Roughly a year ago, I started this blog up as a means to review a few fan-games and hopefully get a bit of popularity. I see this as a more lighthearted side to my other blog, Betaman's Sarcasm Playtime Variety Hour, and I'm going to focus on happier things here.
After I'm done with this one tiny post full of criticism and anger.
You see, I followed Sonic 2 HD since it was still a community project on Sonic Retro. This was over 5 years ago, back in 2008. I had watched it on and off, liking what I saw, up until 2009 when I decided to see how they were doing as a community.
I did not like what I saw.
The entire community was pretty much just arguing about miniscule pieces that had been done nearly four or five times over and still wasn't good enough. I understand that things shouldn't clash, but they don't have to be absolutely prefect. Once I saw that they were all having an all out fight over the design of RINGS, I said to myself that the project was doomed and stopped paying attention.
In 2010, the open community aspect of the project died and it shifted to an internal team, which failed to produce anything of considerable interest until Spring 2012, when they released their abysmal S2HD alpha. All that was located in the alpha was Emerald Hill Zone, an early Hill Top Zone, and Miles "Tails" Prower. as a playable character. 5 years for a full alpha to be released and they only had one full zone completely finished from start to end. You might ask what they were doing, well it turns out that LOst was busy putting DRM into the engine while the rest of the team was busy trying to get a hold of him.
DRM that at one point wanted to keep users from taking screenshots and video of the game. DRM that, combined with faulty programming in LOst's part, caused anti-virus software to view it as a keylogger.
And sure enough, once they got fed up with LOst's bullshit, kicked him out, realized that they no longer had a programmer, and they cancelled the project.
I called it. I fucking called it all the way back in 2009 after seeing the community bitch over insignificant bullshit.
But the best part about it is the fact that the project was doomed from the start. It never had a chance and it never will.
There will never be a Sonic 2, Sonic 1, or Sonic 3 HD. They will all fail because they focus less on actually re-creating the game with a high-definition artistic style and are more determined to take upscaled pixel art and make it look pretty with Adobe Illustrator. Rather than having the entire art department dedicate themselves to actually hand-drawing artwork or doing some actual original work on their part, the art directors of the project will follow Sonic 2 HD's example for the rest of time with having the entire art department trace over resized versions of the original graphics.
I was on the Sonic 3 HD team, and they were pulling the same stunt, with an administrator that was SO focused on making everything look identical to the original graphics that nothing got done because he would shoot down any new ideas. Funnily enough, that same group is also dedicating themselves to pick up the broken pieces of Sonic 2 HD and make a Sonic 1 HD at the same time using the same staff and the same approach. There have even been mentions of attempting to re-create Sonic CD in HD and Knuckles Chaotix. They're trying to re-create every game they can in this misguided direction and I can only predict that it will all fail unless they set themselves straight and take a more original approach to their games.
Then again, maybe its better that they fail.
These are, after all, free re-creations of games that are still being sold through digital media. The Taxman just released a widescreen HD port of Sonic 1 for mobile phones and is currently working on Sonic 2. These are being sold by Sega and Sega's making money off of them. If they're popular, they might even release these ports for computers. If a so-called "HD" remake to these games is released for free, would you buy the Taxman's port or would you go for the free "HD" option? It's taking profit away from Sega and the Taxman, who has pretty much done this all for fans. I'm not saying that Sonic fan-games in HD (at least what they call HD.) should exist. I'm saying that if you really want to make one, make up something original and don't try to remake an existing game, especially if it's still being sold.
Here are some links to will take you to projects I have mentioned
Sonic 2 HD homepage - In case you want to download and see for yourself.
Sonic 3 HD Homepage - They've been in development since 2010 and seem to be following in S2HD's footsteps of getting anything done. I'll be mentioning them very soon.
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