Sonic games look so fucking good

[Wraith]

I was reading a thread on Neogaf about Parallax scrolling and which games were the best at it. Sonic kept coming up as a contender, and it made me realize just how much detail went into the backgrounds of the stage, even back then. The backgrounds would respond to your movement perfectly, from how much higher or lower you were in the level to how far you progressed and what was going on in the story.

 

 

 

 

  

The attention to detail is honestly insane in Sonic 3 and CD in particular. It's just jampacked with shit to look at even though they know the player's going to be breezing buy and younger ones probably won't even be paying attention. It's jam packed with shit to look at.

This philosophy of making everything nice and detailed and colorful extended to the 3D games, but I feel like the hardware was holding them back a fair bit until heroes, who's environments still hold up pretty well.

Grand Metropolis is a favorite of mine. A huge, bustling futuristic city with lots of moving parts like flying cars and machines and signs and shit.

 

 

But then the boost era is where Sega really started going all out and making some of the best looking games around again. Unleashed, of course, holds the fuck up wonderfully even now. 

 

Sonic Colors may be on the Wii but it's no slouch either. It has the best looking level in the series imo with Planet Wisp:

 

The nature/technology clash pretty much captures the spirit of the older Sonic games without really being a rehash or anything like that. It's awesome. The rest of the enviroments are also really creative and detailed to the point where I kind of wish the game was on an HD console. 

 

Then Sonic Generations came along and combined the more wacky settings of Colors with the detail and fidelity of Unleashed to create what is the best looking Sonic game imo. It relies pretty heavily on reusing locations but a lot of these places practically feel new with how much detail they added.

     

 

But yeah, those are just some of my favorites. I didn't touch on a lot of things. Talk about which levels and games  in the series look best to you and why. Should be fun

 

 

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

My vote does have to go to Unleashed for the PS3/360. I mean they REALLY pushed the power of those consoles really well. The scenery if just really beautiful and well done.

Seriously look at this:

This one is a personal favorite because you can see the temple in the background

I'm telling you this game looks awesome and I want to see more games like this. It has Pixar styled graphics but it is very Sonic-ish at the same time. Plus there are enough lighting and texture to draw a middle between surreal and realistic.

[Person]

On the topic of the Classic games, Sega REALLY knew how to push the Genesis' inferior graphical qualities to look better than the SNES. Sonic 1 made a point of having as much color and detail on screen as a way to prove that the limited palette didn't matter as long as it was used correctly. Case in point:

Now, I love Super Mario World, maybe even more than Sonic 1, but there's no doubt which one is more visually impressive.

In my opinion, Sonic CD has some of the best art design of the series.

The wacky, alien looking worlds are just so unique.

As for the 3D games, I'd agree with Unleashed and Generations. And yes, Sonic Heroes was definitely the best looking "Dreamcast-Era" game. It blew my mind that Shadow the Hedgehog, which used the same assets, looked so much worse. But even that has cool looking levels like Black Comet.

I think that we can all agree that the grand "Worse Sonic Graphics" award goes to Unleashed PS2, for a number of factors: It came out in 2008, when even PS2 graphics still could have looked better, and it can forever be compared to the beautiful HD version.

Spoiler

I really like to rag on this game!

 

 

[Osmium]

I do agree that Sonic 3&Knuckles and Sonic CD are the best looking games in the series. 

One of the backgrounds that impresses me the most is Marble Garden which absolutely goes above and beyond with making the whole area feel enormous and breathtaking. 

Those mountains still blow me away, with their deep purple texture that slowly starts to gradually fade as they become more distant and more encompassed by the hazy sky lying low overhead. They look like they are dozens of miles away showing the vastness of this zone. It gives me the impression it is mid to late morning. The way the foreground is shows that we are quite high above the unfettered forests that showcase the ancient Echidna ruins below, with different layers of trees noticeable behind one another and parts of larger ruins sticking out like sore thumbs. 

