Sonic Colors: Ultimate - Announcement Trailer

[Jango]

I'll be damned, they did it. They actually did, they fucked up the music in a Sonic game. Not any one tho', but easily the best soundtrack in the whole franchise. And they ruined it. Blind Squirrel, Deaf Squirrel...

[Sonikko]

8 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

They're marketing is so bad that we're still, at this point, not supposed to know the name of the next game had it not leaked.

I don't think that's a bad move on its own, it's the same thing Nintendo is doing with BOTW2 and, it's usually because it makes the game more mysterious and drives up speculation, makes people want to discuss and make theories.

The issue when SEGA does it is that Sonic games are very inconsistent in quality and design, you never know what you're gonna get next, and also, although it is ok for me to wait 4-5-6 years even for a new Zelda or Mario, because I know that the end product will be state of the art, doing the same with Sonic just pisses me off because doing so for the past decade hasn't exactly made sense.

So, I don't think their marketing is inherently bad considering the industry as a whole, I think it just shows too much confidence in products that ultimately do not deserve it.

BOTW2 had a cinematic trailer reveal in 2019 and a less than 2 minutes gameplay trailer this year, and people are satisfied with it, hell, I'm satisfied with it.

I don't even want to see anything else because I just want to jump in and be blown away, because it is gonna be great, and even if it doesn't completely align with my taste, which I doubt will be the case, I know they will have done everything they could to make it as perfect as can be.

Sonic has never been like that, not after Yasuhara left.

[pppp]

So in short order:

They fucked up the music, they fucked up the visuals and there's even sound effects where they're not supposed to be.

What exactly is it about Sonic that makes it so impossible for them to release a game that has no major screwups anywhere?

[Sega DogTagz]

12 minutes ago, pppp said:

 

What exactly is it about Sonic that makes it so impossible for them to release a game that has no major screwups anywhere?

The funny thing is, this is even seen with an outside developer. Blind Squirrel has recent ports/remaster under their belts and we are still doing spit takes about some of the decisions being made with Sonic. 

Whats the fix for that? We can't trust sonic team, we can't trust another team outside of Sega.... Where am I supposed to go when the time comes for Unleashed to get some love? 

[Soniman]

6 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

The funny thing is, this is even seen with an outside developer. Blind Squirrel has recent ports/remaster under their belts and we are still doing spit takes about some of the decisions being made with Sonic. 

Whats the fix for that? We can't trust sonic team, we can't trust another team outside of Sega.... Where am I supposed to go when the time comes for Unleashed to get some love? 

Like with Taxman and the classics, trust the fans and have them do it. I'm not sure who'd the 3D remaster expert would be for them to seek out but I've seen man many individuals in this Fandom instantly find the problems and how to fix them already 

[Kazhnuz]

Most of the fans doesn't really have the knowledge do pull such a task on a custom engine like Sonic Colors. It's even an order of magnitude or two more complicated than the Sonic 1 case.

( It doesn't mean that their skills have no values, but that this port is quite different than remaking a project in Unity, or modding an engine, there is a lot of knowledge to have in 3D rendering : I'm pretty sure that they had to rewrite a big part of the rendering engine for that, and other difficult and less "sexy" task like that. )

So no, I don't think that "trusting the fan" would be the solution, the fans that could work on such a project certainly already work on the gaming industries.

[azoo]

After being reminded that the Classic Controller had the same layout as Ultimate does, I see why it’s this way. It’s still pretty bad though, and feels like proof that Colors was designed with the GC controller in mind and the CC as an afterthought.

Why? Well, think about button positions. In Unleashed, Generations and Forces, boost is on the left face button (X/Square) and slide is on the right (B/Circle). For the GameCube controller, they tried to reason to this, as A is the center/bottom (so it’s jump), B is the furthest left (so it’s boost) and X the furthest right (so it’s slide).

But when that control scheme is kept literally into the Classic Controller without any further mind, the buttons skew into a weird way. Now slide is the top face button, boost is the bottom, and jump is the right..

