Yeah, you heard me right, Sonic 4 Episode 1 may well be coming to Windows via Steam at some point in the near future. Now you too can enjoy wonky physics, scripted ramps, and the horrible synthesized butchering of Jun Senoue's work from the comfort of your office and - with a decent enough laptop - your toilet too! (The Sonic Retro crowd would probably argue that the toilet is the most appropriate locale.)

Not entirely sure if I should be happy about this or not, but it sure as hell beats trying to play with a DualShock 3.

Well the only good thing that comes to my mind, for a steam release of Sonic 4, is the possible potential to twonk around with some of the game's files to try and correct some of Dimp's damage.

For example Super Sonic controls a lot better than normal, okay it's still broken, but it's more responsive. If Sonic's acceleration and maximum speed values can be raised, I think it'd go a long way to fixing some of the issues. Sure the jumping and uncurling will still be very broken but, it'd be an improvement.

And if the music tracks can be replaced too than I'm sure someone will remaster Senoue's work to sound a lot better (See: M&S at the olympics 2012 Splash Hill mix)

I'll buy it on Steamand PSN if SEGA write up a legally-binding contract promising to put Dimps on (or throw them under) the next bus that rolls along. At least the Retro crowd have already hacked the shit out of Generations, so let the twonking commence.

The music wasn't even broken until Senoue passed it along to the dev staff. Case in point, Splash Hill Act 1. Open it in GoldWave, go to Effect-Pitch and scale it back to 80% - voila, problem solved. Nothing wrong with Senoue's compositions, besides the brainiacs who picked the god-awful soundfont and decided that Sonic music wouldn't sound good unless it had much higher pitch and tempo than the human ears can withstand.

Should've just done the entire soundtrack in the style of Sonic CD, tbh. It'd work.

To be honest from the way things now seem to be going, I'm hopeful Episode II will take a more CD-style route. Sonic 4 seemed very Sonic 1 style.

Thoughts after playing it:
Okay, it's more fun than I'd anticipated, but the complete lack of any physics is just an epic fail. Super Mario World has better momentum physics than this. (Pro tip: SMW doesn't have any momentum physics.) There's really something wrong with starting a spindash then stopping after an inch because you let go of the d-pad. Funny how the homing attack seems to have full rebound physics when used against bosses, yet basic momentum and gravity were no good.

Audio actually sounds okay in practice, but for God's sake, stop using soundfonts and synthesizers. Passable, but one of the worst-sounding games I've played in quite some time. Chuckled at seeing the old Sonic 1 'continue earned' sprite, cringed at the Sonic Adventure sound effects. Can't we just forget that SA/2/2006 ever happened?

Seeing Crawl and Motobug was nice, but Bubbles is still a gonk and I'd have preferred to see Buzz Bomber instead of Buzzer. That's just nitpicking though.



At least Sonic CD is still the shit.

The new Sonic CD release is the absaloute dogs bollocks. Wonderful stuff.

Episode II is looking more hopeful as things go on, totally original badnicks now (unless you take the theory that they're Master System inspired, I'm 50/50 on that) - and reports are that physics are muched improved. If they're anything like Generations' 3DS classic physics (another Dimps digital innovation) - then it should be leaps and bounds above Episode 1.