Roblog

Perusing my little brothers game collection I ran across Sega’s SONIC MEGA COLLECTION for the GameCube and decided to get my old school game on and play one of the Sonic games I never got around to when I was younger.  I was a Sonic follower when I was little and I had a small collection of the games on the Genesis.  I’d never gotten a chance to play the fourth installment, though, so I was actually kind of excited to finally try out SONIC & KNUCKLES.  (The collection includes SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, its two sequals, SONIC & KNUCKLES, SONIC 3D BLAST, SONIC! SPINBALL, and DR. ROBOTNIK’S MEAN BEAN MACHINE.)

The first SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, in case you haven’t played one of the original Sonic games before (I know, I’m getting old), was built for the SEGA Genesis and was a 2D platformer to compete with the Mario games from Nintendo.  The big sell-point was the amazing speed at which Sonic could traverse his tile-based levels and  the fun roller coaster design that resulted from all that speed.  SONIC & KNUCKLES was the fourth installment of the series and was the final 2D version.  The game plays exactly like its predecessors, though the designers added a couple new abilities for both Sonic, and his new rival, Knuckles.  These abilities allow the designers to create sections of a level that are character-specific, only Knuckles could reach some places with his smashing power.  Basic mechanics included moving and jumping (the basics of a platforming game precedented by SUPER MARIO BROS.) to progress from platform to platform, avoid dangers, and attack enemies.  The Sonic games also added the ability to roll into a spikey spinning ball in order to attack some enemies from the ground.  Springs and loop-de-loops are characteristic of most Sonic levels and spinning gold rings were the collection item of choice.

It was interesting to go back to this game and see how strongly the arcade mentality influenced the design of the game.  The arcade industry was still fairly strong and console designers were constantly chasing arcade-quality.  Generally big successes were games that were big arcade hits and were then ported to the consoles, though with lower quality graphics due to the limitations of the console hardware. Despite (as far as I’m aware) never being an arcade title, SONIC & KNUCKLES still held on to a three lives, no continues philosophy, leading to a very challenging game.  The player has to earn new lives and learn the levels in order to progress to the later stages.  If he fails to get to the end before his life stock has run out, the game is simply over and the player must restart from the beginning.  Game design since has changed to favor helping a player play through and enjoy the game, with automatic saves, infinite “lives” (see my REPUBLIC HEROES post), and a focus on playing levels again after completing them in order to find other bonuses or increase score.  This is in contrast to having to play a level over before completing it due to failure to reach the end and having to learn how best to accomplish the task.

As a side note, I still find it amazing to play a Sonic game on a Nintendo platform.

Image by Tom Martinez Jr.

My team and I have decided to promote the Jumping Bean prototype to full-on game status!  We’ve started an eight week production to create a full iPhone game based on the constant jumping theme of Jumping Bean.

We’re starting with the simple concept of Super Mario Bros. with the jump button on auto-rapid fire.  The game will feature designed (i.e. not procedural like the original prototype) levels with playful graphics and a classic platformer feel with the auto-jumping twist.

Iteration #1:

The first iteration of this concept exists here and includes a level based directly on Super Mario Bros. level 1-1.

The comments for this iteration included:

• Need some enemies
• The jumping feels floaty under ceilings
• The control feels a little too precise, giving the player little to master in regards to the platforming
• We’ll need more complex levels, including moving platforms
• Could get a sense of depth by adding parallaxing

Some of this feedback was implemented in iteration #2.

Iteration #2:

The second iteration (found here) is actually starting to feel like a game and is almost as good in quality of many of the free games on the iPhone, which means anything we add from here on we can charge for ; ).  We added some simple enemies, adjusted the feeling of the jumps, and added to the game a concept Tom drew up for our lovable amigo.

Some of our feedback at this point:

• It’s time to start thinking about the game’s color palette
• Should think about having a way to get rid of enemies
• More variety in the enemies would be good
• Restarting the whole level every time the player makes a mistake is probably a little harsh

I’m feeling really good about the progress on this one (of course we have Unity3D to thank for that) and the type of game we are shaping up to make.  It will be exciting to see how it progresses over the next eight weeks!

~R

Currently playing: Super Mario Bros., Jumping Bean