Sonic Classic Collection

[Blue Blood]

Is the framerate really THAT bad on the DSL though?

I only played on Angel Island, and yes it was.

[-Mark-]

If you ask me, that's probably because you played it on a DSi first.

When I got the game last week, I noticed the framerate initially (and if you ask me, even then it was by no means awful), but having played the collection to death this past week, it seems pretty much fine to me, if only because I've probably got used to it.

Like I said though, even when I first got the game, yes, I noticed the framerate wasn't 100%, but I'd say it's far from awful.

[SuperLink]

My copy arrived from Zavvi, and I just played the first zone of S3&K. The framerate doesn't really effect gameplay, but man, it really makes the game "feel ugly", even though it looks quite good visually really. Thankfully the sound is top notch.

So the game runs much better on a DSi? That's not fair I'll have to try it on my brother's DSi sometime...

So yeah I'm both disappointed and impressed. Far better than Sonic Genesis, but not as good as what people seemed to be making it out to be. Atleast I can finally play S3&K on a handheld.

EDIT: Considering there are accurate ports of PS1 games on the DS (RE1 comes to mind), this is a pretty damn poor effort from SEGA really. Still, it's "good".

EDIT2: Just saw my brother playing it on his DSi. Ffs the difference is almost astounding. I'll have to sneak a go on his DSi or something when I want to play it >>

Edited March 18, 2010 by Lyra

[Tornado]

I just found a lovely glitch. Play Sonic 3 and perfect the first bonus round. The "Emerald Get" music plays, fades out as the high score tallies up, then the "Continue Get" music plays, then everything freaks out and it replays the "Emerald Get" music at the wrong pitch from the beginning before cutting out halfway.

[Gamerguy21]

Well, I guess that pretty much explains why I haven't really had any huge slowdown problems with this game (DSi user). All this talk about how awfuly the game runs on non-DSis actually makes me want to pull out my old DS Phat and see how bad it really is.

[Psych]

All this talk about how awfuly the game runs on non-DSis actually makes me want to pull out my old DS Phat and see how bad it really is.

The original DS AKA DS Phat is the model I have, and I can safely tell you that the slowdown is quite bad sometimes. It's nowhere near as bad as Sonic Genesis on GBA, mind, but it's especially irritating in Sonic 2 & 3 (standalone version as well as lock on with Knuckles). If you choose to play with Sonic & Tails together on either of them the slowdown is at its worst, especially when playing through Angel Island in Sonic 3. I've had to choose playing as either of them on their own instead to get the games running as smoothly as the others (they all still chug a bit after that, but they run smoother overall without Tails tagging along with you). Apart from that, though, I'm happy I bought it: I'm even tempted to buy another copy as a present for a friend of mine who loves the original Sonic games. I was never really fond of the DSi when it came out; the lack of GBA game support was a big turnoff for me. But after hearing about all this, I probably wouldn't mind saving up the money to get one now.

[PSI Wind]

^ Why would you want Tails to follow you anyway? Its a worthless feature (Special Stages in Sonic 2).

[Tornado]

Blast Processing, man, Blast Processing.

[Patticus]

DSi, so if the model matters than that might be a bit of an issue.

No idea how, they all are the same I'd think.

The DSi has more memory it can draw upon, I think.

[Saint Nathan]

I just found a lovely glitch. Play Sonic 3 and perfect the first bonus round. The "Emerald Get" music plays, fades out as the high score tallies up, then the "Continue Get" music plays, then everything freaks out and it replays the "Emerald Get" music at the wrong pitch from the beginning before cutting out halfway.

Not just there, it's every time you get a continue anywhere. And the pitch doesn't change I don't think. But it does reloop the music, most have just been missed, it's not super noticeable.

[-Mark-]

^ Why would you want Tails to follow you anyway? Its a worthless feature (Special Stages in Sonic 2).

Because Tails is awesome and adorable, duh!

Edited March 19, 2010 by Mahzes

[Saint Nathan]

Well, in S3&K, Tails could actually help you to fly if you jumped and grabbed his arms, That was pretty handy. And Tails was a 2nd player controlled character if you wanted. Fun shit.

However, not sure if that's possible in SCC.

[Tornado]

Not just there, it's every time you get a continue anywhere. And the pitch doesn't change I don't think. But it does reloop the music, most have just been missed, it's not super noticeable.

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure that the pitch was higher, but it might have some unrelated glitch.

[SuperLink]

Interesting observation.

While most of the game runs far better on the DSi, the special stages from Sonic 3 look really awkward on it. The floor shakes and the screen shudders sometimes when you turn. This doesn't happen nearly as much when played on a DSP or DSL.

Edited March 19, 2010 by Lyra

[Saint Nathan]

Interesting observation.

While most of the game runs far better on the DSi, the special stages from Sonic 3 look really awkward on it. The floor shakes and the screen shudders sometimes when you turn. This doesn't happen nearly as much when played on a DSP or DSL.

