Working At Home Feels Good

Hi guys, sorry for the hiatus in posts.  The last few days I've been at home with my family, my pets, and my old friends.  It's great to see the old town of Slidell, LA that never changes (maybe for the best).  Unfortunately, I'm flying back to Orlando on Sunday (six days).  Not that Orlando is bad--I've become accustomed to my apartment and feel good there, but I miss being here very much.  Too bad I won't be coming back much in the future since I'm getting that internship gig in the Fall and afterwards...well, time to get a real job in far away lands...

I've been working on Super Sprint online for most of my time though, usually pulling all-nighters since I can't turn away and I want to complete this or that feature.  The main reason is because it's my "Personal Portfolio Project" (or PPP for short, if you like dumb abbreviations) for school.  I don't feel too well though--I feel a bit nauseous.  This has always happened when I work on Super Sprint.  And I hope the guys at school can understand why I'm splitting my time between this and Battle Fortress Tortoise.  Sorry about any problems we've had in the past.  I like you guys--I want to be your friend and help out.

...Anyway, I wish I had at least another week to spend with my family in this nice house.  I can do work at home but going back to the cube...err, hexagon-shaped cubicle farm in the windowless room with dim lights...don't like it too much.  Yeah sure, it's not a bad place to be with its groovy curved walls and whatnot but it's just too much like a game studio (if that makes sense).  Like I want to go someplace "normal" to the rest of the world if I want to pull long hours on stuff.  We should aspire for more.

As a matter of fact, if I ever started my own game studio, I'd probably get a house/cabin/mansion in a very scenic area.  Like the Swedish Alps or the Colorado Rockies.  Better yet, how about Gatlinburg, Tennessee!!  Near the Great Smoky Mountains and the Airsoft Gun Black Market Capital of the World.

It'd be like living in a house, but it would have a couple of computers here and there.  Then you work in a nice house, feel comfortable at home, breathe in fresh outdoor air, stand in the sun in mild temperatures, maybe get some snow once in a while.   You always get a great view of the blue skies, hills, forest, river, flower garden, etc.  It would be very therapeutic.  It would be like programming in Heaven.  Or in a happy Sega world where everyone is your "buddy" and a jingle plays whenever you do something good or collect 100 of some arbitrary item.

 That's me watching NASCAR on TV.  I've been on a NASCAR kick lately, it's awesome.

And there's a waterfall.

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh, nice view.

Best of all, there would be GO KARTS!!!!  There'd be multiple levels with various Sega-themed scenery props scattered around (go away, Mario Kart).  All the karts will go the same speed.  And there will be no jerkoff guys yelling at you to stop bumping into other drivers.  Or pull into the pit because your 3 minutes of driving is up.  Would be lots of fun.

One can dream, huh?  Still though, the goal is to WORK AT SEGA AND AID IN THE GLORIOUS RETURN OF BLUE SKIES.  Remember that.

Also, if you're ever in Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, remember to visit the NASCAR Speedpark, Ober Gatlinburg, and any other arcades along the main strip or go kart tracks.  There should be one or two Daytona USA 1/2 cabinets still in operation.

Sonic CD Impressions

OMG SNOIC CD IS ON XBOX LIVE AND PSN GAIS!!!

Well, it's been out for three weeks now but only recently have I gotten around to playing it.

To tell you the truth, I have never played this game before.  Not on Sega CD, not on PC, not on any compilation games.  To my surprise, this game came out in '93, between Sonic 2 ('92) and Sonic 3 ('94).  However, chronologically it's supposed to be between Sonic 1 and 2 (no Tails at the time). I heard about Metal Sonic, time travel, and how "great" this game is so I figured what the hell, let's buy it.

YO DAWG I HERD YOU LIKE SOINC ON YOUR XBOX SO WE HOOKED UP YOUR XBOX WITH SNOIC CD AND YOU DON'T NEED TO PLAY IT ON A CD

First, it's worth mentioning that this game wasn't originally affiliated by Sega.  The Genesis games were ported by Backbone Entertainment with Sega's permission.  Sonic CD, however, was ported by some guy by the name of "Taxman" and he later presented it to Sega who said, "What the hell, let's put this on Xbox Live, good work man."  This is incredible.  What effect does the community have on what Sega publishes?  I think that El Semi's work on the Model2 emulator paved the way for Daytona USA on XBL/PSN.  So what does that mean about Bart's Model3 emulator?  Can we see Daytona USA 2/Scud Race in the future??  What else can we do for Sega???

If only Sega gave the thumbs up to that fan remake of Streets of Rage...I don't get it Sega.  The fans are trying to help you out, man!!!