This is a REALLY awkward control scheme that not only leaves the left face button (the most common button used as a primary action in video games..) as unused, but goes against the muscle memory of basically every other (far more accessible) boost game. It’s gonna be a problem, is what I’m saying, unless they bother to allow remapping controls. 

...This is all said with an asterisk though, because that’s me assuming it’s using the Nintendo control scheme. It could be like my first guess and be on Xbox. Which means they took the Classic Controller’s carelessly literal binding and did their own carelessly literal binding, making slide now on the left and boost on the right.. which is better, but still awful.

Yeesh.

 

[Iko]

I don't really like how this port turned out, sorry.

I considered the original Sonic Colors a 7/10 game at best already (my favorite 3D boost game but still I don't like the 3D boost games much overall), and not only this new version does nothing to improve over the original game, it even downgrades it in almost every possible way.

Spike Wisp is still glitchy to control, drifting is still crap (even in the original, they didn't even manage to replicate something like Mario Kart's drifting, it's not that hard come on), and the annoying double jump doesn't seem to be improved. Those were my biggest issues with the game, and they're still there, so I have no reason to buy the remake.

Especially when Nintendo announced Metroid Dread (another 2.5D game, because let's be real, Colors is 2.5D for the most); compare the two games and get an idea of how bad Colors Ultimate is.

[VO.SUPER]

To add something positive. I generally do think Sweet Mountain has visually translated well to Ultimate, and I like how in the new footage it looks like the seams were fixed. Without hyper analyzing, the level itself is a solid recreation of the original with some flourishes.

And I guess the new music has grown on me.

[Graystripe2000]

Anybody want an answer to the lighting? Well, I think it’s safe to say I’ve pieced it together: The original uses Hedgehog Engine, this doesn’t. 

This explains why the lighting is the way it is. The two engines have differing lighting capabilities. See this vid for an example between Unreal and Unity:

 

It also explains why the game is at 30 FPS on Switch. 

[Kazhnuz]

IIRC, the original don't use the Hedgehog Engine, at least not the rendering part of it. In presentations, people from ST said that the Wii wasn't powerfull enough to run it. While it may reuse code from the HE, it'll certainly be more entity and stuff like that than rendering.

( I think that it would have been great if Sonic Colors Ultimate would have used the HE2, but it would have meant having to do it inhouse, as I'm not sure that many studio would know how to use it, and thus would have impacted Sonic 2022's dev )

[FloweringFox]

I'm honestly glad I haven't pre-ordered the game since I'd heard it was in an unplayable state in 2020. If they could mess a Wii port up that bad, I figured it'd be best to wait.

It's such a shame, too, because I was looking forward to playing it on the Switch. If they can't get even the music and controls right, there's a serious issue.

I can't even say Colors is a favorite of mine, either, and this is disappointing. If there isn't some options to turn off their 'improvements', I'm sticking to the Wii version.

Okay, the lighting makes more sense now, but I still think the other changes are unnecessary and are kind of a downgrade.

[VO.SUPER]

I have no doubt that this game is going to keep getting revised up until the last minute. It feels like every bit of new footage, or screenshot shows a drastically different place in development. So god knows what the final will look like.

At the least I expect them to fix the sound mixing.

Also I think we have our first look at the cutscenes:

Spoiler

 

Yep, those are upscaled Wii cutscenes alright. (Distracting how the subtitles are sharper than them.)

[VO.SUPER]

What do you know, it is Tomoya Ohtani doing these remixes. SEGA just posted what I imagine will be one of the many remix uploads to their channel.

This is a really good remix, I gotta say. I like how it goes just a little harder on the Japanese flavor what with the emphasis on string.

[pppp]

3 minutes ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

What do you know, it is Tomoya Ohtani doing these remixes. SEGA just posted what I imagine will be one of the many remix uploads to their channel.

 

Huh. this actually sounds faithful to the original. What the hell is up with Sweet Mountain then?

[VO.SUPER]

3 minutes ago, pppp said:

Huh. this actually sounds faithful to the original. What the hell is up with Sweet Mountain then?

