How Sonic Project 06 Evolved Over Time

 

    
    Sonic Project 06 is a fangame I feel needs little introduction at this point. It’s a fan recreation of Sonic 2006 that attempts to realize the vision of the original while adding additional flourishes to round out the experience to what I believe is some of the most fun 3D Sonic gameplay out there. However, it isn’t complete yet. Last release is still being developed and seeing as it’s probably gonna be a while before it comes out, I thought it’d be fun to not only marathon every* single version of the game but also talk about how the game has evolved over time because to be honest I just wanted an excuse to gush about this game again. So strap in because we are going to be here a while.

DEMO 1.5 - 5/20/19

    Sadly demo 1.0 is not publicly available anywhere for download, so instead we’ll start at demo 1.5, which was released to address some issues from the initial version. However because of this discrepancy, we’re going to treat this like 1.0. Starting off with the stage list, it’s just Sonic’s Wave Ocean and Kingdom Valley, meaning the only characters in this demo are Sonic, Tails and Silver. Loading into Wave Ocean we can see that the visuals aren’t too dissimilar to how the game looks currently, which was kind of surprising to see. It makes for an interesting comparison across the different major releases, being able to see where refinements were made to make the game look as good as it does now. I’ve always liked 06’s environments so to see them being done this much justice even back in the first build is nice to see. Unfortunately I do not share the same praise for the physics. They feel weirdly… floaty? It’s hard to fully describe but it definitely feels strange. I mean just look at this slope jump. It’s really funny to see but probably unintentional. The spindash also feels inconsistent, with spamming it being really weird to control and charging it basically being useless. It gives very little speed and also uncurls you, basically being a far worse version of the blue gem. Although I do like how the jumpdash carries some momentum after it ends, it makes it feel less pace breaking than the current iteration so hopefully something like this gets implemented in the last release. The rest of sonic’s moveset is here and works as normal, your spinkick, slidekick and light dash are all mapped to separate buttons and you start out with every retail upgrade with the exception of the gems. The gems are here and accounted for, being scattered across both stages. They mostly work as they did in the retail game, or at least how they were intended to work. Blue gem gives you a burst of speed, red gem slows down everything including Sonic, which is a fair balance because if it still worked like it did in retail the s-ranks would be even easier. Green gem gives you tornado kick at home, purple gem still shrinks you but only gives one extra jump at level one. Sky gem is slightly less busted but still really good, the white gem is still as useless as ever and finally, the yellow gem is useful for getting those s-ranks. The level up system is implemented here too, which makes every gem use less action gauge and improve their ability. The blue gem extends the dash and lets it do damage, the red gem just uses less action gauge and the green gem gets extended range and damage. The purple gem gives you an extra jump per level, maxing out at 3 extra jumps. Sky gem makes you actually deal damage to enemies during your travel, which sounds good on paper but considering the primary use of this gem in my own play is to save myself from falling, it’s not as good as it sounds. The white gem gains more damage and lets enemies ricochet into other enemies, which is really nice but bbunfortunately there’s not much use for the gem in the first place. Finally, the yellow gem just decreases the amount of gauge used, which is still nice but not as useful. The Rainbow gem is present as well, being the reward for getting both s-ranks and allows you to become Super Sonic. The gem level is tied to your abilities too, with the first level just providing the basic invulnerability and a slight ring magnetism. Level 2 boosts your speed and jump height, with level 3 granting the arrow of light, based on his attack in the Solaris boss fight from the original game. Unfortunately for the gems, Sonic’s action gauge recharges at the same pace as a snail, which is probably an insult to snails so I’m sorry to all the snails I offended with that comment but holy hell is this thing slow. Sure it can recharge in the air but it’s so slow I often forgo the gems with the exception of the rainbow gem. Although that also has an issue in that for Wave Ocean it kicks you out of super when you grab the orca, so you can’t even be super in the mach speed section. To be fair, Super Sonic isn’t any faster in mach speed anyway nor can you be Super in the results screen. You also lose control when using the arrow of light, which now that I think about it, also applies to the spinkick, which you also can’t activate out of a spindash for some really strange reason. Also a weird bug with the blue gem is that it sometimes just… doesn’t work? I probably have a higher chance of winning the lottery than having this gem function, which is a real shame given how bad the spindash is. Overall the controls aren’t bad–they’re more than bearable–but there’s just a lot of weird small issues that are probably just the results of small oversights during development.

Tails is just straight up broken I think. He doesn’t have the rhythm badge property on his tail swipe, trying to aim the dummy ring bombs uh… does whatever this is and throwing them in the air pauses your forward momentum which feels super jarring. You also can’t turn while doing the tail swipe but his flight doesn’t feel that bad but the gauge feels like it drains far too fast. At least it recharges at a decent rate unlike somebody’s. Thankfully his segment is extremely short so you can still mostly skip his level design and head straight into the first mach speed section of the game, which has its own quirks. The fastest way to traverse mach speed is by not holding your movement stick when you light dash, as for some reason holding it as you light dash makes you move slower. Other than that mach speed suffers from the same issues I highlighted earlier with the floatier physics and weird controls.

    Moving over to Kingdom Valley, this stage still looks gorgeous here. Much like Wave Ocean the foundation of the visuals would be planted here, although something does look a little weird here, even compared to the next demo. Also like Wave Ocean, here we have a new character to play as in Silver and while already a substantial improvement over retail, it’s still a far cry from his full potential being unlocked. The teleport dash works a lot like retail, with it only sending you a short distance forward. Its physics are very similar to the homing attack’s but I feel gravity kicks in a little too fast, sometimes making it riskier to cross small gaps with it. His levitation still feels really nice and the gauge drain/recharge is as it should be. He lacks the ability to do any animation cancels which is a shame but understandable as he’s only in this small segment and this is his only spotlight for a long while. Although using his psychokinesis reveals that the hit detection isn’t rock solid. Sometimes objects will just refuse to be grabbed and assuming you can grab them, sometimes they also just refuse to do damage. He also sports a new running animation and it still looks really good here. Although I’m not really a fan of this weird green-ish tint to his fur and the glows on his gloves feel a bit too much, here’s a side-by-side of current release silver to really highlight what I mean. It’s a minor complaint, it doesn’t ruin the game or anything but just something to point out. One time I broke the ending part of his section but seeing as the laser wall isn’t here you can just… hover over to the spring and skip the last combat segment, which lets be honest is probably a blessing in disguise.

