerful artifact (c.f. Soleanna), and when he couldn't find it immediately, he decided to settle in, keep looking, and remake the capitol in his image for kicks.
 

Anth0ny

Member
None of that has to do with sluggish controls, slippery punch attacks, or repetitive level design (did you like that section of level? great! because it's going to be copy/pasted again in about 5 minutes).

It has Sonic Adventure controls. You say sluggish, I say responsive. Colors/Unleashed/Modern Generations is sluggish.

We'll never agree on this =D

Does Mario 64 have sluggish controls and repetitive level design?
 
Ah, there's that cynical, meanspirited attitude that I so love to see in a Sonic fan!

Re: Your wakeup call: you a) became cynical, b) outgrew Sonic, or c) both. Forgive me if my armchair psychology is a tad off. In any case, I respect your reasons for disliking Sonic Heroes even if I disagree with them.
a) I still regularly played Mario and a whole bunch of other stuff which would've likely regularly called my maturity in question if I was more open about it at school.

b) I still regularly enjoyed the Genesis games and at the time of hating Heroes I still liked the Adventure games. By the time I got around to playing Unleashed half a decade later or so while I didn't think that was great either I feel I could look at it objectively enough to know it was a far better game than most of what had come before for instance.

No offense but your several responses of "Oh, I didn't remember that" kind of leads me to believe it's been awhile since you've played the game yourself and this is the first time you've looked outside the fanbase bubble for what other people thought of the game. You're free to like the game and all but the forced mysticism over the hate and weird attempts to 'guess' where people are coming from psychologically instead of just giving actual reasons why you like the game would probably stop this argument from coming more passive-aggressive. Anth0ny may have fucking bizarre tastes but at least there's some attempt to back up those tastes instead of 'maybe everybody else has just grown cynical of 3D Sonic games'.
 
It has Sonic Adventure controls. You say sluggish, I say responsive. Colors/Unleashed/Modern Generations is sluggish.

We'll never agree on this =D

Does Mario 64 have sluggish controls and repetitive level design?

Wait what? You've just gone and insulted the controls you love for the most part, Heroes doesn't match Adventure controls, it's slip sliding away with some erratic left and right movements.
Heroes controls feels like the in between of Adventure and Unleashed with the pros of neither.

Bringing Mario 64 into the equation is the most maddening thing of all, on one hand arguably the best controls in a 3D platformer and on the other Sonic and friends on Ice.
And SM64 has a completely different style of gameplay to Heroes where revisiting stages is like the entire point, WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE?!
 

Anth0ny

Member
Wait what? You've just gone and insulted the controls you love for the most part, Heroes doesn't match Adventure controls, it's slip sliding away with some erratic left and right movements.
Heroes controls feels like the in between of Adventure and Unleashed with the pros of neither.

Bringing Mario 64 into the equation is the most maddening thing of all, on one hand arguably the best controls in a 3D platformer and on the other Sonic and friends on Ice.
And SM64 has a completely different style of gameplay to Heroes where revisiting stages is like the entire point, WHAT'S HAPPENING HERE?!

I'm curious what he thinks of Mario 64 because I've heard the word "sluggish" used when describing that game's controls too (especially compared to Galaxy, which I think is crazy).

If that really is the common perception, I guess I like sluggish controlling games! lol

Try playing Heroes again. It feels damn near identical to Sonic/Shadow in Adventure 2, physics wise. My problem with that game was not revisiting stages or gameplay/physics... but just the mediocre level design. Nothing about the game was particularly memorable. Well, except that pinball/casino stage... ugh.
 
If anything I find SMG controls slightly more sluggish at times compared to SM64, mainly just because Mario is slow to initiate a full run combined with a slightly slower run speed, I think, really they're pretty similar though.
 

Anth0ny

Member
If anything I find SMG controls slightly more sluggish at times compared to SM64, mainly just because Mario is slow to initiate a full run combined with a slightly slower run speed, I think, really they're pretty similar though.

Exactly.

Despite all the BOOST BOOST BOOST, Modern Sonic feels slow (to me) compared to Adventure Sonic.

