Has Sega finally got it right with Sonic 4?
Catching up on all things nerdy, there have been some leaked videos of Sonic 4 on YouTube:
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Okay, I just checked and they’ve disappeared off YouTube 😛 So, thanks to the magic of Kotaku, they’ve hosted it themselves and it’s looking really good. I also agree with others that have stated his walking animation looks a bit goofy, but otherwise it looks fantastic. I’m really looking forward to this release 😀 I believe the Lost Labyrinth levels are the best demonstration of how “right” Dimps have it, as it’s fusing elements from the Labyrinth Zone in Sonic 1, Hydrocity Zone in Sonic 3 and Tidal Tempest Zone in Sonic CD with all sorts of awesome. Thumbs up.
You know, it reminds me of a great column (well, comment within a review, as I just found out thanks to Google :P) over at Dave’s Sega Saturn page in a Sonic R review that suggested that if Sega weren’t comfortable doing a 3D Sonic on the Saturn, they should have pushed the 2D envelope and made an amazing 2D Sonic game. I just think it’s amusing that they’ve gone back to 2D for Sonic when there has been a push since 1999 for 3D Sonic games, and while I’ll admit that I really enjoyed Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast (and the sequel as well, though there was some douchebaggery with aspects of it), the rest of the games since have been really disappointing.
I mean, just imagine a super-awesome 2D Sonic game on the Saturn – great audio handled by the machine’s magic audio chip (shame about the lack of hardware compression though :P) that continued in the electro-synth style of the original Mega Drive games, great sense of speed and massive playing fields, copious animation and colour, lashings of alpha blending (remember that the Saturn had no troubles doing transparencies in 2D [see Guardian Heroes, Silhouette Mirage and Keio Yugekitai 2] – it was applying them to 3D objects where the problems came in), the mind boggles.
Anywho, I’d better finish up this ranting as there’s one more entry to add before I head off to play some classic Mega Drive games to celebrate Easter (remember yesterday’s rant?), but before I go I’m going to add a plug for sega-saturn.com (i.e. Dave’s Sega Saturn page), because that was one of the greatest Saturn resources online when I first got the internet circa ’96/’97, and was the place I used when I gingerly dipped my toes into the wider waters of imported games 😀 It makes me feel very nostalgic checking it out again. That, however, is a topic for another post in its entirety!
