Mr. Eight-Three-One | Sonic the Hedgehog CD (Windows 95) Gameplay @MrEightThreeOne | Uploaded 8 years ago | Updated 21 hours ago
Slowly getting motivation back to make videos...these last few weeks have felt really meh, to be quite honest. But I guess I shall save the details some other time...
Here is something a little bit unusual from me -- a video of a Sonic game, of all things! Now, you are probably asking me why I'm even bothering to make a video of a game that has been overdone beyond all belief. You would be partially correct -- except this particular version hasn't been overdone. In fact...it's been way underdone! For some strange reason, this version of the game, despite being one of the well-known versions, has almost no proper footage on YouTube. I can partially understand why though -- the game pretty much runs on nothing after Windows 98 without a patch, and even if you can get it to run with a patch, it's forced into 256-color mode, which almost no modern screen recorder can handle. I haven't even tried on Windows 8 or 10 either, which locks you out of 256 colors.
This is the 1996 PC port of what most consider the only worthwhile game to ever be released on the ill-fated Sega CD/Mega-CD addon. I played this via PCem with Windows 95 installed. Unfortunately this wasn't without its problems; PCem is very spotty at best and extremely resource heavy, but it was pretty much the only option I had. DOSBox doesn't play CD audio in Windows 95 for God-knows-why, VMware was incredibly inaccurate as usual, and Virtual PC 2007 doesn't even run on Windows 10, so it was pretty much the only thing I could use. Using a real PC was out of the question because I'm at university right now, far out of reach of any old computers. So, sadly, you'll just have to bear with the choppy audio and wonky frame rate.
This is a pretty standard gameplay video, don't expect any real skill. In fact several parts of this video are going to be painful to watch. I didn't practice at all for this and I wasn't really sure what I wanted it to be going in. In the future if I ever get good enough I may consider a full walkthrough, though getting 100% on this game to most people is destroying all the robot generators, all the Metal Sonic projectors, and getting all the time stones, all of which are a LOT easier said than done. Never the less, the video itself mostly just covers Palmtree Panic and Collision Chaos. I apologize in advance for any cringe I cause on my poor performance on the Collision Chaos boss.
Now, as for the quality of the port itself...I'd say it's mostly a decent port. It did make a few sacrifices in order to run on computers of the time (like the lack of water effects in Tidal Tempest or the low sampling rate of the sound effects), but for the most part it's the same game we all know and love. It's definitely inferior to the Mega-CD version, as there are a lot more tradeoffs than there are enhancements, but most casual players aren't likely to notice them. Now, when the game was ported to Sonic Gems Collection...yeah, most of the sacrifices weren't exactly excusable.
Interesting thing to also note -- although a lot of people attribute the remastered cut scenes to first appearing here, they actually weren't fully remastered until the game appeared on Gems Collection. Here, the videos are still the same resolution as they were in the Mega-CD version, and are compressed to 256 colors. However, that still means they're much higher frame rate and still have a whole lot more detail than the original 16 color cut scenes we got in the Mega-CD version, so it's still a major improvement. We wouldn't get them in full detail until a little while later though.
One last thing -- the American soundtrack is used in EVERY RELEASE of this version. Yes, that includes the Japanese and European releases. I'm of the opinion the JP/EU soundtrack is superior, but the US soundtrack has its own appeal, I think. Even so, you could probably really easily make a new disc image of the game with the audio tracks replaced, so it's really not THAT big a loss. Also, interesting to note that Past tracks were converted to CD audio for this release (they were in-game PCMs in the Mega-CD version, the precise reason they weren't changed in the American release), so if you were really desperate to replace those (can't imagine why, but...eh, different strokes), now you can.
Enjoy. If I get skilled enough at this game I may consider a full walkthrough some day. Or perhaps just do a casual walkthrough if demand is that high.
Slowly getting motivation back to make videos...these last few weeks have felt really meh, to be quite honest. But I guess I shall save the details some other time...
Here is something a little bit unusual from me -- a video of a Sonic game, of all things! Now, you are probably asking me why I'm even bothering to make a video of a game that has been overdone beyond all belief. You would be partially correct -- except this particular version hasn't been overdone. In fact...it's been way underdone! For some strange reason, this version of the game, despite being one of the well-known versions, has almost no proper footage on YouTube. I can partially understand why though -- the game pretty much runs on nothing after Windows 98 without a patch, and even if you can get it to run with a patch, it's forced into 256-color mode, which almost no modern screen recorder can handle. I haven't even tried on Windows 8 or 10 either, which locks you out of 256 colors.
This is the 1996 PC port of what most consider the only worthwhile game to ever be released on the ill-fated Sega CD/Mega-CD addon. I played this via PCem with Windows 95 installed. Unfortunately this wasn't without its problems; PCem is very spotty at best and extremely resource heavy, but it was pretty much the only option I had. DOSBox doesn't play CD audio in Windows 95 for God-knows-why, VMware was incredibly inaccurate as usual, and Virtual PC 2007 doesn't even run on Windows 10, so it was pretty much the only thing I could use. Using a real PC was out of the question because I'm at university right now, far out of reach of any old computers. So, sadly, you'll just have to bear with the choppy audio and wonky frame rate.
This is a pretty standard gameplay video, don't expect any real skill. In fact several parts of this video are going to be painful to watch. I didn't practice at all for this and I wasn't really sure what I wanted it to be going in. In the future if I ever get good enough I may consider a full walkthrough, though getting 100% on this game to most people is destroying all the robot generators, all the Metal Sonic projectors, and getting all the time stones, all of which are a LOT easier said than done. Never the less, the video itself mostly just covers Palmtree Panic and Collision Chaos. I apologize in advance for any cringe I cause on my poor performance on the Collision Chaos boss.
Now, as for the quality of the port itself...I'd say it's mostly a decent port. It did make a few sacrifices in order to run on computers of the time (like the lack of water effects in Tidal Tempest or the low sampling rate of the sound effects), but for the most part it's the same game we all know and love. It's definitely inferior to the Mega-CD version, as there are a lot more tradeoffs than there are enhancements, but most casual players aren't likely to notice them. Now, when the game was ported to Sonic Gems Collection...yeah, most of the sacrifices weren't exactly excusable.
Interesting thing to also note -- although a lot of people attribute the remastered cut scenes to first appearing here, they actually weren't fully remastered until the game appeared on Gems Collection. Here, the videos are still the same resolution as they were in the Mega-CD version, and are compressed to 256 colors. However, that still means they're much higher frame rate and still have a whole lot more detail than the original 16 color cut scenes we got in the Mega-CD version, so it's still a major improvement. We wouldn't get them in full detail until a little while later though.
One last thing -- the American soundtrack is used in EVERY RELEASE of this version. Yes, that includes the Japanese and European releases. I'm of the opinion the JP/EU soundtrack is superior, but the US soundtrack has its own appeal, I think. Even so, you could probably really easily make a new disc image of the game with the audio tracks replaced, so it's really not THAT big a loss. Also, interesting to note that Past tracks were converted to CD audio for this release (they were in-game PCMs in the Mega-CD version, the precise reason they weren't changed in the American release), so if you were really desperate to replace those (can't imagine why, but...eh, different strokes), now you can.
Enjoy. If I get skilled enough at this game I may consider a full walkthrough some day. Or perhaps just do a casual walkthrough if demand is that high.