I think it's just the bad sound mixing. The whole of the clips we hear have these weird spikes in places with the instruments like those horns. That's what I'm going with at least for now. I guess we'll hear more in the future from the isolated tracks from the main channel.

[Blue Blood]

The original Aquarium Park Act 1 is one of my favourite Sonic tracks of all time, and thankfully this remix is really up to standard. I like this a lot. I can't say I prefer to the original, but I have no problems with it either. Replacing some of the lead synths with traditional instruments (I wanna say a shamisen but honestly I've no idea) has paid off. The second chorus doesn't hit as hard as the original's second chorus however, and that's kind of sad cause it was my favourite part. It still sounds great however. What a relief that is. 

But still... remixing the soundtrack was not essential at all. It's a risky move and as far as Sweet Mountain is concerned it's backfired hard. Tropical Resort doesn't sound too hot either. I hope the original soundtrack is still available on a toggle.

[Jango]

It doesn't look terrible like I assumed it would (the cutscene) lol

The remix is great. I wonder if they're remixing Acts 1, 2 and 3, but keeping 4, 5 and 6 like the original. That would be the ideal scenario (unless you really have a favorite level tied to a bad remix and that completely ruins your experience now lol).

[Soniman]

5 minutes ago, pppp said:

Huh. this actually sounds faithful to the original. What the hell is up with Sweet Mountain then?

Tomoya made it very clear on Twitter those ass Sweet Mountain tracks were not his so I'm guessing he did some of the tracks and not all of them.

Still even though this is a pretty nice version of the song I still prefer the original. It's already perfect, what can you do to improve it really?

Honestly I think they should've went like Generations Crisis City and Rooftop Run Classic and just do something completely different that was still good and kept the spirit of the original if they were that intent on remixing 

 

[Sonikko]

4 minutes ago, pppp said:

Huh. this actually sounds faithful to the original. What the hell is up with Sweet Mountain then?

That one wasn't done by Ohtani, he said so on Twitter

[Wraith]

10 minutes ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

What do you know, it is Tomoya Ohtani doing these remixes. SEGA just posted what I imagine will be one of the many remix uploads to their channel.

This is a really good remix, I gotta say. I like how it goes just a little harder on the Japanese flavor what with the emphasis on string.

This is awesome.

[VO.SUPER]

2 minutes ago, Soniman said:

Tomoyo made it very clear on Twitter those ass Sweet Mountain tracks were not his so I'm guessing he did some of the tracks and not all of them.

Still even though this is a pretty alright version of the song I still prefer the original. It's already perfect, what can you do to improve it really?

Honestly I think they should've went like Generations Crisis City and Rooftop Run Classic and just do something completely different if they were that intent on remixing 

 

What the hell is the point of only bringing him back for a few tracks if you're gonna remix the whole game? Couldn't afford him or something?

[Blue Blood]

1 minute ago, Soniman said:

Honestly I think they should've went like Generations Crisis City and Rooftop Run Classic and just do something completely different that was still good and kept the spirit of the original if they were that intent on remixing 

I dunno. That doesn't sound like a better option to me. It's choosing between two that are very unfavourable, when a perfectly good option is already right there on the table and going unused. And if it really came down to it, I think that remastered/remixes that try close the original is best for this game that is still fundamentally just a Colours remaster and not a remake.

[Sonikko]

Something a friend of mine made me notice is that Sonic's animation on the world map is screwed up.

Seems to be playing at half speed, if you compare it to the original game lol.

I noticed the Jumpball is slower as well, I told him and he made me notice the world map.

The DX parallel is complete:

 

• Animation speed fucked up by 60fps - check
• Lighting broken - check
• Issues with transparency - check
• Slightly higher poly assets with questionable design choices (the stuff in Tropical Resort especially, the inscriptions look awful) - check

[Blue Blood]

1 minute ago, Sonikko said:

• Animation speed fucked up by 60fps - check
• Lighting broken - check
• Issues with transparency - check
• Slightly higher poly assets with questionable design choices (the stuff in Tropical Resort especially, the inscriptions look awful) - check

• Metal Sonic appearing out of fucking nowhere - check
• Characters from future games added retroactively - check