#p-06

This shows up in other ways too, with Amigo characters getting their own stage segments and entire stages in a series first. During Shadow's ending, Mephiles uses two Chaos Emeralds to amplify his shadow clone jutsu and completely fill the room with himself. But the theme comes back around when we go to Solaris. As the lore goes, the kingdom of Soleanna worshipped the god Solaris, with stonework scenes in Dusty Desert showing just how long they've done so.

But then, the duke of Soleanna decided to try utilizing their god for their own purposes. In a laboratory beneath the sea between the castle and the old town, the duke managed to capture Solaris, dividing its mind from its power, into Mephiles and Solaris.

Without the mind to control the power and with both filled with vengeance from being exploited by the people who once worshipped them, both ran free, destroying the facility. During the infamous Last Story, Mephiles then uses all seven Emeralds to re-merge with Iblis after it's released from Elise's soul, returning to their full and complete form of Solaris.

All the playable characters then work together to gather the scattered Emeralds and resurrect the mostly-dead Sonic, with Elise using the same power that the two used in Dusty Desert and Tropical Ju- yeah there's no sugarcoating the weird furry kiss. But it IS another instance of gathered sources of power being amplified beyond their individual limits. Thankfully, the final example is the final boss itself, with Sonic, Shadow, and Silver teaming up to defeat Solaris in the present, past, and future simultaneously.

Some Random Sketches I made. The Silver up first was inspired by the brief Section of P-06 Shadow Update where you could play Silver at the time, and his updated Full speed running Animation. The Other Silver was inspired by A Dragon Ball Super Manga pose. 

He feels a little floaty, which is both understandable but a little hard to get a feel for. Also a little bummed out that mashing for extended glide was fixed, but again, I understand. I appreciate the little touches to make Silver's levels more playable, at least. The end of Dusty Desert is a smart and elegant way to make that a lot more playable.

Overall, I like it. I'd still say Sonic's campaign in P-06 is my favorite, though. Shadow's is still a little too difficult and weird. Silver isn't quite in the middle. Like if I had to assign scores to all the campaigns, I'd say:

Sonic's Campaign: 7/10, maybe even an 8

Silver's Campaign 6/10

Shadow's Campaign: 4/10

I streamed the whole thing the day it released, if you'd like to watch me play Silver, Shadow, and Sonic's campaigns back-to-back-to-back. There's a minor sound glitch where gameplay audio was maybe 10% too loud, but that was an issue with my stream setup that day.

Sonic 06 only made the Sonic franchise a complete pariah in the gaming world for YEARS . Sonic was treated like a freaking joke Literally everyday critics/reviewers/random gamers would shit on Sonic for years. I would see articles detailing why Sonic sucked and people sucked for liking it(they were probably written for easy views). Sometimes they would even go as far as to say that the Sonic franchise, even the genesis games had always sucked from the beginning.

It was at times difficult to admit to being a Sonic fan in both irl and online gaming circles lest one be mocked to high heaven with "furry" and "le bestiality kiss" jokes.

06 was also why the number of playable characters ("Sonic's shitty friends as reviewers called them") were stripped to a minimum (solo Sonica) and why human characters were taken out of the spotlight for years.

A lesser franchise would have been killed off altogether by an 06 quality level game. .

A short featurette detailing the work I have done restoring unused voice clips for ChaosX's PC remake of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006).

It's surprisingly enjoyable. I haven't been in a position to try the Shadow update, but I streamed the final Sonic demo when that came out and I was pretty impressed.

As I say in this stream, I still think there are things about Sonic 06 that are just unfixable. ChaosX has done an amazing job getting this game feeling about as good as it could ever feel, but levels like Tropical Jungle and Flame Core are always going to be bad, no matter what. The best controls in the world aren't going to save bad, rushed level design.

And, in truth, I don't want those levels touched much more. They're bad, but they're Sonic 06. The only way to fix them would be to trash the levels and replace them with something brand new from scratch, and I don't think that is an elegant or necessary solution. There would be a difficult balancing act of making the new fan-made stages fit in with the official Sega levels, and it would take too long and too much effort for what this project is aiming to be.

