Sonic 3 HD: My story

 Last post I said that Sonic 2 HD failed for numerous reasons such as:

• The art being a mere trace over the original graphics
• The fact that LOst thought it was a good idea to keep the targeted community from reverse engineering an engine that he made from a guide that was made by the same community.
• The fact that for no less than 5 years they squabbled over the graphics, wanting original pixel perfection.

Here's another project that's doomed to fail because it's following in Sonic 2 HD's footsteps: Sonic 3 HD. Unlike Sonic 2 HD, I was actually part of the team for a short time, so I'm here to share my side of the story on the whole situation.

I was a part of Sonic 3 HD back in 2011 some time after I joined SFGHQ. Back then, it was a simple project: Make an HD version of Sonic 3 and Knuckles as a response to Sonic 2 HD. Headed by Devinator and Gemster312, things seemed to be going okay.... kind of. They were misguided in attempting to start with the Sonic and Knuckles half of the game, and not straight from the start. Myself, I originally applied as a level artist for Angel Island Zone, but was forcefully moved to Mushroom Hill because that's the only zone they were working on. This was back when they were using the Sonic Dash engine on Game Maker for the engine. It was sloppy, shoddy, and it just didn't feel right. I of course, went to work on the piece of art they asked me to do: A multi-layered parallax background for the level. At the time, I also contributed a few little concepts that are still in-place today: such as the inclusion of some other level bonuses, which Gemster shot down.  It was about that time that I noticed a little something about Gemster, and Devinator too.

They're fucking control freaks.

Every suggestion that strayed just a little too far out-field or wasn't identical to the original game was immediately shot down because "it wasn't accurate enough to the original." Lots of great ideas were lost completely that way. They also always wanted to "handle" the project by keeping it out of public forums such as Sonic Retro and SFGHQ.Pretty soon after dealing with all this, I got fed up and due to some conflicts in my life, I left once, blaming it all on Gemster. This was near the end of  2011, and I returned around the summer of 2012, apologizing for everything. By the time I'd returned, some things were still the same, and some things had changed. Most notably, a user by the name of Mike Berry, a user that also got fed up with Devinator's way of "handling" the community and the project was banned because he made a post calling out Devinator on his bullshit. I was, once again, tasked with creating a new background for Mushroom Hill, because no real progress had been made on the zone since I had left. (And the entire resolution of the game had changed, rendering my earlier work useless.) My second and final departure was simply because I lost interest in the project and didn't want to be associated with those people. Nowadays, I'm not even a legitimate member there, my account was most likely deleted because I was inactive.

Then I learned of ALL the projects that particular community were trying to start.

First it was Sonic 1 HD, headed by a member of Sonic 3 HD, then there was Sonic CD HD, which was also headed by a different member. Now they're trying to pick up the pieces of Sonic 2 HD and make that a thing again, and I've even heard claims of a Knuckles' Chaotix HD. This madness has to end! Devinator even tried to control those projects too by yelling at everyone that was more interested in S1HD to come back because they signed up to work on S3HD first and as such were still obligated.

Personally, I can't fucking stand the community and I can't wait for the project to either get cancelled or blow up in their faces. I mean, look at the project forums, you've got all sorts of madness:

 Posts from long ago are missing completely, and the most WayBack Machine will show only allows a few recreations of the old forums. Any "announcements" that are too old are simply gone forever, making the history of this project a bitch to find out, and the community is nothing more than a ghost town. Then again, maybe Devinator is just trying to cover up drama. Members constantly leave the project or lose interest to go pursue other idiotic ventures(At least when I was part of the community anyway.) and in the 3 years I've been watching, they haven't finalized any zone art, and released only 1 alpha demo. This is almost as bad as Sonic 2 HD when they worked for 5 years, 3 of those being a closed community due to incompatibility with the open community's art, and by the time of the first alpha, only had 1 zone fully complete.

In short, this project is nothing but a mess that's begging to die. And I'm calling it right now, just like I did with S2 HD:

This project is doomed, just like Sonic 2 HD. The entire community is doomed to fail and they will never finish their abundance of HD sonic projects, simply because they have the mindset of  "It has to be identical to the original or else it's no good.