#icecap zone

[disneymultiverse2022]

Sonic Multivers #11

Stanford Pine in Disney Gravity Falls + IceCap Zone In Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Into Together Become One

[sonichedgeblog]

IceCap Zone, Act 1 'Sonic 3' SEGA Mega Drive

[crappyblue]

i've almost wrapped up work on my third ring racers character and second badnik, penguinator from sonic 3's icecap zone! this guy is extremely goofy and already a favorite of mine. the only thing left for me to do for it is its signpost graphic, but… i've got that on hold while i follow artistic momentum toward the next badnik i want to make, whom i hope i get to show off soon!

[nightfurylover31]

Icecap Zone reference! ❄️

[blazehedgehog]

"Shadow was made based on Gerald studying the ancient echidna prophecy in Hidden Palace Zone." careful, you're getting fandom theories and headcanon mixed with the actual text of what you're talking about. there's never been a mention of Gerald working from Hidden Palace- all the ruins we see in SA2 are SA1 ruins. Even if Ian Flynn now retcons that in in some supplemental material, it'll still be a posthoc retcon.

Oh sorry I didn't see the sign over there

Not to be rude or anything, but I don't work for Sega or IDW or anyone official.

It's pretty clear Shadow is based on the look of Super Sonic. We never see Gerald investigate any ancient echidna stuff, but Maria does tell us some things about how the Artificial Chaos were created in the Shadow the Hedgehog flashback levels, confirming the obvious: that they were based on "the God of an ancient culture." (So, you know, Artificial Chaos were based on Chaos)

Now, what we see, both in Hidden Palace and Lost World, are murals depicting two things: a prophecy foretelling a fight between Eggman and Super Sonic, and Perfect Chaos. We never see any murals of lower forms of Chaos, but the Artificial Chaos are obviously based on something below Perfect Chaos.

When Chaos transforms for the first time, Eggman mentions "it's just as the stone tablets predicted." So there was possibly information on what lower forms of Chaos looked like. Where did he get them? Did he inherit them from Gerald?

Maybe he got them from The Lost World ruins. I mean, it's right outside of Final Egg, so maybe. Final Egg is also in the heart of a vast jungle, and from within Lost World itself, we can even see more ruins far in the distance. And if Eggman got them from Gerald's estate, who even knows where he got them from.

So there was detailed documentation about these things probably in multiple locations from both before and after the event that nearly wiped out Knuckles' ancestors and lead to the creation of Angel Island. After all, Lost World and Final Egg (plus the jungle surrounding it) aren't part of Angel Island -- only Icecap and Red Mountain are. (And a datamined list suggests Mushroom Hill was originally going to be represented in some form, too)

Through deduction, we can assume there's probably more than one Super Sonic mural. Maybe by different artists! Maybe even statues! Just like there are many different ancient hieroglyphs depicting Anubis in different shapes, styles, and forms.

It's splitting hairs. Live a little. It is an extremely educated guess that Shadow the Hedgehog is meant to be an interpretation of Super Sonic, wherever in ancient echidna culture that came from. The suggestion is pretty clear that Gerald was looking at that material around the same time both Biolizard and Shadow were created. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than "aliens from space made a blood pact."

[dragonthunders01]

Spectember D11: Seed World

It has been 200 million years since mankind launched into the stars an colonized many of the worlds that were attainable on their reach, many populated by their native life, many others on their youth of development and many others that even though they reunited the right conditions for life to form, they were barren, so they filled them with their collection of fauna, many being turned to an earth like Eden world, but not many remained that way, some started to degrade fast for the long term conditions of the planet geology or position of their stars, some die out for extraordinary cosmic event and others just faded into oblivion for the circumstances of their own planetary development.

