#useless data collection hooray

[spacecravat]

link to google sheet for more data and larger view

Total number of bg3 fics as of February 21, 2024: 20,669

I was trying to figure out what counts as a BG3 rare pair so I compiled some stats. Included technically romanceable/fuckable characters (plus Gortash) in the screenshot. Anything highlighted in red has under 50 fics.

[blobsreviewsofgame]

Sonic Generations (Nintendo 3DS)

Sonic Generations 3DS is a platformer by Dimps released for the Nintendo 3DS in 2011. I don’t like it.

The story is a bit different compared to the console/PC version. Besides Tails, none of Sonic’s friends are in it.

Classic Sonic is running around in Green Hill Zone for some reason and comes across the purple halloween ghost called “Time Eater”. Skipping ahead in time, we see the preparation of the blue hedgehog’s birthday party. Sonic comes across it too early with Tails being the only one at the place. Then the time eater appears and they both get sucked into the white void (that is now just a level select menu).

Eventually they come across their classic counterparts, team up and find out why this all happens. The writing is a bit better compared to the console counterparts but it still isn’t the greatest Sonic has to offer in terms of story. Like Tails and Classic Tails actually doing something besides talking in the story.

But the cutscenes are like Sonic Rush Adventure and Colors DS’ cutscenes, sadly. There’s a dialog box with text, characters do grunts, poses and mimics and sometimes they slide across the screen. It’s not like fully animated cutscenes with voice acting is an impossible task on 3DS (Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice does this) but it’s probably more so because the game just got rushed.

Gameplay isn’t too hot here either.                                                          

Classic Sonic plays through the levels in 2D. He can run, jump and spindash, like always. The rolling here actually works more like how rolling works in the old games than Generations does on consoles but the levels never really use rolling in some clever way. It also has the Game Gear Sonic 1 rolling glitch. Just jump and roll constantly and you’ll gain speed instantly. The first 3 levels for him are basically just 1:1 the layout of the original game and the levels afterwards are either straight lines, waiting to jump on slowly moving platforms or homing attacking à la Sonic 4.

Yes, Classic Sonic has the homing attack. More specifically after he watches Modern Sonic do it a bunch of times, he learns the ability (aka: after the 1:1 layouts of the original games from the Classic era). He also watches him do the boost later on but Classic Sonic doesn’t actually learn that, making the cutscene pretty useless. Odd.

Now, Modern Sonic plays through the levels in… 2D. Oof, but hey, because this is Dimps here, the levels are going to be like Sonic Rush where you do tricks and stuff, right? No.

Modern Sonic is mostly just about walking on even ground boosting through a lot of enemies, waiting to jump on slowly moving platforms or homing attacking à la Sonic 4. No tricks to fill up the boost meter, no satisfying chiptune crunches for soundeffects, just boring. There is an attempt at making setpieces but those are often not connected to the main gameplay (platforming, memorizing and looking cool) and instead are something like a minigame (press A at a specific time, hold down the boost button, etc.). 

Boosting is even slower than it was in the previous handheld games. It almost feels like a run button with invincibility, it’s that slow feeling.

Speaking of Classic Sonic learning the homing attack only later, Modern Sonic only learns the stomp later too by Tails giving him “30% lighter shoes”. …Even though he was already able to stomp in both versions of Sonic Colors.

There aren’t 3 zones per era anymore too. We have Green Hill, Casino Night and Mushroom Hill for the Classic era; Emerald Coast and Radical Highway for the Dreamcast era and Water Palace and Tropical Resort (from Colors DS because Classic Sonic gets a 1:1 layout again and maybe Modern Sonic tries to be like Colors Wii but it’s not 1:1 there) for the Modern era.

Why not include Heroes or something from the Advance games for the Dreamcast era and something from Sonic Rush Adventure for the Modern era (because Rush’s Water Palace is included for some reason)? 

Bosses are also here, just like in the console games.

The 3 character bosses are always racing levels where the enemy is hindering you with their attacks if you’re close around them. The levels for them also reuse assets from a level you already played through but with a different layout and background music.

