SimonM7

Regardless of if I boot freeloader and pick PAL or not, Sonic Mega Collection NTSC looks funky. There's a gigantic black bar at the bottom. Does this occur with the newer Freeloader that supposedly works on the Wii aswell?

Actually... ... I'm sort of playing this again. When I first had it I finished up all the story things and got the proper ending and all that (curse you emerald hunt at the end, blasted infernal gameplay from hell!) but I never got the S ranks and stuff. Later on I returned to it with the intention of gettin those, but all that gave me was a massive headache (look a few posts up, I'm sure I said so). Now however, with the downloadable content being difficulty levels I reckoned that maybe the "hard" mode wasn't just harder, but different aswell. That's when I noticed you get the "X Episode Completed" achievement for just finishing the hard mode, and I began playing that without aiming for S. What a difference that makes, when dying doesn't automatically ruin everything for you! Also, enemy numbers increase = way more combat = best part about the game in the first place. I still shiver when I think of the day I'll set out to actually grab those S-ranks, but in the meantime I'm actually having fun with this again. Also - I can pretend the city bits/missions never existed! It's a total win. As for the DLC, I'll decide on that when I'm done with the hard mode. Playing Dusty Desert without elise just might be worth it.

Didn't expect IGN to be the party crashers on gamerankings. Hopefully there are plenty of 8s to follow so that the score can pull itself up from the depths of past Sonic endeavours on there.

7.6, not bad at all from a gamespotly perspective!

"Gamebrink" reckons it's worth 81/100. Gaming Age, upon inspection, gave Sonic The Hedgehog an abysmal "F" which apparently equals 5/100 (!) so it's not like they're slapping big numbers on him just cause he's blue. *puts hand in mouth excitedly* Dammit! I was gonna stay neeeuuuutral on this one.

B+ or "85%" off Gaming Age. I think I'm officially setting in motion some genuine excitement from within my heart.

Truest words in the thread. And this counters the earlier statement. I don't really know what kind of jump in graphics you pro-graphics guys are talking about, but I know one thing. When you max out graphics and everything starts looking the same you need to go elsewhere to compete. The whole point of setting the bar "low" with the Wii is for two things to happen. 1. Keeping development cheap so that experimentation is hugely encouraged. 2. Taking away the ability to compete on a technical level, instead forcing devs to take the idea route. I think Dom's example makes for a great counter point. Crysis has been in development ever since the first PC Far Cry came out. That game's selling point are its graphics. Crytek wouldn't want to jeopardise their sure hit by murking up the beaten controls path, because they want to ensure that everybody gets their game. Puttin in Wii controls is a huge gamble, because they'll both alienate "true" FPS gamers, and they can (and will most likely) suck since the game wasn't built around them in the first place. Crysis is a huge, big damn project that'd either make or break Crytek as a team, and they'll want to keep is SUPER conventional as a result. And they will. And it'll sell, because people take a look at it and it's pretty. With the Wii, that whole.. years of developing a crazily expensive engine is simply not even an option. You won't make a game that'll compete on a technical level with something like Crysis so you don't even bother. Instead, from day 1, what goes on in your mind is "how do we use these controls and these input methods in a unique way, how do we create something that truly speaks through its gameplay". That's what's gonna make Wii games THE most interesting games around from a pure gameplay perspective. "We could have both!"-ers need to realise that we really, truly can't. Had the Wii been more powerful, the risk of ports would increase by 10, we'd get nothing but huge projects put on as many platforms as possible, with the Wii version having tacked on Wii controls. What we want is for games to be built on the Wii from the ground up, and the ease, and cost-efficiency of development will ensure that those come out. Once genres form and standards within the Wii control methods start to materialise, development on the Wii will focus more on graphics than they do now, but even then it'll be through clever use of power (think God of War) and art direction (Think Okami) - cheap methods that still has games done faster and cheaper than on competing platforms with games droughts throughout the year except in march and september. People seem to think Nintendo missed a point, but the truth is they got it just fine.

I ran out and got an SD card today and I noticed while poking around the menus that the Wii said it didn't find any photos or movies on the card. Movies huh!? What formats does the Wii support in terms of videos? I know this is totally off topic and I'd put it where it ought to be if I knew where that was. Perhaps a multimedia sticky is in order along with the VC stuff etc?

