What was the reason people liked it back then?

[ElectroRanger]

I know, why am I bothering with a 'game is not great as we thought' thread, those usually don't bear any fruit, but it kinda dawned on me while replaying this again.

See besides the first 3 games, aka 1 2 and knuckles (3), or even the gba ones, was or is there anything of value to the sonic games series besides the fact that you play a character that runs fast? Because in my opinion I am playing so far the first 2 stages with sonic and so far I feel much thrown off after playing oddysey ( okay better example, I feel thrown off knowing my experience with Mario 64).

The stages aren't entirely a challenge in particular in 3D, mostly because for the most part you just hold a button for most of it, enemies are just placed in without any reason beyond just the need to have enemies , and boss fights are overtly simplified, without mentioning puzzles .

Like seriously, why is it that there are people who still enjoy these games exactly, besides just cynical and edgy memes nowadays or just sonic himself as a character.

This is also being said by a person who surprisingly doesn't like the 2d sonic games for some reason . Maybe it's because the needed emeralds for the better ending, which requires getting all the bonus stages right without having any save points of the like or something for the emeralds, just in one sitting basically. Specifically the bonus stages in sonic 3

[F-Man]

As I was there, and SA1 became my favorite game of all time, coming off the back of classics like Super Mario World, the DKC series, SM64, Banjo-Kazooie, etc, I can answer this.

The controls were the most satisfying thing I had experienced up to this point. The complete control of your movement you have mid-air, being able to land your jumps so perfectly, and adjust the length and height of your jumps with your speed (especially when charging spindashes) that would let you take all sorts of shortcuts the developers might not even have thought off. No game ever before had exuded so much freedom. Add to that the hub worlds and knowing that there were so many more characters to experience all with their own story, it just felt impressive.

I wouldn't even get to play the other characters for quite a while because I would always restart my file halfway through to re-experiencce Sonic's story and cutscenes which were so damn amazing. The character's mouths were animated in sync with their dialogue! Video games were getting closer to movies than ever! And it was done with cool cartoony characters instead of boring realistic humans. My 10 year old self couldn't be happier. The game wasn't just some videogame hero doing videogame stuff, we were pulled into a world. Actions had consequences, and when Sonic was getting mad at Eggman on the Egg Carrier (and after), he felt truly heroic. He didn't make some lame quip like he would now. He was totally down to earth in the seriousness of the moment.

I could go on with how every level would pull something crazy that just blew our mind over and over again. The twisty-curvy road at the end of the Windy Valley, the snowboarding, the bumper cars, being taken aback in a roller coaster as you get a complete view of the level you're about to play, running down a friggin building (still one of the most memorable moment I ever experienced in a video game). All of which in the best graphics we had ever seen by far.

[ElectroRanger]

Originally posted by F-Man:

*snip snip*

Okay, I do hope some of those points were from when you first played this, because looking back:
1.The controls are actually way more awkward than I remember, sometimes just being mad glitchy to the point you just fall off stage without noticing what just happened.

2. The lip sync. No, everyone besides gamma ( obvious reasons ) has insane mouths. Like, I bet this was decent to perfect in Japanese, but here it's just terrible. Feels less like someone poured their heart and mind and more of just dotted out the checklist.

3. Memories. Personally the only thing I remember is being scared from that water temple with sonic when I was young, specifically because of the concept of dying drowning, also that giant snake thingy. Oh yeah, and I kinda related to gammas story, as awkward as it might seem to the average player.

But other than that, besides say some boss fights the stages aren't too memorable in any positive way. Nothing feels too innovative or interesting besides the music, especially the fact that some stages have abit of annoying gimmicks here and there. Nothing too mind blowing, at least now from perspective.

But hey, like I said at post, maybe those at the time were pretty impressive to our young minds and we just kinda accepted that.

[The Devasia Mentality]

I've been playing SADX since 2003, and while I can gather the ports have all been varrying dregrees of un-good, I cannot for the life of me get how there's anything even CLOSE to being wrong with the control. The control is essentially perfect, with the exception of Big I rarely ever struggled when playing this game in all the years I've played it. 14 years of experience... have not clipped through the one puportedly glitchy loop on emerald coast or anywhere else even once.

[ElectroRanger]

Originally posted by The Devasia Mentality:

I've been playing SADX since 2003, and while I can gather the ports have all been varrying dregrees of un-good, I cannot for the life of me get how there's anything even CLOSE to being wrong with the control. The control is essentially perfect, with the exception of Big I rarely ever struggled when playing this game in all the years I've played it. 14 years of experience... have not clipped through the one puportedly glitchy loop on emerald coast or anywhere else even once.

Well hey, maybe it's a different people thing.

[F-Man]

Sonic Adventure's control only ages better and better as time goes on and Sonic Team keeps releasing games where Sonic feels limited and automated.