    At the end of the 3rd section of Kingdom Valley we get the classic cutscene of Silver holding off the enemies so Sonic can catch up to Elise, but in these earlier versions there’s actually a spring to the left side that can skip this entirely, which is pretty neat considering this cutscene is also kinda long. Ignore the timer still ticking, that's just a bug. Entering mach speed and this is still probably the best looking area in the game, although I had more issues with the hitboxes here than in Wave Ocean. But other than that, it’s a fairly standard affair. Run to the end and watch Elise perish. Something I did forget to bring up in the previous section was that if you press the input for the spin kick, sonic will grind to a halt which can definitely help when you accidentally start going too fast.

    Before I end this section there’s a few miscellaneous things I wanna go over that I couldn’t really find a place to put anywhere else but still want to mention. The gems don’t have a preset order like they do in the retail game and instead are in the order you picked them up in, also missing the little gem ui added in a later release. You also can’t swap them during automation and automation overall feels a lot slower. You can finally choose to restart just the section you’re on or the entire stage which is a really nice quality of life feature that the original game didn’t have. Gold medal results aren't accessible which is a bit strange but is passable due to there only being 2 stages accessible. The last episode just isn’t there which I find hilarious. Again these aren’t jabs at the game as this is the first demo but just weird little oddities that I found while messing around with the game. It’s a good demo for what it is but thankfully, we wouldn’t have to wait long before the next release.

DEMO 2.0 - 10/31/19

    Demo 2 was released not too long after 1.5 and brought a multitude of changes as well as 3 new stages. Before even hopping into the game, I wanna highlight the extras menu. Yeah it existed in demo 1 but it’s been a little more fleshed out here, letting you finally access the test stage and a lot of player customization. Sadly there’s still no option to change the background video yet but that’ll come later. Gold medal results are still inaccessible in this version, which sucks a little more now that we have 5 stages but still not the end of the world. Speaking of the end of the world, the last episode still isn’t on trial select which is still just a funny oversight.

    Jumping over to Wave Ocean, we’ll see that the little wind tunnels have been added, helping to speed up the automation and to help guide the player through the opening section, clearly showing that touching these will grant you a burst of speed. These are used again later but for the most part they only ever show up in Sonic’s version which, while expected since no other character ever water slides, it is a bit of a shame they only show up like 3 times. Something you’ll also notice is that certain automation has sped up, almost to a comical degree. The controls and physics have also been further refined. Spindashing from a standstill no longer brings me great anguish, although now it just feels inconsistent. The blue gem finally works again, the homing attack’s momentum got slightly nerfed but still feels really nice and the funny slope jumps of the previous release have been put into check. Sonic’s quills have also been brought down, no more are the days of them just completely freaking out. The ui has also been slightly updated to use more accurate coloring. Who would notice? Me of course do you KNOW who I am? I’ve stared at this ui for years of my life of course I’d notice. Also while the little gem selector ui still isn’t present but this time they are sorted by their retail order, which is a very nice change. Still can’t change them during automation and sadly the gauge behavior is still the same as the previous release. Moving over to the end of the stage, we can see that Super Sonic’s color pulsates like it does in the classic games which is a neat addition. We also don’t get kicked out of super when grabbing the orca anymore, which is really nice. Tails is unfortunately still a bit underwhelming, lacking the rhythm badge property on his tail swipe but his dummy ring bomb aiming doesn’t bring shame to his entire bloodline anymore and his flight feels infinitely better than it did prior. Unfortunately his segment still isn’t really that interesting but at least it’s over in a flash. Upon hitting the switch, a new dialogue exchange between him and Sonic is now present, although missing some of the camera work that would come later on. Speeding into mach speed, there hasn’t been much change here. Holding a neutral stick while light-dashing is still the fastest way to traverse, the spinkick button still slows you down the same as before but newly added is the ability to do the bounce attack. Other than the physics changes I really can’t tell if anything changed here, so onto the new stages!

    Dusty Desert is new to this demo and it brings a new playstyle with it: Sonic carrying the princess. This playstyle wasn’t much fun in the original game and not much has really changed here. You have a moveset that has been heavily cut down, leaving only the light-speed dash, slide kick and homing attack from the base moveset. Exclusive to this character is the energy shield that you have to use to cross the sand in this level. You can also use it to destroy enemies but it’s a bit gimmicky, with it typically being faster to just homing attack everything. Going through this level is fairly similar to the retail game, with it probably being the most open-ended stage in the game. It’s a real shame this level is dumbed down by the princess playstyle. This stage has a lot of open space to shove new design and secrets into, but sadly goes underutilized due to the rushed nature of the original game. Hopefully one day this level can be expanded upon.

    Moving over to Flame Core, I hope you enjoy not seeing anything because wow, is this stage dark. I sure hope there’s no quirky animatronics around- oh fuck. Luckily this stage is a bit more combat intensive than the previous stages so we can go ahead and see that much like the retail game, your bounce attack just annihilates anything in your path. It makes Sonic have the fastest combat in the game, as well as the easiest score attack method. The combat is also generally faster paced with the engine improvements that have been introduced, like being able to spam the homing attack and hitboxes not being as bad as they used to be. It really is a night/day transformation. It also feels like a good time to bring up that you can also refresh your homing attack by hitting the button for the bounce attack. It’s a small change that many people probably didn’t even notice but one change that goes a long way to making this game feel as fluid as it does.

    Moving into the interior, I really hope you liked not being able to see anything before because it is 10x worse here than before, bordering on unplayable with how hard it can be to see. Luckily I’ve played this stage half a million times so I can traverse this area with my eyes closed but wow. Eventually we run into Knuckles, a newcomer for this demo and he’s probably the most different from his retail counterpart thus far, with a lot of his core issues being addressed. His gliding has a similar descent to the original, but you don’t have sticky glue on your gloves anymore meaning you can actually detach from walls when you want to. He can also finally glide into enemies and his ground shaker attack functions as it was intended to. His 3-hit combo has different finishers depending on the last button you hit, with them being ripped from previous games. His section is also extended ever so slightly, instead of hitting the last orb and teleporting straight to Sonic you have to move forward and actually exit the room before swapping. A very small change that doesn’t stick around for long but it’s still nice to see. Leaving the section unfortunately doesn’t bring any light back but we’re at the end so it isn’t too big of a deal.

