30/01/2021

Week 3 - Spinball Has Not Aged Well At All!

 Third week down in my self-imposed Sonic 2021 Challenge and it's been up and down. Down as in we were stuck on Spinball for nearly 2 hours and I lost a stream(that's three hours I need to make up somewhere) and up as in we're now sailing through Sonic Adventure! Let's get right on and get Spinball out of the way and done with before we discuss the rest of this week's blogs contents.

Sonic Spinball (1hr 52mins) - a hard game, but mostly owing to crap controls. If you're expecting anything like Casino Night from Sonic 2, walk away now. The game is slow and clunky even on the fastest speed setting, trying to aim Sonic feels so imprecise I would have had better luck letting my half blind girlfriend play in my place - it almost felt more like luck when it came to hitting targets, and very little in the way of skill. I had seen many videos completing this within 35 minutes and hoped an hour was a feasible target. Alas, that was far from the case. If it wasn't for quick saving with Kega Fusion I would have been there for a very long time. Thank you, Kega Fusion, for saving my hairline from receding any further than it already is. 



Here's the latest copy of the spreadsheet and as you can see there's a lot more colour on it this time(sorry colourblind folk!) as I had need to figure out how I'm actually going to complete this challenge! As always if you click on it, this should make it bigger and easier to view.

To break it down: green are games I've completed; blue are games installed and ready to go, purple are titles I have lying around somewhere and need to confirm where they are for access purposes before turning them blue; red are games I don't have in a streamable format and need to get somehow(example, I have Shadow and Heroes for PS2, but am unsure whether to use a HDMI upscaler or an emulator - either way this needs some work and consideration to get working). A couple of the arcade games are playable in a browser, some I'll need to get extra items(for Sonic Free Riders, I'll need a Kinect and lots of luck because apparently it's shit). We're currently on 9 games completed and I'm actually a little worried I will miss my goal of completing all 65 games within the year(wanna watch my progress? I stream every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 7pm UK time for 3 hours, hit that Follow button even if I'm offline, then come on over!) but illness and bad cheaty games won't hold me back. 


Speaking of cheaty games, let's talk about Sonic Adventure(hereafter referred to as SA). The first properly 3D game in the series, originally released in 1998 on Dreamcast, suffered from a common problem that plagued platformers as they transitioned from 2D sprite game to 3D polygon glory - the camera often bugs out. I'm about 4 1/2 hours into SA - we've completed Sonic, Tails and Big and are progressing nicely with Gamma about 1/2 way through. I've given chat the power of choosing which hero we go with next, and I think they're saving Amy until last. Can't possibly imagine why. Thanks, chat. (Want to join my community? Come check out my Discord server - Springyard Palace - for stream notifications, Monday Night GIF Battles, and more - just read the simple rules and answer the question - giving a role out is manually done so be patient!)
Aaaaah, the amount of times we've lost a life because the camera bugged out. Want to jump onto a platform close to a wall? Woops, the camera ate the wall before you got there and somehow threw you down to a fall death - oh yes, we can fall from space, regularly do skydiving from aircraft and other stupid stunts not limited to breathing in space, but if you try to jump down too far to skip part of the level, you die! Feel like bouncing from platform to platform over a bottomless pit? Camera shifted to under a platform blocking your vision, you die! Fighting a water monster on a pond? Camera moves to face away from the beastie, you get stuck and drown, which means you die! Also connected to the camera is slightly twitchy controls whenever running down a narrow corridor, which SA loves to use. Wanna run straight? Nope, you're wall running at a weird angle so you're actually going slow. Try and steer down this corridor? OM NOM NOM WALL. Try and let the character go forward on their own following the pre-defined path? OM NOM NOM WALL or WHEEEE FALL DEATH.

The dodgy camera isn't stopping me from enjoying SA though. When it works, the game is an absolute joy to play - fast, pretty, great soundtrack, and a solid plot(TAILS SAVES STATION SQUARE AND IS VERY VERY BRAVE, TAKE NOTE SONIC TEAM OH WAIT YOU FINALLY SACKED YOUR SHIT WRITERS LOLOLOLOL). Good luck keeping up with it across all six stories though, there's slight variations across each of them - for example when playing as Sonic and you face off against Knuckles, for some reason you replay this when you're going through Tails' story. I don't know whether it's a lost in translation thing or if it's intentional, but it does raise an eyebrow when you're playing through, you think you've already seen it and rather than seeing it from a different perspective you become the perspective. It's a weird shift to keep on top of.

