Sonic 3D Blast | "3D" "Blast" - Scott The Woz

hey y'all Scott here this is Sonic 3D Blast this is a hernia Spot the Difference do I even have to explain myself here who's ever looked at this and said delicious Sonic 3D Blast Sonic the Hedgehogs jump to 3D quickest scene this has always been a strange ones the Sonic the Hedgehog series was hot in the early 90s but started to wane a bit as the decade went on due to the Sega Genesis reaching the end of its life cycle and the following system the Sega Saturn not attaining that level of popularity alongside the fact that after Sonic and Knuckles in 1994 we didn't get a new Mainline Sonic game until 1998 with Sonic Adventure on the second Dreamcast that's a long time to go without a new game so how do we keep Sonic relevant Sega asked we're on the news I have a complicated relationship with this game as I feel many people do see this isn't one of the crown jewels of the Sonic franchise it seems that everybody's in agreement this isn't a great game yeah I've never seen anybody actively hate it not like it sure but hey that's like picking on a dog with no legs I know this game isn't great but I still kind of like it it's like dating a bad boy you never marry it but Sonic 3D Blast came to fruition after Sonic Team toyed with the concept of a 3D styled Sonic title while developing Sonic 3 but what they were envisioning would have required certain chips to be included in the Sonic 3 game cartridge which would have made a Sonic game more expensive than the child who wanted it was worth so that idea was scrapped for Sonic 3. and that's how Sonic 3 became a good game but the idea of a 3D Sonic on the Sega Genesis just wouldn't go away let's call it an intrusive thought no it's Sonic 3D Blast yup however the next generation of console gaming was Upon Us allowing for 3D games to be a standard not a novelty the Sega Saturn had officially released which is why this was the perfect time to make a 3D Sonic on the Genesis no wait now it is yeah even though the Sega Saturn had been on the market since 1994 the Sega was still interested in supporting the Genesis with Sonic content even when the Saturn had nothing of the sort Sonic Team wanted to Branch out from the franchise for a bit with games like Knights into dreams and I guess Sega as a whole was all right with putting Sonic on the back burner for a little bit maybe help give some of their other game some time to shine I mean come on name 80 Second Genesis games that aren't Sonic but you can't but that didn't mean Sonic development wasn't going on just wasn't a huge priority for Sega at the time and full of second Game Gear releases second Master System titles Knuckles chaotix on the Sega 32x the series was far from dead but throughout 1995 and 96 it was being used to support smaller factors of sega's business rather than their major new console maybe they thought the Saturn didn't need the help it was getting new games regardless we should focus on giving Game Gear players a reason to get out of bed today I don't know I mean I get it Sonic Labyrinth probably costs less than half a bug to produce but if the cost of your new system that needed to be successful not having a killer rapper even just a single damn game from a series everybody recognized it obviously didn't work out for them so [ __ ] it let's break a 3D Sonic for the Second Genesis so why is 3D Sonic on this system why wake up in the morning I don't know we'll see Sega was developing a Sonic game for the Sega Saturn it was meant to be a response to 3D gaming and nothing more Sonic extreme was being created by Sega Technical Institute in North America as the Sega Saturn's big holiday title for 1996. but just by watching the promotional videos you can tell the project was directionless it felt like this was being cobbled together to show that Sonic and Sega by proxy can stand Toe to Toe with the other guys in their fancy big penis 3D Platformers so of course Sega showed up to the baking competition with this what the hell was this game it didn't look bad per se that was more so just confusing like what are these levels what are you doing in them how do you progress why is there a fisheye lens this game just looked like a 2d game you can move towards and away from the camera in and not anything nearly as impressive as Super Mario 64. I'll even Crash Bandicoot and a 2d game you can move towards and away from the camera in is exactly what that game is regardless extreme was poised to be the mainline Sonic series jumped to 3D deal with it life [ __ ] stinks but now without a taste of 3D for Genesis owners as Sega crafted a completely separate 3D Sonic experience for that console Sonic 3D Blast these two are supposed to come out at the same time much like how a game like Assassin's Creed Unity released for PS4 and Xbox One the same day as Assassin's Creed Rogue for PS3 and Xbox 360. it is not that I'm the first to think of that analogy I was the first brave enough to say it it's all about offering customers who haven't upgraded consoles yet an affordable option of their