 

The lower you get, the more encompassed by the trees you are and the ruins become closer and more detailed. Different textures and colours can be seen and individual pillars are more appropriately more massive looking too. Plants and vines are more noticeable and become more intricate responsibly. The foreground gives you the impression that this is artificial ground you are standing on, covered by grass and weeds over the centuries. The hilly and uneven nature of these structures are due to them being worn down by wind and erosion over centuries. 

The transition from day to night is beautiful too, going from the everyday shades of azure and greens to less vivid at first as the sunlight weakens, to red and purples as the sun approaches the horizon and lowers, finally terminating at denim and completely black for the mountains in the background of Carnival Night. 

 

I also want to talk about Angel Island Zone. 

The zone starts off low in the understory and forest floor of the rainforest. Appropriately the colorus are different shades of green and perhaps darker and dimmer than the first zones in the previous two games, giving a more mysterious feel with music that is perhaps not as cheery as the first zones and the prequels. 

The ground here is natural brown soil and rock covered by a thick level of grass. Waterfalls can be seen along with at least four(!) layers of trees and shrubbery. The trunks of trees at this level are completely covered in foliage. Only occasional holes in the wall show the world outside the forest. Ferns, palm trees, and blue flowers can be seen down here also. (I don't think it's very realistic for palm trees and for plants to be able to flower on a dark forest floor, but whatever, this is fucking Sonic the hedgehog.) 

At the points you rise, the canopy becomes visible and you rise over the huge rainforest. The vivid blue sky is seen, becoming brighter at the horizon, giving it a very tropical feel perhaps even beyond Green and Emerald Hill zones. Brown rock and soil walls accompanied by waterfalls give the whole area a very wet feel also. You can almost feel the spray!! 

But the big change comes in the latter half of the first act and the whole of the second act of course, as the colours go from greens and browns and blues to reds and shades of oranges giving you the impression that this game is starting off pretty hardcore, at least compared two Sonic 1 and 2 and things are gonna be bigger and grander this time. 

The inferno seems to already be cutting down sections of the walls of trees as the lighter parts display, and the trees and shrubbery in the background are more distorted as the fire increases in temperature. It is also noticeable that the foliage in the foreground has gone from green to more of a yellowish tinge as it is burned.  

The almost completely red background of the end of the second act gives it a more apocalyptic feel and it shows how much Eggman can do in just an instant to a zone once lush and full of life. 

Last thing about Angel Island is like is how the battle with Flame Moblie takes place over a thick waterfall, with the texture of the huge wall presumably behind the waterfall being shown in hints of purple against the cyan. I like how this is the climax of Angel Island zone, being really high up, fighting in the spray of a huge waterfall, with a fall being mortal. 

 

There are other zones and things I do wish to discuss but this post has gone on long enough and I'll talk about those things later. 

[LATER BUDDY]

I've always reaaaally loved the usage of silhouetted buildings in the background to both show how hot the area was and how it's due to factory Eggman has setup here. It might not have the most depth in paralax scrolling compared to other levels, but I felt like they've always done a really good job of setting up the atmosphere here in a simplified format. 

[BradAric]

I think all Sonic games have their own beauty, and I'm loving these screenshots...but I particularly wanna give a shoutout to cutscenes in various Sonic games, particularly Unleashed and 06. If the upcoming Sonic movie looks like one of those, I'll be sold. I can't find the particular scene I'm thinking of, but towards the end of Unleashed when Sonic is a Werehog and Dark Gaia first pops up, his fur is just beautifully animated...

[Semi-colon e]

I have always adored the effect in Hydrocity Act 1 and Launch Base Act 2 where the water level matches the background. Coral Cave in Rush Adventure did it too, and the underwater segments look gorgeous.

 

Generations looks so good though too. Unleashed has the better lighting, but I feel Generations looks better because of the style being a nice mixture of cartoony and realistic, while Unleashed leans too much towards realism.

