All the S@nics - the end

[FourteenthOrder]

I absolutely adore both soundtracks. raocow's choice was perfect to see him react to Sonic Boom, though. Man, I love that song.

I first played this game like 2ish years back, why is it giving me nostalgic feelings like this isn't like nearly all of the other games so far that were all from my childhood

Regardless I really love this game. At first I was kind of like "this is weird and different" and unsure-y, but it quickly grew on me and its more exploration-y focus ended up making it one of my favorites. It really is kind of a natural extension of the layered, multi-path level design you see in lots of Sonic games.

[Sebby19]

Also in each Past act is this hologram projector of Metal Sonic harassing some wildlife. Bop that, and critters will appear in all timelines of the act, especially the Good Future. However, it doesn't have any real bearing on the gameplay (it doesn't even give points!), so I'm not sure what the point was in including them.

gamers LOVE numbers is why it isn't thought of with the other games

I mean Mania's elevator goes 1, 2, 3, K, M. Don't know why a 'CD' couldn't go there either. Especially since a stage from CD comes back for Mania.

I think the first proper Sonic cartoon was "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog", famous for...

Was this before or after Sonic CD?

[Leet]

Because a CD would interrupt the numbers, but K and M don't. Honestly I don't actually know why I'm just thinking about other experiences with gamers dismissing games that don't have numbers in the title as "just spin-offs"

[thatguyif]

So, allow me to propose an idea here re: the music. I recall faintly playing this on Kega Fusion some years back, and I remembered something critical.

The bulk of Sonic CD's music tracks are basically MP3/WAV files. That's how they function. The only tracks hardcoded into the game are the Past segments of each zone, which are based on the Japanese soundtrack. That's why the Past segments sound of lesser quality: They're basically running on the Genesis/MD synth chips. When an Act is loaded in the Sega/Mega CD version, or when you go into the Present/Good Future/Bad Future, the game queues up the relevant track like a CD player. You can swap tracks by having matching file names, and the game won't know the difference.

My thinking is this: Act 1, like you did today, you play the NA soundtrack. Act 2, you swap it for the JP soundtrack. Act 3, you play whichever one you like best. I think this is the best way to make everyone happy.

[KobaBeach]

i love the jp soundtrack better but seeing ronco gush about sonic boom is precious
i had the silliest grin on my face seeing raocow just gush about this game

[Heavy Sigh]

Fun Sonic Facts!

THE SONIC CD STORY

Although Yuji Naka and Hirokazu Yasuhara had gone to San Francisco to help mentor (Naka's status as mentor was debateable at best) the newly-hired employees of the Sega Technical Institute in the development of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic creator Naoto Ohshima chose to stay behind in his native Japan, ready for his next assignment. Meanwhile, Sega of Japan, in preparation of the launch of the Mega CD, wanted a Sonic the Hedgehog title on the console to headline its existence, hoping the tailwind of their premier franchise would drag the new technology to superstardom. At first, the company considered the quick and dirty solution of simply developing an enhanced port of either the original Sonic the Hedgehog or of (preferentially) the upcoming Sonic 2, a practice that would define the Mega CD library in the years that followed. However, for reasons no one at SoJ quite remembers anymore, it was decided that instead of porting an existing title, a new entry in the Sonic series would be developed from the ground up to show off the incredible capabilities of the Mega CD.

Once the decision was made, it took about ten seconds before Sega gave free reign to Naoto Ohshima as Director of the project. Not wanting to make a game that was essentially the same as Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Ohshima contacted Yuji Naka and other members of the Sega Technical Institute during the initial planning stages, where both teams exchanged information about what the other wanted to do. It was during these early moments that Sonic CD started to take shape, in the moment Naoto heard the words "Time Travel".

[Super Llama]

Might as well post the JP music here:




Also here's some sick-ass remixes.




If you haven't listened to it, Temporal Duality is the single best Sonic fan album OCRemix ever put out.