The world of Scelloc was a tropical oceanic planet splashed with dozens of small islands, many of them volcanic in nature, the settlement was populated by tropical marine fauna, mollusks, fishes, corals, arthropods, it remained like that even after their human colonizers disappeared, but just 50 million years something happened, a large cosmic event disrupted the orbit of the planets, including Scelloc, through it did not throw the planet out of the system, it left it at the edge of the habitable zone, and in a period of 10 million years this paradise was sealed into a tomb of ice, it was too fast that the majority of animals that lived depending of the warm climate perished with just a handful of established deep water forms that evolved to thrive in the dark managed to support the change, only small cnidarians and sea slugs survived the cataclysm, and for the next 140 million years they will claim up from the depths of the ocean to the roof of the giant ice caps.

The global trapped sea of Scelloc thankfully remained liquid thanks to the geological activity of the planet, the active tectonic activity underwater keeps these warm enough to host the trapped life.

Near the hydrothermal vents forms often large fields of large unique polyp towers that extend their tentacles to alongside smaller Shipworm-like derived slugs that remains sedentary feeding on the chemicals or in the polyps themselves, around them some slow feeding snail like forms gathering the material and forming rudimentary shells and even scallop like forms that abandoned their slug shape and adopted a bivalve like form with large starfish-like slow polyp that now have evolved free forms.

On the endless seabed there is a variety of filter and detritu feeders that eats the sea snow that cyclically keeps falling from the upper regions or the nutrients that accumulates in the sand, many still nudibranchs and snail like forms that are migrating to new vents, many jellyfish like polyps; upper the seabed are floating small and large nudibranchs that either developed their "cerata" as floating organs or active squid and even like forms that can extend ovr the vast abyss up to the roof of the icecaps, some even able to glimpse the light on the thinnest ice parts and even melted holes on the equator.

This world will likely unfreeze from its perpetual snowball state in the far future when its star increases its luminosity, but until then for the next hundreds of millions of years it will remain sealed within the ice.

[misterah13]

All classic sonic games levels in order

Sonic The Hedgehog

Green Hill Zone

Marble Zone

Spring Yard Zone

Labyrinth Zone

Star Light Zone

Scrap Brain Zone

Final Zone

Sonic The Hedgehog 2

Emerald Hill Zone

Chemical Plant Zone

Aquatic Ruin Zone

Casino Night Zone

Hill Top Zone

Mystic Cave Zone

Hidden Palace Zone

Oil Ocean Zone

Metropolis Zone

Sky Chase Zone

Wing Fortress Zone

Death Egg Zone

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 And Knuckles

Angel Island Zone

Hydrocity Zone

Marble Garden Zone

Carnival Night Zone

IceCap Zone

Launch Base Zone

Mushroom Hill Zone

Flying Battery Zone

Sandopolis Zone

Lava Reef Zone

Hidden Palace Zone

Sky Sanctuary Zone

Death Egg Zone

The Doomsday Zone

Sonic The Hedgehog CD

Palmtree Panic

Collision Chaos

Tidal Tempest

Quartz Quadrant

Wacky Workbench

Stardust Speedway

Metallic Madness

Sonic Mania

Main Mode

Green Hill Zone

Chemical Plant Zone

Studiopolis Zone

Flying Battery Zone

Press Garden Zone

Hydrocity Zone

Mirage Saloon Zone

Oil Ocean Zone

Lava Reef Zone

Hidden Palace Zone

Stardust Speedway Zone

Metallic Madness Zone

Titanic Monarch Zone

Egg Reverie Zone

Encore Mode

Green Hill Zone

Chemical Plant Zone

Studiopolis Zone

Flying Battery Zone

Press Garden Zone

Hydrocity Zone

Mirage Saloon Zone

Oil Ocean Zone

Lava Reef Zone

Hidden Palace Zone

Stardust Speedway Zone

Metallic Madness Zone

Titanic Monarch Zone

[danvolodar]

On the sense of scale, in 40k not least of all

The one fictional trope I strongly dislike is "one planet - one location". It is as lazy as it is omnipresent: consider all the "ice planets", "desert planets", "jungle planets" and samesuch that you know. The recent new major update for Factorio suffers from it just as well, but really, it's so internalised I've seen passages like "they moved from the desert to the jungle, and couldn't quite believe they're on the same planet any more" in sci-fi. But just by opening a climate zone map of the Earth, it is trivial to see that a single planet can fit everything from icecaps to deserts and jungles quite comfortably. But this is simply a sign of our sense of scale failing for objects large enough, and this works to suspend disbelief in a surprising number of settings.