 

I think what made these games look gorgeous was the attention to detail in terms of making every area feel like an actual place. Even in like Shadow and 06, it's still there. Shadow is fairly ugly overall, but Lethal Highway looks pretty awesome, dammit. You feel like you're really deep into the city with broken highways around you and shit falling down everywhere. But then you get to Lost World, and it's trying to do the Mario thing, and it just loses so much of what makes the environments in Sonic games special. Like, Speed Highway Classic had the area that is all indoors, and there's loads of detail in that you can see mannequins in the shops or tables in the cafés. Or like how Crisis City in Generations shows loads of rubble all over the floor and has a bright orange sky, and broken highways in the background. Or the Sonic statues in Hydrocity Act 1. Or the drills in the background of Planet Wisp. Or the fish swimming around in Aquarium Park.

 

Sonic has always been about spectacle, and that's not just the automated sequences. It's also because of what the game shows you as you progress through the levels. It kind of reminds me of Castlevania in that each level or area makes you feel like you're in an actual living world. Castlevania was doing this even in the NES days, with the clock tower looming in the background when you're on the final staircase leading to Dracula (which is in nearly every game since, and almost always looks awesome).

 

I don't need Unleashed style world building really, I just like levels that make you feel like you're really there.

 

Also the heat shimmering in the tornado sections of Crisis City in Generations are absolutely phenomenal, and they're displayed here and there throughout the rest of the zone too. This is why I love Crisis City so much. You feel that intensity, you feel that desolation, you feel that tension.

 

[#AR]

Man...

You know that feeling when you were a kid and looking a something so massive in scale in comparison to you that you widen your eyes, drop your mouth and just utter "wooooooooow..."

Sonic Colors did that to me.

At age 16.

Like...I've always been visually impressed (for the most part) with new main series Sonic games, but I can't think of a single damn moment in my 18 years of being a Sonic fan that have just utterly floored me like the intro to Starlight Carnival

I almost forgot I was playing a Wii game for a minute. 

 

I can never forget how goddamn flabbergasted I was just staring at everything in the background...that whole colorful fleet of ships, the light road...like...it was just magical.

[Hyp3hat]

Starlight Carnival is just ridiculously good looking. I recently gave it a shot on Dolphin with the resolution cranked up and my god. My two picks for 'best looking wii game' are Colours and Mario Galaxy, no-one else seemed to try doing spectacular stuff with the Wii.

[Person]

I remember being absolutely breath taken by Sonic Colors too, especially Starlight Carnival. It's amazing how Sonic Colors looked better than, say, Sonic 06; especially with it running on a graphically inferior console. Even when Starlight Carnival was in All Stars Racing Transformed, it looked nearly identical on next gen hardware.

This specific area in Sonic Colors if my absolute favorite thing in the entire game:

So relaxing, beautiful, and jam-packed with detail and color. Every modern Sonic game should look this great. As much as I liked Sonic Lost World, I think that style is best left to Mario. Even the Genesis games weren't that simplistically rendered. Sonic Colors (and Generations, really) exemplifies to me what Sonic games should look like In 3D. Fantasy/Cartoon lands with a shitload of things to look at; not exactly "realistic", but enough to be believable as if on some kind of alien world.

Sonic Team always seemed to have trouble figuring out what Sonic's visual style should be in 3D. They tried realistic settings in SA1 and SA2, classic inspired worlds in Heroes, ultra realism in Sonic 06, and Pixar-esque visuals in Unleashed. But they really hit a sweet spot with Colors.

Starting with Unleashed, 3D Sonic games started to feel like they were in immersive, deep locations again, like Shroomz's description of Angel Island Zone. I see something like this:

And I think "platforms arranged over a bottomless pit"; a "level". Not that SA2 had bad graphics (in fact, I love the way the highway and Final Rush stages looked), but the locations felt like obstacle courses rather than real worlds. But something like this:

The highway/level is still there, but that's not all. There are flames, a Ferris wheel, moving cars, etc. It still feels like a full world rather than JUST being a path over a pit like SA2 or Shadow, for example. 