The actual bosses are rather okay but a bit soulless feeling.

The final boss from Sonic 3 is a bit too slow and you can’t always counter his attacks which is a missed opportunity and the way he gets defeated is lame. It starts nicely with the Sonic Rush-like build-up (camera zooms in 3-times while being frame freezed) but then he’s doing a falling animation, getting stuck in the air and fading to white.

Biolizard is dragging the attacks a bit out too much and it can feel like forever before showing its weakspot. And it doesn’t do the Sonic Rush build-up at the end… aw.

Egg Emperor (isn’t that from the Dreamcast era again?) is okay but Eggman’s voiceclips get repeated way too often and the spinball looks strange while swapping planes because it’s often tilted for no reason.

But it does have the Sonic Rush build-up! Except it doesn’t do freeze-frames this time and he just freezes there while explosion.gif animation files are pasted on top of the boss model a lot.

But at least the time eater fight is actually better than the one in the console version.

Story mode doesn’t require to play 9 missions in the 3DS version btw but we do have to play 7 special stages. And no, Super Sonic won’t be playable in normal levels.

Special stages in Generations 3DS are basically remakes of the ones from Sonic Heroes. You control a running Modern Sonic in a giant tube where you go left or right to collect colorful spheres. Collecting them gives you boost energy. Sometimes, you also need to jump over spike bombs by jumping through dash rings.

The goal of the special stage is to catch up with the emerald, like Heroes. Unlike Heroes though, it’s super easy and the controls work. Hooray?

If you thought missions are just absent in this version, well, no, not entirely. There’s a separate mission mode here with 100 missions. You unlock them randomly by playing the online mode or you can spend 5 playcoins to unlock 1 mission. If you don’t want to play online, that’s 50.000 steps to be able to play all 100 missions.

Missions are now always under a more stricter time limit and require you to e.g. collect a bunch of rings, defeat a bunch of enemies, earn more time by destroying monitors and getting to the goal or not getting hit once. Sometimes it has new layouts, most of the time, it doesn’t. It takes about 2 hours to play through all 100 of them, a bit more than how long story mode takes. 

Playing through a mission also unlocks something like illustrations and pictures, high-poly 3D models or music from past games (which you can only listen to; also in standby mode with headphones).

There’s also something I wish the actual Generations would’ve had: Online VS mode.

You can play this game with other people online and you can choose to play either the 16 main levels or race to the emerald in the 7 special stages… in about 10 to 15 frames per second. It’s not very pretty. The races also work via local play (wireless 2 players with both having cardridges) but surprisingly, I haven’t found anyone yet who also has Generations 3DS. Oh, and it shares a profile card with each other which shows what ranks you got in each level, a screenshot from a game of your choice, your favorite Sonic the Hedgehog game (even the ones you don’t expect are there), your score (which depends on winning and losing in online battles and the amount of times you played a stage) and how long you’ve been a Sonic fan.

There’s also a time trial mode here which lets you upload your record online, like Colors DS. You can also share time trial ghosts and profile cards through streetpass but good luck finding someone via streetpass that also has streetpass data for Sonic Generations 3DS.

Sometimes it also rewards you if you’re doing something online by giving you a random item for your next playthroughs of a level, like 10 rings or an electric shield.  Fun fact: You can only get an electric shield for Modern Sonic that way.  Anyways…

The music in Generations 3DS is basically the best part of it but unlike Generations on consoles, you can’t swap the music out with something else. I think Dimps could’ve at least added an option to play music from your SD Card while playing levels because I don’t want to hear Radical Highway’s awful remix ever again.

My 3DS Activity Log says I’ve put in 171 hours into Sonic Generations 3DS but would I recommend it? No, absolutely not. While it does have a ton of useless unlockable content, playing it is a chore or just a borefest. It’s clearly a cashgrab and not much else. Don’t bother with it, okay? It’s just draining.

There, @squadalaguy! I finally reviewed it! :P