Even the one time they made a game that seemed similar visually, Sonic Lost World, it was essentially the anti-Sonic Adventure in the way that speed and running on walls was decided entirely by holding a certain button. It's like a battle of digital vs analog. Variables vs fixed values. As far as free-flowing goes, Sonic Adventure is king.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by The Devasia Mentality:

I've been playing SADX since 2003, and while I can gather the ports have all been varrying dregrees of un-good, I cannot for the life of me get how there's anything even CLOSE to being wrong with the control. The control is essentially perfect, with the exception of Big I rarely ever struggled when playing this game in all the years I've played it. 14 years of experience... have not clipped through the one puportedly glitchy loop on emerald coast or anywhere else even once.

I wouldn't call it perfect, by any means.
It has it's problems.
Of course, since it was a pioneer in 3D platforming, that's to be expected.

I've been playing it recently, and I'd forgotten how much the physics can mess up.

Such as in Sky Deck, with the final room tilting and repositioning (especially when it faces down).
I was struggling with crossing those gaps on the ladders, as for some reason, when I Homing Attack to cross a gap (trying to cut time), the game wanted to yank me to the right slightly, making me miss the ladder, and sending me falling all the way to the bottom (and death).

Or running down tunnels, the game has this obsession with running me into a wall and making me stop, or making me run up the walls onto the ceiling, and then making me stop and fall (or at least missing any rings on the floor).
----

Two other nitpicks I have as well are in the Chao Garden.
1) Why is it so tricky to pet Chao? I pet them, and they just walk away while I'm doing the animation.
2) Why on earth am I able to Spin Dash in the Chao Garden?! Why is that even an option?! I just want to pick something up, and instead I'm spindashing my Chao facefirst into a wall.

...Thankfully, SA2 corrected those two issues. But it's still a little annoying to have that in SA1.
But, again, it was a new concept in its time, so I can't blame them for that, especially as they've since corrected the flaws and polished the concept.

[The Devasia Mentality]

I'd say those issues have less to do with the controls and more to do with game design. The camera dictates how you move in relation to it, so tunnels and long stretches at a distance from the character where that dumbness happens are due to stupid variances in the camera position. Sky Deck? Well the gravity tilting mechanic sucks anyway, but at this point I've long since figured out ways of using it to my advantage and skipping over the ladder section at the end, so I kinda forgot about that. And I just pretend the Chao Garden doesn't exist, it's a waste of time anyway.

[F-Man]

There's a specific Chao action button that doesn't do the spindash in all versions. On Dreamcast it's Y, on PC it's Button #3 (X on Xbox controller). Why on earth you're using B is beyond me, who even does that?

[Crystal Sharrd]

It's one of the, if not the, best 3D Sonic game.

[Allard]

Because it's good.

[AortaPlatinum]

I'll be honest, objectively, this game is really bad. Like REALLY bad. I only enjoy it because I grew up with it (technically, my first playthrough was at ~12yo), and I enjoy exploiting the bugs, and speedrunning Sonic, Tails, & Knuckles' (pun 1000% intended) stages. The only reason I ever play the other levels is to unlock Super Sonic's story, so I never come back to them after finishing the game.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by F-Man:

There's a specific Chao action button that doesn't do the spindash in all versions. On Dreamcast it's Y, on PC it's Button #3 (X on Xbox controller). Why on earth you're using B is beyond me, who even does that?

I'd never noticed that before.

I generally use B out of habit, as a few Sonic games have A (or X) as the jump button, and B (or Circle) as the Boost button, so I got in the habit of using those two.
Since this game's config tool indicated that X and B apparently do the exact same thing, I just went with using B.
The game never mentioned that one of the buttons is different in Chao Garden. Which would've been helpful.

Thanks for the info.

Originally posted by Anime was a mistake:

I'll be honest, objectively, this game is really bad. Like REALLY bad. I only enjoy it because I grew up with it (technically, my first playthrough was at ~12yo), and I enjoy exploiting the bugs, and speedrunning Sonic, Tails, & Knuckles' (pun 1000% intended) stages. The only reason I ever play the other levels is to unlock Super Sonic's story, so I never come back to them after finishing the game.

That's "subjectively", not "objectively".
Even if you interviewed one million people, and verified that they all hated it, that's still "subjective".

For something to be "objective", it has to completely remove the human element.
As such, proving that something is good or bad is almost impossible to do objectively, as good or bad games is a subjective experience.
(Even something like Sonic 06 can't be considered objectively bad, as it's still relying on human opinion. Now subjectively bad... then yeah, for the most part it is.)
------

For this game, one has to remember it was revolutionary in it's time.
Combining 3D platforming, high speed, and story-telling.