own and Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Genesis seemed to be exactly that poverty 3D Sonic and with it being the last Sonic game on the system not one of the last games on the system in general you can view this as a bit more of a celebrational release like hey let's do one last Sonic game on this guy and make it 3D to show just how far we've come this was said to be an incredible and momentous holiday season for Sonic until the meth wore off yeah all those things are said about Sonic extreme those weren't just my opinions those record to the reason why that game got canceled this thing was not working out though thankfully Sonic 3D Blast function so this became Sonic's Grand leap to 3D because in addition to a Sega Genesis version Sega released a Sega Saturn version that holiday in place of Sonic extreme which made them look even more pathetic you're releasing a 3D game two months after Super Mario 64 and it's this even calling it 3D Blast it's so cocky when you know what this is they could have called Mario 64 Mario 3D Blast but they didn't because a more generic title was coming later Sonic 3D Blast wasn't primarily developed by sega's Sonic Team or any of the other in-house developers rather it was created by Travelers Tales who are these guys well they developed pugsy those have to be my last words but you probably know them best now for the work on the Lego game so they originally developed a far greater variety of titles and many of which were licensed movie games such as Toy Story in fact it was their work on that game in particular to Garner sega's attention seeing how well they were able to craft 3d like visuals on the Genesis so give him Sonic and hey why not make a second Standard Version as well just to be safe because you know Sonic extreme might get canceled just as much as I might be dead in a Sonic 3D Blast on the Sega Genesis had a relatively quick development time only taking roughly eight months to complete with the Sega Saturn version being whipped together even faster in just seven weeks what once was just meant to be a supplementary title became the core holiday release and thus Sonic 3D Blast received a middling response at least on the Sega Saturn side of things the Genesis version was actually praised at the time this was impressive for the hardware this Hardware not this one which that just goes to show this game was doomed to age poorly I mean if people thought this was outdated on the Sega Saturn just think what I thought playing this on GameCube yes myself alongside countless others first experience 3D Blast via the Sonic Mega Collection this title definitely stood out amongst the crowd and I loved it for that I mean you have Sonic one two three and Knuckles that's all fine and good but variety is the spice of life and Sonic 3D Blast was a cool offshoot titled to switch to now and then and much like the actual Mainline Sonic games I never got far hell in this one I don't even think I beat the first level well that's all going to change today see my soul still has unfinished business here on Earth that's why I'm still here so I assume my destiny is to finish Sonic 3D Blast and figure out it's worth then and only then will I finally go to hell or next best option I'll be resurrected so let's do it let's fulfill one of my two lifelong goals like I have a choice well my first experience with 3D Blast was via the Sonic Mega Collection compilations have pretty much been my only way of experiencing this game actually holding the game box and cartridge is a surreal experience Manchester playing it on GameCube I understood how impressive this was as a Genesis game but that just goes to show how much playing on the original hard work can enhance the experience when you're playing via an actual cartridge on an old school TV and you see this [Music] thank you [Music] foreign with birds of course the second most shocking element here was the fact we have a CGI opening cutscene on a Sega Genesis cartridge I don't care how many frames it is I don't care what the resolution any Sonic game I saw back in the day and I played this on the GameCube I'm the actual Sega Genesis this is still mind-blowing even the title screen here looks impressive for the hardware that hopping into the main menu we have three options starting the game tweaking the button layout and a sound test no continue option or save feature like in Sonic 3 it is soon by 1996 this would be a standard much like how I assume Sonic 3D Blast is gonna be good well on to the game and unlike other Classic Sonic titles we get this little story blurb at the beginning are you ready to meet the flickies yeah mysterious Birds who live in another dimension and can travel anywhere through large rings large rings wow realism I guess Dr Robotnik learns about the flickies I will change the flickies into robots and have them search for the chaos emeralds for me using the infinite power of the emeralds I can conquer the world because of Birds Sonic visits Plucky Island to see his friends but the only thing he finds are robots