    Radical train is the final new stage for this demo, which thankfully doesn’t introduce any new playstyles. That also means it’s the stage I probably have the least to say about, because it’s just a standard action stage. You gotta stop the train from exploding and then hop into mach speed to chase down Eggman’s train. It’s fairly linear too, meaning there’s not much room for shortcutting. It’s also unfortunate that since the game is so fast now, you won’t get to hear much of the banging music that plays in the mach speed segment, which is maybe playing right now if I remember how to make videos.

    Finally, Kingdom Valley hasn’t received many changes itself, but Silver has been slightly fixed. His teleport dash behaves largely the same as before, but that weird glitch where objects couldn’t be picked up has been fixed. Although now we have an issue where you can sometimes get stuck in the throwing state and just… float there doing nothing. The only way to fix it is by getting hit which is just strange. I don’t know how to reproduce it either, only having this one clip of it. The laser wall still isn’t here but at least this rune works now, meaning you can take the intended path now. Hit detection still isn’t solid and sometimes this enemy doesn’t wanna be grabbed but otherwise, Silver is fairly solid now. The cutscene at the end of section 3 still doesn’t pause the timer but again, you can skip it so who really cares.

DEMO 2.5 - 11/15/19

    There’s not too much to go over, so let’s keep this as brief as possible. You can finally complete mach speed sections as Super Sonic, as well as his aura’s audio level being lowered. Result screen quotes have been implemented for Dusty Desert, something I actually didn’t even notice being absent until reading the patch notes for this update. Flame Core finally stopped being an introvert and decided to let some light into its room, meaning you can actually play the level now. Radical Train’s levers now glow so they’re a bit easier to see.  Kingdom Valley section 3 is a lot rainier now but unfortunately the timer still doesn’t pause during the cutscene. Apparently Silver’s animations got fixed here but I didn’t notice a difference.

    And that’s a wrap for demo 2. Overall a solid demo that makes a lot of solid improvements over the previous version but still has a lot of room to improve, as we’ll see going forward. However, much like demo 1, this demo is good for what it is. Sadly not as many smaller things to talk about but that’s just the nature of this release.

SONIC RELEASE 1.0 - 7/14/20

    Finally, we reach the first of the major releases. From this point onward, P-06 would follow an episodic release format instead of the incremental demos we had the year prior. With that out of the way, this release adds the rest of Sonic’s stages to the game, meaning we finally get to behold the beauty of the snowboard and also Tails Wave Ocean is here too I guess. I don’t know how to continue this paragraph so let’s just move forward.

    Starting yet again in Wave Ocean, not much has changed here. I just like using this stage as a backdrop to discuss overall changes. Controls don’t feel too wildly different here, although the homing attack does feel slightly worse, but there’s a couple things that are much worse but that’s for later. The spindash still feels inconsistent, with some feeling weak and some feeling how it should. The gem menu is finally here and it feels great to finally have it here, finally knowing what gems I’ve collected and what order they’re in, even if it’s gotten to the point where I know this information anyway. Sadly the gauge drain still acts like it did previously but you can finally change gems during automation, which is nice. Moving forward to Tails, unfortunately nothing has really changed with him. Still no rhythm badge but the flight does feel a lot better to use. Speeding into mach speed and the light speed dash has been fixed. The fastest way to move is now holding the stick forward while spamming light dash instead of letting go of it before a light dash. Other than that, there’s no other notable changes to be had here.

    White Acropolis is a new stage and it is one of the more linear stages, although in the 2nd section that linearity is more of a suggestion. Although it may seem unremarkable at first, playing through the first section reveals the board has some busted physics- oh my god. I knew Sonic was fast but I just didn’t believe it. Moving past this surprisingly fun snowboarding section, we move into the second section, which has a really funny quirk to its level design. You see those laser walls? That’s the end of the level right there. Chaos has placed invisible walls over these walls so you can’t just skip over but in this release they’re fairly low, meaning if you position yourself on a rock or the searchlight you can blue gem over the wall, skipping the entire level. However, skipping this level means I have less to annoy you with, so let’s rewind. Moving past this surprisingly fun snowboarding section, we move into the second section. Fun fact about this stage is that it’s generally believed that this stage was outsourced due to some developer notes found in the retail game, which may explain why this level’s design is… interesting. It’s definitely a neat idea though, having a level essentially being a giant circle. Shame the invisible walls are so low but hey, you can just play as intended, so let's do that. You’ll eventually swap to Tails to do a flying segment and afterwards, we get to see a really neat change to the level design. Instead of spawning on the other side of the door like retail, we actually get to go through this little pathway to end up where the switch is, then we can progress forward into a giant open field of snow. This may be the most open section in the entire game, with nothing really stopping you from going anywhere within the bounds of the section. There’s plenty of paths to take and enemies to defeat, making it a really fun section to score attack.

    Crisis City also decides to open with a snowboard- err sorry, rustboard and this section isn’t nearly as funny as White Acropolis’. There’s not really any opportunity to take advantage of the broken physics, but this part does look pretty cool I guess. You also finally run around this loop instead of just awkwardly transitioning to the next section thank goodness. Moving forward we have this really long rail grinding bit and the lack of a way to properly speed this section up kinda hurts it, so instead of playing as intended you can just jump off at the start and land on a later section. Even after that you still have a bit more left to go and for some reason, this demo doesn’t have proper rail switching, so sometimes when you try to change rails you’ll start going backwards. A mild annoyance that I hope gets fixed eventually but not enough to really kill this section, not as much as the slower rail speed anyway. Moving forward through to the 3rd section, this section is one of my favorites in the entire game. Unfortunately the action gauge still works really weird, so part of that fun is diminished but give it one more release and I’ll stop complaining about how it works for Sonic I promise. We’re finally in the infamous mach speed section, which has been drastically improved here. It still keeps that chaotic feeling of the retail game’s version while making it more bearable due to the vastly improved controls.

    Tropical Jungle is another princess stage and is probably my least favorite stage across the entire game. It's a lot better here, but it’s still just generally unfun. Although it’s not due to the level design, I think it’s really good in the second half, reminding me a lot of White Acropolis’ ending area. The first section is fine but both sections are bogged down by the moveset being extremely limited, hell you don’t even need the shield in the first section. The stage has also consistently given me trouble when attempting to s-rank the stage. I’ve gotten better at it now but it still trips me up from time to time. A true shame because as mentioned earlier, the second section is jam packed with alternate routes. It’s an incredibly dense area, a miracle they managed to pack so much into such a small section. It’s just a shame that you’re still holding Princess Elise because man this section could be so much more fun with Sonic’s really fun moveset.