[Arctangent]

i've never really thought about it, but the dbz-like terrain in the attract cutscene actively prevents the terrain from looking sonic-like

i have a mental image of the two styles mixed, but it doesn't carry the Blatantly DBZ vibes that the actual stuff has, so

anyway

below is probably not very spoiler-y as a whole but it's a rant that ended up being waaaay bigger than i thought it would

sonic cd is a game with a lot of a cool concepts. i mean, honestly, the amount of exploration we saw rao do in the games thus far and will probably see him do in 3 is a good showcase of how classic sonic can be pretty satisfying to play in a more open way. the concept of having four whole variations of each act is really fascinating on its own, especially when paired with the exploration focus, and literally adds a whole new dimension for routing speedruns. and the super peel out is just really stylish and cool, which is why we've seen its unique figure-eight run recreated countless times despite cd never really being a mainstream game

'course this vid is a good showcases of how cd's level design is at odds with its goal of exploration, how the time travel mechanic is really clunky to actually use and you can easily ignore half of it and still go for the best ending, and how the super peel out is actually so pointless that they had to severely nerf the spindash so that you didn't just immediately go "why would i ever use this"

not to mention the spindash just feels awful. you might've noticed that rao failed to use it several times despite making decent use out of it in 2. that's because the spindash controls entirely differently in this game for no real reason - instead of pressing down and then repeatedly pressing jump to rev sonic up to several different speeds like in every other 2d game, you instead press down and hold jump to basically mega buster charge up a spin dash up to a single speed. it's a lot like how various 3d games implemented the spindash, except i'm pretty sure those had the launch speed varying with charge time. here, it's literally just a single speed and if you don't charge long enough, you don't launch

also despite the fact that he's, y'know, spinning while charging? he doesn't damage enemies. the reason for this is, iirc, because the spin dash and super peel out are actually exactly the same, except the peel out has a higher launch speed and the spindash puts you in a rolling state

which means, yeah, everything that's bad about the cd spin dash? yeah, goes 100% for the peel out, which really just exacerbates how useless the move is if not for the fact that the spin dash is severely neutered. iirc, future games with its run lets you destroy and bounce off of enemies if you land on them with the figure-eight, but in cd, you're just as vulnerable using it as you are in any normal running state

and, yeah. both the speed boost options suck in a game where the core time travel mechanic can only be used by staying at a high speed for long enough, and if you lose that speed, that opportunity to time travel is permanently lost. i don't think that really needs to be added on. there are bits in the levels literally designed to compensate for how awful the time travel mechanics are, by forcing sonic into a spring-driven loop so he has no option but to retain speed for long enough. attempts at using the signs normally are liable to be quickly stomped on by crashing into walls, crashing into enemies, landing from a spring, having to do platforming, or just clipping the level geometry in a way that cancels your speed

it would seriously be so much nicer if the signs just opened a portal when you went past them ala the special stage portals in 2. maybe require a minimum speed while passing to activate them to retain the element of speed being involved, but the current system is just awful and makes trying to take advantage of this core mechanic completely unfun. even just making the signs reset when you touch another one would make it more bearable

but, i mean, granted, that's partially the level design's fault, too. and the level design ... well, did you notice that this act was a lot like a typical sonic zone 1 act 1? multilane design with a lot of emphasis of flowing forward that kinda made going back a chore because springs and terrain alike are placed moreso to get you to the goal, even at the expense of making backtracking a pain? did you also noticed that there was exactly one thing you had to search for, in only one of the act's variations ( thankfully, given the annoyance of switching between them ), just sort of randomly placed with no signposting so that you could easily miss it if you weren't scrubbing every nook and cranny when most nooks and crannies just have ring boxes? yeah, uh, prepare for more of all of that, except with flow-stopping gimmicks and far larger levels that don't want you navigating them or picking up speed outside of the designated Speed Tubes™ so you can't navigate spacetime, either

