Could a "Doomsday Zone" like stage work in SRB2?

Icarus said:

People still love Sonic 2 and CD despite being two games that don't have a secret boss when having every Chaos Emeralds/Time Stones

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Sonic 2, yes. CD on the other hand is controversial. I happen to enjoy it myself, but there's a lot of people who think it's terrible. The only thing I think is more or less universally enjoyed about it is the soundtrack, and even then there are arguments as to which of the two OST's is better.

Back on topic, I'm also in the boat that I would just be happy to see a special Super Sonic boss fight at all, though I would prefer it to be 3D in some capacity. Perhaps it could be (in regards to level design) designed specifically around Super Sonic's moveset without changing up the moveset from regular gameplay, so as to make it interesting yet familiar. NiGHTS mode would work, but it would also be a tad underwhelming since the game is primarily 3D.

SIG7 said:

https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=24408

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Sorry but this thread is from 2007...

time gear said:

Sonic 2, yes. CD on the other hand is controversial. I happen to enjoy it myself, but there's a lot of people who think it's terrible. The only thing I think is more or less universally enjoyed about it is the soundtrack, and even then there are arguments as to which of the two OST's is better.

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Sonic CD is still objectively one of the best Sonic game ever made (even if some think it's terrible) and the Japanese OST fits Sonic better overal.

time gear said:

Back on topic, I'm also in the boat that I would just be happy to see a special Super Sonic boss fight at all, though I would prefer it to be 3D in some capacity. Perhaps it could be (in regards to level design) designed specifically around Super Sonic's moveset without changing up the moveset from regular gameplay, so as to make it interesting yet familiar. NiGHTS mode would work, but it would also be a tad underwhelming since the game is primarily 3D.

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The problem is that a 3D final boss may ends up being frustrating than a simpler 2D one.

OP345 said:

Imagine if it's the Black Rock itself which is the true final boss. It was sentient the entire time and maybe it got corrupted by Eggman's machinery or influence.

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That's what I suggested a while ago.

Icarus said:

People still love Sonic 2 and CD despite being two games that don't have a secret boss when having every Chaos Emeralds/Time Stones

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Speaking of CD, the 2011 re-release was obviously(?) to have a true final boss (along with a brand new zone).

But it didn't happen.

Elyos03 said:

Speaking of CD, the 2011 re-release was obviously(?) to have a true final boss (along with a brand new zone). But it didn't happen.

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This is actually a disapointment. Sonic 1 and 2 enhanced many things over their original versions (such as having Sonic + Tails and Knuckles being available in Sonic 1 with some new part of levels like in Marble Zone and the Spindash being added).


Sonic CD had the OST choice but aside from that it was a bit underwhelming because they could allow Whitehead to do much more like having a better save system and Knuckles being playable as well...


Final Fever would've been nice too.

Keep in mind that the CD remake was Whitehead's first official remake. He hadn't proved himself to SEGA yet. I can understand why they wouldn't approve him making too many changes, much less a new level. Of course, that changed for the next two games, which he was allowed to include the main trio in Sonic 1 and 2, the Sonic 3 style save system, as well as a made-from-scratch version of Sonic 2's Hidden Palace Zone.

It is a shame, though. While I do consider CD to be the weakest of the classic games (fight me), I would enjoy it a lot more if it simply had Sonic 3's save system.

I think Sonic CD has nothing to incite players into getting every Time Stones, at least Sonic 2 had Super Sonic as a reward.


I hope Sega would allow him to make an actual re-remake.


Back to the main subject: using the Night controls would congratulate the players for managing to finish every Night stages

The reward for finishing all the special stages is playing as Super Sonic in any stage. Many players are going to see the true final boss not as a reward for doing the special stages, but rather as a part of the campaign that they have to get through the special stages to unlock. Many players don't even like the NiGHTS special stages to begin with, so making the final piece of the campaign more of the same might actually even be irritating to them.

As for me personally, I don't really mind the NiGHTS special stages aside from the difficulty spike at stage 6 that is gone by stage 7. I do see potential in using that style for a boss level, but I generally agree with the philosophy that you shouldn't throw a 2D boss at the end of a campaign that's 90% 3D including every single other boss.

OP345 said:

It's either that or throwing in a completely different control scheme for Super Sonic and making the final boss super easy for no reason when the special stages are right there. There's honestly no difference between the two besides being able to making the final boss harder and more interesting if it was in NiGHTS style.

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That's a rather unimaginative viewpoint. It most certainly is not limited to an either or scenario between those two methods. Other possibilities have even been discussed in this thread, for instance designing the boss around the existing moveset for Super Sonic. This individually could be done a number of ways, such as placing an invisible floor or making use of level design specifically made for Super Sonic's moveset.

OP345 said:

Firstly, the level design for Super Sonic's moveset would have to very simplistic because the player would not be accustomed to using Super Sonic all that much. Super Sonic in-game is mostly used as an invincibility power up and a cool reward which lets you go super fast. Most of the preceding level design doesn't accommodate Super Sonic's speed so any sort of unique level design is going to be super easy as a result. It's also a boss fight and not some level.