Whew. That's over. Didn't think I'd ramble like this. Now I want to play some Sonic Colors.

Spoiler

As a certain side-note, and because I have a relevant profile pic, I'd like to mention that Crash Bandicoot did this "large world on a confined path" thing pretty well.

Crash plays like you're walking through a goddamn hallway, but there's still plenty of visual charm beside that. This makes these levels seem larger than they actually are, and creates a more expansive environment than it actually is. Again, packed full of detail, even though you'll likely be passing by it fairly fast.

 

[Blacklightning]

One thing that bothers me about environments in the later games, fucking gorgeous though they are, is that the picturesque moments are always the most fleeting. Now, it's really not hard to see why - Sonic's literally moved faster than the speed of sound for most of them, and at best you'll usually have about a second to truly appreciate it before your attention needs to be brought back to centre and focus on something that can probably kill you. Even when you're essentially autopathed for the sake of spectacle, you can either run it too long and cut into actual gameplay time, or run it too short and miss out on all the carefully sculpted background architecture they made. Or to put it in practical examples, you can add in lots of really big, long launches where literally nothing happens:

11 hours ago, Wraith said:

Or you can basically just make something briefely visible off to the side when you're on a grind rail or something and hope the player actually has no reason to stay focused on the rail grinding itself:

11 hours ago, Mikyeong said:

This isn't a problem the 2D games tend to have because the camera is always facing one direction. Even though this limits the size of your canvas per se, you'll always be in view of nearly the entire thing, whereas in 3D games it basically becomes its own level design challenge of capitalizing on breaks in the action as best you can, or cleverly directing where the player's focus is. Starlight Carnival is clever in this regard mainly because they're essentially one in the same - whenever there's eye candy, you're always moving towards it. When the star fleet shows up, you're falling into them. When the pathways show up, they literally materialize ahead of you. If you have to hope that the player is looking in the right direction when you want to add something pretty to the level, you're pretty much doing it wrong. And if there was ever a huge, glaring flaw with the art design of modern Sonic games, that is absolutely it. Not hating on what they already have, I should be clear on that - I just think it's the one thing holding them back.

 

On another note, it still boggles my fucking mind that Sonic Team can put together soundtracks, artstyles, graphical fidelity and characters beloved by most of the world and somehow still doesn't have the resources to tie it all together into an amazing game yet.

[Alice Twilight]

Mega Drive titles impress me the most. The console didn't have spectacular specs but I think Sonic games (And SEGA's first party games in general) really pushed the most out of their hardware. Sonic the hedgehog 3 is the best looking game on the system for that reason.

[Agie]

The graphics have usually been a main redeeming point in each game. While some, like Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006 looked kinda bad even for their day (hell, Sonic 2006 was released one year after Kameo: Elements of Power, and the same year as Viva Pinata), many others hold up well.

Hell, it's probably one of Sonic Riders' good points. That game looked amazing for PS2 hardware, and had the best graphics of the sixth generation, having a Dreamcast feel to it while still being up to par with other games on the PS2. A shame the gameplay didn't hold up at all, but hey, give credit where it's due (something I've had trouble with, admittedly).

[Bad Guy]

I've always been partial to the look of Knuckles Chaotix to be honest.

I love the crazy aesthetics, the bright colors, and all the nutty psychedelic shit there is to look at. I love the whole carnival feel of the setting too.

I'm not really sure what more to say about it other then I feel like this game was made for me. I just love it. 

I feel really strongly about the super under appreciated Advance titles too. The aesthetics of these games, particularly 2 & 3 are top notch.

Music Plant to this day remains one of my favorite levels in the series. There's lots of cool ones though. So yeah, Knuckles Chaotix, and the Advance series are for sure my favorites. Some honorable mentions go to Heroes, and of course Sonic CD, but that game gets enough praise

[Re:Ganma_02]

The level and backdrop artwork in Sonic Chronicles are really, really good. Something I feel that they pulled off well is having super simple colour schemes yet still make the levels bright and vibrant and full of detail.

