“...perfect for running, driving, flying or ring collecting.”

June 23, 2017 9:40 PM

OC ReMix Presents Speeding Towards Adventures: 25 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog! [Overclocked Remix] On the final day of Sonic's 25th anniversary year (gotta go fast!), OverClocked ReMix today released its 62nd free community arrangement album, Speeding Towards Adventures: 25 Years of Sonic the Hedgehog. Featuring 23 tracks from 30 artists, Speeding Towards Adventures pays tribute to numerous titles from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, and is co-directed by Russian community member Stepan "Black_Doom" Sudilovsky & Dutch musician Jorrith "Jorito" Schaap. The album is available for free download.

Speeding Towards Adventures pulls together a deep group of musicians honoring the Sega sound team's music in a variety of styles, including rock, funk, electro swing, pop, orchestral, and more. Speeding Towards Adventures was made by fans, for fans, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Sega or Sonic Team; all original compositions are copyright their respective owners. "The fast-paced addictive gameplay, vivid stages, and, of course, catchy music made my first experience of diving into Sonic universe one of the most memorable parts of my childhood," recounted album director Stepan Sudilovsky. "Then I started to learn more and more about Sonic the Hedgehog games, and they were all amazing to explore, but music remained the most enjoyable part of this entertainment." The scope of the album's game coverage starts from the original Sonic the Hedgehog and works up to 2010's Sonic Colors, tackling a full dozen Sonic games. Sudilovsky underscored the album's wide-ranging approach: "My vision for this project: cover as many games as possible, as well as to represent a variety of music genres to represent the variety of Sonic's journeys."

Preview it: On YouTube at http://youtube.com/watch?v=Yemuj9HbaBE
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/ocremix
Download it: http://sonic25.ocremix.org
Torrent: http://bt.ocremix.org/torrents/Speeding_Towards_Adventures_-_25_Years_of_Sonic_the_Hedgehog.torrent
Comments/Reviews: http://ocremix.org/community/topic/45902/

posted by Fizz (5 comments total)

I go back and forth on Sonic the Hedgehog. Some days I'm convinced that Sonic was never really that good, he was just the first in a long line of lame attitude-infused mascot characters whose speedy schtick was impressive at the time but has aged badly. Is it just nostalgia that makes me look back fondly at the early games? After all, Sonic has had a nearly unbroken string of duds since 1996.

Other days I watch my son playing Sonic CD on the iPad or begging me to load Sonic up on the Wii and I think there's got to be more to it. Sonic took a difficult idea, a game that rewards either speed or slow exploration, and did it better than anyone else. Most Sonic games are crap because they don't expect you to stop and look around, or they're filled with bottomless pits that punish the slightest mistake. It's difficult to make a good Sonic level, I know, I've tried. The early games were masterworks of level design, where you smooth transition between careening around loops and bouncing off springs one minute to poking at secret areas or jumping across precarious platforms the next.

Oh, and the music is phenomenal.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 1:15 AM on June 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

No, Sonic was really never that good. Uncontrollable blue nonsense with none of the charm and genius of Mario.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:38 AM on June 24, 2017

Sounds like someone just never got the hang of a console with Blast Processing and all that entails.
posted by radwolf76 at 3:09 AM on June 24, 2017 [5 favorites]

Re: the weird looking-back "Sonic was never good" attitude that's in vogue now, I think Satchell-like-a-bag Drakes makes a good argument against it if you can stand the story analysis (and if you can't, jump here, but he makes a great point about scene transitions and visual storytelling). Some of the criticisms are valid (there probably shouldn't be bottomless pits or drowning pools at all in this kind of game), but a lot of them overlook the fact that the 2D Sonics were made with fundamentally different design principles than Mario, so judging them as bad Mario also-rans (which is what this usually turns into) is weird. I think a lot of the Sonic pessimism is due more to brand poisoning over the years than any inherent inferiority in the original games.

Anyway, what I like about them is mostly the riot of colors and amazing music. No matter how iffy the actual games ever get, they always have some of the absolute best music featured in games. So many compositions lend themselves to remixes and reinterpretations to a greater degree than most games, particularly in the early/mid 90s, and sound fantastic as house/dance music. So here are more remixes.

April Rain (The Cynic Project)
Planet Wisp (Plasma3Music & Pl511)
Disco Absolution (RobKTA)
Wisp Inc. (Glacial Spoon)
Chaotix 5 (OverClocked Assembled)
Two Futures (Portanexus)
Summer Knocking (RobKTA)
posted by byanyothername at 6:29 AM on June 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

No, Sonic was really never that good. Uncontrollable blue nonsense with none of the charm and genius of Mario.

Fixed.
posted by Fizz at 9:26 AM on June 24, 2017 [3 favorites]