I'm reposting this message from a few days ago.
But first, remember the most important thing: SA is the best.
F-Man: I agree. You know why it's like that, right? It's because Sonic is going downhill. :(
(I was just talking about this at another forum earlier today.)
I haven't played Shadow the Hedgehog, though.
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I mostly agree with magnum12:
-High % of good stages, yes...
1. Nah, that'd probably be Sonic 3. I liked S2, SCD, and S&K more. S3&K is good,
but only when the two games are locked-on. S3 just isn't as good as the others for
stage design and music (in my opinion, of course), and I hate that it has no continues.
2. SA's camera is evil (as if SADX's unreliable Free Camera wasn't bad enough),
but SA2's is way worse. It snaps back when the character moves, and it's the most stubborn
camera ever when it comes to pulling through walls (a problem that is in most games to some degree).
It's almost impossible to pull it out from behind a wall without jumping 30 feet out away from the platform.
*SPLASH!* NO! *camera pulls through to show Sonic dying*
3. True, except I don't mind Knuckles's music (still not my favourite, though).
-My main complaint is that the extra characters almost always bring inferior gameplay.
Knuckles has hunting. Big has fishing. Gamma's stages are okay, but the SA2 versions aren't so great.
Amy had slowed-down Sonic stages. Teams from SH made the controls bad and added
dumb puzzles and excessive fighting (made worse by the controls).
Tails was okay, though. His gameplay wasn't quite as good as Sonic's, but
I wouldn't mind seeing him as a playable character in newer games (without his Cyclone, of course).
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S3DB is really 2-D. I define a 3-D game as a game that uses three-dimensional polygons for its graphics.
S3DB is obviously pre-rendered. The gameplay acts kind of 3-D, but it's not completely 3-D.
And it doesn't use the perspective effect (the "Stretchy Polygon Effect") to make distant objects smaller,
except in the Special Stages. (Those are kind of 3-D. At least they use layers
and some kind of cool background distortion trick.)
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Groudon, did you say Shadow's Spin Dash is worse than SA2's??? Uh, oh.
Why'd they have to mess with it? Just leave it like SA: one button has one function.
Rolling makes Sonic smaller (to squeeze through small spaces), and it also can break boxes.
Why make all this other junk and put it on the Action Button?
SA2 has a Zelda-inspired roll move (of course, Link is slower than Sonic). What's ShtH have? (Do I want to know?)
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Graphics: SA2B is the best so far, in my opinion, although every existing Sonic game looks
Playstation 2 at best. Of course, this doesn't count Sonic 06.
I looked at the SADX model yesterday, and it surprised me.
Sonic mostly looks like in SA2B. His arms and legs are terrible, and the ugly, white shine
shows the polygons on his spikes really clearly, but his face is surprisingly smooth.
Also, his face looks... taller... or something... that must be why his head looks so flat.
Heroes wasn't bad (its shine effect was between SADX's and Sonic06's for quality...
sort of a "smooth, shiny plastic" look), but the model was a little blockier.
So,
SA2B: smooth characters, realistic, surprisingly clear textures, a little too much pop-up
SH: okay characters, nice-looking first level, N64-like last level, SA2B-quality draw distance and a bit of overlap
SADX: N64-like, with a few nice textures, a pretty nice Sonic model, nice water (and 2 effects at once)...
and terrible draw distance (object pop-up, level clipping, overlap glitches), and a glitched framerate
Sonic06 (at the top for quality): smooth characters, good textures, unknown-quality water
(in that jungle place, it has reflections like Starfox Adventures, but the beach place doesn't seem so great),
decent draw distance that may still be fairly flawed (it looks like the horizon is about to start
covering the too-empty boardwalk in that one picture taken from the lighthouse)