Sonic 3 & Knuckles Hard Bosses Edition 2 (Version 300.0)

Hi! Finally, I made a new version of my hack! I want to show on this site!
I do this hack for 2 years, if you've played version v200.0 hack, in the new version you will notice a lot new! If you see this hack for the first time, hope you like it!

This is only a beta version, I would like to hear advice on how to make the better this hack!

Download:

 - Mediafire

 - 4shared

What has changed:

 - Changed Bosses. Also in the game, there are new bosses. For Blue Knuckles bosses will be much harder.

 - Changed Hud. Deleted Score, Timer, and Hud Lives.

 - Removed all the rings!

 - New playable character Blue Knuckles.

 - Removed almost all of the layout levels.

 - Changed Palette.

 - New Music. (New remix music, and music from Sonic 3D).

 - New Special Stages (By VegaLTE)

 - To activate the debug mode you need to use the code "UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, UP, UP, UP, UP" (Code must be entered after the Sega screen.)

 - Changed credits.

Credits:

Special Stages Changed:

- VegaLTE

Beta Testers:

- kelvinsonic

- Nikash Gill

- William5000000

Screenshots:





Video:

 

OK, so I've just sat and played this for a bit and, well... it's hard. Really damn hard. (It wouldn't be called Hard Bosses Edition if it wasn't, right?)

I couldn't beat any of the bosses, bar the Sandopolis miniboss and that's saying something. I mean, some of these bosses have what looks like no clear window of opportunity to attack them and I get killed almost instantly. It's frustrating as well, because I actually wanted to play and enjoy this and instead I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to beat Angel Island Zone's miniboss without mistiming a jump and dying instantly. I don't understand the purpose of having bosses with an insane amount of hits to make it more challenging. It's also a shame I didn't get much chance to admire the music changes either, bar the boss tune.

Don't get me wrong, I love a challenge as much as the next person but this is so difficult that it's just not fun for me. Which I'm sorry to say.

Still, it's nice to have another Sonic 3 and Knuckles hack.

 

OK so I'm going to be honest here. as it stands now *takes deep breath* I hate this hack... I'm sorry but with a passion I just don't like this hack at all. I mean dont get me wrong, it's great that you know how to code bosses in s3k as it's rarely something you would see now a days, however They are rediculously hard and some you can't even stand more than 5 seconds without losing to some kind of dick moves. That and the layouts are a bit to difficult to work with even if it is suppose to be hard, and the music just sounds terrible. Again I'm sorry but I just don't like this hack at all and cound'nt even enjoy playing it anymore after the HPZ boss with knuckles.

 

Recently I found this bug here, I was trying to climb wall with blue knuckles I ended up getting stuck.



...and about the game is a good job, It was a great pleasure to test your game good work.

 

Oh, where to begin with this thing...

Let's just hit the high points here. Roughly 70% of the music is not pleasant to listen to at all. Whatever edits you made to them, they made the songs very unpleasant to the ears, which is an instant turnoff for players. Fix them or trash them, simple as that. Also, the palettes are meh. Not completely painful to the eye (except for that level select), but they're not exactly stellar palettes, either. In addition, the special stages are not very good at all. Not challenging, just boring. Nothing about them made me want to go back and play them, which for a person like me who enjoys the occasional Blue Spheres run is a disappointment.

Your most massive chunk of flaws in this entire hack are the bosses, though. The boss edits are generally terrible, in that you've opted to make them difficult via what I like to call "dickish difficulty". This difficulty stands out from normal difficulty in that instead of feeling like my skill is the source of my failure to defeat the boss, I feel like the boss was terribly and unfairly designed to be nigh-impossible to beat, especially when you include the absence of rings. Your fairest bosses were the MHZ boss and DEZ final boss, in that they weren't really altered past having unfair hit amounts and no rings (in MHZ's case) as well as timing changes. Meanwhile, every other boss was vastly unfair in a very dickish way. I get you want difficulty, but you missed the sign pointing the right direction to hard and instead are deep in the forest of extreme dickishness that no one enjoys. You want players to keep playing? Make the game fair, not unfair. I can say that I never want to play this again because of how terribly unfair and dickish it was in design, and I'm pretty sure many others agree, so step back and rethink how to make bosses fairly challenging, because this isn't it.

Now, all of that being said, there is some glimmer of hope to it all. While they need refining, the approaches taken to the MHZ, FBZ, and SPZ tracks (both acts for all) are not terrible, and given some tweaking, might be able to come out as interesting arrangements of the original pieces. The boss and miniboss edits, while at times flawed, also fall into that category. Also, while there are points where the palettes are terrible, there are also points where the palettes are just boring and dull. With some reworking, the palettes can go from dull and boring to dark and menacing (if that's what you're going for, which I assume is the case).

This thing needs a lot of work before it becomes a solid hack. Learn from what is pointed out as wrong, apply, and who knows, maybe you'll be able to impress people the next time you make a release if you improve enough.