Are there more than one skin for each car? Because the one I just got for the Firefly was pretty rubbish.

I'm pretty sure by analogue sticks he meant a game you play with analogue sticks, you disgusting PS3 defender type person you!!

And they made Berserk of it! But with more ogres and stuff than in reality, presumably.

God I wish I had an SD card. My brain is coming out.

But the system is still super young, and all the titles you mention are all launch games. I find it admirable that they all leave us with positive feelings at all. Compare these to what the DS had, because DS the IDEA was a lot stronger than its titles for a long time.

Horrible first impressions. I mean the screen tear/wobble is awful, the framerate irratic, the amount of stuff you're supposed to keep track of plus wiggling the controller = hate. Then it gets fun. And then some more fun. Now I'm having fun with it and the niggles I had are not as pronounced anymore but they do keep it from feeling any brand of fantastic. But it's fun, and it suggests grandeur from upcoming games, I like that.

Official Red Steel forum, developer posted "just wait for Red Steel 2!" in a context that made it seem like the real deal. Also, sales have been real good. Ubisoft recently commented on the importance of owning IP, using Red Steel, Assassin's Creed and Rayman as examples. Both of these items are from certain places, but I can't possibly be arsed to look them up right now. Eurogamer and Red Steel forums anyway. on topic: Sonic is fast.

YEAH RIGHT! If by "win" they mean "finish fourth every other race" then sure. These people haven't even played the games properly.

Sadako comes crowling out the screen I bet!

To be perfectly truthful I never had even the slightest problem with the camera in Sonic 06. The only real problem I have with those games in terms of control is when they can't be relied on, for instance in the dreadful halfpipes that plague levels like the forest one. That and when the level seems deliberately designed to have you slightly just brush against a wall and have Sonic stop entirely. Nobody in their right mind tries to control the camera with the right stick, you simply would "feel" where things are in relation to Sonic and simply adjust the camera when it's absolutely needed. The bottom line here is that while the camera was twitchy because it tried to sometimes force certain movements in the Adventure games, in Sonic 06 I thought it was fine. Indeed I feel that this is most likely true, as it's been the consistent truth throughout all Sonic games including SA1, 2 and 06. Heroes and Shadow interupted this with key hunts and rubbish like that. But here I sort of feel like.. Sonic is keeping his pace, going where HE wants to go, leaving you to only change paths whenever HE decides that you can. I was sort of hoping that you can change what to attack with the d-pad, or maybe even have some Sonic Rush bonus stage type stuff where you need to point at certain things or draw certain shapes to have him do a trick and gain rings/speed/whatever. It seems to me that the input is minimal to help those along that couldn't deal with the speed and the camera before instead of just fixing the levels where they needed to be fixed, and have the controls make sense where they needed to but didn't. Of course, all of this is backlash waste as a result of the way they messed up 06 (which I truly felt had a really solid foundation!) and it's just my biggest fears in regards to this speaking. I saw on Dante's list that this is done by the UGA guys that handled Sonic Riders, which I thought was excellent, so I'll keep faith. *crosses every finger-like thing I've got* I'll buy it and like it regardless. :}

For starters I'd line up and shoot some of its supposed "fans".

I saw this on Gamersyde Diaries. It looks so nuts. It's like a B movie version of Shadow of The Colossus but with giant robots and alien ants.

If that means an episode for Blaze, I'm going to.. I dunno... Lick someone or something.

My biggest worry is about.. you know.. what's actually fun about it. Broken as Sonic 06 was, the combat was excellent. Mixing up slide tackles with homing attacks and bouncing on the ground to take out big clusters of enemies sometimes approached Sega magic of old. Here it seems like you just flick the controller whenever the game wants you to. Camera being good? I've seen instances in videos where it clips into walls - and this is a STATIC camera, supposedly! I'm much more worried about this than I ever was, post demo, about Sonic 06, so needless to say this still has to prove itself. To me at least. The load times should be shorter by default, and there's no mission based town bits, so I expect it to automatically be less frustrating to play based on that alone.

I can show you a video of me playing where it looks good. Issues are mainly with load screens being littered everywhere, and a huge chunk of pointless "mission based" town bullshit.

Didn't PSW give Sonic The Hedgehog 9.5 or something? These first scores mean absolutely nothing.

Um. Where's that from? Give Us The Game Early And Ee'll Give It a Good Score monthly?