The ironing is delicious.
 
they removed the music?

so let me get this straight

you start the game and the first thing you hear isn't "YAH YAH YAH YAH YAH!"

What kind of bastardization is that? It's not even Crazy Taxi anymore
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they also have to remove a song or two from the Jet Set Radio re-release? What is it with SEGA and maintaining the rights to music?
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they also have to remove a song or two from the Jet Set Radio re-release? What is it with SEGA and maintaining the rights to music?

One song. You have to remember, the JSR soundtrack is full of songs from artists that were never big- that kind of thing can often fall through the cracks and they just don't know how to license them, or who'd be owed what.

They did a cracking job, really. Crazy Taxi was SEGA being cheap, although The Offspring and Bad Religion are probably considerably more expensive than the JSR soundtrack. The recent iOS version of Crazy Taxi has the original music.
 
Not sure if the stupid Sonic running meme is over or not but I found this to be funny:

f6b.gif

EDIT: whatisthisidonteven...
 

WillyFive

Member
Super Mario Galaxy 1+2's controls are a lot slower and less responsive than previous 3D Mario games, very noticeably too.

It's frustrating Mario doing a backflip when I want to do a long jump just because the game couldn't tell the difference; despite Mario 64 picking up the same moves instantly and accurately.

Also, Sonic Generations' controls were also kinda unresponsive as well compared to SA2 (at least the PS3 version); especially the Lightspeed Ring move. One tap of the button in SA2 was enough, but you had to quickly tap in Generations in order to get it to work.

They're similar, sure, but there were some major differences. And like I said, his character shifted in some ways, it wasn't just about appearance. (But man, there were some ugly renders in that period.)

Also, don't forget the Mario we have right now isn't the way he was being presented during the N64 era.

Sound effects and GUI design changes each generation (as well as graphics, obviously), but Mario has stayed the same for me. I can't see the difference, I guess. Can you point out some differences?
 

TheOGB

Banned
Hey guys, what's--

Sonic Adventure 2 is still fucking amazing, the pinnacle of 3D Sonic, and I'd rather play one million Knuckles stages than that god awful BOOST BOOST BOOST Colors garbage.

I missed you guys <3
Generations (2D) > SA2 > Heroes/SA1 (I'd like to replay both games, it's been a while) > 06 > Generations (Modern) > Colors > What I've played of Unleashed

I'm probably going to write up a huge post in the SA2 thread about my impressions playing SA2 XBLA after not touching the game for a few years. I really thought it wouldn't hold up.

Nope. Still awesome.
Egoraptor and Jontron said in the latest Game Grumps episode that they are going to play Sonic 2006: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDGrmEMpWTo

I actually knew this already for a couple of weeks already because Guess Who from Sonic Retro sent it to them. :p
Oh lord have mercy
Yay, Anth0ny's back
 

qq more

Member
Anth0ny you just suck at Unleashed/Colors/Generations





;)


Exactly.

Despite all the BOOST BOOST BOOST, Modern Sonic feels slow (to me) compared to Adventure Sonic.

The ironing is delicious.

I bet you think Sonic 06's Sonic is faster than post-06 Sonic. And I swear to god if you really think that...

EDIT: Someone pointed out to me that Modern Sonic's acceleration is slower without boost but his top speed is definitely NOT slower than Adventure Sonic. What are you even going on about?
 
So apparently Rouge is 18 years old.

Yeah, she totally looks and sounds like an 18 year old.

The ages are pretty random. I was surprised when I found out Blaze is supposed to be a year younger than Sonic, because there's absolutely nothing about her design or personality that would imply that she's anything but older than him. (Of course, could be one of those anime trope twists, "Oh she's had such a hard life, she grew up faster," whatever.) In fact, considering she's supposed to be Sonic's parallel (at least in the Rush games), it would make sense for her to at least be his age.

Sound effects and GUI design changes each generation (as well as graphics, obviously), but Mario has stayed the same for me. I can't see the difference, I guess. Can you point out some differences?