Let's turn to Warhammer 40k, then.

To be fair, it doesn't aim to be realistic, per se, but it is a setting about perpetual war, so at least war logistics have to make the very minimum of sense, I feel.

And then there are Imperial hive worlds, with population in billions if not dozens of billions, time and time again shown as conquered by laughably small contingents of warriors - even singular Space Marine chapters! A chapter is notionally a thousand warriors strong. Even if we suppose vehicle and space craft crews are exempt from the number, same as the marines in the Armoury; even if we pad the number with ten times as many chapter serfs as there are marines, it is still many orders of magnitude from making sense.

Industrial societies (which hive worlds are) can easily mobilise some 15% of their population. You'd expect it'd be more for the Imperium, where "there are no civilians in the battle for survival", but let's leave it at that. Actually, let's suppose the number is lower, due to the unbalanced nature of hive world economies - even with 10% recruitable population, a hive world can muster armies numbering in hundreds of millions, if not billions.

These guys are supposed to take on armies numbering in many millions. Literally, that's the entirety of them.

The thought of a man fighting and winning alone against a million opponents is immediately laughable, but once instead of a single man we have "many" - say, a thousand space marines, - this disbelief mechanism turns off - and a chapter, or even a few companies, operating successfully in planetary-grade battles, appears believable.

Now, for the Imperial Guard regiments, the numbers of soldiers in each vary wildly. However, they're regiments, not divisions or army corps, and they've been said to possess up to "tens of thousands" of people. For simplicity's sake, let's suppose a regiment is a hundred thousand soldiers, as an upper estimate. Then to fight an entire hive world head on, the Imperial Guard would need tens of thousands of such regiments deployed. Alright, we can generously suggest that once hive cities start falling under their assault, the invasion force can start recruiting from the locals - but there still needs to be a reasonably strong initial strike force to capture the initial hives, particularly minding that in a lot of cases, hive worlds are said to only have but a handful of these.

A Universe Class - this ship is 12 kilometers long and transports half a million men!

A Universe Class Mass Conveyor is said to be able to transport half a million troops in its holds (and I believe it's the largest transport that exists in any numbers - the runner-up, Cetaceus Class, is at least five times smaller). Even if we suppose these troops come with their whole vehicle and weaponry loadout, there still need to be hundreds of Universe Class ships in orbit to ensure the initial invasion. More will be needed to supply the ground effort, until hives can be conquered to handle some of that burden with the local resources. Meanwhile, in any Warhammer writing, transporting armies across planetary systems and supplying them is usually done in fleets of single digit, perhaps dozens of vessels at most, and these not of the titanic Universe Class, either.

The Devourer Dropship carries five thousand men from orbit to the ground.

What is even worse, there's no canon info on how all of these people and resources are getting into gravity wells. The normal large landing vessels mentioned a few times are the Tetrarch Heavy Lander and the Agantyr-Class Dropship, these carry about three hundred men each from orbit to the ground. That means that deploying the contents of even a single Universe Class would take literally thousands of runs (that is, hundreds of thousands of landings to deploy the first invasion wave alone). If Devourer Dropships, the largest vessels available, are considered, their capacity is about five thousand soldiers (plus vehicles), so it's hundreds of runs per each Universe Class, and tens of thousands for the first wave altogether.

So it's plain to see, I think, that 40k breaks very easily as soon as the scale of what's happening is considered, even with its signature gigantism taken into account. If even the cursory, orders-of-magnitude issues of logistics are handled believably, it becomes a rather different setting, with hundreds or thousands of spaceships needed to constantly run operations to supply a single Imperial Guard planetary campaign. And then the whole issue of unreliable faster-than-light travel (riding cathedrals through hell) very much comes to the fore: it's one thing if a handful vessels has to do it once in a while, but quite another when hundreds of capital ships have to shuttle into and out of a system all the time to support a single planetary invasion.

