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Game News

Here’s Some New Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Stuff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w11wp1DNSwE

E3 isn’t upon us until tomorrow, but that hasn’t stopped game companies from showing new stuff during the week before. Like there’s a new Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance trailer, Sony announced Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault and Sega revealed a bunch of new stuff for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. First off is the new trailer above showing the track based on Super Monkey Ball as well as the new characters Vyse from Skies of Arcadia and Gilius Thunderhead from Golden Axe.

Sega also announced that Shadow will return from the first All-Stars Racing game driving a tank this time around and that Joe Musashi from Shinobi on a quad bike is playable as well. New levels from Golden Axe and Jet Set Radio are shown in a couple of new screenshots which can be seen below.

And it wouldn’t be E3 without there being leaks. Sonic Wrecks accidentally uploaded a version of the new trailer showing the Wii U logo at the end, so it looks like future Wii U owners will be able to get this game for the system. As proof of this a screenshot of this was taken by Sonic Paradise, besides that Sonic Stadium made a post about it before it was removed.

[Sources: IGN and Sonic Stadium]

Game News, Miscellaneous

Sonic 4 Soundtrack Ripped

Forum member infinity has somehow managed to obtain a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 4‘s soundtrack and has posted it on the forums!

Link.

My thoughts? Splash Hill Act 1 was just really shoddily done; this soundtrack is nowhere near as bad as I thought it’d be! I recommend checking out Mad Gear in particular as well as Splash Hill Acts 2 & 3. Really top notch stuff all around.

Check out the relevant forum topic!

UPDATE: Boss 1 is actually an unused track from the 16-bit Sonic 3D – so at least one track from this game dates back to 1995! See the below Youtube link for the original unused song:

An MP3 download of the above track is here.

Game News

Sonic 4: First Impressions?

Forum member Endri claims to have played through the entirety of the available Sonic 4 demo available through the Xbox 360 online service accessible by anyone with a developer or J-Tagged 360. Pending future evidence, this is technically a rumor, but it’s a pretty lengthy read nonetheless.

Quoting him from the forums:

Okay. I don’t even know how to start. But, here we go.

Early in the morning today, I, and a other few (un)lucky people, had the opportunity to playtest the X-BOX 360 version of the game. In fact, any of you could do it as well, provided you own a Developer’s Console, or a J-TAGed system.

I’ll try to give a very briefely analysis of what were my thoughts about this game.

Graphically (and artistically, I must say), the game is very beautiful, even thought I can’t really eat that celshading effect they put in Sonic’s model, to make it look like a differed shaded Genesis sprite.Something important to notice is that, the 3D models are not really 3D models, instead, they are sprites of pre-rendered 3D models. SO we are pretty much dealing with a 2D game here. That goes for everything else but Sonic, since I’m not sure as if Sonic is really a sprite itself, but I pretty much think it is. THat might explain the akward animations.

The level design. I played through Splash Hill Zone entirely up until Casino Street Zone. Splash Hill ZOne is pretty much Neo Leaf Forest Zone (for those who don’t know, Sonic Advance 2’s first stage). Everything about it looked like Leaf Forest. Hell, even the level art itself reminds Leaf Forest some way or another. The level design pretty much encourages the player to keep going to the right, except when the levels abruptuly decides to force you to go in the opposite direction by inserting unexpected walls, making you jump, jump to the left, jump to the right, keep running to the right. It is especially strange, considering the level layouts encourages you to keep running right. The acts are actually considerably huge in size, but quite short in time, much like Sonic Advance 2 stages. I don’t remember any level especific gimmick on the first stage, which is pretty unfortunate. You gotta love Casino Street Zone, since it’s freaking Casino Night Zone. It’s exactly identical. The colors, the tiles, everything. The level layout however is much like Music Plant Zone from Sonic Advance 2. A level that right encourages speed. Ha, about the Special Stages, they are quite fun actually, it is Sonic 1’s Distorted Dimension, but with a new twist: instead of controling Sonic, you control the stage itself. So yeah, my oversight was right after all. In terms of difficult, I found it harder than Sonic 1’s Special Stages (and provided, they were rather easy). I belive they are going to be even fun/harder with the motion controls of the Wiimote/Six-axis/DualShock3, since you have to rotate the stage using the trigger buttons in the X-BOX 360 version (RT rotates to the right, LT to the left, etc). Looks like a pinball of sort. Oh, don’t let me get started on the bossfight. You might already imagine how it is by now.