You know, I think it's just super noticeable on the DSi. Because, comparing the special stages of Sonic 3 on PC with the ones from Classic Collection, they both shake. The same amount too, except the ones on the PC seem to shake more slowly and are less noticeable, on Classic Collection they move pretty fast. It might just be an emulation thing, I'm not sure.

Also Tornado, I went ahead and got the glitch on Emerald Hill, the pitch does not seem to change in stages at least, I'll check in the special stages.

[-Mark-]

Well, I noticed an odd glitch in the collection's save system last night-

in Sonic & Knuckles (standalone, not S3&K), the ability to save is still enabled, even during the end credits. In Sonic 1 and 2 (since the manual save is disabled in Sonic 3/ S3&K due to the existing autosave system), it disables the save feature during credits.

So! Out of curiosity, I try saving during the credits, to see where I'll end up when the game loads. Since the save system in Classic Collection usually takes you back to the start of the last Act you did (might only be Zone in Sonic & Knuckles, not sure), so I assumed it might just take me back to Doomsday.

Now, when I try and load up the game from when I saved in the credits, I get a black screen for a second or so, followed by the first two seconds of the Blue Sphere special stage music, before the game cuts back to the SEGA logo.

Weird. D:

[-Mark-]

Apologies for the double post, but just done a review of Classic Collection.

Put in spoiler tags to save a massive post, since the review is 1,200 words. D:

REVIEW:

So, SEGA have seen fit to re-release (or should that be re-re-re-re-re… you get the idea) the first four main Sonic games on the DS. Considering the popularity of the handheld, coupled with the fact that these games have been ported or compiled in some form or another on almost every console since the one they were originally released on, it actually seems almost surprising that it’s taken them this long to see some kind of DS release.

As most of you will probably already know by now, the four games contained in this collection- Sonic the hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles- are widely regarded as some of the highest points of Sonic’s gaming career; they’re the games that shot him to stardom in the first half of the 1990s, and were critically acclaimed practically across the board.

Now, considering the already-established quality of these games, the quality of any subsequent re-releases or ports then relies almost solely on two factors- how well the games themselves have been ported over, and how much you’re being charged to what is essentially repurchase games that you more likely than not already own in some way or another. So, with that in mind, how does Sonic Classic Collection hold up?

Ultimately, it comes down to the extent to which you can overlook a handful of minor imperfections- basically, as faithful representations of the original games, they’re a fair way away from being perfect. However, at the same time they’re still far from being the disaster that was the Sonic 1 GBA port (if you don’t know, don’t ask).

So, what stops the game from being perfect recreations of the originals? It’s actually a lot of small things, really- no single one of them ruins the game by any means, and even all combined they still don’t really, but they do drag down the atmosphere of a compilation that could have been so much better. Firstly (and initially, most noticeably), the games have some framerate issues- nothing serious at all, and in fairness anyone who hasn’t already played the games to death previously probably won’t notice much at all, but they’re still there. It’s never to the point where it makes the game unplayable by any means (nor dos it even come close), but it does make the game seem a little less visually fluid. However, if you stick with Classic Collection enough, after a few hours you’re likely to notice the framerate less and less. Failing that, shove it in a DSi (if you have one), which will all but eliminate any framerate issues due to the game being optimised to run better on the more powerful handheld.

Secondly, anyone who’s played the originals (or indeed, any previous rereleases of these games) will notice that a number of features have been cut from Sonic 2 and 3, namely the sound test and multiplayer options -the former of which was necessary to activate the level select and basically any other cheats in the Sonic 2, meaning such cheats are basically ruled out. There are still ways around some of the level selects and debug modes (things work as usual in Sonic 1 and Knuckles in Sonic 2, and debug is apparently still manageable in Sonic 3 & Knuckles), but regardless, it does feel like they’ve removed some aspects of the game- well, because ultimately, they have.

If you overlook this, there are still a number of gripes with the games themselves that, every so often, will give you a painful reminder that these aren’t quite the faithful recreations of the originals that you might have hoped for-or indeed, that almost every other re-release of these games has been so far. Namely, there are a number of graphical and sound oddities- most noticeably that the Power Sneaker item now simply increases the pitch of the music, rather than the speed of it. In addition to this, the Act 1 boss music in Sonic & Knuckles has been bizarrely substituted with that of Sonic 3. Thankfully in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it plays the correct tune.

There are also a number of fairly noticeable graphical errors, which unfortunately seem most prominent in Sonic & Knuckles, although they’re still present in small amounts in Sonic 2 and 3. Basically, they have some serious layering issues in some places- characters will go in front of or behind items when they should be doing the opposite, and depending on the context, it can look absolutely and disappointingly ridiculous at times. Some of them aren’t such a big deal- okay, jumping behind a hole in the wall (whilst still appearing in front of the wall) isn’t that serious, but when you’ve got Knuckles clinging onto the back of the Master Emerald in Hidden Palace, it does sort of ruin the moment quite a bit, especially given the plot importance of that particular scene. There are also some very ugly black squares appearing in the background of one of the Sonic & Knuckles bonus stages.