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So anyway, about Sonic CD.  If you want a great guide on this game, check out Sonic Zone:0.  It's got a comprehensive strategy guide on all the classic Sonics, including Sonic CD.  It even has huge level maps and whatnot!

Anyway, the first thing I notice about the game is that it that it's brimming with color.  Granted, the bad futures look grim and some of the levels are a complete clusterf*** that don't resemble a stereotypical Sonic zone, it just felt good to play.  Very therapeudic.  I would check out UK Resistance's Sonic CD Screenshot Parade if you haven't already.  Even when you kill enemies, they drop seeds that sprout giant flowers.  I like that.

Then there's time travel.  You can go to the past or the future where the level takes on a different visage.  There's a secondary goal that requires you to go to the past to destroy Eggman's "robot generators" in order to ensure a "good future" for that zone.  One free of the nightmares of Biff Tannen & the almanac, something like that.  At first, I had no idea how to do this so I just kept running right through the level as usual.

Then there's the means in which you time travel.  You stumble across signs labled "Past" or "Future."  The goal is to hit one of those then move quickly without stopping for a few seconds.  Then you teleport like the Delorean from Back to the Future.  At first, I had no clue how to do this.  I would just be running along then I would arbitrarily teleport like "wtf" though it really didn't change the fact the level is beatable in all time zones so I was cool with it.

Anyway, more about time travel later.  My goal at first was to just beat the game and kill Eggman.  TBQH, just beating the game like normal was too easy.  The Eggman bosses in Stage 3 of each zone were not the giant monstrosities of the past.  They were more like puzzles--for instance, navigate through the pinball machine or jump on the platforms to reach Eggman and kill him relatively quickly.  Very strange but also nice since I didn't feel like busting my ass on any really hard bosses.

The first time I died was on the Wacky Workbench (Zone 5) boss with the blocks that shoot you into the air (I got crushed by the ceiling).  Then after that, I made it to the Metal Sonic boss in Starlight Speedway (Zone 6).  This is when the game really kicked my ass.  Minor spoiler alerts ahead.



This boss battle is surprisingly different than in Sonic Generations.  For once, Metal Sonic is invincible.  Yet for some reason, he can't hurt you like a normal enemy would (touch him and nothing happens) except when he's using one of his attacks.  He stands there like a pimp before the race saying, "Can't touch this" or something.  To "kill" Metal Sonic, you have to make it to the finish before he does.  Simple right?

Rather than the collapsing platforms from Generations, Eggman follows you with a huge ass laser which kills you in one hit regardless of how many rings you have.  If you stall for a brief moment and fail to regain your speed fast enough (because of those G-D hills in your way), you're toast.  Really, I had ten lives going into this boss battle and thus, I died ten times in a row.  Thankfully the game allows you to restart from the very stage you were once on so no biggie.  My younger brother wants to try but he dies ten times in a row too.  Then I go again and finally won after five deaths.  So I died 25 times trying to beat Metal Sonic.  How pathetic is that.

So Metal Madness is the last zone in the game (Zone 7) and this stage is dramatically harder than the rest of the game, no surprise there.  Surprisingly, the Eggman final boss was incredibly anti-climatic.  Eggman comes out in a robot with four panels shaped like a SNES controller's d-pad.  Hit him a few times and the game's over.  WTF?  I presume if you collect all the "Time Stones" (*coughchaosemeralds*) or get all Good Futures then you access the "true finale" or something, kind of like the Doomsday Zone from Sonic 3&K.  So that's lame.

So I go back to play the game a second time, trying to get all Good Futures and all the Time Stones for the stupid achievements.  Anyway, you time travel by getting the Past/Future signs and running for a few seconds, either by running through tunnels, flying through the air, whatever.  This has to be my biggest complaint with the game.  There's very few places where you have a clearing to run for a few seconds.  If you falter about a half-second before you teleport, your sign powers go away.  Note that you can't get the time travel powers back from the signs--they can only be used once.  From what I heard, the time required to teleport was much shorter in other versions so that's a bummer.  It's aggravating enough as it is teleport once (to the Past to destroy the robot machine) so to do it more than once is tedious as all hell since I can't waste my time travel signs.

You can also do a "running spindash" in this game too...just hold up instead of down to do it.

Also, the only practical reason to teleport is to destroy the robot machines.  The different time zones have different geography and more rings.  Therefore if you exhaust most rings in one time zone, you can travel to another and gather even more.  What's the point anyway since merely picking up rings doesn't give you points unless you're able to finish the zone with them (which is hard with all the enemies/spikes around)?  This game encourages exploration (excluding a few lightning-fast tunnel seconds) but without any true purpose to teleport other than to check out the change in scenery or to create the good futures, then it's a but confusing.