A problem with people that started off with modern games, is that they tend to look back at these older games and call them terrible.
Not realizing that these kinds of games are what paved the way for those modern games they love.
-----

As for those other 3 characters, while I don't know about Amy, I know that Gamma and Big had a reason for their level designs.

Big was effectively a commercial for an upcoming fishing game for the Dreamcast, called Sega Bass Fishing. Sega put in the fishing stages with Big to test the waters and see if people would like that kind of gameplay or not.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/71240/SEGA_Bass_Fishing/
Since they did make the game, I'm guessing they also worked on addressing some of the complaints.
----

With Gamma, he had the shooter segment, because Sega wanted to test having a Sonic character using a gun. Since they weren't about to have one of the core characters doing that, they instead had an Eggman Robot use a gun.

As for Amy... I'm not sure why they went that way for her, or why she only had 3 stages.
I know that she had a lot of things changed about her, after Sega pulled the plug on Sonic Extreme (and thus Tiara never got her debut).

Rather than use Tiara, they decided to take 8-year-old Amy Rose and made her 12 years old, and turned her from having a schoolgirl crush on a guy 7 years older than her, to her being in love with a guy 3 years older than her.
As well as trying to make her a fighter-in-training.

[Dark Redshift]

To summerise the answer to the title question:

Back in 1998, this game ran on the Dreamcast on a specialised CD that could only hold up to 1GB. Even with the limitations on the disk and the hardware, it had the best graphics available on a console at the time other than the Playstation 2 and the Xbox that would be the Dreamcast's spiritual child, having the same buttons and running on the same operating system.

The game had everything that made later versions good in terms of story and gameplay (except Big) but the graphics were far better despite being less advanced and the game was less buggy. Even my copy of the 1998 release is less buggy than the initial GD ROM release that year was, with the only glitches occuring because it's an ISO running on Null DC, as I was unable to find a real console like I wanted, let alone the chances of said physical machine working.

This version of the game is OK, but it is less good than the original because it is based on the inferior Gamecube port that had ironically worse graphics and more bugs, the Sonic equivalent of Conker Live and Reloaded and Tomb Raider Anniversary, not to mention the PC, Xbox and PS3 versions of SA1DX don't even have the Game Gear games that came with the gamecube port as extras.

That doesn't make the game bad however, just not as good as the original game on the original hardware.

[ElectroRanger]

Originally posted by Dark Redshift:

To summerise the answer to the title question:

Back in 1998, this game ran on the Dreamcast on a specialised CD that could only hold up to 1GB. Even with the limitations on the disk and the hardware, it had the best graphics availible on a console at the time other than the Playstation 2 and the Xbox that would be the Dreamcast's spiritual child, having the same buttons and running on the same operating system.

The game had everything that made later versions good in terms of story and gameplay (except Big) but the graphics were far better despite being less advanced and the game was less buggy. Even my copy of the 1998 release is less buggy than the initial GD ROM release that year was, with the only glitches occuring because it's an ISO running on Null DC, as I was unable to find a real console like I wanted, let alone the chances of said physical machine working.

This version of the game is OK, but it is less good than the original because it is based on the inferior Gamecube port that had ironically worse graphics and more bugs, the Sonic equivalent of Conker Live and Reloaded and Tomb Raider Anniversary, not to mention the PC, Xbox and PS3 versions of SA1DX don't even have the Game Gear games that came with the gamecube port as extras.

That doesn't make the game bad however, just not as good as the original game on the original hardware.

Oddly enough, I remember I had a disk version of the game on PC that DID have the game gear games...so makes me wonder...

[AortaPlatinum]

Originally posted by Dark Redshift:

To summerise the answer to the title question:

Back in 1998, this game ran on the Dreamcast on a specialised CD that could only hold up to 1GB. Even with the limitations on the disk and the hardware, it had the best graphics availible on a console at the time other than the Playstation 2 and the Xbox that would be the Dreamcast's spiritual child, having the same buttons and running on the same operating system.

The game had everything that made later versions good in terms of story and gameplay (except Big) but the graphics were far better despite being less advanced and the game was less buggy. Even my copy of the 1998 release is less buggy than the initial GD ROM release that year was, with the only glitches occuring because it's an ISO running on Null DC, as I was unable to find a real console like I wanted, let alone the chances of said physical machine working.

This version of the game is OK, but it is less good than the original because it is based on the inferior Gamecube port that had ironically worse graphics and more bugs, the Sonic equivalent of Conker Live and Reloaded and Tomb Raider Anniversary, not to mention the PC, Xbox and PS3 versions of SA1DX don't even have the Game Gear games that came with the gamecube port as extras.

That doesn't make the game bad however, just not as good as the original game on the original hardware.

You'll be happy to know that a thing called Better SADX exists, friend.