We can all talk about the wonkiness of ‘My Saturday Morning Apocalypse’ adventure Sonic Forces all day long – perhaps never as concisely as our expert TSS Review, of course – but seeing its physics baked into another Sonic game really hammers home some of the gameplay issues that were prominent in the 2017 release.
Some brave soul has decided to put this to the test with a Sonic 2 ROM Hack that aims to shoehorn Sonic Forces’ Classic Sonic physics into the Mega Drive masterpiece. ‘CampbellSonic’ on YouTube shared some progress on the project, cunningly choosing Chemical Plant Zone as the testing ground.
Some of the changes made to the 16-bit game, ‘CampbellSonic’ reveals, includes the following:
- Sonic comes to a dead halt when he lands on the ground while not holding any direction
- After getting hit, Sonic lies around contemplating his life for a bit before getting up again
- Sonic’s speed caps while running, preventing him from building up speed
- Sonic’s inertia is weakened, causing his movements to become stiff
You can see this all in action in the video above, which admittedly makes for some excruciating viewing – seeing Sonic unable to obtain the high speeds you’d expect from a CPZ speed run plays havoc on the brain. Maybe the best bit is seeing the blue blur only able to achieve top speed when spinning into a booster pad.
Let us know if this Forces you to reconsider your Sunday plans.
In all honesty this rom hack is a brilliant way of showing why Forces and by extension: Sonic Generations feel so… wrong. Kudos to CampbellSonic for giving an example that even a baby could understand.
Essentially, the attempt to make the controls tighter in Forces don’t make for much of a fun game.
I’d rather take Slips the Hedgehog if it means going fast.
If I wanted to take my time, I’d play a different game series.
The problem with Forces is they only tightened the bits that were already tight enough, and didn’t even touch the stuff that did need tightening.