    Aquatic Base is the final level in Sonic’s campaign, and it’s probably the longest in the game. Although unfortunately we start off on a not great start, because you’re immediately prompted with a hallway that you’d probably immediately want to spindash down it, but unfortunately there’s dash panels littered through this part that reset your speed when hit, which is REALLY jarring and is a recurring element, which does bog part of this specific section down. It’s also an incredibly linear stage, meaning there’s not much room to explore here unfortunately. Then you get hit with the ball. I don’t like the ball. It’s better here, as the controls are improved and the ball now takes an additional hit to dissipate. But it’s still just a bit of a pace breaker, which isn’t the only time this ball will cause me great anguish. Saving that for later however, we now swap over to Tails and the lack of the rhythm badge really hurts his combat here. Sure you can fly around carpet bombing everything with dummy rings but sometimes you just wanna stick to the ground and wack things with your tail, which is just slightly annoying to do for now. Also it still locks you in the direction you’re moving, not helping things either. Thankfully his flight is still busted and the laser walls haven’t been raised here so you can just skip most of his segment, especially since the next couple rooms have the Pillars of Doom™ that you can hit to instantly kill everything around them.

    The next section starts in another hallway of despair and sadness but hey you at least get to play bowling, so that’s pretty neat I guess. If you miss the strike here you’re legally obligated to restart the section until you get it. This isn’t a joke. You have to hit that strike or Sonic will find you. Hit it. Hit the strike. Unfortunately not even 10 seconds later you’re thrown into another hallway of despair and sadness, BUT at least after this one you have a small combat room that you can trivialize with the Pillars of Doom- WHO PUT THESE EVERYWHERE? They just kinda ruin any semblance of combat that this stage could’ve had. Yes I know 06’s combat isn’t this super deep system nor is it very hard–especially Sonic’s combat dude have you SEEN how busted the bounce attack is–but having a win button in 90% of combat rooms is a very weird design decision. But hey, Knuckles is here and I really like his inclusion. It gives this stage a sense of finality, with the entire team working together and it's something I wish we had for the other two campaigns. Unfortunately for Knuckles, his segment might be even easier than Tails’. You can fly over his entire section and surprise surprise the Pillars of Doom™ are here yet again to ruin any combat potential, which especially sucks for Knuckles because I actually like his combat in this game. Hopefully one day we’ll get a level that will better utilize Knuckles but for now, this is the best we have. Afterwards we actually have a neat change from the retail game, where instead of spawning on the other side of the door like before, you now have to jump on the ball and ride it across the area. Or just skip it, I’m not your mother. We finally enter The Red Zone™ (holy shit get more original jokes nerd) and get sent down- say it with me folks! Aquatic Base’s hallways of despair and sadness! After a hallway and an enemy encounter you’re more likely to skip over, the level is over. Just like that? Wow, that was a stage if I’ve ever played one.

    Going over the rest of the game, not much has really changed between releases- (phone starts ringing) hold on, I think I’m getting a call from somebody. (pick up) Hello? (R: Aren’t you forgetting something?) Forgetting something? From MY favorite video game? Maybe. (R: Isn’t there a certain.. level on the beach you need to discuss? One with some waves in the ocean?) I already went over Wave Ocean- no… you don’t mean… that beach with waves in the ocean, do you? (villain laughter into disconnect) Tails Wave Ocean. It exists. Boom paragraph over we’re done- (ominous cough) oh okay FINE. This level features Tails running through a near identical copy of Sonic’s Wave Ocean, but for some reason you don’t start the actual beginning, but instead at the dashramp right before the first checkpoint. Then you remove all the character the original stage had like the water sliding, pole swinging and killer orca threatening all of humanity. We get none of that- oh shit I forgot about this orca sequence. Ok you can take that last part back, I’m sorry. This level is just so uninteresting because nothing changes from Sonic’s version. There’s no major layout or object differences to take advantage of Tails’ flight; it's just a worse version of Wave Ocean. We don’t even get something as superficial as a time of day change to make it look a little more interesting- Why is this even here? Who wanted this? I need to move on before my head explodes trying to comprehend this stage’s existence.

    Now, where were we? Ah, right. Going over the rest of the game, not much has really changed between releases, with a few exceptions that I’d like to highlight here. Silver is substantially worse in this release and it’s all in part due to the teleport dash inheriting whatever nerf the straight homing attack received because this feels bad. I don’t know what went wrong and while it doesn’t necessarily kill his section for me, it does make it a lot less fun. He also added laser walls to this section at the end, meaning you have to play the game now. Also a really weird bug I discovered while messing around in the test stage is that Silver loses his ESP particles if you enter this dashpanel. Knuckles’ section in flame core still hasn't been changed but hey at least you can see the stage now. Speaking of Flame Core, there’s a speed shoes capsule placed inside of a spring here right before the lava bridge section and while definitely unintended, MAN it is fun to have and soar to the end of the section with a fully upgraded purple gem. Another really cool feature of this release is you can finally change the background video on the main menu, which is a feature I really hope gets expanded on in the future. He finally let you access the gold medal results and I couldn’t be more thankful, although funnily enough the last story still isn’t in trial select yet it’s visible in gold medal results. Poor last story, always neglected.

SONIC RELEASE 1.5 - 8/4/20

    This release is similar to the previous patch release, no new notable content but a handful of impactful changes. For example: the speed shoes in Flame Core were unfortunately removed, which–while I understand why he didn’t want them there and they were definitely unintended–doesn’t mean I can’t miss how silly they were. Although, one of the best changes this demo made was extending Silver’s teleport dash to use the full meter and THANK GOODNESS I DON’T HAVE TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS ANYMORE. I honestly don’t even know if I noticed this during the marathon *roll clip here* but this might be the biggest change made in this patch because holy did it feel bad before. The jumpdash also feels a lot more like it did in demo 2, which is good because idk what was up with it in 3.0. Tails’ Wave Ocean has also had its opening moved to mimic Sonic’s version, instead of just starting at the jump panel. Still doesn’t help the fact that this level sucks but hey! It’s a neat detail. The snowboard has also seen a hefty nerf, meaning no more of… whatever this was. Same with the speed shoes, I’m gonna miss this version of the snowboard even though this was absolutely unintentional. Finally, there’s uh, this in Dusty Desert. I think there’s more of these throughout the game but this is the only one I can fully remember and with the lack of a freecam I don’t feel like searching every nook and cranny for these things.

