All the S@nics - the end

[10204307]

The Pyramid Cave theme is arguably one of the best songs in the game. It seems that a lot of people don't think about it super often, but whenever I'm thinking about great 3D Sonic music, this is always one of the songs that comes to mind.

[TiKi]

Fun SONY Facts! The Dreamcast Killer

One of the biggest sticking points in any discussion about the Dreamcast is its relationship with the PlayStation 2. That, and the fact that despite having a thirteen month lead in the US and a whole two years in Japan, nothing it did could wrench the publics eye off the PS2. Much of the gaming media were giving their blessing to the PS2 before it was even released, just off the strength of the PlayStation brand in 1999.

Sony was often accused of announcing "vapourware" at its first PlayStation 2 conference in March 1999. On display were no games, but a raft of tech demos that pretended to be games, with appearances including Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy VIII, Crash Bandicoot, Tekken and Ridge Racer - big releases on the original PlayStation, but which would not materialise on the PS2 for years, and in almost unrelated forms (save for launch title Ridge Racer V).

Sony's figures were also rather disingenuous, boasting the possibility of its processor rendering many millions of textured polygons a second while forgetting to mention that it didn't have near enough VRAM to actually do that. The inflated specs were in-turn picked up by the gaming press and referenced uncritically and extensively in the months leading up to launch - with tidbits like US gaming magazine Next Generation's claim that the PS2 was "20 times more powerful" than the Dreamcast and "100 times more powerful" than the original PlayStation before a single game was ever shown.

Other PS2 pipe dreams included movies on demand and an e-commerce system similar to what would eventually be on the Xbox 360. Both claims went nowhere, but that didn't stop Sony's Phil Harrison, who in 2000 began mouthing off about 100Mbps internet connections for PS2, hard disk drives and servers containing downloadable versions of every original PlayStation game ever made, and for aspiring publishers in hell, the idea of server-generated in-game advertisements, pay-per-view events and episodic titles, a nightmarish vision that would bypass the console but never came to be. These announcements, alongside the entire gaming press acting as the PS2 Hype Men, led to the Dreamcast's record launch being utterly, utterly crushed by the PlayStation 2's launch, and over the next year the total domination of the video game market.

The PlayStation 2 hype reached its peak when the Japanese Trade Ministry imposed shipping limits on the console (stopping sales to Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea), through unfounded fears it might be used as a powerful weapon by international terrorist groups to calculate missile trajectories. US and UK governments were also concerned, and labeled the system as a "Super Computer", banning its sale to rogue states.

I wonder if anyone reads these facts?

Fun Level Facts!

To find Big in Pyramid Cave, head to the second checkpoint. Once you pass it, you'll be on a roller coaster of a rail ride. after the first few dips and hills in the ride, look left as it flattens out, and you'll see Big through a grate.

Out of curiosity, how much more powerful than the PS1 is the PS2 really?
Though let's not forget that it DID come with a free DVD player. Hell yeah.

[Leet]

My favorite animals are the penguin, gorilla and bat. My least favorite are the skunk and the other birds.

Eagerly awaiting when we finally meet the deep one and skeleton

[BobisOnlyBob]

I wonder if anyone reads these facts?

I have literally read out sections of your facts to my ever-patient fiancée and other members of my family as trivia, as I am wont to do anyway, and it's great having that tragic epic I'm so fond of, "The Rise and Fall of Sega", told alongside their games in chronological order like this.

[Crow]

the best animal is objectively the phoenix because Bird

unrelated: very excited for sonic riders in 2-3 years from now

[Heavy Sigh]

Fun Level Facts!

In DEATH CHAMBER, you can find Big on a pillar inside the Pyramid Core's central machine, facing the entrance to the Red Zone. Look through the grate to see him.