Bringing up the GUI doesn't even make sense. Maybe I'll dig up some examples tomorrow after I've had some sleep, but I'm not sure I feel like spending a while on Google Image Search trying to dig up examples of rarely-scanned advertisements and the like. I just remember it because I was so into Mario stuff, and what they started doing with him frustrated me.
 

WillyFive

Member
Bringing up the GUI doesn't even make sense.

In Mario 64, the UI looked like this, with very saturated and textured fonts and graphic elements:


But starting with Sunshine they started incorporating the paint brush under numbers motif:


And now, they have streamlined to be simpler, cleaner, and more colorful; most notably using a bar to make everything look more uniform:


It's just a small thing I notice.
I thought that, as of Heroes, Sonic was 16 years old.

That's what the manual says, no?

Also, it was mindblowing to me when the Sonic Heroes manual included the ages of the characters.
 
I don't doubt what you're saying here is sort of true, but outside of Hang Castle I can't remember too many stages with repetitive layouts.

In Ocean Palace you go through the whole "stairs leading up to a door Knuckles needs to punch open" two or three times.

Grand Metropolis and Power Plant use the "destroy a set of enemies to make the bridge slam down" gimmick at least twice.

The titular "Bingo Highway" mechanic shows up twice, and neither the first nor second one are appreciably different - one's just longer.

There are two identical cannon sequences in Bullet Station.

Both battleships in Egg Fleet are basically identical in various ways, and the arena you fight the mini-boss in that stage is always identical the 3 or so times you face him.

Every "push the button" sequence in Final Fortress is identical.

Those are just off the top of my head, and isn't even counting gimmicks that re-appear across multiple stages, like the go kart tracks.
 
a) I still regularly played Mario and a whole bunch of other stuff which would've likely regularly called my maturity in question if I was more open about it at school.

b) I still regularly enjoyed the Genesis games and at the time of hating Heroes I still liked the Adventure games. By the time I got around to playing Unleashed half a decade later or so while I didn't think that was great either I feel I could look at it objectively enough to know it was a far better game than most of what had come before for instance.

No offense but your several responses of "Oh, I didn't remember that" kind of leads me to believe it's been awhile since you've played the game yourself and this is the first time you've looked outside the fanbase bubble for what other people thought of the game. You're free to like the game and all but the forced mysticism over the hate and weird attempts to 'guess' where people are coming from psychologically instead of just giving actual reasons why you like the game would probably stop this argument from coming more passive-aggressive. Anth0ny may have fucking bizarre tastes but at least there's some attempt to back up those tastes instead of 'maybe everybody else has just grown cynical of 3D Sonic games'.

I had I a feeling that last part of my post might be taken out of context.
In calling you cynical I wasn't talking about your opinion of Sonic Heroes, I was referring to rather nasty things you were not-so-subtly insinuating about the younger Sonic fandom. In fact, I posted about this earlier, about the arrogance of we Genesis-era fans who like to pretend we are so far above the ones who populate dA groups and draw recolored Sonics and Shadows for kicks. We're not. The fact that you called Heroes a wake up call from being one of this just sealed the haughtiness of the sentiment. It's one thing to say you've outgrown that aspect of your fandom, but there's no need to for the mid-20's half of the Cartoon Hedgehog Loving Community to act like almighty superior dickheads to the tween half of the Cartoon Hedgehog Loving Comminity. Neither side is deluded, we just show our appreciation for this series differently.
 

qq more

Member
I had I a feeling that last part of my post might be taken out of context.
In calling you cynical I wasn't talking about your opinion of Sonic Heroes, I was referring to rather nasty things you were not-so-subtly insinuating about the younger Sonic fandom. In fact, I posted about this earlier, about the arrogance of we Genesis-era fans who like to pretend we are so far above the ones who populate dA groups and draw recolored Sonics and Shadows for kicks. We're not. The fact that you called Heroes a wake up call from being one of this just sealed the haughtiness of the sentiment. It's one thing to say you've outgrown that aspect of your fandom, but there's no need to for the mid-20's half of the Cartoon Hedgehog Loving Community to act like almighty superior dickheads to the tween half of the Cartoon Hedgehog Loving Comminity. Neither side is deluded, we just show our appreciation for this series differently.
There's also people who fap to Sonic characters... would you defend them too?
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Well now, what do we have...