[tsunderecat413]

here is a collection of miscellaneous audio that i never finished. maybe these ideas will be revisited someday. probably not. most were unfinished due to being saved in a demo version of fl studio, so i will instead mention why i likely won't revisit them.

1. "Beautiful Homestuck Medley": an unfinished cover of sean kingston's iconic "beautiful girls" in the "style" of various homestuck songs. or, in this case, three.

reason for being scrapped: it sucks

chances of being revisited: 3/10

2. "Battle! Cirno": an unfinished cover of tomboyish girl in love from embodiment of scarlet devil in the style of a battle theme from pokémon gen 5. i actually really like this idea, but i need more practice making pokémon styled arrangements.

reason for being scrapped: idk how to make a good pokémon battle theme

chances of being revisited: 6/10

3. "GBAtastic Voyage": a sequel to my previous "snestastic voyage" from sample pack contest xvi this was meant for sample pack contest xviii, but i couldn't figure out how to finish it beyond the intro before the deadline. how unfortunate. i do intend to make a full gbatastic voyage for spc one of these days, but it will not be based on this one obviously lol. this is also the only one that was unfinished for a reason that wasn't being created in the demo version of fl studio.

reason for being scrapped: ran out of time

chances of being revisited: 8/10 (concept), 2/10 (this specific version)

4. "Genesis Does Back": a ym2612 cover of toby fox's "megalo strike back." the intro really doesn't sound that bad. i think this has a lot of potential, honestly.

reason for being scrapped: "megalo strike back" is a bitch to transcribe

chances of being revisited: 7/10

5. "Hammahclobbah": a "bonetrousle" for king dedede. those of you who follow me on soundcloud might know of an abandoned undertale au i created called "kirby: the great underground offensive." this was meant to be for that, but at the time, i had no idea how to get the proteus soundfont that toby fox uses, so i used a crappy sample. i think in this version i actually swapped the sample for the actual soundfont. it's still horribly mistranscribed in the latter, unfinished half.

reason for being scrapped: it sucks and it's irrelevant

chances of being revisited: 2/10

6. "Icecap": an unfinished cover of "ice cap zone" from sonic 3. hey, remember when people thought "ice cap zone" was based on "smooth criminal" for some reason? that was really weird, they don't even sound similar or use similar chord progressions. i think people back in the olden days of the internet were just idiots ;P. anyway, this references that. otherwise, it kinda sucks after the intro.

reason for being scrapped: it also sucks

chances of being revisited: 1/10

7. "One-Winged Angel (Chrono Trigger Cover)": self-explanatory. on the subject of abandoned soundcloud projects, i was once working on an album of video game songs in various different soundfonts. i abandoned that project for... a plethora of reasons, including 1) agood number of the songs were from undertale, and 2) i would rather make actually good covers and mashups than transcribe random video game songs by ear with little to no regard for hardware limitations. anyway, this isn't a bad idea, per se, but it could use a bit of an overhaul.

reason for being scrapped: i don't feel like transcribing the entirety of one-winged angel with snes hardware limitations

chances of being revisited: 4/10

8. "The Final Prelude": a rather fitting end to this thread, not only because it is called "the final prelude," but also because it's the only one that's actually finished... i think. the thing is, i don't even remember why i made this, what it was for. my guess is that it was intended to be for a theoretical homestuck act 8 or something? maybe i could repurpose it for my pseudo friendfic series.

reason for being scrapped: it technically wasn't lol

chances of being revisited: 2/10

[the2dvgstages]

"IceCap Zone" - Sonic the Hedgehog 3

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles (Knuckles) Ending: Just a day in the life of a guardian

So the fact that during Knuckles’ campaign you face an Egg robo imitating Eggman has always been very weird to me

Because the obvious question is: where is the doctor? If I had played the game as it released I may have believed that he’d been killed for good at the end of Sonic’s story! Naturally nowadays I know that’s not the case and I doubt that was ever the idea...but hindsight also brings me to wonder whether we’re seeing the actual, first ever case of Eggman getting upstaged. Granted, there’s no proof of that and it’s much more likely that he’s recuperating from his battle with Sonic and sending his robots to steal the ME again in the meantime...but every time I see thatn short sequence of Eggrobo bringing Knuckles to Mecha Sonic, complete with the latter using the ME for himself...I dunno that gives me some “secret mastermind behind everything” vibes