And then there's the special stages.  Get 50 rings and jump into the large ring right after the ending sign to teleport there.  You're in this trippy faux-3D land, resembling Mario Kart and F-Zero.  Sonic runs around to jump and kill these floating UFOs that randomly move about the place.  Kill them all to get a Time Stone.  Wow, this has to be the most pain-in-the-ass thing ever.  It really hard to get down the timing of Sonic's jumps, much less cope with the sporadic UFO movements.  You have plenty of time to hunt down the UFOs although touching the water instantly takes away 10 seconds which is really bad.

To get all the Time Stones, I had to restart over and over again.  This means going back to the main menu and clicking on your save game again (yes, you can continue on a special stage).  Note that you MUST quit to the main menu before your time runs out since the game instantly saves & escorts you to the next stage once that timer reaches zero so don't screw around when you're almost out of time.

BTW, I love the Japanese soundtrack just for the Palmtree Panic music alone.  Damn, this is just a groovy soundtrack with techno, hip-hop, synthesizers, whatever.  The English version has that creepy boss music which reminds me of that secret message Easter Egg that we should all stay the f*** away from.



Still think it's strange that two entirely different soundtracks were made for this game.  Why does US have a different soundtrack than EU/JP version?  Shocking.

There's not more to say about the game.  Tails is a bonus character who was added by Taxman.  Using him disables achievements so don't bother.  This game places more emphasis on exploration and just chillin' out rather than speed running through the whole thing.  This kind of sucks since there's not much incentive to time travel anyway.  The future is basically useless you're teleporting just for kicks.

But this game ain't bad.  I know some people on the GameFAQs forums (Sonic Generations board included) are rambling about how overrated this game is.  I can't remember who declared Sonic CD was one of the best Sonics ever.  So it's a love-hate game.  I say just buy it anyway.  You really can't go wrong with it, even if you just run through the game in about an hour.

Review Score: 7.75 out of 10.  Mostly cause this game looks really cool.  The score seems overstated but it's an old game with very few changes so what's the point of this number anyway?

I was going to talk more about Sonic but I'll save it for later.  I've gone on for way too long.

We did it!!!  By creating this blog, I've made a Good Future for Sega racers (& video games in general) everywhere!!!  That was the whole point of this blog...good vibrations, baby.

UK Resistance: Rest In Peace & Funny Posts

Old Sega fansite UK Resistance has announced that it will receive no more posts.  Site will still be up (I think), but with no more updates.  You have other sites like this one claiming it's shut down so it seems believable to me.  I don't think it's an April Fool's Joke since it was announced March 29th.

Now lately, they've been posting crap about Sony and Nintendo so it's like they were getting bored with it.  Anyway, we remember the Blue Sky in Games Campaign and 50 Reasons to Buy OutRun 2.

Beware that UK Resistance is not a site for the kids cause of the curse words so this is your warning.

Some of my favorite old posts.  I was actually compiling a list a while back, but I was lazy.  So I'm gonna post this now:

Guide for game reviewers: How to take good OutRun 2 screenshots.

Flagman dance in OutRun 2!

Most amazing promotional photograph ever.

Beautiful Sonic CD screenshot parade.

The UK Resistance Green Hill Cottage.

Faster Than Speed: Quite possibly the worst Sega racer ever (if that's possible)?

Best piece of Sega memorabilia ever.

Robotnik defeated by a girl at tennis!!

Daytona 2 flag at concert (already been posted).

To Be This Good Takes AGES: Guy beats Phantasy Star Online with a Level 1 character... 

E-mail to Rockstar requesting more colorful games (with reply)...

Fax to Namco about Soul Calibur cheats...how to change the color of the female's undergarments...yes this is real.

Ghetto language in Need for Speed: Underground, worth a facepalm.

Yuji Naka & Sonic the Hedgehog at the hedgehog sanctuary.

E™A™ lice™nse™s le™tte™rs "E™" a™nd "A™" for e™xclusive™ use™ in E™A™ ga™me.

The OutRun 2 tips book!  Also Doom III and Fable.

The 578 Most Disappointing Games of 2010...

E3 Road Trip pics!

Is Gwen Stefani a Sega fan?

Sonic the Hedgehog joke book!

What the Nintendo Wiimote is good for (sfw I promise).

And finally...a Christmas story about OutRun 2--A Christmas Carol style.  Save us from the Need for Speed games!  Funny how that was years ago.  Nowadays, it's Burnout & Split/Second.

...

That's about it for now.  I sure hope the site doesn't go down forever or all these picture links will be ruined and I'll be super-pissed.  Farewell, mates.