Harkofthewaa

I understand the purpose of them, but they rarely give off the desired effect. The 3DS versions of the Sonic 1 and 2 have filters that would be great if they didn't add that unnecessary, totally inaccurate fish eye lens effect. I typically just like the raw pixels. That's not necessarily how games would have looked back in the day, but it's fine. A lot of games that try for a retro aesthetic and include filters don't actually use the filters to any effect to make pseudo transparency or to give the illusion of additional colours. 

I prefer raw pixels in all the cases except one: Gameboy and other consoles with similar LCD displays.

I think that this shader is avaliable in Retroarch but I never bothered to try out because Retroarch is heavy and complex, I prefer the simpler emulators specialized on one console.

EDIT: I mean, I like that shader and would prefer to play GB games with it but I've never tried it out yet.

i've never been interested in them. i get that pixel art looks different on an old crt compared to a clear modern display and that a lot of old pixel art was designed around that, but filters never make games look the way i remember them feeling, and the few cases i've seen where it's used to good effect aren't enough to make up for being blurrier and muddier in general.

Raw pixels on the grounds that you get to see the sprites and backgrounds how the artists had designed them from their monitors (or referenced from graph paper, really old school). A lot of filters either ruin the artwork as an attempt to upscale or just blur the image too much. The only filters that would work would be any Mega Drive game that was designed for composite aka many American developed games.

Then again I haven't tried those fangled dangled CRT filters that have popped up in the past couple of years. Some of them are pretty complex.

Upscaling or smoothing filters almost never look good on pixel art.

I typically turn them off except for Sonic Mania, in which I always have it set to CRT-sharp which is like a perfect in-between imo.

I've never seen a filter that successfully makes an old/retro game actually look the way games did on CRTs.

I don't personalty care for scanlines or most shaders that blur the image, but I do care about matching the colors of a CRT and very few shaders actually do that. SNES games and early 3D games in particular depended on the colors of a CRT for atmosphere.

Are there any major differences compared to the final build?

   In the Tiny fight, not really. There's no health bar and missing sounds but otherwise the fight is complete. Now the other levels in the build have some minor differences (Hang Eight with the most), the title screen is basic, and a lot of functions are disabled as this build was a showcase build(namely saving and the warp room platform). The funny thing is it's only about 40 MB, guess ND didn't want much to get out if the build leaked (later builds for Crash PS1 games would employ dongle protection via special memory card data).

   A lot of the music is missing instruments, except for Rock It which has a different song entirely (you can hear traces of what that song would become though). The build also has a lot of Crash 1 leftovers, such as the HUD, the title cards (seeing the ND house with Crash 2 music is just weird) and pause screen (which amusingly was updated to say "Press Start to go to Warp" rather than Map). Crash as a whole isn't completely fine tuned yet, while Analog functionality is present you only have eight way movement (can still slow walk though so they've done some work on that front), and high jumps have landing lag, which is something I'm glad they didn't keep.

I guess this is YouTube's latest random video of the week to recommend to everyone lol.

(still love the troll laugh, perfect Roshi impression)

*lights powder keg* "Actually it all started with Unleashed!" 😬

*RUNS under hail of arrows*

To be fair, SEGA Executives are more likely to see the Metacritic score than fleeting status updates on forums like this one (and frankly, I can't blame anyone for not wanting to lurk Sonic fan forums for a long enough period of time to see these sentiments).

Pretty sure the Metacritic score matters more here. 

The fact of the matter is, Sonic fans both hardcore and casual will no doubt buy it. It's easy money for Sega.

@Cuz To a degree maybe, but Colors exacerbated the worst aspects and removed the good bits, on top of adding in it's own problems.

Hopefully they won't make that same mistake that Square Enix did.

Correction: This is a tie-in for the upcoming new game Sonic Epic, the Epic stands for Epic games exclusive

I never got Super Sonic in Sonic 2 because the Special Stages demanded too much trial-and-error memorization to be worth my time. It comes off as "If you're good enough to get all 7 emeralds, you're already good enough to beat the game anyway, so it's just bragging rights."

i can get most of that but i feel like if the "solution" to labyrinth sucking is that there's shortcuts to skip most of it, that's still just labyrinth sucking.

The logic of "if you're good enough to get the thing you don't need it" doesn't really apply to gameplay shifts...being good enough at S2's special stages doesn't make you good at S2.

I would find myself to agree. Even zones that may be unfavourable to bear through, one can carve a path to finishing them as quick and efficiently as possible, including slow levels like Labyrinth Zone. But if one can't cut through the level no matter how much they memorise it, as the games otherwise expect and encourage in repeat playthroughs, then it's just a slog every time.

and yeah, sonic 2's special stages are super wonky, especially with goddamn TAILS as a a partner

@StaticMania I feel that in the amount of time it would take me to complete the Special Stages, I would have already beaten the game several times over.