there's a tree right behind him Robotnik made my friends like this I must save them robotning Must Be Stopped Sonic starts to defeat the enemies in order to rescue the flickies who are trapped inside the story of my [ __ ] life go Sonic you can warp through the big rings with the help of the flakies I don't mind chase after Robotnik and defeat his plans yeah kick his plan's ass and here it is Sonic 3D Blast [Music] he looks miserable this is 3D I can get the same feeling looking at my hand think about this game risks next to it like seriously 3D the graphics are pre-rendered word when I was younger sure I'd go along with the mob but I didn't know why we were pillaging The Village well imagine creating a 3D model or something the Sega Genesis can't display that but you know what it can a picture of that 3D model so yeah these are all 2D Sprites based on images of 3D rendering so deep down that family tree you could consider Sonic 3D Blast to be 3B but it's played from a top-down perspective or to be more exact isometric meaning it's at an angle and that is like the cheapest way to pretend your game is 3D oh Sonic used to only be able to go left and right well now we can go up and down yeah it was Adventure on Atari 3D no it wasn't 3D it stunk the game's Super Mario RPG came out months before this and that pretty much did everything 3D Blast is doing right now without having to brag about it in its title this is nothing new and nothing to tout in the 3D that honestly makes this game so much clunkier than any other Classic Sonic experience well he feels so damn slippery here it's like I'm on Ice the whole damn game I guess skinning around is supposed to convey Sonic Speed because without it like this is the fastest thing alive yeah maybe in a post-apocalyptic World ran by slugs well let's just remove speed from our minds for a bit here done let's just critique this as a functional video game you gotta be [ __ ] kidding me precise jumping is a myth here being not 3D 3D can make it so confusing to know where you are in relation to the environment and even if you do know the game can tell you to [ __ ] off I mean movement isn't horrible or anything it's responsive and something you can get used to but that's not a compliment that's the bare minimum a video game should be it sounds like one though so go ahead I don't care substandard Sonic the Hedgehog games at the time couldn't be simpler just get to the end of the stage Sonic 3D Blast is similarly very straightforward though as a kid I never knew what the hell I was doing here I just knew surely it must be important well since we have to save Birds trapped inside robots we have to defeat each and every enemy in a stage to collect said Birds holy [ __ ] we gotta bring the flickies we collect to this giant ring that's what you do collect Birds bring them to the ring repeat but don't rinse this is the gameplay Loop it functions it's just damn boring and I feel like a lot of that's because of how the game looks but also the fact that the gameplay is just damn boring every stage has these checkerboard floors with really unappealing colors that honestly hurt the eyes more than anything it's kind of disorienting but the look at and also to know where you are in this world when the game's about finding all the enemies and I can barely even tell where I am in the level because 90 of the screen is floor that's a problem plus when you get hit with some flakies on you they get scattered around and you have to get them back but with how the graphics look it's like trying to find a bird in a haystack it's really hard I don't even know where a haystack is and without slippery this is zooming past the ground not knowing where you were and not knowing where you're going Sonic 3D Blast just gives me a headache conspiracy theory number one Tylenol funded this however it's something you get used to as time goes on and the overall layout and level design here Works nothing's really all too fun per se nothing really sticks out but it's not bad it's just there this gameplay feels like it was designed around the 3D gimmick rather than because they had a core concept for a good game yeah you kill like 10 enemies and bring Birds to a ring this isn't a game it's a list of to-do's Sonic 3D Blast is about as deep as getting out of bed in the morning it's so damn simple but God damn is it hard to follow through with it just the same damn thing over and over and over again and it's not even really that challenging it's just well it's just Sonic 3D Blast this game's in a weird place okay because there's nothing really that interesting going on here it doesn't do anything inherently well it's just an experience that happens it's by all accounts a worthless video game he's kind of cute though yeah 3D Blast is an anomaly it's not fun but it's not very good either though what makes it appealing regardless of these detractors is the charm uniqueness and overall General playability there's something pathetically endearing about a game trying to pass off as a 3D experience in the 90s and the fact