With the release of Sonic Mania, these lovely individuals have seemingly been vindicated, as Sonic's sprites in that title are based off the ones in Sonic 1 and 2. This important design decision then led to fan-made comparisons such as this, to which the True Elite immediately respond by pointing out how cross-eyed the Sonic 3 sprites look.
Except that if you bother playing the game, you realize this is what Sonic's standing sprite actually looks like:
So where did the other sprite come from? We've actually seen it before on this very blog. It's one of the rotation sprites used when standing on rotating objects, such as the barrels in Carnival Night Zone.
This sprite just happens to be slightly different from the regular standing sprite, namely with respect to Sonic's left shoe, his mouth, and his gaze, which does indeed look a bit cross-eyed.
Okay, but how did this relatively obscure sprite end up in the comparison?
Well, as I pointed out back then, the standing rotation sprites take up mapping frames $55 through $5B. Meanwhile, as we recently saw, the actual standing pose is all the way over at mapping frame $BA. Someone comes along to make a rudimentary sprite rip, finds frame $56 long before reaching frame $BA, so they push it to the top of their sprite sheet.
Much later, someone naïvely takes the first sprite in this sheet, blows the pixels up to the size of Legos, and uses them to win an argument on the Internet.
So how come the other characters don't suffer from this kind of mix-up?
Well, as for Tails, frame $56 is significantly different from his standing sprite, which is nearly unchanged from the one in Sonic 2. This makes it unlikely that anyone would confuse the two.
As for Knuckles, he actually uses frame $56 in his main standing animation, in no short part due to his sheer number of unique sprites, which struggle to fit within the 252 mapping frame limit.
Personally, I like the Sonic 3 design, with no real preference between the Sonic 1/2/CD/Mania and 3K designs. I will admit Sonic Mania was in the right for using the Sonic 1 design for nostalgia value.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think?
Not a nostalgia value, people really prefer Sonic 1/2/CD designs, which I also do.
DeleteI honestly find it hard to believe that people's preference of the 1/2/CD sprites isn't just because of nostalgia, given that the 3K sprites better match Sonic's classic design and are thus more accurate and better drawn, in addition to being better animated. Sonic's shoes in the 1/2/CD sprites look ridiculous, being too long and pointy and looking nothing they do in the official art and character sheets; and his hands look awful, they're diminute when he's standing, but grow twice as big all of a sudden when he's walking.
DeleteDo these people who accuse the 3K sprites of having "clown shoes" say the same when they look at the official art? And if they hate the "baseball mittens" so much, why are they cool with the 1/2/CD sprites having them when he's walking?
The Sonic 3 sprites actually seem to match the official art much more closely than the other sprites. I guess people who are complaining about the "clown shoes" never noticed that Knuckles got the treatment in Sonic Mania.
ReplyDeleteI always preferred the Sonic 3 sprites myself; yeah, the proportions were a bit exaggerated, but it's both a cartoon and a sprite. That felt appropriate, and it gave it more personality than the previous games' Sonic sprites.
ReplyDeleteMore importantly, neither 3K nor 2 nor Mania used that awkward purpley blue that Sonic 1 used. Despite being otherwise almost identical to its immediate successor, that palette really did a lot of harm IMO.
There's also the fact that, alignment wise, the rotation sprite version of the stance is shifted one pixel behind compared to the real standing sprite.
ReplyDeleteHmm... defend S3's sprites, or complain about "Legos"...
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, what I find interesting about that presumably-early standing sprite is that the shine on Sonic's shoe matches his ducking sprites, where it spontaneously moves.
Now i will never unsee it
ReplyDeleteThx
Great post thank you.
ReplyDelete