Also, and this will be brief, but Big's fishing mechanics suck.

Roll on the final parts of SA, after completing this it's straight onto SA2. Thankfully instead of seven unskippable credit scenes, it only has the three and it has far fewer camera bugs. It's been a fun challenge so far, but before long I'll have to think about what's next. Cheers for reading, will be back next week to discuss how the end of SA went and whether we're busy swearing at SA2 or not.


Final note before I leave you alone, as part of the #GameOverMND gaming weekend join @ScepticalSquiz, Whipstitch and me for a fun Minecraft building challenge! On Sat 6th Feb 2021, we will be starting at 12pm UK time (that's 1pm for our European friends, and anywhere between 5-7am for our US friends) and going for a full EIGHT HOURS. That'll be 8pm UK/9pm Europe/1-3pm US. You can catch all the action over at twitch.tv/scepticalsquir. All donations will be towards the bigger charity drive for @mndassoc

Grinning face with smiling eyes

23/01/2021

Week 2 - Forcing My Way Through

 Week 2 of the Sonic 2021 Challenge is almost over, and wow what a frustrating week of gaming it's been! This is my first blog entry since I decided to start this wonderfully hair-brained idea of trying to get the true ending to 65 Sonic games, we've completed 8 games so far and the focus of this particular entry will be how each of those games went! So without further ado, here's the eight games we've completed so far...

 Sonic 1 (54 minutes) - a smooth run to get us started. Only used the save state system within Kega Fusion once for a Chaos Emerald, the rest was plain sailing. Could have maybe gone quicker, but happy to get it done under an hour.

 

Sonic 2 (1 hour 6 minutes) - first deathless run of the challenge! All emeralds gained within Emerald Hill, used a save state a couple of times to do it but after that it was a case of hold right, press jump, collect 50 rings and turn super. Also helps that after a high school loss in a competition(speedrun Death Egg, was given a dodgy controller to use) I've practised that last boss lots over the years. Can get it done quite quickly now!


Sonic Eraser (5 minutes)
- first joke entry of the challenge, and another deathless/lossless run. Doesn't matter which mode you choose, you get the same ending - so I set the difficulty to 0 and went for it. Easy win.

Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (2 hours 12 minutes) - and then we get to the first shit game of the challenge. Puyo Puyo itself is a fun game, especially in multiplayer - but oh man, single player mode employs that most horrible of tropes, the Cheating Bastard AI. What should have been a simple run ended up with spending up to 20 minutes on some levels as it cheated that hard. "The AI can't possibly win now, it only has 2 gaps to hang on I lost just like that wtf" and it wasn't just the one time it happened. I actually won the game on a massive fluke, Robotnik threw the game by stacking all in one column for no reason and hitting the height limit. Very frustrating game to play, glad I don't have to go back to it.

Sonic 3 (1 hour 11 minutes) - all the endings are more or less the same bar a change of sprites, so I went for Sonic as he is without doubt the fastest character. All emeralds were easily acquired, abused Super Sonic where possible and if I'd pushed a bit harder, maybe I'd have gotten under the hour mark. Ah well.

Sonic & Knuckles (Sonic's path) (1 hour 48 minutes) - similar story to Sonic 3, except Warzak85DF asked if I was going to replay the game as Knuckles. The aim of the challenge is to get true endings, and S&K has two different paths with different endings. So it looks like I'll be revisiting these pair of games to complete them as Knuckles. As for the run itself, emerald big rings were tricky to find - I'm used to playing the two games as a complete experience, which means a lot of subtle differences including big ring locations. With a lot of patience and some help from the chat, we got them all come Lava Reef and blitzed the rest of the game.

