LOS ANGELES — Sega is working on a new 2D platform Sonic game in the spirit of the original series. They had a demo of it available at E3 2010, allowing people to play one of three early levels in the game. The game takes place after the Sonic and Knuckles game.
Sega promises that this is the beginning of a new series of games. The game starts with Sonic going off exploring, and Egg-Man comes after him wanting to just kill him now and get him out of the way, so Sonic won’t stop his next plan.
The game levels are built to feel like the original with a slight difference. The bosses will play like the original but with upgrades. The game then has a twist ending that will lead into Episode 2, and continuation of the new series. They are taking great pains with this title, since the last game in the series was in 1994, there is a lot of time in here, and gamers have a lot of expectations from a new sonic game.
This is evident from the fact that they have delayed the game to make it correctly. They were originally scheduled to release at the end of this summer, but are now targeting the end of the year. When I played with the game it looks like the original sonic games, just having a higher resolution. Sonic has a nice upgraded look, without changing too much to character. I was disappointed with Sonic’s acceleration in the demo. When you move Sonic he walks too long before he will start to run.
They said that was one of the issues that they have decided to rework after showing the demo off. I also had an issue that when you press down to go into a roll it would usually not start spinning rolling fast, but goes back to slowly moving. This bothered me as being very unlike the previous sonic games that were always about speed. The people at the booth said that was one of the reasons they have delayed the release of the game, to give them more time to make it more like sonic.
Sega has included the Chaos emeralds in the new Levels. Like the original games, it requires 50 rings to activate get them, though the game allows the player to replay, and jump to a level that they want. This is nice since if you miss a chaos emerald you don’t have to start the game from the beginning like the previous ones.
They included the original power-ups from the original series, plus some additions from the later Sonic Adventure games. One such addition is the ability to jump attack from one enemy to another. The invincibility and fast shoes are back though.
They made some differences between the PlayStation 3, iPhone, Xbox 360, and Wii Versions for the special stages. The PS3 and the Wii can control using the Tilt controllers. The iPhone can control any level with either tilt, or by controls on the screen for directional pad, and action button for jumping. They arranged the level, and the View point on the iPhone so that the controls on the bottom wouldn’t obstruct viewing the level.
Definitely excited to see this one come out.
Slow acceleration and slow rolling when you push down while moving were both features of the original 2D sonics (You have to be at a complete stop to use the super spin dash). The issue here isn’t the faithfulness of the recreation, it’s that the 2D sonics were mediocre platformers with annoying mechanics centered around forcing you to memorize a level if you wanted to get through it fast (Slow acceleration that punishes you for hitting a wall or a trap, claustrophobic camera that prevents you from actually seeing walls or traps beforehand, huge knockback time from hitting most traps, etc.).
I just tried the originals this morning to double check. Yes there is an acceleration time in the original, but I think the acceleration time in the build they showed off at E3 is slower, and that was my complaint with it. Also What I pointed out as a bug to them, was that if your running and you press the down arrow you should just go into a spin(keeping your current speed), that wasn’t often working in their build.
If you didn’t like the original Sonic games, the direction they are going with this one is not likely to appeal to you.
Thanks for the comment though.