that it isn't actually 3D makes the game so much more playable today than other titles they designed this as a game that looked Cutting Edge but was a standard 16-bit Sega Genesis game at its heart rather than a game that truly was cutting edge being crammed onto the Sega Genesis when it didn't belong compare this to many of the other earlier 3D games at the time well this isn't anything to write home about in comparison to the others I guarantee it's one of the most playable today it runs smooth all you can do is run around jump and perform a spin dash it's very simple which can make it kind of boring and monotonous but hey it makes it age far better than many of the early 3D games on PlayStation well yeah the visuals are obviously dated I don't know they sort of have their own weird little style to them it's kind of charming this game is sort of garbage and obsolete yet very competent and playable with a lot of character which makes it so oddly lovable to me dude your brother just [ __ ] shot me oh my God one is he gonna learn conspiracy theory number two this game isn't too bad whenever I see it in the latest Sega Genesis collections I always pop it on for a little bit to run around the first level it's kind of enjoyable to jump about and gawk at the Primitive 3D environment here though I never really cared to go much further than that the gameplay Loop is saving flickies is incredibly uninteresting and tedious especially considering you have to jump on enemies to save them and the game already has issues with perspective this concept would have worked far better in a 2d game 3D Blast definitely knows this because one of the power-ups available is the gold shield giving Sonic the ability to perform these Sonic Blast attack better known in future games as the homing attack and the ability ability famously introduced in Sonic Adventure allowing you to home in on enemies after jumping due to how difficult it was to line up jumps in 3D I [ __ ] wonder where they [ __ ] got that [ __ ] idea conspiracy theory number three [ __ ] this game the homing attack is great to have here but a little odd it's locked behind a power-up because what does Sonic 3D Blast gain from this a dysfunctional relationship other than that the power-ups available here are limited to invincibility the speed shoes the standard shield and the fire Shield which doesn't even have the cool properties it add in Sonic 3 and Knuckles this just gives us fire resistance what's cooler than Sonic Sonic not giving a [ __ ] you can find Knuckles and Tails in each level and giving them 50 Rings will bring us to the special stage [Music] God these just never look inviting to me they're always so drab with an incredibly disorienting background if you focus on it but the stages themselves I mean it's a bridge if this is a special stage I don't want to know what the [ __ ] this is these are incredibly easy some of the easiest special stages in all of Sonic history which hey I'll take that compared to the alternative what the hell Sonic 2 special stages but we can just keep getting rings in the stage and bring them back to these guys to grind the levels out and get all seven Chaos Emeralds crazy early on which all these do is unlock the true final boss see after these unlocked Supersonic and Sonic 2 3 and Knuckles all in three and Knuckles we got damn Hypersonic the fact our reward for getting all the chaos emeralds is this I can tell what you're trying to do I'm not giving you the sympathy vote for this but just let me tell you this game feels like it's trying to pull that at every second like oh man this is the enemy that stole your bird beat you senseless [ __ ] your wife Aid zones in total with most containing three acts I'd go through them all but there's just not enough noteworthy here each of them has something distinct to them yes but it's never really enough to make any stick out the closest in my opinion are these spinner things in Rusty ruins on the diamond dust zone is a nice level volcano Valley zone is lava themed Green Grove is the first Zone and damn well looks the part well these are all unique enough I guess with the repetitive gameplay camera angle and limited level gimmicks they end up just feeling like the same damn things finishing the game I got no sense of satisfaction it wasn't like I beat the game I withstood it that's not to say 3D Blast is bad overall just mediocre it's Charming for sure it just feels more interested in hooking people in with the marketing gimmick of being a 3D game on the Sega Genesis holy sh that's possible [Music] nope this game is the big fat 5 out of 10. it's not bad but God damn why would you play it well the game's programmer John Burton took it upon himself decades later to give you a reason to play it releasing a mod for the game on PC titled Sonic 3D Blast director's cut in 2017. this is one of those official unofficial releases where it wasn't released by Sega but it was released by one of the developers so hey more credibility than my directors could I don't know burn took this opportunity to tweak