Also I don’t like how the ME is just suddenly on Sky Sanctuary. The ME getting stolen is one of the most pivotal scenes in Sonic’s story, the fact that it gets stolen off screen this time and with no build up feels very shoddy given this game’s standards

Now let’s talk about one last thing: artstyle. This game’s

So when talking about Classic Sonic’s general aesthetic sense it’s usually stated that he’s got a very abstract feel. Abstractism mixed in with a small dose of “down to earth”. Green Hill would be a regular place were it not for the checkerboard ground, the totems, the twirling flowers, bright colors and of course all the springs and loops etc. Spring Yard is a city in the middle of a forest that just so happens to have a weird pseudo pinball theme going for it. Sonic CD is half an acid trip. There are certainly Zones that feel more grounded, like Scrap Brain or Chemical Plant, but generally speaking there’s a certain balance between zany abstractism and down to earth feel

However...I feel that Sonic 3 is an exception to this

Because when you look at most of its Zones you’ll notice that they are...real life places

Angel Island Zone is...a jungle. That’s it. No checkerboard ground, no super bright colors, no weird structures. Were it not for the obligatory Sonic loops and springs you could take this place, put it in another game and it would work just fine

Same with Marble Garden: it’s just a bunch of grassy ruins, nothing too crazy about it. Icecap has some interesting ice crystal formations in the background but for the most part it’s just an icy mountain. Sandopolis is especially egregious in being just straight up an Egyptian pyramid, because in Act 2 you can see in the background some hyeroglyps depicting humans...which will later create some issues what with the whole deal about the island once being inhabited solely (well presumably) by echidnas. Hell even SA2 of all games had a more interesting looking pyramid!

What I’m trying to say is that Sonic 3′s areas feel to me like they’re trying to veer more into a realistic feel when compared to what came before. There are certainly exceptions, like Carnival Night, Mushroom Hill and Sky Sanctuary, but for the most part the game just doesn’t feel as abstract oor “out of this world” as the others

No I’m not saying that this is Sonic 06 or Frontiers tiers of bland realism, but people tend to forget that Sonic Team’s attempt to make Sonic “live in the real world” was gradual, with the Adventure games already trying to go for more down to earth approaches, Shadow’s game going all gritty and even Sonic X literally putting Sonic in the “real world”. I’m wondering if this process hadn’t already been taking its first baby steps here?

Another difference I’ve always noticed is in how Eggman’s mechs are visually presented

Now the regular Badniks are as goofy as ever, but the boss robots look distinctly more...menacing. The game in general tends to use slightly darker colors and has much stronger “shading” on sprites belonging to bosses (and even the characters to a smaller extent), giving them a greater sense of visual depth. In general their designs are remarkably colder feeling, like look at stuff like the Hydrocity miniboss or Big Arms or especially the new Death Egg Robot when compared to the old one: yes, the latter was menacing but still remarkably goofy looking. The former looks scary. And in a way I like this, these guys are bosses, they’re supposed to look a bit intimidating, but I have a small issue in that there seems to be a bit of an artstyle clash between them and the characters, Eggman included. It’s like the increased level of sprite detail and shading on them makes them feel like they belong to a series with a darker artstyle when compared to the guys who actually inhabit this world. Again: it’s nothing extreme, but it’s foor for thought in hindsight

One design I absolutely do not like and never have is Mecha Sonic’s

Reemember when I said that what makes Metal Sonic’s design so perfect is how it manages to perfectly balance the menacing edgyness of his dark eyes, sharp edges and overall cold feel with the inherent goofiness of still having Sonic’s proportions, hence still making him feel like he genuinely is like a twisted version of Sonic?