    And that about does it for the Sonic Releases. This also means that we’re finally moving onto demos I have past experience with, as I unfortunately couldn’t play Project 06 until Shadow Release fixed the input system to work with Playstation controllers. Overall, these releases are solid but it wouldn’t be until the next release that things really take off for this game. A lot of issues would get ironed out and this game’s popularity would skyrocket, but enough stalling. Let’s get into the ultimate lifeform’s debut.

SHADOW RELEASE 1.0 - 9/6/21

    The ultimate life form finally makes his Project 06 debut, but he’s not fully ultimate in this release. I don’t know what happened behind the scenes but this release had some… rough edges to say the least, specifically with some of Shadow’s content. This was also the first version of the game I was able to actually play, due to the game’s input system being changed to finally support controllers that aren’t the Xbox 360’s. There was a workaround before where you could add the game to steam and it would work that way, but I only learned of that workaround really close to this release. There was a small release before this–Project TGS–that featured this input system but I’m not reviewing that in this video because it’s too small for me to realistically talk about. Anyway, enough stalling. Let’s actually get into the meat of this release, starting with…

Sonic of course! …What? It’s his game, you think we’d start without him? Like before, not much has really changed, just overall refinements. Although, there is an evil, evil thing that plagues this release’s speedrun: The double input glitch. This glitch was technically introduced in the previous patch but I wanted to save that rant for this release because what else would I talk about here? If you hit the jump and spindash button at the same time on most characters, the game will get confused and give you a jump that is roughly double the height of the regular one. This isn’t quite frame perfect but the window to perform it is so tight it may as well be. Now why does this ruin the speedrun for me on this version? Part of my enjoyment in speedrunning this game–or just playing in general–is using this game’s fluid and fun movement to traverse the stages and take shortcuts that feel intentional. The double input glitch takes that fun and shoots it in the face, allowing for skips that don’t really feel rewarding, instead of using my own skill to perform skips and cool tricks I can just hit two buttons at the same time and win. Now there is a positive to this glitch: If you perform this glitch in the air after using a jumpdash as Sonic or Shadow, you can skip using their air action–bound attack and chaos spear–and use their second jumpdash. If you’re not aware, Sonic and Shadow can perform two jumpdashes and it’s a really handy trick, especially for Shadow as you get to skip the animation of throwing a spear. Although sadly, it’s broken for Shadow in this release, meaning it’s not actually possible but it does get fixed in the patch that follows. Speaking of speedrunning, this update introduces the legacy homing dash, which behaves similar to the jumpdash in Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog where it inherits your direction, meaning you can do a pseudodrop dash with it. It’s a really handy tool that I have sorely missed while recording the previous sections and it feels so good to have it here. 

In terms of actual character updates, he finally fixed Sonic’s action gauge to only recharge on the ground but at a much faster rate and this just feels so much better than the old system. It felt like I was watching paint dry. Tails finally has his rhythm badge ability, meaning you can hold the button and do continuous tail swipes. Knuckles and Silver haven’t changed as far as I’m aware, so we’re gonna ignore them and move on.

Shadow is finally here and he plays largely similar to his retail counterpart, although there’s been a couple of changes. He controls very similar to Sonic, even gaining the spindash back after it was absent in the retail version, although both his run speed and spindash speed are slightly slower than Sonic. His jumpdash also no longer goes further than Sonic’s like it did in retail, which isn’t too big of a deal. His Chaos Spear is also limited to 3 uses per jump, which is a weird change. I can kind of see why? You could just spam them in retail to very slowly move forward but that wouldn’t even be possible in this game due to the physics change, so this change just comes off weird. There’s also a bug where if you use two spears, you’re unable to use your jumpdash, probably related to the jumpdash refresh being absent from Shadow in this version of the game. Also, charging the spear allows it to do damage. Chaos Boost is here and accounted for, although Chaos Snap is a bit janky. Sometimes it just won’t auto teleport you when you’re clearly in range, although he fixed the bug where if you held the jumpdash button and didn’t hit a target it’d cut you short. The level up system actually works properly now, similar to Sonic’s gems, with the other abilities working fine but there’s a new 4th level of Chaos Boost you can obtain after getting every S-Rank in Shadow’s Story. Heading to the end of Dusty Desert, you will see a new room has been opened, to the right of this room with a bunch of worms. Go through a little obstacle course and the shard will be yours. This is basically Shadow’s pseudo-super form: you’re immune to damage, kill enemies in one hit and all of your chaos abilities are supercharged and consume no energy. However, this comes at a cost: your action gauge not only depletes a lot faster, but if it runs out you are stunned for 8 seconds, with this being avoidable by either being in automation or on rails for some reason. While a cool ability–with it being inspired from this cutscene from retail–it is a bit hard to use on stages that aren’t packed with enemies. At least with Super Sonic you’re not heavily penalized for running out of rings, so it feels more usable than Uninhibited Shadow. Although in this release if you hit “k” on your keyboard it’ll activate this form, almost certainly being unintended and just left over from testing.

His amigos have seen some upgrades too, mostly. Rouge can finally kick enemies again, although her bombs are still a little slow to use. She can also glide into enemies–much like Knuckles–which speeds her sections up significantly. Other than that, not much has changed, as she’s inherited a lot of the fixes from Knuckles. You no longer have glue for hands and along with her kicks, combat is so much smoother but could still use some work. Speaking of needing some work, Omega is by far the weakest and worst feeling character in the game. He plays far too similarly to his retail counterpart, whose only redeeming quality was the fact that he could break the game wide open with a busted hover and also somehow had the fastest ground speed. The only real changes in P-06 that are specific to Omega are his hover getting heavily nerfed; with it actually making you descend and using the action gauge dictating how much you can hover and his ground speed getting nerfed. He has a new first person turret mode that does kick ass but unfortunately it’s not enough to save him. His shotgun blast is far too weak and short-ranged, all of his attacks stop you in place to use and he just generally feels sluggish to play. I absolutely dread playing Omega and that’s a shame, because I sure do love robots. At least in Wave Ocean you can mostly speedrun through his section but Dusty Desert is such a drag to play I typically just avoid the stage all together.

