Leaked Sonic the Hedgehog 4 footage shows Splash Hill Zone

It looks as bad as I feared it would.

I would have much preferred 16-bit

I’m sorry, what?

It looks fantastic. It’s just in 2.5D. You know, keeping with the times, yet going back to its roots.

Bloody nora. You all complain about the previous titles and ask for it to go back like it used to.

Now you get it, you’re all complaining? Sorry if I am passing myself off as a grump, but that’s very much hypocritical.

Agreed JC. This looks outstanding. Just as I imagined a 2.5D retroish reboot should be. Definite purchase now.

The physics and animation look off. They really need to fix those two things and make sure the level design is good. If they do, it could be alright.

Agreed. The animations don’t look as crisp as they did on the Megadrive, and the physics seems a little floaty.

I just wish they’d used 2D art for everything. Can’t think why they didn’t. There’s nothing all that “cutting edge” about 3D nowadays, is there?

Still, more back-to-basics Sonic platforming = good. So I’ll quit my whinging

So… does this mean that the PS3 and X360 are capable of BLAST Processing???

It Will Look Even Better If The Game Is 3D Enabled For When The 3D System Update Comes Out For The PS3, I’m Sure They’ll Fix The Physics & It Will Be Just Like The Old 2D Games, Then Animations Will Be Up To Par When The Game Drops No Doubt.

Wow, it looks like… Sonic the Hedgehog! Where’s the secret bit where they fuck it all up? Have they not revealed that yet?

I actually really like Sonic 1, although I never really got into the other games. Still gets the odd whirl on the Megadrive emulator every now and then.

Blerk mate, Sonic 2 is *clearly* the best in the series – makes Sonic 1 pale in comparison!

Went downhill swiftly afterwards, IMHO – yes, that includes Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3D, Sonic Adventures etc etc. I really enjoyed Sonic Advance 1 and 2 though, plus I hear good things about Sonic Rush.

Is Sonic 2 the one with the underwater bits? I couldn’t stand those.

@5 this is pure 2D btw ,not 2.5D as some have been saying, all 2d assets with parallax scrolling
new linky since SEGA has been knocking on 1up’s door.
http://www.bscreview.com/2010/02/sonic-the-hedgehog-4-leaked-video/

weird how he got kinda stuck at that angle at the angle. i remember him going back down before instead of standing at 45 degree angles. :/ graphically though – spectacular, imo.

i love how the begin of the stage is identical to sonic 1, i hop they do that a lot, litter through out the whole game little section of familiarity

the level select had SPOILERS

casino street zone form sonic one
lost labyrinth zone dreaded underwater level
mad gear zone that was from sonic 2 i think, the one where you run on the nuts and blots

and looks like they are bringing back the special stage from sonic one

maybe they’ll have a different special stage/style for each chapter

4 zones by episode isnt to bad. As long as each one has atleast 2 stages and a boss…

in the video, they select spring hill zone, then is greeted with 4 more choices
act 1
act 2
act 3
boss (my guess, can’t really make out what it says)

4×3 stage and 4 bosses

12 stages, thats sounds about right, having just 8 stages would feel like a bit of a rip

i reeeeeeeeeeeally hope they’ll do a level editer, they wont, but i can hope

i’ve had the casino stage music in my head all morning

For a single episode that would be decent. Though if i did get the game i’d probably wait for the disc version.

Unless, of course, there’s only a single zone in each episode and the rest of those zones only become available later on once you’ve bought the other episodes.

/cynic

I actually quite fancy going off and playing some classic Sonic now. Maybe I’ll start Sonic 2. Oh wait, I’m at bloody work.

Emulator and rom on your work PC, go ahead!

A few months ago that’d have been a breeze, but since the office move-around everyone’s in a much more prominent position. Bastards!

/shakes fist

This looks great. Would rather a disk version though. I’m REALLY not into the whole ‘episodic’ gaming thing.

@bugmenot

But the character model is a 3D object, isn’t it?

for 2 years of collage all i did was play super mario bros 3 in class, then when ever it was time to hand in some work, i’d scan a text book with optical character recognition software and hand it in

i passed my advanced IT gnvq with a merit

those were the days my friend

“It looks fantastic. It’s just in 2.5D. You know, keeping with the times, yet going back to its roots.”

It’s not even technically 2.5D Johnny. The models might have been created in CGI, but they’re entirely 2D objects on a 2D plane.

This might have worked a hell of a lot better of it *were* proper 2.5D.

As a couple of people have mentioned, the game objects are 3D, but the game plays on a 2D plane.

Actually I think Michael’s in the right – the models look like 2D renderings of 3D objects, if that’s the right way of putting it.

It’s no King of Fighters XII or Street Fighter II HD, on the strength of this footage at least, but the backdrops are great. Roll on Casino Street Zone.

“As a couple of people have mentioned, the game objects are 3D, but the game plays on a 2D plane.”

Just from looking at it, and the way the objects interact with each (hit boxes and such), I ‘m almost convinced they are in fact not 3D objects on a 2D plane, but simply 2D objects based on 3D renders.

Which is a very bad design choice, if that’s the case. Its rarely ever works. They would have been much better off going with 2D renders.

It’s likely the cause of the “floaty” nature of the movement and especially the way in which Sonic jumps on Badniks. It doesn’t look naturally at all, but then, it’s a pretty poor quality video.

there’s no 3d fullstop it’s all sprites and bitmaps, the backrounds look handdrawn 2d, the foreground looks handdrawn 2d with 3d perspective(from what i can see) eg.loop the loop, The character model looks like it might have started life as a 3d model but been converted into dozens of sprites for ingame model ala Donkey Kong Snes which is the first game i know of that used sprites originally rendered in 3d. There would be no point rendering the character model in 3d you would get 3d rendering artifacts(aliasing) sprites sampled at high resolution would give you a much cleaner character image.

I’ll trust you guys on this one, as you seem to have far more technical knowledge on the subject than I do.