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Windrunner

Sly
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,601
If you've seen Splash Wave's Streets of Rage 2 and Sonic 2 videos, you know what to expect: probably the best "making of" videos on Youtube.

 
OP
OP
Windrunner

Windrunner

Sly
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,601
The entire history of Sega Technical Institute is fascinating; there's a good 2 hour documentary to be made there.
 

Zippo

Banned
Dec 8, 2017
8,256
Splash Wave/Chase Face is awesome.

Today's been insane and this just made it even better.
 

Virtua King

Member
Dec 29, 2017
3,983
What a fantastic watch. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is my favorite platformer of all-time, so anytime it gets some attention, I'm there. Yuji Naka is my favorite developer too, so that's was interesting learning about some of his programming tricks in regards to blue spheres.
 

HyGogg

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,495
Good little mini-doc. I loved Sonic 3 to pieces, but I never cared as much for S&K's zones. I actually liked the shorter length compared to 2 as well. I wonder how I would have felt if it was released as all one game. Maybe if they picked like the best eight zones from the whole thing.

S&K is basically the original DLCquel, minus the discount price.
 

glasiche

Avenger
Feb 12, 2018
474
This was an excellent watch. The Sonic 3/Sonic & Knuckles explaination was great. Amazed they were able to collect so much production footage
 

Vex

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,213
This guy (or team?) is good. I thought I knew everything about the sonic games, but boy oh boy he managed to still amaze me with some cool stuff. Damn this is good!

That planet explanation is pretty cool. I didnt know they were inspired by dragonball for that.
 

Luckett_X

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,425
Leeds, UK
Not watched a Splash Wave doc before, so clearly I have been living the wrong life. The production footage alone is treasure unbenownst to me.

Clearing up the Michael Jackson stuff once and for all in there feels like I just exorcised a 24 year old ghost.
 
Oct 27, 2017
5,356
This guy (or team?) is good. I thought I knew everything about the sonic games, but boy oh boy he managed to still amaze me with some cool stuff. Damn this is good!

That planet explanation is pretty cool. I didnt know they were inspired by dragonball for that.
I mean, Sonic as a whole has some very evident dragon ball inspiration, like the chaos emeralds/dragon balls or super sonic/ssj goku. I'm not surprised he made blue sphere after DBZ's first ending or perhaps King Kai's planet
 

OneThirtyEight

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
5,685
Been waiting for this one.
Despite being my favourite game, i don't know much about the developement of it more than that they had to split the game in two and the MJ-stuff. This will be interesting.
 

logan_cadfgs

Member
Oct 28, 2017
948
Honestly the whole Lock-On idea was executed really well. It's easily one of the slickest ways I've ever seen a developer handle a behind-schedule game.
 

mute

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Member
Oct 25, 2017
25,246
Never knew about the Sonic 2 just being included on a separate chip thing.

Really wish they took the time to sort out the music rights properly back then.
 

Dragon1893

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,452
Wow, fantastic video. I was a huge Sega fanboy in the early to mid 90's so I'm always very interested in this stuff.
 

Deleted member 13155

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,604
Honestly the whole Lock-On idea was executed really well. It's easily one of the slickest ways I've ever seen a developer handle a behind-schedule game.

I wasn't even mad. It became somewhat obvious when the sound test code made waves, The stage select showed some levels not present in 3, and their music was completely finished.

But there was a 6 month gap, and honestly Sonic 3 was kinda meaty even though 6 zones sound short and the launch base boss wasn't really epic. I played tons of time attack, and I pretty much loved every single zone in 3. I played this game far more than Sonic 2. And that music, the Ice Cap zone is legendary.

S3K was just icing on the cake, stand alone it was weaker (no time attack etc), but locked on with 3 it became my fave 2D platform game ever. And it gave me an excuse to finish Sonic 2 again, with Knuckles. Special stages with sonic 1 cart was a nice time sink too.
 

kikuchiyo

Member
Nov 9, 2017
779
Were allegations of child abuse against Jackson really a "witch hunt"? I liked the video overall, but it's an interesting turn of phrase...
 
Feb 13, 2018
3,849
Japan
I can't watch it at work. Does it mention the original isometric plans, Brad Buxer/Jetzons stuff, or how the devs looked through books of animals for hours before they decided what animal to make Knuckles?
 

Akela

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,850
I was wondering the other day what Sonic 3 would have been like if they had released it for the Sega CD, had the system been more popular. The deadline would have still been an issue but they obviously wouldn't have been restricted by the price of a 32mb cartridge if they could use the CD format, and it would have been great to hear Micheal Jackson's tunes with Redbook audio (though the allegations might have still been an issue for Sega). Plus, I feel like they only scratched the surface of the Sega CD's capabilities with Sonic CD.

At the very least, I would love a remaster of Sonic 3 & Knuckles in the vain of Sonic Mania. Rework some of the stages and graphics, remix the music maybe add hand drawn intro/outro animations and call it something new like Sonic 3 Special Edition or something.
 

Don Fluffles

Member
Oct 28, 2017
7,077
Yep. STI was always the true Sonic Team. Sega of Japan's upper management has almost always been out of touch it seems.
 