These negative issues aside, the games still look and sound amazing. It actually attests to how brilliant the graphics and sound in these games was for the early 90s when you look at them now, still looking and sounding great by today’s standards compared to many DS games. In fact, the visuals are probably helped by the smaller screen size (although sadly not the smaller resolution, although thankfully there are little signs of visual compression or scaling) due to the fact it makes everything look smoother and less pixellated. It also adds a basic save system (only accessible from the touch screen, which might be considered annoying for some- similarly the only means of pausing the game is also quite oddly touch-screen only) which takes you back to the start of the act you saved at, making these versions perhaps a bit more kid-friendly than their counterparts.

Ultimately, this game is a cut-down, handheld version of 1997’s Sonic Jam (right down to the Sonic World BGM being used for the menus). No doubt for many the allure of finally being able to play these games on a handheld will be strong enough to let them overlook the games several flaws, and the save system is fast and unobtrusive, as are the menus, giving this collection a brilliant sense of ‘pick-up-and-play’ that most other versions lack. You can go from having your DS off to playing the game in a matter of seconds, and the opposite is true too, in terms of saving and quitting.

Die-hard Sonic fans are understandably going to be the harshest critics of this collection, but even so, it can’t be argued that the games still play well. If you can put up with a handful of small (if admittedly somewhat irritating) issues, this is still a good collection of what is essentially Sonic’s finest hour. Considering you can get all four of these games (and unaltered, ‘complete’ versions, nonetheless) on the Virtual Console for around £24, it all comes down to price and how badly you want portability for these games. With some places selling the game for a modest £17-18, and some cheekily listing it as a full-blown £30, it’s really a case of how cheaply you can find it (or how die-hard a Sonic fan you are).

Edited March 20, 2010 by Mahzes

[SuperLink]

So earlier today I had a long car journey, and my DS started running low on batteries so I popped in Sonic instead of Pokémon, as I'm assuming the batteries would drain much slower on a game like that.

I played S3&K through from Hydrocity all the way to Mushroom Hill, got every Chaos Emerald by Marble Garden Act 2, and I was surprised by how much of the game I remembered considered how long it's been since I last played it. Super Sonic makes things far too easy so I'm going to have to play it again without any Chaos Emeralds ._.

Anyway, while playing it I really started to get used to the lag, and even though I was playing on a DSP it felt fine to play. Yeah, the framerate can get bad at times, but the gameplay is pretty much S3&K, and even playing as Super Sonic speeding through stages ridiculously quickly the game didn't suffer very much at all. So once again, I'm a little impressed by the ports. They're very shoddy, but they work, so I can play S3&K handheld. Compares to Sonic Genesis... well they're not even comparable.

Just, thinking of all the SNES ports on GBA and all the other collections of DS, SEGA did a pretty damn bad job really, but it works, so I'm complaining, but I'm still happy. Know what I mean?

PS. I'm pretty pissed off that nearly all the cheats are gone.

[Ferr]

sorry if it was commented before but, anyone noticed that the sample voices from the Sonic 3 mini boss music are different? The voice sounds different and also much cleaner than the original genesis version

[Autosaver]

There were voices? O_o

Oh, Lyra. You do know about the killing yourself cheat to get to level select. Right?

[SuperLink]

There were voices? O_o

Yeah, like the "go!" in Launch Base, or the "come on!" in the S3 mini-boss music.

Oh, Lyra. You do know about the killing yourself cheat to get to level select. Right?

Mhm, but that doesn't help the lack of cheats in Sonic 2 or regular Sonic 3

[Autosaver]

Knuckles Sonic 2 level select works.

[Tornado]

sorry if it was commented before but, anyone noticed that the sample voices from the Sonic 3 mini boss music are different? The voice sounds different and also much cleaner than the original genesis version

They are recorded raw instrument instructions rather than being run through the Genny hardware like it was on the Genny itself. This compilation doesn't emulate the music, it plays it separately. That's why they are clearer than they would be on a non-modded Genny.

Edited March 21, 2010 by Tornado

[JezMM]

Oh, now people own it, has anyone confirmed if it contains the multiplayer modes from Sonic 2 and 3? Even just time trial on 3?

EDIT: Nvm, stopped being lazy and read Mahzes review - that sucks. D8

They could have even included it anyway without wifi support. The games only use one button so they coulda had a bonus (just for fun) single DS multiplayer option in which player 1 controls using d-pad to move and L to jump, and player 2 controls using ABXY to move and R to jump.

EDIT 2: And my edit was speeded with a response! I say. Thanks anyway, lol.

Edited March 21, 2010 by JezMM

[Patticus]

Oh, now people own it, has anyone confirmed if it contains the multiplayer modes from Sonic 2 and 3? Even just time trial on 3?

No multiplayer or time trial. At all.