Sonic 3D Blast (2 hours 10 minutes) - looking back I should have played this with an analog stick instead of a d-pad. Wasn't very well received at the time but has aged well, in my opinion. Especially if you use an analog stick! Emeralds were easy to gain(apart from that last one, screw you) and I died a small amount of times but they were by and large my fault. It was nice to play a non-Sonic Team Sonic game that let me feel like failure was my fault and not badly coded AI. If you ever get the chance, I implore you to find the Director's Cut of this game and try that.

Sonic Forces (3 hours 9 minutes) - a part of the challenge is to not skip cut scenes, so as to give the audience something to watch other than me holding right and pressing jump. I swear there were more cut scenes and pointless dialogue exchanges than actual gameplay,which was filled with challenge-less platforming and cheaty deaths. Boss fights were a test of endurance as opposed to skill(wait for the window of opportunity, press jump 3 times, repeat), and there was little to incentivise me to go do the side quests. I first played this when it originally came out three years ago, and uninstalled it after. This time, I was happy to have the chance to uninstall it on stream for everyone to bear witness to.

Elapsed time so far, 12hr 35min. Currently we're about 1/2 way through Sonic Spinball, another frustrating experience and I'm wearing out F5/F8 in Fusion. It's okay though, I'm happy to get another crap game out of the way - but I don't think I'll be playing '06 any time soon, I need to balance the books with a few more good games before then!

11/01/2021

The Great Sonic The Hedgehog 2021 Challenge

A new year, a new post to the blog? Eh, why not. Let's actually try and keep this going for once haha!

I'll cut to the chase - I'm parking Matilda for the rest of the year. In fact, I don't think she's even been fired up once this year so unless I host another 24 hour livestream, there will be zero miles acquired throughout the whole of 2021.

What I am doing though is probably given away by the title - it's a challenge of epic proportions. I'm going to attempt to complete, on my Twitch channel, 65 Sonic games in 50 weeks. That's right, 65 freaking Sonic The Hedgehog games in slightly less than a year. As I stream 3 hours a time and 3 times a week, that's 450 hours in which to complete all these games. Which really isn't a lot.
And not just any kind of completion! I'm going to try and get the True ending in every single title. Not 100%, I'd like to get that one out there straight away otherwise we'll miss this by a loooong shot!


Hopefully you can click that image above and make it bigger, but that's a list of 63 titles from the Sonic catalogue. The final two are rumoured releases for the 30th anniversary of the blue blue, one 2D and one 3D. I was originally aiming to get this done for 23rd June but I'll be lucky to get this done by the end of the year if I stream every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday - which is what I'm going to have to do to even have a hope of doing this.
Some titles, such as the classics, I can speedrun with my eyes closed. Others - such as Sonic Chronicles - I'll struggle with as they'll be very time consuming. And others still - looking at you, '06 and Heroes - I've never completed and expect to swear at lots.

"So," I hear you cry, "if you're not playing ETS2 at all then are you giving up on the charity angle of your channel for the year?" Nope. My friend Sceptical Squirrel(otherwise known as Squizzy) does a lot of physical activities for charity and this year is no exception. He's going pescatarian for the year, running a half marathon, a 1364 mile cycling challenge and more! All this is in the name of MND Association, a cause which is quite personal and close to Squizzy's heart for reasons I'll let the big guy explain for himself on his fundraising page. Where possible I want to support my friends, and Squirrel in particular is one friend who's been amazingly supportive to me over the years and gotten very little in return other than an earful of abuse, so here's where the Sonic challenge comes in.

 For every game I complete with a true ending, I will donate £1 to Squirrel's link above. My other half, Mirtai, has decided she's going to match that - so in actual fact for every game I complete, we're donating £2.
If I complete the full set of 65 games, then I'll bump it up to £100 - and Mirtai will match it to make a sweet £200 for MND Association! 

Squirrel's challenge is a year long one, and so is mine. I reckon if we can get the four-eyed moron up to, say, £3,000 by the end of the year I'll finally get that haircut y'all have been begging me to get for a while now. Give generously, and even if the target falls short you are donating towards a most excellent cause.

A reminder that I stream every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 7pm UK time on my Twitch channel and you're all very much invited as I try my damnest to achieve something I've been wanting to do as a Sonic fan since I first started my YouTube channel all those years ago. Thanks for reading, dream big and see y'all soon!