the game and add a few options to make the experience overall less frustrating and more fleshed out that included a save feature using passwords level editor supersonic a better camera system better control and a handful more changes that do make the game better yes but these are all fairly minor issues that don't affect the overall gameplay loop it's still uninteresting it's just less flawed than before though I still commend Burton for going through with this I think all the changes he made I mean he did everything he could have done to 3D Blast without completely overhauling the XP experience any bra might have with director's cut has to do with the fact it's still Sonic 3D Blast but it's great to have a better version of the game available alongside a better version Sonic 3D Blast on Sega Saturn oh yeah they finally did it they put the game made for the wad of gum on the Cadillac say do you think they could put pong on my PlayStation 5. it's pretty obvious why this didn't excite many people I mean you weren't fooling anybody with this it's almost as if Sega is soon putting Sonic and 3D in the title would have been enough for the game to compete with the likes of Super Mario 64. and when the title is bragging about itself and this is what you get yeah it's understandable why reviews of the Saturn version weren't glowing though this has always been the best way to play 3D Blast it's so much smoother with far more defined and refined visuals the environments don't look like a Magic Eye picture rather look like actual environments these look like more than just video game levels the music is all CD quality brilliant tracks that are different from the Genesis ones though that's not to say the Genesis version is bad far from it I genuinely think the best thing to come from both of these games is the soundtrack it's wonderful at the same quality as any of the other Classic Sonic titles on the Genesis but the Saturn version is really something special considering we didn't have a ton of classic Sonic material during this time especially on the Saturn so this music gives us a glimpse as to how more Mainline Sonic games would have sounded post-genesis but pre-dream cast and it's really unique the special stages are brand new and now fully 3D if you want to see the difference between pre-rendered and just flat out rendered yeah the takes on the special Stage Formula from Sonic 2. these are done so well absolutely fantastic special stages here and not too hard not too easy it controls great with enough variables being thrown in from time to time perfect this version has different opening and ending cut scenes which are technically far better than the Genesis version but just aren't as impressive because like ooh the Sega Saturn playing a video file oh I've been talking about Sonic 3D Blast for 20 minutes like yeah it was designed to do that interestingly though it just goes right into the game no story cut scenes like in the Genesis version there's also still no save feature which I don't care if the game's three hours long on the Sega Saturn that's unacceptable and Jesus Christ the load times are abysmal in this one they're definitely pros and cons between the two releases though overall I'd say the Saturn version is the best of the bunch though the Genesis one is more fun to look back on let's be honest this game is a hole isn't necessary to play these days so well yeah the Saturn version is superior if you're playing the game in the first place you might as well just play it on Genesis this game has always been more of a novelty like oh look at it try on Saturn this isn't impressive and the game plays the exact same albeit smoother and Visually clear but this was always initially designed as a game in fake 3D that would work well in the Genesis and the gameplay suffers from being pretty repetitive because of it you put this game on a Saturn and like yeah it's better but are you really playing Sonic 3 Blast for a good time or to look back at history and chuckle but certainly back to what I said earlier regardless of its detractors the charm uniqueness and playability make 3D blasts just such an easy game to pop into and experience what Sega wanted you to think was 3D it will always be an interesting time to look back on and it's a surprise amazingly tolerable one to experience these days and while 3D Blast is more so a spin-off some consider it to be Mainline and honestly with how big of an imprint it left on the Sonic series video games as a whole it's easy to see why the gameplay mechanics and even music were used in Sonic Adventure in the isometric camera while clunky feels like it almost lent some inspiration to future 3D games like Mario 3D Landing Kirby and the Forgotten land may not be perfect but Sonic 3 blast is far more important than you may think oh my God I just discovered the trick to staying alive [Music]

Channel: Scott The Woz

Views: 1,294,639

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Id: Vh7GzDe4Mko

Length: 25min 13sec (1513 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022