Secondly, the NiGHTS special stage gameplay is the only other sort of Super Sonic-esque gameplay that can allow for some complexity and difficulty in the boss design. It is a matter of those two scenarios.

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Firstly, no, it wouldn't need to be simplistic. As the final boss of the entire game, there's already an existing expectation that it should be hard, it just needs to be fair. Secondly, If you collected all of the Chaos Emeralds and made it up to the final boss, there is an expectation that you have had plenty of chances to test out Super Sonic already, so a boss designed to test your skill with him wouldn't be unfair.

You could even do both and swap between them as the fight progresses. Fly after the boss NiGHTS-style, then the boss lands in an arena somewhere and it switches to a normal 3D boss battle, then when you land enough hits it flies away again, etc.

Icarus said:

I think Sonic CD has nothing to incite players into getting every Time Stones, at least Sonic 2 had Super Sonic as a reward.


I hope Sega would allow him to make an actual re-remake.

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I mean, it literally was a remake. It was rebuilt from the ground up, with a new engine. If it looks and feels identical to the original game, that's only because Whitehead put so much effort into making sure the game imitated the original.

For me, I would have liked to be able to keep Time Stones are repeat playthroughs so I wouldn't have to worry about hunting down the robot generators, and just be able to play it like a normal Sonic game.

OP345 said:

You can't make it hard if you're going to just give the player some control scheme they're completely unfamiliar with. You have to keep it simple so that the player can actually beat the boss. If you make it hard then that's BS not fair.

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The current topic at hand is Super Sonic's regular moveset. Also, it's the Final Boss. You keep it simple so that players can beat the boss with early bosses. At the final boss, you are expected to be able to play the game properly. An easy final boss is just going to make people complain about the final boss being too easy.

OP345 said:

What skills? Most of the levels can be steamrolled through with Super Sonic, the levels aren't designed to accommodate him. He's OP for a reason.

Games typically build the players skills by slowly introducing harder and harder obstacles to push their limits until the final boss where all of those skills are tested.

This is not that. No skills have been tested with Super Sonic so introducing a ton of new concepts for the boss out of the blue would be ridiculous and totally infuriating.

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You say this as if this is some sort of tactical battle simulator rather than a platforming title. All Super Sonic has over regular Sonic is a higher jump height, invincibility, and the ability to hover. A level designed around these concepts for the final boss wouldn't be uncalled for, as you should have had plenty of practice using them by the time you get to that point. You have by then collected the chaos emeralds and had plenty opportunity to have used Super Sonic in the levels. This familiarizes you with how he controls, which does count. Therefore, it's not unrealistic to expect you to know you can reach slightly higher platforms and glide across large gaps while Super.

Level design that's literally the same thing as what regular Sonic usually goes through but with his Super Form stats in mind wouldn't be some groundbreaking change that would cause players to be unable to cope with the boss. It would be a little bit new, but nothing so drastically different that players wouldn't be able to quickly adapt.

GrayAngel said:

I mean, it literally was a remake. It was rebuilt from the ground up, with a new engine. If it looks and feels identical to the original game, that's only because Whitehead put so much effort into making sure the game imitated the original.

For me, I would have liked to be able to keep Time Stones are repeat playthroughs so I wouldn't have to worry about hunting down the robot generators, and just be able to play it like a normal Sonic game.

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No, the mobile versions of Sonic CD, 1 and 2 were remasters, they used a new engine but are still fundamentally the same games.


A fully fledged remake would be something in 3D or 2.5D but this isn't what the fans want nor what we need.


But I do agree that locking you in Metallic Madness 3 when you finish the game was a big mistake.

OP345 said:

Yes, his regular moveset. Players aren't used to doing anything more advanced with Super Sonic other than super thokking through the campaign levels. You wouldn't be able to make it hard (at least in an interesting way and not just give Eggman 100 lasers) and you wouldn't even know how to because you haven't built enough concepts to have a good understanding of what to do.

And you're right people will complain about the final boss being too easy but, with Super Sonic's moveset, it would have to be.



No it doesn't because, beyond the familiarity with the controls, the core to mastering a game is understanding how the controls interact with the environment. Players are used to just shooting past regular levels (because Super Sonic is meant to do that) so they are not going to even understand the concepts of level design you bring suddenly to the final boss.



You could not ensure that at all nor guarantee it. Honestly, the best way to solve this debate is just to make a final boss with Super Sonic (your ideal boss) and have new players who just started playing SRB2 do it.

And having a final boss where Super Sonic works just like regular Sonic is boring as a heck. You could do that against Brak Eggman if you wanted to. This is a Doomsday Zone style boss.

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I'm going to avoid the long winded explanations this time because it's evident that no matter what I say you are going to to go to any extreme jumps in logic necessary to argue against it anyway, so I will just say this: The topic at hand is nowhere near as complicated or difficult as you are making it, and your insistence against the idea seems to be founded more in your own personal lack of imagination as to how to make it work projected onto others as objective fact rather than any true know-how/insight you may have. To put it more simply: It seems as though you can't imagine how to make it work, and therefore you choose to believe it's impossible for anyone else to do it regardless of what others say to you.