it's sort of a worst-of-both-worlds thing. trying to play sonic cd as a normal sonic game has the issue of the levels just ... not being all that tightly constructed, since they're meant to be big and explored so enemies are basic and there's a lot of space that's just ... there. on the flipside, though, it doesn't abandon the sonic level design wholesale, either, so levels end up tedious to explore as reaching different lanes still requires mastery over the level gimmicks and sonic's physics. and, of course, the entire goal of the exploration is to find a single destroyable object that's always in the exact same variation of the act. iirc, the machines still appear, now degraded and run-down, in the other time periods, so you can locate 'em while not in the past, but ... ultimately, that means you still want to be in the past as much as possible, since finding it in another time just means you have to stumble your way to another sign, hope you can keep your speed to travel to the past, and then make your way back to the place you found it

i can genuinely say that sonic cd makes me think of a high-concept, highly-polished fangame. like, i don't really need to repeat the praises for both soundtracks it has, and it has a lot of visual flair even if it can ... hurt itself with it later on. but what makes cd really unique are a variety of mechanics that would really shake up the formula of a typical sonic game ... and the devs ended up getting stuck in the mindset of implementing them in a way that "feels sonic-y" even at heavy expenses to how well the mechanics are executed. i think we've all seen fangames and hacks and stuff like that - where the devs clearly had some big ideas and may even have technically impressive showings for it, but because they were slapped onto a foundation that wasn't built for it and they stuck to retaining certain parts of that foundation's feel, the result ends up clunky and fumbling the concepts at best and nigh-unplayable at worst

despite how much i've ragged on it, i'd say cd is firmly in the former camp, because it's still competent overall and a lot of these problems can be played around to minimize their negative impact. i'd say i'm moreso disappointed in it than that i really dislike it, since it really does feel like it has a ton of potential that ends up just being fumbled

which, thinking about it in this moment, is probably why i'm able to type so much on literally just three aspects of it

[SAJewers]

So, allow me to propose an idea here re: the music. I recall faintly playing this on Kega Fusion some years back, and I remembered something critical.

The bulk of Sonic CD's music tracks are basically MP3/WAV files. That's how they function. The only tracks hardcoded into the game are the Past segments of each zone, which are based on the Japanese soundtrack. That's why the Past segments sound of lesser quality: They're basically running on the Genesis/MD synth chips. When an Act is loaded in the Sega/Mega CD version, or when you go into the Present/Good Future/Bad Future, the game queues up the relevant track like a CD player. You can swap tracks by having matching file names, and the game won't know the difference.

My thinking is this: Act 1, like you did today, you play the NA soundtrack. Act 2, you swap it for the JP soundtrack. Act 3, you play whichever one you like best. I think this is the best way to make everyone happy.

Alternative option: convince raocow to play the 2011 remaster as Tails, and play with the JP music there.

[Bean]

Sonic CD's an oddball, but it's one of the ones I liked. One of the few Sonic titles I went through on my own channel. Should be fun to watch raocow go through this one and see how it's one of the more exploration-based adventures in the series. More partial to our soundtrack than the original one, but they both have their hits and misses.

[10204307]

If I may make a small correction, the signposts don't go away on a timer, but rather if you start going fast enough for the sparkle trail to appear behind Sonic for a few seconds, and then slow down or stop moving before you actually time travel. If you've touched a "past" sign and don't want to lose it, it's best to avoid rushing while you look for a place where you can safely build up enough speed.

As far as soundtracks go, I greatly prefer the Japanese one, but ultimately it doesn't matter too much since you're going to be in the past most of the time anyway, which is the same in both versions. The American soundtrack is alright, but I find it kind of bland for the most part, with the exception of Tidal Tempest Present and Sonic Boom.

Other than the ability to select the soundtrack, another major improvement the PC port makes to this game is reverting the spin dash back to the way it works in the other classic Sonic games. (There's an option to make it work like it does in the original Sonic CD, but I don't know why someone would want that...)

