All the S@nics - the end

[Blivsey]

Omochao getting smashed by the trap it wanted to warn you about is wonderful

check at 2:33 for even more omochao fun tho

[Dark Hunter]

Omochao getting smashed by the trap it wanted to warn you about is wonderful

That had to be one of the most beautiful and amazing things I have ever seen happen in this game.


Shame the rest of the level couldn't be that fun. I do remember this one being a pain. Especially those artificial chaos that hide inside themselves.

[kitikami]

Oh wow, i didnt even notice Omochao repeatedly getting sucked into the vacuum of space in an endless loop. That's two semi-immortal characters from raocow LPs within the past year who have met that exact horrific fate (Royal from Iconoclasts).

Tails at the Chao garden:

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

I've missed a few videos, so I'll just quickly comment on them now; I love King Boom Boo's voice, I find it neat how you fight the Egg Golem with two different types of characters, and I really like the rocket cutscene.

Anyway, here's Eternal Engine, and it's been so long since I first played this that I forgot how difficult it can be. These days I think I've figured out the best way to approach this stage. The dynamite may give the impression that you should be careful with how you shoot, but if you try to take your time you'll just give the enemies more time to shoot at you, and as raocow figured out by the end, just because an enemy goes off screen it doesn't mean they cease to exist, so trying to just ignore them is practically begging to be shot from behind. With that said I feel like it's best to just go in guns blazing as usual and then traverse the holes left by whatever dynamite you shot. I want to say that no matter how much dynamite you blow up it should always be possible to make it through, although it's been a long time since I've played this so I can't say that with 100% certainty.

Anyway, like all of Tails's levels I like this level, but one thing that sets it apart from the rest is that this level ends with a boss like encounter, which I find pretty neat.

[xnamkcor]

I'm port sure shuttles never reach space. They just go into sub-orbit. The boosters and tanks probably fall to Earth.

Or not. I'm not a rocket surgeon.

[Piesonscreations]

OMOCHAO HAS PASSED

[Crow]

you ready to go to space?

[CrappyBlueLuigi]

got his own space man, time to get him

don't let it hit the moon

[Heavy Sigh]

Fun Level Facts!

Finding Big in Meteor Herd is actually pretty difficult! Get to the central tower, and put yourself between docks 0-2 and 0-3. You'll see a 3 pipes sticking into the floor and disappearing into the distance. Go up to the glass floor in front of them, and look down at the left part of the center pipe. If you're as close to it as you can possibly be, you'll see Big clinging for dear life to the pipe. Or not, as he's basically at the maximum draw distance and you might not see him even if you do everything right.

Fun Secret Fact!

Meteor Herd actually has unused Sonic exclusive level objects inside it like an invisible grind rail, hinting that Sonic might have somehow also played through Knuckles stage, or at least a part of it.

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

I haven't really thought about it much until now, but I'm beginning to realize that I really like these treasure hunting stages; I feel like I've had good things to say about almost all of them, and this one is no exception. It's a really tall stage, but if you know where things are you can get up to the top relatively quickly, and you'll probably get in range of a shard on your way up. And of course once you're at the top going down isn't a problem, and I find it fun to use the Drill Claw to just go plummeting all the way down.

[Veruchai]

Yeah, bit late at this point but I really don't get the problem peeps have with the radar and treasure stages in general.
I keep reading the radar should be 'better', or that the levels are too big, but rao keeps finding stuff without the computers helping.
Like 50% of the information available is being completely ignored because its not necessary, but the used info is somehow not good enough?

In big stages like pumpkin hill and meteor herd you just float around in a big circle until you get a bleep, and then smaller circles until its red. Since the monitors give increasingly precise info you can use them to find the general location from visual clues to speed up the search if desired. Admittedly because you only track 1 piece at a time the search time is somewhat arbitrarily lengthened. But the levels are already really short, making it even shorter would make them feel trivial I fear.

I really like these stages personally and I'm not trying to say it's wrong to dislike them.
It's just that I don't understand the arguments around the radar being weak specifically.

[Paragraph]

The radar is fine, but it has a few weaknesses that can lead people to call it "useless" or "bad". First of all, it only shows you the "current" objective, so you can end up passing by a hiding spot multiple times without it beeping because it insists on pointing you only towards the same thing the monitors tell you about. SA1 didn't have this, so the SA2 stages seem worse in direct comparison.

Secondly, the radar doesn't tell you if it's out in the open, inside a wall, in an enemy, and so on. So it can still be kind of annoying to pinpoint the actual spot you have to be in to find the object, something we saw in this very video. That's not really the radar's fault, but it's not helping either, hence "useless". It's emphasized by the heavy verticality in some levels, so you can be pretty close but it's below or above you OR in a wall and you have to triangulate and for some people, again, that can be quite annoying.

Finally, lots of people just don't care for the treasure hunting style in general. It might be more well-received if going from place to place was smoother or more interesting, but the general movement of Knuckles within the constraints of the SA engine is just...lacking sometimes, floating around in big 3D spaces with this camera and sometimes with gravity gimmicks added on can feel extremely bad. So you got people playing levels they don't care for to begin with AND that feel terrible to simply navigate, but you have to navigate them back and forth...

I don't hate them personally, but they do have the deck stacked heavily against them.

[Veruchai]

Yeah, I felt all those other faults were not a problem with the radar and was like: "just complain about those then".
But I can now totally see someone thinking if the radar was better it would help avoiding those other 'boring/annoying' parts faster/better.
Ty para.

