We first reported on the Unleashed Project over a year ago, when Sonic Retro community members (and all-around beautiful people) Dario FF, Twilightzoney, and Chimera revealed the earliest footage of their experiments with porting stages from Sonic Unleashed into the PC version of Sonic Generations. Today, thanks to the incredible efforts of Dario and his team, they’ve released the first completed version of the project, including all eight major daytime stages from the original Unleashed ported to Generations, along with a redesigned hub world and reworked level progression.
Now you can play through all of the best parts of Unleashed without having to endure the suffering caused by Werehog fatigue and medal-hunting. Plus, you can enjoy the beautiful art direction of each stage in full 1080p at 60 frames per second (provided your computer can handle it – my Phenom II X4 cries during Jungle Joyride), and many of the game’s lower-resolution textures have been recreated in higher quality so you can get the most out of your PC’s graphics card. Of course, the stages also benefit from improvements and changes Generations made over its predecessor, such as tighter controls and the addition of customizable skills.
Be sure to check out the trailer after the break, complete with an orgasmic remix of the Unleashed final boss theme by Retro musician Falk, known for his work on fan games such as Sonic Before the Sequel and After the Sequel (and who also did the hub world remixes of the Unleashed stage themes for this project). You should also head to the project’s ModDB page, where you can find links to download the mod for yourself. Finally, a tremendous thanks to the Unleashed Project team for all the hard work they’ve put in over the past year to get this polished up and ready for release. This project is a stellar example of the kind of awesome stuff we love to see from the Retro community.
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, and by that I mean not go to Sonic-related websites in the past few days, you know that Eddie Lebron released his Sonic fan film last week. And if you’ve seen you’ll probably think that it’s impressive for a low-budget fan project or that it’s crap. Or you actually have a different opinion than the majority of the internet, but that’d just be silly. Anyway monday links.
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Watch live video from vidyaretro on www.twitch.tv
We’ve got one more surprise stream for you all before the end of the new year. We will be joined by Chimera of the Unleashed to Generations conversion team checking out one of the levels and will be able to take your questions.
Check back at 4PM Central (That’s less than an hour if you’re just reading this!) and come join us!
UPDATE: The stream is over, if you missed it you can still watch it archived (cut into lots of parts due to connection problems) here on our Twitch channel.
Seasons greetings, dear Retro readers! Last night, jolly old Santa Claus visited the Retro HQ, ate all our cookies and milk, and didn’t leave us a damn thing. Fortunately, we managed to pull his bag off his sleigh as he tried to escape from our armed pursuit, and in his wonderful bag of gifts, we found a hundred pounds of solid gold ingots. We promptly sold all the gold, and I’m happy to report that all of the Retro staff slept on mattresses made entirely out of cash last night. In the spirit of the Christmas season, we thought we’d pass our frankly tremendous fortunes on to you, so today we’re holding a giveaway for a Sonic Franchise Steam Bundle. This bundle includes every single Sonic game available on Steam (see complete list below), and only one lucky reader is going to walk away with the whole thing. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post before 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time on December 31st, 2012, and include an email address we can contact you at in case you win. Make sure to read the rules below as well. Good luck, and may you enjoy these games as much as we are enjoying our endless pits of money.
Complete List of Games Included:
Contest Rules
Clarifications:
UPDATE (AGAIN): It looks as if Amazon.com in the US is also providing a couple of collections for digital PC download for sale on Sega games. However only one of the packages activate on Steam. That being the Dreamcast Pack containing Dreamcast Collection Volume 1 (Which contains Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5 Part 2 and Sega Bass Fishing) and Jet Set Radio for $4.99. The Genesis pack is still on sale for $4.99 as well, however those do not activate on Steam, but that’s still 50 Genesis games that also sell for $7.50 a pack currently.
While this is not really a deal, they also sell Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg for digital download PC. (This also does NOT activate on Steam) Still noteworthy.
UPDATE (12/3/2012): Sonic Generations is 75% off again on Steam until December 10th as part of a sale celebrating the official release of Big Picture Mode. Another Sega game, Hell Yeah! is 75% off as well. You can check out all of the other deals here. Amazon is also having a sale on downloadable Sega games, with various bundles. This includes the Sonic Action Pack for $25, which includes every downloadable Sonic game besides Sonic Adventure 2. These deals are good until December 8th and can be seen here in this NeoGAF thread.
Those who have used Steam for at least half a year know that their sales are usually pretty darn good, with lots of games usually being 50% or 75% off. Like now Sonic Generations is 75% off until November 27th, which is a great deal if you don’t have the game yet. All other Sega games on the service besides those that came out during the last month or so are 50% off as well. Other good games on sale are Dishonored for 50% off, Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition for 75% off and Deus Ex: Human Revolution for 75% off.
Also, if you missed out on the Starbucks deal for Sonic 4: Episode II you can get Episode I for $2.99 and Episode II for $3.74 on Amazon. Both episodes use Steamworks so you’ll have to activate them on Steam in order to play them. The Sega Genesis Classic Game Pack is also priced off to $4.99 and includes 50 Genesis games.
A while back, you’ll remember we made a post showing how a small group of fans on our forums were tearing into the very fabric of the PC version of Sonic Generations to recreate the daytime stages of Sonic Unleashed within the game. On last check, they had managed to get the Hedgehog Engine’s Global Illumination Ambiance working, a rather impressive task of its own right. So how are things coming along now?
Quite fantastically, if these three projects all based off Generations are anything to go by.