[Nast]

Clearly the best solution is to have both soundtracks playing at the same time, one on the left channel and one on the right channel, so the listener can choose. :v

Regarding the signposts, there's a fangame called Sonic Time Twisted that implements the mechanic, but with an interesting change: you just have to run past the signpost at a certain speed to be instantly warped, and you can re-use the signs as much as you like. The downside is that it's much easier to time travel by accident, but that's fine as long as there are plenty of signposts available to travel back. I think if it had been implemented like that in CD it would have improved the game a lot.

[FourteenthOrder]

If you haven't listened to it, Temporal Duality is the single best Sonic fan album OCRemix ever put out.

Strongly agreed.

[xnamkcor]

I prefer the ending theme version. I hope raocow gives it a listen.

Ending theme is the only thing I like about this game(intro too).

"There's not much Past signs in the past".
Don't tempt me.

[Crow]

there's actually one level with a past sign in the past, and if you get it and use it, it sends you to the super-past, where you are stuck forever and have to restart your game to break out of.

the super-past is, of course, labyrinth zone from sonic 1

[xnamkcor]

there's actually one level with a past sign in the past, and if you get it and use it, it sends you to the super-past, where you are stuck forever and have to restart your game to break out of.

the super-past is, of course, labyrinth zone from sonic 1

I'm assuming SONICC_D has a Debug mode.

[Heavy Sigh]

Fun Sonic Facts!

One of Oshima's first and best decisions was choosing Hiroyuki Kawaguchi as Art Director to shape the worlds of the game. Although comparisons can be made between the levels in the first Sonic the Hedgehog and its CD sequel, Kawaguchi's creations were a feast for the eyes, standing out from anything that had yet been seen in the franchise.

Although the Sonic 2 team discarded their idea of time travel as a play mechanic, Ohshima took the idea and ran with it, immediately imagining the level Sonic was in to suddenly change around him (it was around this time that Ohshima had seen a subbed version of Back To The Future), the player instantly being warped to a different place. But when he tried to make such a 'Time Warp' reality, the lead programmer Matsuhide Mizoguchi mutinied, claiming that such a thing was impossible to accomplish on the Mega CD, and insisted on putting a "loading sequence" in first, which became the brief moments where a star-studded Sonic is flying through a green background. Though Ohshima kept pushing the programming team to skip the loading screen (still seeing BTTF's version of Time Travel as the only kind cool enough for Sonic), Mizoguchi's team of programmers could not find a way to make such an idea work with Naka's engine.

However, even after Sonic CD was complete, Ohshima remained adamant that if Naka had been the chief programmer on Sonic CD, he would have been able to find a solution.

[Grounder]

two for two on the time stones so far

already going better than 2 did

[Crow]

yeah these special stages are painful raocow's doing really dang good at them

they are actually action-based rather than trial and error garbage like sonic 2's though, at least

[Awoo]

Super looking forward to seeing how raocow does at the

Chaotix

special stages, assuming he plays it
It's one of the best things about that game, honestly

[Super Llama]

Since raocow's locked out of the Bad Future for Palmtree Panic might as well post both versions.

[xnamkcor]

Is This Comedy?

[SAJewers]

I feel like you'd have less of an issue time travelling if you made use of the shoe powerups you see in the levels.

[kitikami]

This game was released two years before Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, so the Smashing Pumpkins must have written "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" about playing Sonic. It kind of makes sense if the song is written from the perspective of one of the animals trapped in Robotnik's robots.

[KobaBeach]

I feel like you'd have less of an issue time travelling if you made use of the shoe powerups you see in the levels.

no you'd just have more of an issue because you'd be triggering it every goddamn time you ran despite not being in the proper stretch of land for it, interrupting you and losing your chance

yeah these special stages are painful raocow's doing really dang good at them

they are actually action-based rather than trial and error garbage like sonic 2's though, at least

I actually find them much easier for that reason