But the majority of P-06 is crazy impressive and it's even crazier to consider that I guess ChaosX claimed he had never (and maybe still hasn't) played Sonic 06 for himself? He did a lot of this semi-blind, and he's been shockingly fast and efficient putting it all together. How much he's done in such a short amount of time is mindblowing.

I’ve kind of poked fun at P-06 in the past, because at this point it’s like, the fifth “Sonic 2006 PC Remake” project we’ve had. There was:

My own Sonic 2006 2D Project

Baddog(?)’s Sonic 2006 2D Project

Genesis of the Azure Wind for Halo Custom Edition (debatable if this was a Sonic 2006 remake, but it was definitely heavily inspired by it)

Brianuuu’s STH2006 Project for Sonic Generations

Sonic NEXT for Unity

Sonic P-06

(I feel like there was at least one more that I’m forgetting about, too.)

And something shared by all of them is they take various measures to “fix” Sonic 2006. And, well, to put it lightly... all of them are made by amateurs, making amateur decisions.

Sonic NEXT, for example, is way too heavy and fiddly with its controls. It takes a lot of getting used to, even compared to official Sonic games. It also focuses heavily on the beautification of Sonic 2006, and especially in the Crisis City demo, that feels like it takes center stage to actually making a game that controls well. It is still super easy to break the game or to die accidentally. It’s faithful to Sonic 2006 in all the wrong ways.

And then you have STH2006 Project, which I’d liken to porting Mario Kart to the Gran Turismo engine. You can do it, and maybe it’ll even be fun eventually, but it just doesn’t make sense to me.

None of this is to say I think these guys should stop what they’re doing or whatever. If they feel fulfilled by these projects, more power to them. Sometimes you get itches like that and you just have to scratch them. And these sorts of projects can be extremely important in the process of learning what makes a good game -- it’s sort of like how people start learning how to draw by tracing someone else’s work (a real, acceptable learning practice).

But there’s no changing the fact that these are amateur, rough, inelegant works. It could be argued they don’t fix anything at all.

P-06, though, is different. They not only polish everything up in a way that feels right, but they add smart new features, like a homing attack crosshair. The lights in Flame Core now have a trail effect that leads you to the next light. They add little boost rings during the surfing sections of Wave Ocean so you aren’t just watching Sonic surf. It’s much easier to aim bombs when playing as Tails. The energy meter works.

And when they get something wrong, they move quickly to fix it. The controls in the 1.0 demo were too sluggish and weird, so they released demo 1.5 that tightened everything up and made it feel more like the original Sonic Adventure. Flame Core was too dark in demo 2.0, so they released demo 2.5 that brightened up the level and tweaked some other things. And usually these updates follow only a few months after the main release.

And like I said during my stream, I’ve been starting to feel kind of starved for a new Sonic game, so I’ve actually been replaying Demo 2.5 of P-06 for a week or two now. And it’s... kind of won me over. A lot.

There are still levels that are stinkers, but that has less to do with this remake project and more to do with the original game. I don’t think you can fix a level like Tropical Jungle without completely rebuilding the entire level from scratch to be something different. It’s always going to be bad, even if you fix the controls and sand down the rougher edges. The same applies, to a lesser extent, to Dusty Desert, Flame Core, and Aquatic Base. Those are difficult, hazardous, weirdly laid out levels, and there’s only so much you can do with that while still preserving their core essence.

But, overall, taken as a whole, I’m very impressed with the level of speed this project was completed under, and the quality of changes and improvements they’ve made. This is about as close to an ideal overhaul as this game will ever get. It’ll never be perfect, because it’s still Sonic 2006 at its core, and parts of that core will always be a little rotten, but... to cozy up to an ugly meme, I would consider paying money for the completed version of this. It’s certainly better than Sonic Forces or Sonic Lost World, that’s for sure.

I hope they do a 3.5 demo at SAGE, though. The snowboarding section at White Acropolis feels a little chaotic because you’re moving so fast and the path down the mountain is so dense with enemies and things. The camera and stuff feels a little jittery, too.

I also feel like I take way more accidental damage now. It really cannot be understated how it feels like enemies fire on you almost INSTANTLY, the MOMENT they appear, which has the side effect of you taking damage any time you go in to strike. I don’t like the idea that you need to give enemies space for a second or two before hitting them. The player should always come out on top for pressing the first-hit advantage, especially in a Sonic game where the point is going fast.