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Sonic Classic Heroes

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Revision as of 19:56, 10 August 2013 by MathUser (talk | contribs) (Characters)
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Sonic Classic Heroes
Version: 0.10
Last release: 2013-08-08
Status: in progress
System: Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
Original game: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit)
Credits: flamewing, ColinC10, Various others

Sonic Classic Heroes is a ROM hack for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis that is the result of a collaboration between flamewing and ColinC10, combining their respective hacks Sonic 2 Heroes and Sonic 1 and 2. It therefore is a single ROM that offers the entire campaigns of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, either alone or together; and enables the player to direct any from one to all three of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. The hack is named after this latter ability to control a team of characters, which is reminiscent of the more recent 3D game Sonic Heroes.

The hack is built on Sonic 2’s engine, which has been enhanced by both flamewing and ColinC10 to have new features. These include: multiple gameplay elements from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, such as element shields and character-specific abilities; the ability to save progress, scores, etc. to SRAM (something rarely implemented in Sonic 2, with the other notable example being Esrael’s Sonic 2 Delta); various bug-fixes and improvements to the mechanics of the original games; and many more features, both implemented and planned.

History

Background

Beginning
Sonic Retro
almost immediately
after the initial release of the first version of this project, Sonic 2 Heroes, posters to its official thread on the Sonic Retro forums suggested (with varying degrees of jocularity and seriousness) that flamewing and Sonic 1 and 2 author ColinC10 combine their two hacks, with the result that the hack would cover not only the levels of Sonic 2 but also those of Sonic 1. Reminded of this suggestion several months later, flamewing
Sonic Retro
posted
expressed interest and an intention to ask ColinC10. The two agreed to collaborate. flamewing took most programming responsibility to integrate the source code of the two hacks and only
Sonic Retro
announced
the existence of the project once it was well underway, on 19 December 2011.

First release

On 20 July 2012, flamewing
Sonic Retro
announced
the first public release of Sonic Classic Heroes. This was the same version that he submitted to that year's Sonic the Hedgehog Hacking Contest. Although the new title of Sonic Classic Heroes now replaced that of Sonic 2 Heroes, the existing numbering scheme was maintained, making this version 0.07 beta. Several revisions fixing bugs and/or improving features have since been released, bringing the current version to
Sonic Retro
version 0.07 final, revision 3
.

Features

Although this is by no means an exhaustive list, here are some of the things that are, or in the future have been planned to be, included in Sonic Classic Heroes. Until this page is updated more thoroughly, please see the forum post linked in the above paragraph for an extensive changelog.

Characters

When using more than one character, the first player controls the character who is leading the group. The leading character can be changed at any time, using the additional buttons on the six-button Control Pad.

  • Up to three players can play co-operatively, via the Team Player multi-tap. Special Stages will be playable in this way, too. Moreover, the player will be able to choose how many of their characters appear in Special Stages; currently, all characters appear in the Special Stage, but in the future this will be optional, thus satisfying players who don’t like CPU-controlled characters losing their rings.

Team Sonic

  • Players can choose to use one, two, or three players. The default team is Sonic, Tails and Knuckles.
  • Sonic can use the Insta-Shield and Super Peel-Out, and he has a higher top speed than either of the other two player characters.
  • Tails can fly, swim, and carry Sonic or Knuckles – or both!
  • Knuckles can glide and climb, and will also be able to carry his friends.
  • When player 1 is controlling Sonic, Tails and Knuckles share his top speed, acceleration, deceleration, and jump strength (which are even more meaningful when one considers Super Sonic’s enhanced stats). This is especially useful for Knuckles: when he is CPU controlled and thus is following Sonic or Tails, his usual reduced jump height might make him unable to follow the other characters onto some higher platforms to which they could jump.

Team Chaotix

Future Characters

These characters may be included in future revisions.

Items

  • Power-ups are awarded collectively to all of the player’s characters when a monitor is broken. However, shields are lost individually: if a character is hit, only they will lose their shield, whereas the other character(s) will retain their individual shields until they are hit.
  • Elemental shields from Sonic 3 have been added. The standard blue shield from Sonic 2 remains and has been upgraded so that, like the elemental shields, it awards Sonic a power while he has it: in this case, the Homing Attack.

Menus

  • Version 0.07f added the new ability to save progress to SRAM, accessible from a new combined options and saving menu that is shown after pressing Start on the title-screen. Here, the player can choose to save/load their progress in any one of twelve separate slots. Each saved game allows, prior to its loading, choices of: character order and number, game mode (Sonic 1 and 2, either game alone, or an “Emeralds run”), a level select, and options regarding the AI. The menu also offers a sound test, and various colour schemes for itself.

Downloads

Sonic Classic Heroes version 0.10, released by flamewing via Mediafire
Sonic Retro
on 2013-08-08

External links

Sonic Retro
Announcement of project
in the hack's dedicated thread (formerly titled Sonic 2 Heroes) on the Sonic Retro Message Board