I feel this is a good time to talk about the score system, because how else am I supposed to pad this section out- I mean because I think Shadow’s campaign is a lot of fun to score attack because it isn’t just mindlessly spamming the bounce attack like Sonic. In the original game, you only really got a combo bonus for defeating a leader enemy. In Project 06, the score system is back with a vengeance and my god is it fun. Every enemy you defeat gives points and adds to a combo, with the more enemies you defeat adding more and more points until you either hit the ground or go long enough without defeating an enemy. Now this doesn’t sound super complex on paper, and that’s because it isn’t. It’s a fairly basic combo system but its inclusion is something I think goes underappreciated because the amount of dopamine I get from seeing that rainbow “PERFECT!!” text with a giant number above it is unmatched. Unfortunately for Shadow, score attacking in this specific release is not nearly as fun because of the jumpdash refresh being broken but this does get fixed eventually. Sonic’s campaign is brain-dead easy to score attack because spamming the bounce will delay the score from finalizing just a bit, giving you more time and also makes traversing between rooms a lot easier, compared to Shadow where I notice I’m using my environment a lot more to link between enemies and rooms. It’s a lot of fun trying to optimize a room for score attack, it’s a shame that score attacking on any character not named Sonic or Shadow isn’t as fun. Luckily you primarily play as those two and any deviation from them is short enough to not matter, but it is a funny discrepancy.

There weren’t many stage updates, but the ones that are here are pretty neat. You can freely control the glider in Crisis City, Kingdom Valley and Wave Ocean, making those sections a bit more fun. Wave Ocean’s glider section is also weirdly good for score attacking, because you literally cannot touch the ground after you enter the glider, which you don’t actually start in like you do in retail. Crisis City’s glider section has an unfortunate oversight where you can just kind of glide above all the debris and just hold the accelerate button. Truly a shame as I kind of prefer this section over Wave Ocean’s, since you have to actually dodge stuff. Kingdom Valley’s is also weirdly good for score attacking and is probably the one I prefer doing the most as its fairly short and straightforward. The buggy has remained in Crisis City but unfortunately this moment of joy won’t last too much longer, so enjoy it while you can. Dusty Desert would be a slog seeing as it has a mandatory hover craft segment, but whether by accident or on purpose, the trigger to open the door to progress to the next segment is always active, meaning you can just go to this stone wall and skip the entire section. I’m so unbelievably thankful for this as if I had to do the hover craft section every time I wanted to do this stage I’d cry. It’s not the only thing that makes me wanna cry in this stage because Omega is here but I had my mandatory Shadow Release Omega slander earlier. The end of the stage has this really cool purple aura to it, foreshadowing the boss fight that would follow this stage in the retail game. Kingdom Valley is largely the same, but the keys in Rouge’s section are now randomized, with each key having 3 possible locations. Radical Train hasn’t changed much, however I think this is an appropriate time to mention that if you activate chaos boost and enter a vehicle, you will have unlimited ammo. Have fun! Tropical Jungle now has Rouge collecting keys similar to Kingdom Valley, with the last key always being at the end of the stage. Finally, Wave Ocean’s ending has been ever so slightly extended, with you hopping across a few more islands before getting in the hover car. Something I forgot to mention earlier is that Crisis City and White Acropolis have little mini-cutscenes in them now, utilizing cut dialogue from the original game.

In terms of little additions, there’s a fair few in this release. The legacy jumpdash type has finally been added, making your jumpdash act a lot like it did in Sonic Heroes/Shadow the Hedgehog where it inherits your direction when activated, which actually gives Sonic a pseudo-drop dash and it is so much fun. This is also the best one for speedrunning, as not only does it inherit your direction but it also doesn’t kill your momentum at the end, making it overall faster to get back to the action. The test stage now also features the XBLA version of Kingdom Valley, which is a really nice addition. There’s not much change from the regular version of Kingdom Valley but the lighting is different and some minor placement differences, as well as it only being the first section. The test stage also features Sonic Heroes slander, so that’s how you know Chaos has his priorities in check. You can also now change the buttons to either be the Xbox or Playstation icons, which is a nice change for those of us who use Playstation controllers. Sonic’s Kingdom Valley also has a new starting cutscene which looks really cool. We now have stage statistics when you select a stage, something that was oddly missing until now and we also have a nice little star that shows up if you set a new record after beating the stage for the first time, which is really handy for speedrunning and score attacking.

SHADOW RELEASE 1.5 - 9/28/21

    Similar to previous patch releases, there’s not really new content here but instead a bunch of fixes and oh boy was it needed. Shadow’s Chaos Attack used to require you to hold the homing attack button and now it’ll automatically activate when you attack an enemy with more than one health, which… I didn’t even know that was a thing, what? Why would it have worked that way before? Apparently this also fixes the attack so that every hit registers damage- hold on, I have to go test this. oh my god. Okay so it’s a little janky but it is possible to defeat the highest health enemies in the game with one combo in base release, but this patch makes it more consistent. His jumpdash refresh finally works and it feels so nice to have it here. I’ve gotten so used to having it that going back to a version of the game without it felt wrong. Uninhibited also got an activation change, with you needing to hold up on the d-pad and hit the right trigger while at level three instead of it just activating when you hit the right trigger at level 3, meaning you can finally use chaos blast again which was a big issue for me because I loved using Chaos Blast but couldn’t after a certain point cause I didn’t wanna go into uninhibited. Omega got a couple of buffs that I’ll be honest I didn’t even know existed but he still doesn’t really feel that great to play. However it is with great sorrow that I must announce that he removed the buggy from Crisis City. Let’s have a moment of silence for it. Okay moments over, I have a video to make. The test stage has also been added to a bit, although sadly he removed the Sonic Heroes slander so what’s the point of continuing on anymore.

SHADOW RELEASE 1.6 - 10/1/21

    This patch was released just a few days later and fixed a few small issues that we can rapid fire. Super Sonic’s spindash particles broke and showed up as pink, Omega’s jets no longer causes your ear to explode when going up a ramp, Shadow was able to do 3 jumpdashes and finally, you can make your spin effect look like it does in Sonic Adventure 2.

