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The levels also evolve over the course of the acts, arranging the songs and changing some aspects like the time of day. One of the few things it does keep is the ability to turn into Super Sonic when getting all of the Chaos Emeralds. The level layouts are fairly poor too, replacing much of the exploration and platforming with springs, boosters, or simple enemy chains to dash through (though some of these issues can be sourced to Dimp’s other Sonic games too). It uses the old three-level act structure (plus a boss fight, which is represented as a separate area here) but the level designs are longer than they were in the first two games, and so they tend to drag on. The only character is Sonic, without any Tails or Knuckles. Unfortunately, that also meant going back to the ideas of the very first game and ditching everything from the subsequent Genesis titles. The game was promised as going back to its roots, ditching all of the “friends” and gimmicks from later games. It made sense in 3D, where accurately jumping on enemies is difficult, but it’s a weird crutch in 2D. For some reason, it inherits the “homing dash” functionality found in the 3D games (and also carried forward to Sonic Rush), where if you hit the jump button in mid-air you’ll either automatically dash towards springs or enemies if you’re close enough, or just sorta tumble forward if you’re not. Nothing about the way Sonic controls feels right, to his slow acceleration to the lack in momentum in jumps. At least there are a number of fan remixes that “fix” these songs, so at least the core of them can shine through.īeyond how bad it looks and sounds, it also plays very, very poorly.
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This wasn’t done by any amateur either, as it was provided by Jun Senuoe, longtime contributor to the Sonic 3D games, and even did the music for Sonic 3D Blast for the Genesis. The melodies are decent, but it’s very hard to appreciate them beneath the awful sound quality. But instead it seems like someone had a vague memory of what the Genesis sounded like, didn’t much care for it, and then created the whole soundtrack based on that. Many of the sound effects are faithful, and the music attempts to emulate the classic games. The backgrounds are 2D but the sprites are 3D, and they too look rather poor, with Sonic seemingly colored to look cel-shaded, but it looks like the artists only got halfway done with it. It’s two dimensional, yes, but it’s all bright and gaudy computer generated backgrounds that look glaringly bad. When the actual game starts, it’s hard to get over how ugly it looks. Yet the choppy animation here is just a prelude to the sort of issues that plague this title. The game opens up with the classic “Sega!” voiced jingle and Sonic popping up behind his famous logo while wagging his finger. It had what seemed what the right people in place, and yet Sonic the Hedgehog 4 turned out badly. This team was tasked with the development of Sonic 4, with Takashi Iizuka, a designer on Sonic 3 who had since become a prominent member of Sonic Team, acting as producer. These were developed by a company called Dimps, which was formed by former SNK vets and had some experience with Sonic, having worked on Sonic Pocket Adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket Color for their former employer.
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Of course, 2D Sonic never really left – through the 2000s, the series continued on the Game Boy Advance and DS, under the Sonic Advance and Sonic Rush labels. The 2010 title Sonic the Hedgehog 4 (which began under the name “Project Needlemouse”, an ode to Sonic’s original name), promised to be a return to the classic days of the Genesis, focusing entirely on 2D gameplay and ditching most everything of the 3D games.
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It hit its absolute nadir with the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog title for the PS3 and Xbox 360, which was widely lambasted for being an entirely broken mess. While Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends continued to remain popular in the post-Genesis era, the series was never quite the same when it went into the third dimension, and each subsequent game after the Dreamcast Sonic Adventure titles suffered noticeably downgrades in quality.