Xl7tt.gif


While I like people having fun in here, please remember to keep it classy. Is that understood?

...do I have to start going all Sword Art Online on people or what?

FtBmC.gif
 
Anime. Here's the OT for it. The second arc started two weeks ago, but the first arc is better. It's up on Crunchyroll.

Buuut people should watch Fate/Zero if they haven't yet already. Made me jump back into watching anime seasonally. Ufotable are gods, and it's one of my favourite anime series ever.

SppoN.gif


dJ1yI.jpg

If both of these shows are as good as they sound, I might finally have a good enough reason to get a Crunchyroll account (the lack of dubs there still bugs me though). Thanks!

EDIT: wait..Fate/Zero is a prequel to Fate/Stay Night? : /

Erm...lets talk about Sonic?

sonic_derp.jpg
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Episode 1 and 2 of Fate/Zero are pretty slow, but you get into the action in the third episode. I personally like expositional episodes if they're done right, but a lot of other people don't.

As for SAO, it's a bit slow at the beginning of Episode 1 until the twist happens. More people on GAF seem to like SAO, so it would probably be a decent start. I don't even know why I like it, tbh. Probably the action.

Neither of them are dubbed, though.

EDIT: wait..Fate/Zero is a prequel to Fate/Stay Night? : /
Yes, but omg it's sooooo much better. Way more mature, and the animation and narrative are a million times better.

I've only seen the Unlimited Blade Works route of that and man that story is nonsense. If the default anime story is worse than that, then F/SN must not be good at all.
 
It was my understanding that F/SN was an eroge, and those generally arent known for having strong stories. I didn't even know there was a PG-13 version of it in manga and anime form until like a minute ago! Weird.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
The anime is safe to watch, and the PS2/Vita version of the F/SN VN is censored. The eroge version is only on PC from what I'm told. I was thinking of importing it for Vita but I don't think it's worth it yet. Waiting until budget price if possible.

Anyway, speaking of anime...

Sonic X - Episode 4: Get the Chaos Emerald! / &#12459;&#12458;&#12473;&#12456;&#12513;&#12521;&#12523;&#12489;&#12434;&#25163;&#12395;&#20837;&#12428;&#12429;!
AKA Chaos Emerald Chaos (real original there, 4Kids)
AKA Creeper Dudes Everywhere

dj93C.png


I'm not sure if I can ever get tired of that OP. It's very catchy. And for once we don't start off with the last scenes of the last episode. It's better this way, really. Them flying of into the sunset and Knuckles dropping off should be left in the last ep.

Everyone's telling Chris about Chaos Control and how they all got zapped to Bizarro Earth because of it, all while Doc Brown is looking up Amazon Gold Box Deals and they're sitting on beanbag chairs. They find it weird that Chris has never even heard of the Chaos Emeralds. "A Chaos Emerald is a Chaos Emerald. When you bring all seven dragon balls together you can make a wish and revive the dead (but only once because lol) Chaos Emeralds the legends say you will be granted with the power to rule the world!" Doc Brown says that this is nonsense. But Sonic says that the Chaos Emeralds are like the seven Dragon Balls. They're scattered around the world and we have to bring them together. Oh lawd, Sonic said "that's right" in English. There's a lot of English in this show.

Well conveniently, the construction guys found a chaos emerald. Someone tell Knux right away.

Cut to a scene with the President on Air Force One. They're talking about Sonic and bros. "The animals are in some celebrity's house at Station Square. Dr Eggman has set up his base in a remote location in the Southern Sea." I'm guessing the prez wants to hunt them for sport or something. And he thinks Dr. Eggman's one of those no-good terrorists! I would complain about the scenery for the millionth time, but you guys get it already. I don't like it much and it seems like they phoned it home half the time. Also, the president dispatched some dude to monitor Chris. Who's paying for all of this? The taxpayers? Why would they want to pay for this shit?