    Overall, the Shadow Release era of the game was definitely where the game started to get its stride. It really felt like this project gained a fair amount of popularity and really proved Chaos’s dedication to seeing this through, especially considering the rough development this release went through. This was also the first release I was able to play, as it finally supported DualShock controllers, but I had followed the project for a while prior to this, I think around the time of the Sonic Release. Despite how much I was following the project, I somehow never updated to the patched versions until I saw Bickuribox12’s video on the game. I remember this very vividly. He was talking about the jumpdash refresh and I was like “wait I can’t do that” and then I finally decided to update. I would also dabble in some light speedrunning in this release but due to the double input glitch I never went far with it either. While this release isn’t bad by any means, it would pale in comparison to what would come next.

SILVER RELEASE 1.0 - 4/19/23

    Sonic the Hedgehog for the PS3 and Xbox 360, commonly referred to as Sonic 06, is often noted as one of the most notorious video games to ever release. From the messy controls, poor performance, and…. Hey wait, this is the wrong script. This is the wrong video. This is a reused joke.  Anyway, since I’m using the first paragraph for a punchline, allow me to set up another one real quick. *timer.mp4* Now, where were we?

    The Silver Release was a very anticipated release, taking a year and a half to release, which has been the longest wait so far and it was worth the wait. The updates made to the game with this release were insane, with the addition of an awesome Silver campaign. I remember being there on release day, feeling like a kid in a candy store the entire time I played the game. Seeing all the little changes and flourishes added really showed just how special this project really is. This is also the release that ended up pushing me to write my first ever video, which I hadn’t done in about 7 years at the time. Even if the video ended up a bit…. rough. [clip] Oh god turn it off! I’m still proud of this video and that’s why it remains up on my channel, although with an updated thumbnail and description to let people know I’ve redone this video. If it wasn’t for this video, I probably wouldn’t be here recording this voice over. So, in a weird way, I owe this channel to this release. Now with that out of the way, I guess I have to actually talk about the release, and you know the first place I’m going.

    You guessed it, we’re back on Surge Waters- I mean, Wave Ocean. For starters, the double input glitch is fixed so the game is actually fun to speedrun yet again. General control has been improved and it just feels so much nicer to play. I don’t know if I’m going crazy–since there’s no patch notes for this release–but the physics also feel slightly different from 4.6 and that coupled with the control changes just make this game so incredibly fun to control. He nailed it. This is how Sonic should control in 3D. I don’t really have any complaints, everything just feels so…. Natural. In terms of character changes, Sonic’s bounce attack now reaches its maximum height on the 2nd bounce, making the move a lot quicker to use for platforming. Both Sonic and Shadow can spinkick out of a spindash which… is an odd thing that was never here before but its inclusion makes so much sense it was actually really hard to go back to not having it for 4 releases straight. Sonic’s double jumpdash has been changed slightly if you use legacy where the 2nd jumpdash will now always send you downwards as the bounce now takes priority over it when used at the same time. Character fall speed has also been capped and I’m not the biggest fan of this change. It just feels weird and brings an air of floatiness I’m not super down with. Tails and Knuckles haven’t seen much changes, as they’ve had plenty of time to get refined. Shadow, on the other hand….

    You remember all that talking I did about Shadow and his amigos playing fairly similarly to their retail counterparts? Yeah just do me a favor and toss that out the window. Move over Silver, this is actually the Shadow Release part 2. Shadow’s animations have been completely redone and they look so much better than they did before. His Chaos Spear now gives you a little increase in height after each one, being taken from the XBLA demo of the retail game. This also makes the 3 spear limit make so much more sense now, and this also just generally improves the platforming experience, giving you an actual reason to use the spears since they were generally useless before. His Chaos Attack is significantly faster, making combat feel so much smoother. It’s really nice when you see just how many enemies he has to defeat, but it’s still not as fast compared to Sonic that bounce is a MACHINE. Now you may have noticed that timer in the corner and wondered what it's for. It’s for this. The tornado kick is by far the most overpowered move in this game and it’s not even close. In the previous release and in the retail game, if you were standing completely still you would activate the tornado kick. However, because this is a Sonic game and you rarely wanna be stationary, it was barely used, instead being replaced by the Edge Attack (yes that’s the actual name) which was functionally the same as Sonic’s spin kick. In his effort to make Shadow’s combat more fast and fluid, he replaced the Edge Attack with the Tornado Kick. Now, this is fine on paper, however this move is uh [clip] a bit broken. It does 2 points of damage, has a spherical hitbox that grows in size when you hit the button again and because of some hitbox fuckery, can kill the highest health enemy in the game in just one kick if you time it correctly, which is not very hard to do. Nevermind that, I have swept entire rooms in two kicks because of the kick retaining some amount of momentum, even if it does slow you down a bit when you use it. This move also completely trivializes the Chaos Attack because guess what? It can even hit flying enemies with relative ease. This move has become the answer to damn near every combat scenario in Shadow’s campaign and it’s really sad to see. Everything else about him is so good now but the tornado kick is just too overpowered. And sure, you can just not use it, you do have free will after all. However, when you’re speedrunning and trying to go as fast as possible, you’re gonna wanna use whatever will get you through the level the fastest, and that means spamming this kick at every possible opportunity. The only stages it’s not really used in are Flame Core and parts of Aquatic Base because there're so many enemies it’s actually worth going into uninhibited, especially since maintaining the form will be easy. The tornado kick doesn’t just affect normal Shadow’s combat though, it also messes with Chaos Boost as well. As it currently works, Chaos Boost requires you to stay stationary for [x] seconds while it activates, and the primary use for it was to speed up the Chaos Attack and speed up the time it takes to go between enemies with snap. It also has some other speedrun applications but those were very few and far between. But now, because the tornado kick is so broken, the time loss you would accumulate by activating boost is too much when 95% of combat in this game can be answered without boost. That’s not even mentioning how the later levels don’t feel super worth it if you aren’t going for uninhibited, because sometimes it would actually be detrimental to have the spear kill an enemy. Chaos blast is a really cool ability but it’s too slow when you could just… tornado kick. To be entirely fair though, this only really applies in a speedrun setting. If you’re just playing casually then I’m willing to bet none of this matters. You should play the game however you want and if that means using these other abilities to clear rooms, that’s perfectly fine. I just find a lot of enjoyment out of speedrunning, and this kick is the primary reason I don’t really wanna run Shadow’s story. Thankfully both of these issues are getting rectified in the next release, but that’s for later. This is now, and right now this move Pisses me off.