[BobisOnlyBob]

And that's without mentioning the ranking system, which is what the Adventure enthusiasts are generally very keen on doing well on... time hurts your ranking, and using hints hurts your ranking. And they're gonna replay these stages many, many times - this ultimately requires learning practically every possible spawn location and hitting them in rapid sequence, adjusting with the radar.

[Piesonscreations]

Cool Super Mario Last Impact level in my Sonic game.

[Crow]

And that's without mentioning the ranking system, which is what the Adventure enthusiasts are generally very keen on doing well on... time hurts your ranking, and using hints hurts your ranking. And they're gonna replay these stages many, many times - this ultimately requires learning practically every possible spawn location and hitting them in rapid sequence, adjusting with the radar.

getting an a-rank is not actually that hard in most treasure hunting levels, as long as you know the general strategy for how to find emerald pieces you don't have to memorize anything

mad space remains the exception just because it's a lot harder to travel between different segments of the level there than in any other level

[Dark Hunter]

Yeah, when I was A-Rank hunting, my strategy was basically to cover as much ground as possible at the start to find a ping, and then zero in on it. After a bit you gain a sense for where the devs like to hide emerald pieces. It's easier than it sounds, since most of these treasure hunting levels aren't actually as big as they first appear.

Always some measure of luck involved though. Kind of unavoidable when the spawn points are randomized.

Although, I have noticed something: the "Battle" remake of SA2 added a "fourth" stage to the radar, where a big exclamation point would appear over the character's head when you were right on top of the target. That helped tremendously when you needed to dig in a specific spot underground.

[TiKi]

Cool Super Mario Last Impact level in my Sonic game.

I recall quitting at the moon level in this hack (Which was what, course 4? 5?). I get the feeling you mean deadly yet sprawling level that's too in-love with its gimmicks and is almost impossible to find what you're TRYING TO find (let alone hidden stuff) and it's hilarious how well that matches up to some Knuckles stuff

[Piesonscreations]

I recall quitting at the moon level in this hack (Which was what, course 4? 5?). I get the feeling you mean deadly yet sprawling level that's too in-love with its gimmicks and is almost impossible to find what you're TRYING TO find (let alone hidden stuff) and it's hilarious how well that matches up to some Knuckles stuff

I meant it as in the level in Last Impact uses the music from Meteor Herd, and is based off of it.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

So something I'm realizing with raocow's playthrough is that, like, Knuckles' involvement in this entire plot is really just kind of tacked on there for the sake of having him in it. For like 80% of the story he doesn't even interact with Sonic/Tails/Amy. His plot is just "Grr I had to break the Master Emerald to keep bat girl and/or Eggman from stealing it. Oh, hi guys. Bat girl is with Eggman in space? 'Kay, guess I'll tag along with you to get the last shards."

I don't think he's even aware of all the Eclipse Cannon stuff going on.

[Blivsey]

People talking about Last Impact reminded me of a certain one-letter-off stage we'll be seeing in the distant future and Hoo boy

[Leet]

Meanwhile Amy is the actual third member of Sonic and Tails' team here but we don't get to play as her because adventure 1 is the most significant amy content they will ever make

[kitikami]

Knuckles did also have that scene where he blocked Amy from going into the sewers and then got run over by Tails which was very important to the story

[Dark Hunter]

I never did understand that scene. WHY did Amy want to go into the sewer?

[Heavy Sigh]

Fun SEGA Facts! TIME OVER

January 31st, 2001 was the fateful day when Sega officially announced that it was cutting the Dreamcast adrift and was setting sail for the open waters of third party software development. To dedicated fans it was a horrific and almost unbelievable event, but internally, things were even worse. Sega's transition from hardware to software wouldn't be enough to save it from the chopping block, as its majority shareholder was CSK Holdings, whose Chairman Isao Okawa had just gotten done running Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri out of the company in 2000, and had advocated shuttering SEGA's console business as early as 1995 and had even flirted with selling SEGA itself to Bill Gates himself in 1999 (and had only decided against it when Gates didn't offer as much as Okawa wanted). What's more, Okawa had in fact lent the company $500 million of his own money in 1999 just to keep it afloat, and the company had proven it couldn't pay it back.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for the axe to fall.

But it refused.

Isao Okawa, who unfortunately succumbed to heart failure on March 16, 2001, had one last surprise in store for SEGA. On his deathbed, he shocked practically everyone who knew him as he forgave the loan Sega owed him from 1999, and what's more, he then gifted his personal shares in both SEGA and CSK to SEGA, worth an estimated 695$ million dollars. Not a soul at SEGA could believe the windfall, as if an angel had descended from heaven to their HQ with a briefcase of bullion. But that influx of cash gave SEGA the power to pull back from the brink of insolvency and make the full transition to third-party development.

SEGA's fortunes were still far from rosy, but they would yet have a long road ahead of them, all thanks to one man, who may not have believed in the Dream, but had an unshakable faith in the men that built it.

Fun Level Facts!

To find Big in Crazy Gadget, you'll first need to pass the fifth Checkpoint. Big isn't far beyond it, hidden in the mess of colored blocks beyond, as he's standing on the left side of the yellow one. He's covered by a bit of an indent, so the best place to get a look at him is while riding on the rail past it, or to fall next to him while the gravity is sideways.