Yeah well Mecha here didn’t get the memo. This guy’s design is ugly. He’s 100% coldly mechanical with absolutely no attempt at giving him that inherent Sonic-like cartoony feel. He looks so supet serious yet unlike other serious characters like Shadow he’s also straight up inelegant, with those super thin limbs and big ass head. Hell if it weren’t for the color blue and those metallic spikes (which look like a tacked on wig) I wouldn’t even be able to tell visually that this is supposed to be a robotic replica of Sonic! 

Mecha Sonic looks just a few steps away from looking like one of Eggman’s robots from 06. No really think about it and compare the two, they feel relatively similar in artstyle!

Yeah sure he gets a cool boss fight here don’t get me wrong, hell kudos for being pretty much the only Sonic villain who’s had the brain cells (err processing power?) to use the Master Emerald to initiate a Super transformation, rather than to go hunt down the 7 Emerald. But beyond that I never understood the appeal nor the popularity...well ok let’s face it, they’re all due to a certain mid 2000s sprite animation.

Anyway I really like the ending: not only do we get to see Sonic fly his own plane for once, but we get to see Knuckles essentially thank Sonic for the save with a thumbs up and a smile! That’s really cool! It’s a nice little cap off to their relationship in this game: going from trolling him at every opportunity, to having to trust him to save the ME, to coming to respect the blue guy

This game has honestly my favorite depiction of Knuckles. The reason why he trusts Eggman actually makes sense given the context and character and is not just for a gag (though the fact that Knuckles is not tipped off by Eggman literally torching the island in the first stage is uhhh, but whatever it’s a 16 bit game, such story details were not generally the focus, I’ll let it slide), he goes from an irritating douche bag getting in your way all the time to an honorable ally (friend?) whose respect Sonic and Tails have earned and, above all else, we get a whole campaign dedicated to him just doing his job and doing a good job at it

I’m not a big Knuckles fan in general, mainly because I think that, even by the standards of this series, with character portrayals shifting in quality harder than the economy, Knuckles just doesn’t have much in the way of really good portrayals but he sure has quite a few crap ones. But his first iteration is a genuine win for the guy

[sonic06silver]

:DDDDD i do not believe i kno ur favorite gaming/sonic tracks!! Is it Ok if I ask for u to spare a few in these trying times?? ;;w;; (I'm listening to loud sonic music with my lil speaker LOL)

Yes!! Absolutely!! :D I have quite a few. I'm going to start off with some of the newer stuff that you might not be familiar with.

Sonic Mania's soundtrack (YouTube / Spotify ) is stellar all around.

Standout tracks:

Lights, Camera, Action! (Studiopolis Zone Act 1)

Hi-Spec Robo Go! (Hard Boiled Heavy Boss)

Rogues Gallery (Mirage Saloon Zone Act 2)

--

The vocal tracks from the newest game, Sonic Frontiers, were spot on for me. They perfectly encapsulate the vibe of the Sonic series for me. However, if you have any intention of playing Sonic Frontiers, I would hold off on listening to these until then.

I’m Here (feat. Merry Kirk-Holmes)

Undefeatable (feat. Kellin Quinn)

Break Through It All (feat. Kellin Quinn)

Find Your Flame (feat. Kellin Quinn & Tyler Smyth)

--

Sonic Generations (YouTube / Spotify) was Sonic's 20th anniversary game. Pretty good if you want to listen to some new takes on older tracks! There's also a 3DS version (YouTube / Spotify), which features entirely different levels than the console version. I enjoy the remixes they did for both games.

Personal favorites:

City Escape (Classic) - Sonic Generations

City Escape (Modern) - Sonic Generations

Collection Room (Door Into Summer) - Sonic Generations

Emerald Coast (Act 1) - Sonic Generations 3DS

Boss: Big Arm - Sonic Generations 3DS

Boss: Biolizard - Sonic Generations 3DS

--

Lots of great stuff in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)'s OST (YouTube):

His World (Theme of Sonic)

His World (Zebrahead Version)

White Acropolis (Snowy Peak)

Crisis City

Aquatic Base (Level 1)

Aquatic Base (Level 2)

Flame Core (Volcano)

--

I think you already know that I'm a big fan of the Sonic Adventure/Sonic Adventure 2 soundtracks. Both are easily my all-time favorite video game soundtracks. I'll list some of my favorites, anyway, though.