[Blivsey]

[Verse]
Sonic, what are you doin' here?
I heard you were on a quest for the Master Emerald
You know me and you don't get along
I don't think that's the point right now, Knuckles
I know how much the Emerald means to you, and I wanna help get it back
Stop being stubborn and think!
Well, I guess you're right
You're damn right, Knuckles!
I know Eggman's secret station's here somewhere
All we have to do is find it
I know we'll need a key to get inside
That's our only way to find it, so let's go!

[CrappyBlueLuigi]

from front to back, all i see is donuts
i'm glad that i don't call this home

[Leet]

Again that ghost is scary

[Nast]

I remember back when I first played this on an emulator, I did run into the missing shadows bug. What's worse, my 11 year old self didn't know there was even supposed to be a shadow, so I was absolutely mistified.

[Grounder]

Did they nerf this guy for the Gamecube version? I don't remember him turning around.

[Bean]

Did they nerf this guy for the Gamecube version? I don't remember him turning around.

Nope. He still does that occasionally in the GCN version.

[Blivsey]

He always turns around if you try to approach from behind when he's not spitting fire, you gotta wait for him to do it while not accidentally making him turn around and waste time

[BobisOnlyBob]

[Grounder]

found tectonic tracks multiplyventure too

Knuckles did nothing wrong this entire game.

[AUS]

how many games until sonic battle?

[kitikami]

Sonic Adventure is probably near the end of any list of games i'd expect to have inspired Shadow of the Colossus, but that's pretty much what that snake thing was.

Welp, turns out Shadow of the Colossus was just a Sonic Adventure(s) remake all along.

[xnamkcor]

Out of curiosity, how much more powerful than the PS1 is the PS2 really?
Though let's not forget that it DID come with a free DVD player. Hell yeah.

Powerful enough to emulate games like Brave Fencer Musashi and N-Gen Racing with little or no trouble.

[Bean]

Tech talk is pretty complicated since there are things the Dreamcast does better than the PS2 such as texturing and actual image quality while the PS2 was better at polygons, 3D geometry, and lighting. If I remember it right, processor-wise, the PS2 was about 50% more powerful than the Dreamcast.

But that said, the Dreamcast didn't fail because of its hardware or software so much as Sega's own past as the topic's brought up a few times. Again, remember 3D Blast coming out the same year as Mario 64 and Crash 1. The Saturn is an all-time flop that poisoned the hardware brand for the company. A lot of developers just did not release stuff on the thing, and even though it was ahead of its time with the internet deal, the system did not do the numbers to stay afloat.

I haven't been paying as much attention to the topic during this game for need of a break from things, but the Dreamcast was already done for and discontinued by the time Sonic Adventure 2 released in June 2001. Sega literally had publicly announced at the end of January that they were leaving the console business to go third-party and stopped making the machine in March. This was kind of a farewell present, but it is amazing how both Adventure games were clearly rushed in spots by both the release and the demise of the Dreamcast.

You'd like to think that having more time to develop the games would help the series out, but... we'll save that discussion for another day.

[Blivsey]

how many games until sonic battle?

spoiling to protect those who like surprises, but at the very least we have

advance, mega collection, advance 2, pinball party, and heroes

i'm excited for battle too tbh it's gonna be. interesting at the very least

[Mata Hari]

who recorded the countdown for eggman's rocket

[Leet]

Why does Eggman even have a rocket since he's been teleporting to and from the ARK? Maybe he used one to get up there the first time but why set another one up all ready again. It really seems like "we pre-rendered this whole rocket scene and we have to use it".

[thatguyif]

Fallback in case the teleporter fails?

[Leet]

Technically possible but its place in the narrative is still pointless. "Let's go to eggman's base to find out how he's getting in the ARK" should, I assume, lead to "we found out how he gets to the ARK and went there", not "oh look there happened to be something unrelated right here".

[TiKi]

Why does Eggman even have a rocket since he's been teleporting to and from the ARK? Maybe he used one to get up there the first time but why set another one up all ready again. It really seems like "we pre-rendered this whole rocket scene and we have to use it".

Funnily enough this line of thinking is EXACTLY behind some of the weird plot points in Ultima IX: Ascension.