As such, there simply isn't any point in me persuing the discussion further. I've made my point already, there's no point in me continually explaining it further just to satisfy you personally, especially when it's already evident it will never satisfy you. I will leave it off with this: Designing a boss around the regular moveset of Super Sonic is the only method I've seen suggested thus far that actually functions based on familiar game mechanics. I'll elaborate: Super Sonic's regular moveset is just a buffed version of regular Sonic. Egg Reverie style and NiGHTS style on the other hand would both introduce something very unfamiliar to the player suddenly. Egg Reverie would be suddenly handing you free flight, an idea that could be really fun but it would be unrealistic to expect players to know how to control it quickly enough to face a boss. Likewise, NiGHTS style up to this point would only have been used in the special stages themselves and unlockable levels that play like them, the player would have zero practice in using the style to fight an actual boss, nor any practice fighting a boss in 2D.

There may be ways to make either of those two ideas work, but the same is especially true of using Super's normal moveset. It is what the player will find most familiar for fighting a boss with. Super Sonic will have his invincibility regardless of which style they go with.

Icarus said:

No, the mobile versions of Sonic CD, 1 and 2 were remasters, they used a new engine but are still fundamentally the same games.


A fully fledged remake would be something in 3D or 2.5D but this isn't what the fans want nor what we need.


But I do agree that locking you in Metallic Madness 3 when you finish the game was a big mistake.

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Sonic Adventure DX was a remaster. They ported it to GameCube, gave it a fresh coat of paint, added some new features, and they were done. Whitehead's games are literally remade from scratch. Usually remakes will take advantage of advances in hardware by making the game look and feel like a modern game, like when they remade the first generation of Pokemon games with FireRed and LeafGreen. But Whitehead's goal was to imitate the original, rather than update it. Although he did add widescreen, gave it a better frame rate and performance, and other stuff like that which isn't immediately apparent from just looking at it.

Whitehead's games are so special because they were built from scratch. Before him, others would just port the original games to new systems, because that's just easier to do. But the games often had a lot of issues because of them not being made for the hardware they were being played on.

If Nights was a little more zoomed out, I would enjoy it so much more. I don't like not being able to see what's approaching. I've never understood why it's a gametype that you're meant to go fast through, but you have to have a course memorized to be able to actually do that. A little more field of view would go a long way, and then I would have LOADS of fun with it, because I love the gametype in practice. A final boss using that mode would be SO stylish!!

I think that would be cool. What would happen if that kind of stage was added is that Black Core Zone would have to be removed. We'd be seeing the return of Egg Rock Zone Act 3 which would be where the regular final boss would appear in once again. Metal Sonic maybe moved to Grand Eggship Zone where we race and fight against him in that zone. And of course the very final stage would probably be called "Final Fight Zone" like it originally was intended to be. A "Doomsday Zone" stage was something that a proposed final stage after Egg Rock Zone called 'Final Fight Zone' was intended to make an appearance from what I've heard one time and if we see that stage, the music that currently appears in Black Core Zone Act 3 would most likely become the song for Final Fight Zone because that song was intended to be in Final Fight Zone as this song is after all a remastered version of the song that was called "Final Fight Zone".

GrayAngel said:

Sonic Adventure DX was a remaster. They ported it to GameCube, gave it a fresh coat of paint, added some new features, and they were done. Whitehead's games are literally remade from scratch. Usually remakes will take advantage of advances in hardware by making the game look and feel like a modern game, like when they remade the first generation of Pokemon games with FireRed and LeafGreen. But Whitehead's goal was to imitate the original, rather than update it. Although he did add widescreen, gave it a better frame rate and performance, and other stuff like that which isn't immediately apparent from just looking at it.

Whitehead's games are so special because they were built from scratch. Before him, others would just port the original games to new systems, because that's just easier to do. But the games often had a lot of issues because of them not being made for the hardware they were being played on.

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The thing is that DX was just a bad port of an aged game whereas Whitehead managed to respect the spirit and soul of the series while Sega butchered it with average and mediocre games... Anyway this isn't the subject of the thread so it will be my last answer about this.

Charybdizs said:

If Nights was a little more zoomed out, I would enjoy it so much more. I don't like not being able to see what's approaching. I've never understood why it's a gametype that you're meant to go fast through, but you have to have a course memorized to be able to actually do that. A little more field of view would go a long way, and then I would have LOADS of fun with it, because I love the gametype in practice. A final boss using that mode would be SO stylish!!

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The thing is that you need to memorize the special stages to better understand them, like in the classic series. I still agree that Nights into Dreams had more dynamic angles and a de-zoom when going fast compared to SRB2's special stages.

"Final Fight Zone" is a terrible name. At least change it to "Final Flight", if it's a NiGHTS stage.