Sonic Adventure:

Azure Blue World (Emerald Coast)

Pleasure Castle (Twinkle Park)

At Dawn (Speed Highway)

The Dreamy Stage (Casinopolis)

Be Cool, Be Wild and Be Groovy (Icecap)

Leading Lights (Lost World)

Bad Taste Aquarium (Hot Shelter)

Crank the Heat Up!! (Final Egg)

Big Fishes at Emerald Coast - Sonic Adventure

Sonic Adventure 2:

Keys the Ruin (Pyramid Cave)

Soarin' Over the Space (Cosmic Wall)

Bright Sound (Dry Lagoon)

Masters of the Desert

Won't Stop, Just Go! (Green Forest)

That's the Way I Like It (Metal Harbor)

--

Miscellaneous tracks I enjoy:

High and Broken - Sonic and the Secret Rings

Catch Me If You Can - Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity

Un-gravitify - Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity

Door Into Summer - Knuckles' Chaotix

No Way Through - Sonic and the Secret Rings

Wrapped in Black - Sonic Rush

Iron Jungle - Shadow the Hedgehog

Lost Impact - Shadow the Hedgehog

--

Lastly, here are some non-Sonic game OSTs that I enjoy!

Blinx: The Time Sweeper

The Sims

The Sims 2

NiGHTS Into Dreams

Jet Set Radio

Jet Set Radio: Future

--

I have plenty of more songs that I could recommend, but this has already gotten really long, so I will leave it off at that. :] I hope you enjoy listening to some of these!

[bearhiko]

ICECAP ZONE // ACT 1

Sorry it's been a bit haha

[sapphanimates]

I've been finding weird connections between newer Pokémon games and Pokepark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure for the Wii? Like how the Snowscape music from New Pokémon Snap sounds kinda like a slowed down and reworked Icecap Zone theme? Or how Grusha's gym test in Scarlet/Violet is essentially a fundamentally worse version of Empoleon's Snow Slide? Honestly, it just might be me making these ties, because I really don't think Game Freak or anyone else in the Pokémon community really cares about this one obscure game, but lemme know if you agree or just have fond memories of this game.

[blazehedgehog]

The Super Mario Bros. Movie has been a meteoric success, which is significant because animated films typically don't do as well as live action ones, doubly so as a video game adaptation film. In this vein, do you hope that when Sonic one day have an animated feature film (obviously not the next one since it's a live-action sequel), it would have a similar success like the Mario movie? Not necessarily a billion-dollar one, but maybe more successful than the live-action ones?

That would be nice, yeah. In the back of my mind I wonder if they're watching how well Mario does being so pure and faithful to the source material. Because when you think about it, there isn't actually a lot in the Sonic movies that's actually directly from the games.

There's a lot of inspiration, sure. You'll catch something like Agent Stone working at a coffee shop called "The Mean Bean", but that's a small background thing. Or Sonic will grab a piece of trash and go snowboarding with it, stuff like that. But it's not like he's IN THE ACTUAL ICECAP ZONE, with the ICECAP ZONE MUSIC PLAYING while he does it, you know? Which Mario has. Cranky Kong tells Mario to "pick his kart" and he plops down in front of the interface from the game while a riff on the Mario Kart 8 selection music plays. And then, when they get out driving down Rainbow Road, you hear a brief, soaring orchestral version of the SNES Rainbow Road music.

And that's really nice, you know?* It's not making excuses for itself. For all the work they did redesigning Sonic to not be so creepy looking in those Paramount movies, Mario did the one thing that makes the Sonic movies look like they're still embarrassed of the video games. Sonic winks to people who know the games, whereas Mario makes it the whole subtext. Lumas and Koopa Troopas and Kongs all over the place.

Though, to be clear: the Mario movie also does go out of its way to make a "new version" of the Mario Universe specific to the movies. We get a lot of characters in this movie that have never ever been seen in the games. We get to see Mario's whole family, they suggest Peach might have a mysterious origin story, little elements like that which the movie "owns."