Tailzo

Fallen Guardian
Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,998
Sorry, didn't find this at first:

As my avatar may be revealing, the old Sonic games were a huge inspiration for me. And of all Sonic games, Sonic 3, that was supposed to be one huge game, was the most incredible gaming experience I had during the 16-bit era. I've read so much about how the game was split up, a lot about how Michael Jackson was involved with the music and other rumors and legends. This video however, is the best produced media I have seen about this gem of a game.



Enjoy, and discuss this awesome game, that stands the test of time. (Also, when can I get my widescreen remake of Sonic 3 & Knuckles?)
 

BlazeHedgehog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
702
Why did Sonic Mania base its sprites on Sonic 2 instead of Sonic 3?

I guess it could be viewed that Sonic 3 goes against the grain of the "established" Sonic art style. Sonic 2's sprites are an evolution of the Sonic 1/CD sprites, whereas Sonic 3's are a completely different direction.

Sonic 3's sprites also have that pseudo-CG look to them, whereas Sonic 2's sprites stay true to the way Sonic was rendered in promotional art. Sonic 3's sprites are probably viewed as an artistic dead end, given that a "nicer version" of the Sonic 3 sprite is just pre-rendering actual CG. The Sonic 2 sprite let them lean in to more cartoony animations and stronger stylization.
 
Oct 25, 2017
5,159
China
I guess it could be viewed that Sonic 3 goes against the grain of the "established" Sonic art style. Sonic 2's sprites are an evolution of the Sonic 1/CD sprites, whereas Sonic 3's are a completely different direction.

Sonic 3's sprites also have that pseudo-CG look to them, whereas Sonic 2's sprites stay true to the way Sonic was rendered in promotional art. Sonic 3's sprites are probably viewed as an artistic dead end, given that a "nicer version" of the Sonic 3 sprite is just pre-rendering actual CG. The Sonic 2 sprite let them lean in to more cartoony animations and stronger stylization.
This is probably the reason. I never liked the soft fuzzy look of the Sonic 3 sprites.
 

Gundam

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
12,801
Woah. This is my introduction to Splash Wave. What an excellent video. I just watched the Streets of Rage 2 doc as well and man, these videos are fantastic.
 

DiipuSurotu

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
53,148

Mesoian

â–˛ Legend â–˛
Member
Oct 28, 2017
26,782
Because Sonic 3 sprites were ugly and they deserve to be forgotten. I guess it was an attempt to make american sonic canon or something, never liked it and I'm glad they went with the original design for Mania

It pains me to say this but this is correct. Sonic 3 & K is nearly perfect, but it's sprite work on the main cast is so bad.

There's an S3K romhack that I was playing a while back that let you use sonic 2 sprites and man...just aesthetically, it's so much better.
 

BocoDragon

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
5,207
Why did Sonic Mania base its sprites on Sonic 2 instead of Sonic 3?
Flat design is in. Sonic 3 design is a skeumorphic imitation of a 3D object, not authentically digital.

j/k

(I always liked the Sonic 3 sprite tho... and I still have a soft spot for when subtly 3D renderizing everything was a shorthand for cutting edge).
 

BlazeHedgehog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
702
I had no idea that Sonic 2 had a chip for it in the cart for Sonic and Knuckles. Crazy stuff.

I'd have to rewatch it but I don't think that's what was said? As far as I've been aware, Sonic 2 & Knuckles works by S&K loading Sonic 2's level and music data and then patching in a few places for Knuckles to get to (Chemical Plant Act 1, for instance).

All of these games were built on top of each other, so it's not a stretch for S&K's engine to have some sort of backwards compatibility with Sonic 2's data, it just needed a way to load it.
 

PetrCobra

Member
Oct 27, 2017
954
Is sonic 3 the first dlc content?
Expansions were a common thing long before S&K, although not on consoles. It was definitely a new and unique thing to do this with a cartridge. So much so, in fact, that it was never done again. Sega did a lot of things back then that made no financial sense but were cool and/or unique.
 

BlazeHedgehog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
702
The Sonic 2 patch data is on a separate chip inside the S&K cart, right?

From the Sega Retro wiki:

Lock-On works by using special circuitry that combines multiple ROM chips into a single address space, depending on which game is inserted into the cartridge's slot. The result is that the console thinks that one big cartridge is plugged in.

(...)

When Sonic 2 is connected, the cart combines the Sonic & Knuckles ROM, the Sonic 2 ROM, and a 256K ROM chip to boot into a new game entitled Knuckles in Sonic 2. This chip contains 'patch code' such as object placement data (for example, adding a 1-Up to the top of a building in the Chemical Plant Zone), Knuckles sprites and mappings, all code needed for the game to function, and some Casino Night Zone collision data. [The data on this chip by itself] is unplayable in emulators, as it is not a complete game in and of itself, being more analogous to an IPS patch.

Pretty much, yeah.
 

bangai-o

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,527
Halfway through this video, I noticed they still have not got to the making-of Sonic 3 barrel that ruined the game.