Announcing Sonic GX - a new episode of Sonic the Hedgehog for Amstrad GX-4000

[TotO]

Who are the lucky tester?

[norecess464]

Who are the lucky tester?

@TotO is much more than a "tester" on Sonic GX. He has an excellent background in gaming (in general) and has also a good experience in shipping great games for the Amstrad (R-Type, Alcon 2020, etc).

His role on Sonic GX is also on the design side, providing precious advices and suggestions. He has excellent attention to details and brings overall coherency, etc.

Example (fun fact!): initially (and in all honesty), for the Special Stage, I was targeting a pure Trailblazer clone: run, jump, and avoid holes. It was late in the development when I realized @TotO's expectations included gameplay elements on top of the checkboard (rings, bombs and the likes), adding unexpected complexity to the implementation...

Without him, no game. At least, not under that form.

ps. enjoy this day @TotO: that will be the only time where I will publicly show all the love you deserve

[Zoe Robinson]

This is absolutely bloody spectacular!

[abalore]

Who are the lucky tester?

@TotO is much more than a "tester" on Sonic GX. He has an excellent background in gaming (in general) and has also a good experience in shipping great games for the Amstrad (R-Type, Alcon 2020, etc).

His role on Sonic GX is also on the design side, providing precious advices and suggestions. He has excellent attention to details and brings overall coherency, etc.

Example (fun fact!): initially (and in all honesty), for the Special Stage, I was targeting a pure Trailblazer clone: run, jump, and avoid holes. It was late in the development when I realized @TotO's expectations included gameplay elements on top of the checkboard (rings, bombs and the likes), adding unexpected complexity to the implementation...

Without him, no game. At least, not under that form.

ps. enjoy this day @TotO: that will be the only time where I will publicly show all the love you deserve

TotO deserves love every day 

[TotO]

J'vous fou quatres jours !

[robcfg]

It's simply amazing!

If only the Plus/GX line would have had enough time to get great games like this one...

[norecess464]

If only the Plus/GX line would have had enough time to get great games like this one...

No remorse. It's exactly why this is so interesting to program for the GX-4000 nowadays. Let's all take our revenge on the past!

[andycadley]

Seriously impressive looking. Great to see the GX4000 getting some love.

[ComSoft6128]

It's simply amazing!

If only the Plus/GX line would have had enough time to get great games like this one...

Better still, games like this when they were launched!

[dthrone]

It's simply amazing!

If only the Plus/GX line would have had enough time to get great games like this one...

Better still, games like this when they were launched!

I'm not sure I like what you're all insinuating here about No Exit and Wild Streets 

[GUNHED]

It's simply amazing!

If only the Plus/GX line would have had enough time to get great games like this one...

The time was there imho. But the traitor-part of the so called scene went to PC and Amiga. That was the problem. Now they're crawling back... 

[Prodatron]

But the traitor-part of the so called scene went to PC and Amiga. That was the problem. Now they're crawling back... 

Thanks a lot for this great insight, I didn't know, that Norecess is now crawling back from the PC/Amiga.

[GUNHED]

No, I guess he arrived years ago! 

[norecess464]

No, I guess he arrived years ago! 

I may be lost into English->French translation.
I started Amstrad demoscene in 1993 -> pursued on PC in 1997 -> GBA->PS2 stuff in 2002 -> PSP stuff in 2007 -> then I bought back an Amstrad in 2008 because of nostalgia.
It's all listed in the Productions section of my website (link in my signature!).

[GUNHED]

My comment was a humorous one.  BTW: Just before I saw the special stage - looks better than any kind of car race on CPC. Looked three times at it, just a real beauty. 

[norecess464]

So after all this time, you thought that Sonic GX was vaporware, right? How wrong you are! 
 
Many things happened to the game in the last months...



First, we rewrote the title screen, this time it's almost a 1:1 with the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis version. Of course, it's fully animated with all the horizontal scrollers, if you had a doubt.





Actually, now many elements are highly inspired from the 16-bit version of the original game.

Above: the "zone name", the "scoring" and the "game over" messages are now displayed directly into the game viewport...

And below, those are screenshots of the new boss-fights, all of them featuring unique gameplay.






Now each zones have their own unique Bonus Stages...




Sonic now moves faster and features small/long jumps (as a consequence, the camera moves faster, too).

Checkpoints have been added in the middle of the maps to avoid restarting from the beginning when loosing...



Many levels were enhanced with better gameplay. Also, many bugfixes were provided, and all the numerous collision issues we had are now gone.

Those previewed screenshots/video are probably the last ones before the final release of the game. We don't want to spoil anything...

So the eternal question -- when does this game will be available to everyone !?? Well, the answer is simple: this game is a labor of love, we keep adding stuff till we can, and we will continue till we are satisfied enough with the final result. Also, we actually raised the technical bar again and again since we thought that the GX-4000 could handle it (and with reason), meaning more work for us. A tentative release now could be end of 2025, but I don't promise anything now loll. =)

To conclude this post, here is a video showing the various elements of the gameplay... here it's running on emulator (that was more practical to record the various parts of the game) but the game behaves exactly the same on the real hardware.

[VincentGR]

This is the best thing I've ever seen for the hardware and in the 8bit world.

Is that road med res?
A thing that feels different from GG, is the camera movement that locks on sonic.

[Gryzor]

Jesus.

Now all that remains is building a time machine, going back 35 years and wiping the floor with the competition.

I mean, a time machine must be easier than this, right? 😁

[Golem13]

o my god it's hypnotising! and what happiness!
if it's true, it's still vaporware, it's all a series of bitmaps

heart on you my friend

[andycadley]

That just looks awesome. 

This. This is exactly what I used to rant about when I said the Plus hardware was capable of so much more than had ever been demonstrated. That it was worth emulating, worth spending time advocating for and building rewritable cartridges that sounded like madness because why would anyone bother for a crap system with 26 games.

There has been so much that's started to show how much the system was underestimated over the past few years, but this absolutely knocks it so far out of the park. Even I didn't imagine it ending up looking so polished. 

[Prodatron]

This is just so f*ing cool, I have no words for this!
I still most love the 3D "racing" levels at the end of the video, this looks better than 16bit stuff!

[lmimmfn]

It looks absolutely stunning, wow, thanks for sharing and take your time.

[Rabs]

Looks simply brilliant. Nice job. 

[GUNHED]

Excellent work!!! 

[dodogildo]

So gorgeous, I'm paralyzed