Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Archives

Link: https://shc.zone/entries/contest2024/1071

Overall Presentation

I’m so glad that this hack has taken on a new direction since last year. Gone are the weird janky Sonic walk sprites, gone is the brown Tails, gone is a lot of jank overall. In place of it is a new artstyle and a lot more level design polish.

There are still some things that were cut from the game for a reason that were brought back. One thing that was particularly irritating is the wall knockback. It also triggers sometimes when merely running up and down steep slopes.

One very specific gripe that I couldn’t tie into anything else and had to mention is the spring power up. It wasn’t clear to me what it did. I inferred eventually that it must be the high jump power up, however it has no visual or auditory indication that it’s active. May want to change that.

Returning zones

I quite like what was done to the existing zones overall. The new art, music and badniks are quite nice, and make the zones feel quite fresh! I also liked the new Metropolis layouts. That makes me wonder why other zones were much closer to the original game. Would be cool to see more changes in place.

One more thing I don’t like that much is the implementation of the foreground in Aquatic Ruin. It obscures a lot of your view, triggers a lot of visual glitches as it’s not on top of the screen anymore and therefore isn’t accounted by the level design, and hampers the parallax scrolling of the entire background.

Though overall the speeds of the parallax scrolling may require a bit of work. Some layers scroll too fast to really sell the illusion of parallax.

New zones

That’s where the hack really shines!

I quite like the new art (bar the blocky gradients in Jungle Woods and the strangely overshaded water in Ocean Wind), and these are probably the best renditions of these specific zones concepts I’ve seen in a released game. Trophical Sun is my favourite out of the present selection.

Even Wood (which I normally don’t really like) is quite fun to play. The new badniks and clever gimmick usage particularly make the zones actually feel new and complete.

The one significant gripe I have is that I’ve experienced severe slowdown in Tropical Sun Zone, and the background wobble in Sand Shower 2 is affected by the vertical scrolling in a very distracting way.

The bosses are a mixed bag. The Ocean Wind boss I found really well done and authentic to Sonic 2, but others were less successful in hitting the mark. In particular, Jungle Woods’s boss still retains that jank from the previous version in quite a jarring way and may need a redesign.

Game structure, or lack thereof

This hack left me extremely confused on what the overall game structure is planned to be in 2 Archives.

I launch the game, and it dumps me onto a world map. Here I can select any zone in the Present I want. Okay then, I thought. I went to the Warp Point, which I thought was the most interesting to me.

I go through the Warp Point and to the portal. For some reason, the cutscene doesn’t trigger, and I end up on the other side of the pyramid. I approach the portal from the other side. The animation that plays out takes an abnormally long time and the movement glitches.

I get teleported to Aquatic Ruin Zone. I beat Aquatic Ruin Zone. Credits roll.

What?

So was the World Map not part of the game and just a fancy level select? Alongside another, more featured level select? Why didn’t it play Tropical Sun Zone?

Sure, next time I started from Emerald Hill Zone and everything seemed normal, but now I’m not sure what the map’s purpose even is, given how cool it is. In other games with a world map, the game dumps you onto the map after every level and gates your progress. Here it just functions the same way as a debug level select (except it doesn’t allow you to select some levels?) and allows you to break the game? Okay?

Now, about Warp Zone and the time travel. So what’s the deal with the warp zone? Is it supposed to be a cornerstone zone revisited multiple times? Is it just a regular level?

The time travel doesn’t feel like actual time travel either; there’s absolutely nothing to suggest you’ve traveled back in time instead of warping. Nothing about the past zones shows the passage of time; Tropical Sun has nothing in common with Metropolis, and there’s absolutely nothing that suggests Aquatic Ruin is in the past.

One of many potential solutions could be to do the following:

• Make the map appear after every zone;
• Track the player’s progress and limit which levels are accessible;
• Have the Warp Point be unlocked only after all levels in the current time period are clear;
• When Sonic and Tails travel to a different time period, show a new visibly time shifted map to make it clear that the time period has indeed changed.

I feel like right now Archives is just a collection of really good levels but not yet a cohesive game, and a lot more attention must be paid to the wide overarching game structure for it to make sense.

Trophies awarded

• Motobug Trophy - Best Enemy Design
  • The squirrel in Jungle Woods