The Zoah Colony is a really good example of how well cold and warm colours can work together too.

Every level in the in the Twilight Cage to me personally feels unique, though I wouldn't at all say they're all perfect. There are some odd design choices here and there, but when it comes to with colour schemes, I can't find anything wrong.

[Bowbowis]

You know how I always say that Sonic and the Black Knight was the last Sonic game I truly liked? Well here's another reason why, the game is positively gorgeous. On a technical level it's graphics may not be on par with the HD version of Unleashed (not that it's a slouch in that department either) but even so the art direction alone more than makes up for that fact.

Some examples (spoilered because the images are rather large):

Spoiler

SatBK packs a ton of detail into its environments and creates a sense of atmosphere that few other game in the series can match. The whole game just oozes its own unique personality and the visuals are a huge part of that. It's clear that the developers had a very clear idea of what they wanted to do with this game and set out to create a medieval fantasy world, in the vein of The Legend of Zelda or The Elder Scrolls, which also facilitated the over-the-top action movie antics that characterized Sonic the Hedgehog pre-Colors (seriously name for me one other series where the Knights of the Round table go surfing inside of an active volcano). The levels in Black Knight also look like actual environments rather than... Whatever the hell this is supposed to be:

Sorry. I hadn't taken a borderline tangential jab at Lost World for a while. I was overdue.

Anyhow, I know people tend to take issue with Sonic games don't have a super bright and colorful artstyle (it's "too realistic for Sonic" or somesuch), but for the atmosphere alone I'd take Black Knight over stuff like Colors and Generations any day of the week.

[Bad Guy]

4 hours ago, Bowbowis said:

You know how I always say that Sonic and the Black Knight was the last Sonic game I truly liked? Well here's another reason why, the game is positively gorgeous. On a technical level it's graphics may not be on par with the HD version of Unleashed (not that it's a slouch in that department either) but even so the art direction alone more than makes up for that fact.

Some examples (spoilered because the images are rather large):

  Hide contents

SatBK packs a ton of detail into its environments and creates a sense of atmosphere that few other game in the series can match. The whole game just oozes its own unique personality and the visuals are a huge part of that. It's clear that the developers had a very clear idea of what they wanted to do with this game and set out to create a medieval fantasy world, in the vein of The Legend of Zelda or The Elder Scrolls, which also facilitated the over-the-top action movie antics that characterized Sonic the Hedgehog pre-Colors (seriously name for me one other series where the Knights of the Round table go surfing inside of an active volcano). The levels in Black Knight also look like actual environments rather than... Whatever the hell this is supposed to be:

Sorry. I hadn't taken a borderline tangential jab at Lost World for a while. I was overdue.

Anyhow, I know people tend to take issue with Sonic games don't have a super bright and colorful artstyle (it's "too realistic for Sonic" or somesuch), but for the atmosphere alone I'd take Black Knight over stuff like Colors and Generations any day of the week.

I agree actually. I almost mentioned Black Knight in my post but I decided against it. I've always thought Black Knight looked better, at least visually, than Sonic Colors.

[Cheese the Ducking Chao]

Poloy Forest is my favorite level in any video game. The design, the music... Oh man it is amazing. Hell Tails' Adventure has really good design for Eggman's sake. Is and always will be my fave. Unleashed had amazing art styles and dun get me started on The Black Knight. Tails' Adventure 11/10, SatBK and Unleashed 10/10

[Loas]

I really loved Marble Garden Zone's background. I especially loved Hydrocity's background, it's absolutely gorgeous and I love how big it makes the level feel. It adds more to the Sonic world. It's cool to look at the lights in the background of Hyrdocity. A large underground temple with It's lights just shimmering in that large area. Amazing.