But regardless, it's more pure, you know? The Mario movie feels more like Mario than the Sonic movies feel like Sonic, or at least, I think so.

So I imagine, as pre-production of the third Sonic movie continues, they're looking closely at what Mario's doing right and discussing what lessons they would be willing to apply going forward. Though, certainly, if they're adapting Sonic Adventure 2 now, that lends itself more than anything else to Sonic being in a world of humans.

But hey, fingers crossed for Live & Learn over the final battle, right?

And maybe, just maybe, we'll get a Sonic movie some day that's all animation. As I left the theater, I was definitely wondering what a Sonic movie would look like if it was like that. Probably sort of like Night of the Werehog, but updated with more expensive rendering techniques, right? It would be pretty nice.

*To the person who complained to me months ago that the Sonic movies needed to include more game music, and I tried to find an excuse for that: I'm sorry for everything I said.

[samobservessonic]

Stringer is taking the lead story this time and giving us another oneshot, this time with Casanova's incredibly detailed art back in the mix. I do love these backgrounds - they look like they’d be at home on one of those fantasy jigsaw puzzles you’d get back in the 90s. Or maybe those aren’t as common as I think they are. Regardless, that’s what it makes me think of

It also looks as if Amy’s been left at home for some reason (Booo!) and we’re getting a boys’ day out. I’ve been meaning to say this for a while, but I do like that Johnny is taller than the other characters, as it makes him stand out a bit more. I think that even if I was adapting the StC characters to modern Sonic designs, I’d still picture Johnny as being taller than the others. Probably more like Vanilla and Vector’s height?

Anyway, I’m getting distracted. We join our guys as they head to somewhere that’s simply called The Frozen Zone (I guess they couldn’t use Icecap, since that’s on the Floating Island), which they’ve heard needs some assistance from Robotnik. Poor Tails is so cold that he wants faux fur on top of his real fur, but Sonic is having none of that

Dr. Quack from the Archie Comics severely regretting booking his holiday to the Pleasant Zone right now

Turns out they were frozen by this robot and not to be a hater, but I’m not really digging this generic robot design. I think what StC is missing at this stage is more larger robot designs in the games (that aren't piloted by Robotnik) to pull from. Because they do keep using these sort of level boss robot characters a lot and if they’d had more game designs to use in this role I think it’d be a bit more interesting than some of the ones we’ve had so far

Anyway, robot’s gone now. So, I guess not actually the antagonist of this story, since we’re only four pages in

Sonic is indeed too smart to believe that’s it, so the three of them head off to find a way to rescue both the residents of this zone and also Johnny, who once again has the bad luck of not getting his time to shine in this issue. Y’know, for all I’ve heard people think of Porker as the coward (which imo is a misunderstanding of his trauma, but that’s getting off-topic), he really is the one on the front line with Sonic a lot. Probably because they need him as the genius character that Tails isn’t established as yet, but still

I think I’ve scrolled past this guy on the Sonic wiki before. Anyway, he’s the actual villain and he has a lot more of those robots. He makes no bones about how you can guess where he’s going with a name like The Chiller

That’s Porker and Tails out

Sonic’s right, might as well get this over with

Sonic has about as much patience for this guy as I do. Though I am amused at the very British temperature scale in the background

Then again, maybe this guy was ahead of his time and could help us with global warming?

Oh look, the “It’s a fair cop, Guv’nor, etc!” panel that people use to bring up how British StC is. I mean, they’re not wrong about that

Now Sonic is literally saying that this guy is a bad villain and could use his skills to help people instead, which the Chiller instantly agrees with. I know I spent the last few pages ragging on this guy, but I do think it’s funny that the story acknowledged he was a pretty terrible villain of the week and came up with a funny solution for that

Which leaves us with a happy ending, as our heroes leave this zone to celebrate. I guess you could say this is the first proper story with the Freedom Fighters being on the run, since the last issue seemed to belong earlier in the timeline than it appeared. This is a perfectly serviceable oneshot story without needing to be more than that, but I already feel like I’m ready for them to dive back into bigger stories