In that case, yes being good at the game means you wouldn't need it

I agree as well... I also dislike that in some areas, checkpoins are hidden and treated as secret collectables... this goes against the very concept of what a checkpoint is supposed to be.

Not only Sonic 2 is my least favorite classic game, but it's also gradually sliding down in my personal chart to become one of my least favorite Sonic games in general, because even if it has the classic physics®, when a game is not fun to play, it's still not a good game in my book.

A couple of months ago (I think) I made a status update where I said that I played both Sonic 2 and Sonic 4 ep1 and I had more fun with Sonic 4.

Though I adore Aquatic Ruins, that's a great zone and my favorite water level overall.

Considering how checkpoints are used in S2...it makes sense some are hidden.

Though, can't say it's worth complaining about since those are often very close to other check points or near the beginning/end of the level anyway.

I like enjoying levels to their fullest, never sticking to any one preferred route and getting a slightly different experience every time. And if significantly different routes aren't available, then relatively similar routes where there's still more to do than just optimise you're performance. That's why I unapologetically love the layouts of several of Sonic's levels in '06 (Kingdom Valley, Tropical Jungle, Dusty Desert, Flame Core...) and why SA2's Sonic/Shadow levels get tiresome for me. Metal Harbour for example is a really nice layout, but there's only one very narrow path to take and has absolutely no fat. You get the same experience every time. It's a good experience, but one that feels shallow to me.

Levels like Labyrinth and Wacky Workbench are laden with crap that I don't like having to deal with. And if you somehow avoid all that crap... You're probably avoiding playing upwards of 90% of the level. That's not fun. It's hard to call that "playing the game" when you're making every effort not to play some of it. 

@Iko Checkpoints are never treated as secret collectibles. In some areas of S2, there are checkpoints stashed away behind secret walls or on top of loops, but that is solely for the purposes of entering the Special Stages. There are always checkpoints along the main path as well. The method of entering Special Stages in S2 is a problem for sure, but I really don't think that checkpoint locations are the issue. The ones that are out of the way aren't practical of worth bothering with seeking out unless you're going for the Emeralds. And in that case... Yeah, why shouldn't they be hidden? S3K, Mania and Rush handle Special Stage entry methods much better.

There are now multiple classic games where every path you can take is fun so we dont have to settle for labrynth zone anymore

@Blue Blood and @StaticMania From my last playthrough I remember going through some zones without finding any checkpoint for a very long time... I can't remember details, but I'm pretty sure that at some point I needed a checkpoint but I couldn't find it, and it happend more than once throught the game. Anyway I think that hiding checkpoints makes very little sense even if they are extra ones, it's kinda stupid... if you don't want people to access special stages easily, just hide the rings or make the level harder so you will more likely lose them... or use a completely different method for accessing special stages, such as the big rings of Sonic 3.

There are 7 checkpoints (if not more) just in Emerald Hill, you can get Super Sonic there and then cheese the whole game, while even just Chemical Plant (the zone right after) has very few of them.

Though, on the subject of alternate routes, I think that Aquatic Ruins is a good example of how to handle them: there are very few actual routes, most of it is just one wide route that can be traversed in different ways depending on the skills of the player (if you are skilled enough you can stay at the top and skip most the water, but it's actually challenging to do so, and not really a "shortcut"). If you make a set amount of completely separated alternate routes then you have the problem of the boost games where occasionally there are different routes but they never cross each other once you take one.

Late reply: but some stages only have 2-3 checkpoints and it's less that they're hidden and more them being on certain paths..

Am I looking at another dimension?

Don't look too hard l, or you might find that your calling yourself Willy Wombat.

That guy who was locked in the cage next to me back in Cortex's castle? He looked pretty crazy.

and nowhere as handsome

People misusing the word "ironic" triggers me.

Ironic

That's unintentionally the correct use of it. That's irony.

Isonic

Real talk though this is annoying as balls for me cause I was trying to cram download No Mans Sky and Civ VI updates before the month ended. My internet plan is one of the ones that is technically unlimited but only gives you so much high speed data per month and I prefer to use that for more productive things.

You've still got all of the 26th, 27th and 28th. Really annoying when connections and services go offline, but fingers crossed you should be fine. 

I know, but you never know if something else will come up. I've got about 7.5 GB to download and three overnights which average 2.5 GB. Again, mathematically I have enough spare time until something stupid asks for three gigs like Dragon Ball Xenovers 2 or something. You'd think that game would have died but you'd be surprised.

Yikes. That's slow. Didn't real realise that's what you were up against.

It may be slow (600kbs to be exact) but it's at least steady. Again though, that's the throttled speed, it works just fine when fast.

What did Microsoft do this time? :U