The gameplay is pretty solid, actually. Which is a great thing. However, the game pretty much have the physics of Sonic Rush. I hate I hate I hate I hate I hate, I can’t stress enough how I hate the jump! Fucking jump! It’s the worst jump I’ve ever seem in a Sonic game to date. Apparently they tried to mimic the ‘the longer you hold down the jump button, the longer you accent’ mechanic of the classic games, but as a result, they fucked the freaking cake with it. The jump is all over the place: if you rapidly tap the jump button, Sonic almost don’t jump; if you hold a little and release, Sonic starts accending, but he breaks to the floor as soon as you release the jump button. If you hold the jump button all the way down, Sonic jumps like if he had touched a spring, he jumps so high and almost no gravity, it’s like you are jumping on the freaking moon. And I thought the jump in the Rush series were bad. This one is even worse. The jump is so bad that I preffer to keep running right to win really. Don’t let me get started on the spin dash. THe spin dash don’t have enough power, no matter what. It behaves much like Knuckles’ Chaotix spin dash. Running rewards you with much more speed than spindashing.

My final remark of this game? It’s freaking Sonic Advance 2! It’s written Sonic Advance 2 all over the place. It is Sonic Advance 2 all over again. In fact, they could have named this game Sonic High Speed, and I wouldn’t mind it at all. But it is supposed to be Sonic fucking 4. To be honest, the name Sonic High Speed would fit this game better.

I am afraid to say that we are actually dealing with the very final product here, folks. Since the developers already sent the software for the Microsoft Evaluation Proccess. Additionally, the game’s software was sent to ESBR game content analizys team. Considering the game is already been analized and rated by ESBR, the development team cannot overgo any significative change in the game, visually or otherwise, which therefore pretty much means that this is what the game looks like.

I’m in a hurry here, and I’m sorry to not give a better insight on the game, but I’ll make sure to edit this post or whatever, whenever I have the time.

Assuming this is true–and given Endri’s technical prowess and experience with piracy, it very well may be–the glorious return to Sonic‘s roots may not be as wonderful or new as people had hoped. But hey, that’s just one man’s opinion. Feel free to make your own.

If you have a J-Tagged system or a developer 360 console, feel free to try this for yourself and let us know if it’s legit or not.

Game News

Sonic 4: Episode 1 also an iPhone title! July Release date!

Wow SEGA. Great job tucking away that special information.

Sonic 4's REAL Release date and last platform! And if you don't believe it, click the image for the source image on SEGA's website!

There's even an interview with Iisuka!

UPDATE: Well that was fast. SEGA has removed the images from their website already. At least we grabbed them while we could!

Game News

Sega/Sony Internal Document Leaked, Reveals Plans for Future

Take this with a grain of salt, but an interesting little document popped up on Sega’s PR site that mentions quite a few details that the two companies are in discussion about. These include:

-PS2 emulator on PS3, the document citing games such as GTA Vice City and an unknown Sonic title.
-Consideration of import titles on PSN, menus translated. Yakuza was brought up as an example of a game.
-Sonic All Star Racing is open to DLC characters to differentiate the PS3 SKU. Not Ratchet and Clank, but others are likely.
-Sonic Anniversary is a proposed project that would put a ton of Sonic games on one blu-ray. SCEA would love exclusive power-ups and different game modes.
-Dreamcast digital title support. While not exclusive to the PSN, the proposal is Sony can pick which titles it wants more, with long exclusivity meaning more marketing support for Sega.

For the full breakdown of the document, hit up the jump.
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