 

Ok, props for knowing how to code bosses. That's pretty impressive. HOWEVER, the designs are some of the most dickish I've seen in any Sonic hack ever. Giving us no rings isn't hard, it's cheap, especially when the boss takes a million and a half hits to defeat. I started off laughing, because the music was so bad. Every single track is grading on the ears. I got mad when I heard FBZ act 2, my favorite track in the game, possibly my favorite in the series. My laughter quickly turned to anger, as soon as I got to the first spike trap in AIZ act 1. That always gave me trouble because I just speed ahead, but without rings, I died about 10 times trying to avoid that stupid rhyno badnik. The mini boss gave me bad Sonic Advance 3 flashbacks, trying to figure out what to do to defeat the boss. I skipped around a little bit, trying to find a decent boss that I could defat. I couldn't. Even the DEZ boss, where I spindash underneath the fingers to get past that stage, took an eternity and a half for me to say: "Screw it" and quit the game. The palettes look horrible. They clash so much. The color choices you made are also very questionable. Purple for AIZ act 2? Not only does it look butt-ugly, it makes no sence. I did enjoy the part before the boss in AIZ act 2. That added a decent amount of challange. But that's the only thing I liked. This hack needs more than a little work before it's ready for anouther release. 

 

I just wonder what's the deal with the version number. It's almost like Windows 2000 except that the number doesn't refer to a year.

 

Yeah i'd have to agree with everyone else on the music remixes. I played through some older versions of your hack and some music choices were alright, but you forgot to edit the PSG channels to fit with the FM ones making the songs sound out of tune, likewise in the latest version. Also why did you stripped down the hud and only displayed the ring counter when you don't have any Rings to collect in the levels themselves? In fact why is the hud stripped down to begin with? I'm just curious about it, and finally yes this hack has tons of dick moves. I suggest fixing the hud and bringing back at least some rings or change the boss behavior to make them less difficult. Also the checksum should probably be fixed, it can be easily fixed by using the fixheader program that comes along with the Sonic 1 and 2 disassemblies. You can easily drag and drop the rom itself and the program will fix the checksum so that it can be playable on actual hardware. (Assuming if someone wanted to play it on their console.)

 

Seems a bit strange that you'd remove the HUD only to have a custom ring counter display when there's no rings in the game.

Anyway, I got around to playing the game,  and it wasn't a fun time. Let me explain what could be improved:

For starters (and the most important factor) is the bosses. While some bosses I feel do have a sense of difficulty which could be overcome with skill, taking the rings from the game does not help its case. With the possible exception of SZ1, not only are they either obnoxious or far too hard, there are some instances where I think the bosses aren't possible to beat, and I sometimes feel like I'm resorting to cheap tactics to beat the boss in ways I'm sure you didn't intend on (such as spindashing under the fingers on the final boss, and using 2 player Tails to beat CNZ2's boss). I have played all of the bosses, although not enough to get into an actual pattern to beat these bosses, but I'm certain that neither FBZ1 or SSZ2 are beatable, and I'm still not sure about what I have to do to get the boss of ICZ1. I get the feeling that the bosses weren't tested with multiple characters, because this is the case with Knuckles: I've played through AIZ1 and I'm quite sure he can't even reach the boss' platform, while in HCZ, the boss seems tailor made with his climbing and gliding abilities. From what I've tried, Sonic has to pull off a precise jump to hit the boss and it's even worse as Tails. There are some things I do like, for instance, the LRZ2 boss concept (although I feel that it would be much better with rings) and how the LRZ3 boss music speeds up when you reach the actual boss at the bottom. I was initially curious to see why you had placed giant rings everywhere before the bosses, so I came to the assumption that some of these bosses were to be beaten as Super Sonic. Upon collecting all emeralds, I wasn't awarded 50 rings, so I'm going to assume it was to show off your new special stages, so I'll get onto them: They're fine, not brilliant, but definitely not terrible. There were a few times when I had absolutely no idea where to go and I had trapped myself with red spheres for going the wrong way, though.

The level design suffers from flaws which are beyond retarded. I'm going to assume that it's to keep it consistent with the difficult hack theme, but a lot of these cannot be completed the first time around, because you have to know that the chute you drop down to the boss will kill you unless you move right or left. Take for instance LBZ1 and especially LRZ3, which kills you before you can even move if you don't hold right or left at the beginning of the level. I've already mentioned some of the level design being incompatible with Knux, so I'll leave that out. As for the palettes, they're fine with me, except for AIZ.

The music doesn't sound too good. For whatever reason, you've edited what the FM plays, but not the PSG, so it sounds really odd when coupled with the unusual instrument choices you made for them.  Launch Base act 2's music is a combination of two of these factors at their poorest and as such, is absolutely terrible, and reminds me of Central City from Sonic Chronicles. While I suspect that the priority of editing level music in a ROM hack where you battle bosses that have boss themes is quite low, I suggest you give it a look anyway. Speaking of which, MHZ2 plays the unedited boss music for some reason. Don't know if you did that on purpose or not. I will admit it was nice to see you changed the credits music to the S3 unused medley.

I'll take it that this may be a serious project, so I suggest you treat these comments as constructive criticism and work with them. You do show some potential, but you're compounded by poor design choices. Keep at it!

EDIT: Oh, forgot to mention: Don't keep all of your builds together for a game like this. S3&K alone is 4MB, and with all your revisions, it comes to about ~28MB for us to download.

 

Time for a review.

- Title screen music screwed to hell and back
? Sound test number changed to XXX for no reason

+ Blue Knuckles

- Bosses require remembering patterns

? AIZ2 pits during bombing

- Fell through ground in AIZ2

+ AIZ2 boss - that took me by surprise

- AIZ2 boss projectiles are near enough invisible once you hit the boss

more edited in later

EDIT:

what happened here?

also, Dandaman, insta-shield is your friend.