Chris apparently goes to Elementary School Elementary School. Now, where I went to elementary school, it went from Kindergarten to Grade 8. So... I dunno how old Chris is supposed to be in America. Conveniently, Chris's teacher Ms. Wendy is out on some international quiz competition or something so she quit her job? Uh, ok, if that's stable employment go right ahead. So now they have a bespectacled sub named Mr. Stewart. That means you can bug the teacher 24/7. Also he looks evil. He also knows about how rich Chris's dad is ("your dad owns 70% of the world's computer shares?" How is that even possible? "He's the CEO of Starship Soft, Nelson Thorndyke. Your Mother is actress Lindsay Fair.") Ohgosh, run away from this man, Chris. He's a creeper.

Actually it turns out he's one of his mom's fanboys. No wait, why do I think this is worse? Grooooooooooossssssssssssssssssssssssss. Then he asks what kind of animals Chris likes. Chris is an idiot and answers hedgehogs. The next day, Chris's buddy Danny asks why Mr. Stewart was being a creeper and asking him about his favourite animals.

The Chaos Emerald, meanwhile, stalls construction equipment or makes them uncontrollable. Oh, hey, the BGM playing uses that same music sample that some commercials and Chrono Cross's Chronopolis uses. People really love that sample. Someone remind me if this scene was depicted as goofy in the English version because here it's being portrayed as incredibly frightening. Cream and Cheese see the Emerald on TV and let Sonic know. Sonic just said "What's up" in Engrish. Oh, and Buttnik's watching the same program. Of course.

Chris sees Tails's plane in the distance (I think) and impolitely excuses himself from class. So, is this supposed to be in America or Japan? I'm kinda wondering. Then as Chris runs out, the teacher runs out too. Oh dear. Beware, Christopher. Chris rollerblades down the street following the aircraft.

The news crew spots Dr. Eggman and his crazy robot. How the hell are there so many people running down the street like that? That's a very wide street too. Sonic decides that he's gotta go fast to the scene of the potential crime. Eggman beats everyone to the punch and as he's digging the emerald up, Chris takes it from him. And then Buttnik steals it back while Chris is enamoured with shinies. It's pretty funny to see Robotnik shoving a kid and the kid shoving him back.

Chris is, yet again, an idiot and grabs on to Eggman's flying contraption. Chris somehow climbs and stabilizes himself on the flying machine to try to get emerald from Robotnik, and Robotnik doesn't care so he tries to kill the kid, but Chris grabs onto his moustache so he wouldn't fall (he also manages to get the emerald during this scuffle). But he does. Meanwhile, Sonic gets a power ring from Amy. So... do rings dissolve or something? They seem to let Sonic use special powers when he uses them.

Chris is saved by Mr. Stewart from Deadly Premonition. His car has this weird contraption where he can take the roof off and make his backseat some sort of mattress or cushion. I bet the ladies love that. Buuut Sonic gets there first. Man, I don't like the backgrounds in this at all... so bad.

Everyone gathers around at Chris's place to look at shinies. Doc Brown is worried that it'll affect his machines, but Tails says &#22823;&#19976;&#22827; because his machine (his plane) is still working. ok. whatever, tails... >.>

Also, Sonic don't care. And he said that Chris was cool (but he says this to the camera, implying that Chris is a stand-in for the kids watching). That means Sonic thinks YOU'RE cool, you guys.

Overall, I thought this ep was kinda boring.

Next Episode: Knuckles probably got fooled by Robotnik for the millionth time. No one is surprised.
 

BlackJace

Member
Episode 1 and 2 of Fate/Zero are pretty slow, but you get into the action in the third episode. I personally like expositional episodes if they're done right, but a lot of other people don't.

Yes, but omg it's sooooo much better. Way more mature, and the animation and narrative are a million times better.

I've only seen the Unlimited Blade Works route of that and man that story is nonsense. If the default anime story is worse than that, then F/SN must not be good at all.

I really wanna get into the series and add it to my collection, but the boxset's prices are insane. Upwards of 400 bucks.
 
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