    Now, where were we? Ah right, Shadow’s story. Rouge has seen the least amount of tweaks, with the only real notable one being that her bombs don’t stop you in place. It’s a shame she’s never really forced to use her combat but it’s still leagues better than before just because of this one change. Omega on the other hand, has seen a pretty massive overhaul, similar to Shadow. His shotgun blast has been replaced by his melee attack from Sonic Heroes, which is a very nice callback that also improves his combat significantly, but that’s not all. His Omega Shot and Lock-On Shot no longer halt your movement in the air, making his combat flow so much more seamlessly. Although this does mean that you need action gauge to use the Omega Shot in the air now, which is an interesting change. I don’t believe his turret mode has received major changes, mostly because it was the only good thing about him prior. These changes make Shadow’s campaign a lot more fun to play, and were well needed. Well, minus the tornado kick, that move can go burn in hell.

    Moving onto the character this release is actually about, this isn’t actually Silver’s debut but this is his major release and he’s seen a few updates. First of all, his fur is actually silver instead of having this weird teal shade to it, so he’s finally playable. His psychokinesis effects have also been cleaned up and they look so much better than whatever was going on here. Much like the other two hogs, he has his retail upgrades present, and they haven’t changed as much. Although he does have a new move in the Psychic Shot, which was present before but I didn’t really feel like talking about. Using it causes Silver to shoot a blast that stuns enemies, fixing one of the core issues Silver had in the original game. Because Silver is so dependent on objects and with the slap being so utterly useless, before you got the slam enemy fights were not that great. This now makes it where even if you don’t have a stunned enemy or an object nearby, you can always stun an enemy and use them. Although to be fair, the slam is always available by default and is really useful but I still think having the shot is a net positive overall. Although unfortunately, his aiming is still kind of not that great in this release. Sometimes your thrown objects just won’t go where you’re aiming, going entirely off track. I’ve also had times where an object just… won’t do damage? Sure this was an issue before but now that we have Silver’s entire campaign, this does not feel great. His teleport dash has seemingly been nerfed back to its pre-3.5 state, but this actually leads into one of his new powerups. If you have a keen eye in Dusty Desert, you may notice 3 switches in the room before the ball puzzle. Hit them in the right order and you’ll enter one of the tube rooms and at the end, will be the Lotus of Resilience. Grabbing this not only extends your teleport dash back to the full meter like it was prior, but it also allows Silver to spin jump, meaning he can finally badnik bounce. This is such a small addition but it’s so satisfying and just feels right, jumping into an enemy and then hovering somewhere is just so much fun. He has another upgrade too, in Aquatic Base. Grabbing this upgrade will not only make Psycho Smash do more damage when fully charged, but it also grants Silver the Psychic Knife from generations. This is a really cool callback, but also just a useful move in general. The knife can hit anything; enemies, itemboxes, switches…. or not. It’s overall a handy ability, and you can use it in the air to continue moving while using it, similar to the Psychic Shot. These two abilities alone make Silver insanely powerful, but he went further. The reward for S-Ranking every stage in the game gives Silver a pseudo-super state, much like Shadow. The Sigil of Awakening is your reward, and it gives Silver the maturity meter, and by filling it up to this notch right here, it can be activated the same way as uninhibited mode and upon activation will release a chaos blast-style explosion and defeat everything around him. After this, for the duration of the meter Silver will be buffed. His action gauge drains slower, he automatically deflects all projectiles, enemies will be stunned when you get close to them, your Psycho smash and Psychic Knife deal more damage and using Psychokensis All no longer stops you in place. The only drawback is that unlike Super Sonic and Uninhibited Shadow, you are unable to extend this form’s duration. Once you activate it, that’s it. You have to wait for the meter to drain before you can charge it up and use it again. I like this, as it makes the form more usable in my opinion. It’s also a great balance decision because in most stages this form would basically be permanently active, and I think it’s way too powerful to have permanent uptime. Also a fun little tidbit about the 100% rewards is that each one drains one of your three resources. Super Sonic drains rings, Uninhibited Shadow drains action gauge and ESP Silver drains the maturity meter.

    Silver’s improvements alone would make his campaign 10x more bearable, but of course there’s two new characters. Blaze has definitely seen a minimal amount of changes, as in the retail game she was probably the 2nd best character next to Sonic. Her Fire Claw has seen an interesting change however, in that it has an arc and cannot be stopped until you hit an enemy or the environment. If used in the air it only goes through the second half of the arc, which is very reminiscent of the legacy jumpdash.  She has the unused Claw Attack- sorry, Crow Attack restored but, well, uh, there’s a reason it was cut from the retail game. You can actually triple jump with her too, all you gotta do is do your first jump, use the Spinning Claw and jump again. This is a very cool trick, and makes her a lot of fun to play with. Amy, on the other hand…. hoo boy where do I even begin. She was nothing but a slog to play in the retail game, with her section in Dusty Desert being dreaded. Now, I wish she had more playable appearances because man is she super fun. She’s very similar to her playable appearance in Sonic Adventure 1, with her having her hammer bounce back. Her double jump no longer causes physical anguish to use, her hammer attack doesn’t stop you dead in your tracks and she has the spinning hammer, although don’t use it for too long or she’ll become dizzy. Her small section in Dusty Desert is so much fun I really wish there was more to do with her. Maybe her End of the World section will be extended a bit, please?

    Silver’s stages haven’t seen many updates much like Shadow’s, but there have been some meaningful adjustments. Crisis City, Tropical Jungle and Kingdom Valley all have these beautiful opening cutscenes, especially that Tropical Jungle one holy crap this one is beautiful. Dusty Desert is the main stage that has been tweaked, and of course it’s the ball puzzle room. The boxes that were here originally have been replaced with slanted walls, there’s a ramp near the end and the goal has a suction effect to help get the ball in. Although funnily enough this ramp can actually cause a softlock since for some reason there’s just enough space after it for the ball to get stuck, which is fun. Radical Train’s scales have been replaced by the normal ones instead of the weird weighted ones in the original which, I’m gonna be honest I completely forgot they used to be different in retail until I was writing this part. Silver can also finally grind on these rails, which is the only time he can do this but hey, better late than never buddy. Although you can’t teleport dash when you jump off the rail which is… an interesting choice. Flame Core now starts with Blaze and even though it’s a very short section, I like it a lot. Finally, Blaze’s run of Wave Ocean not only has this beautiful setting to it but has also been extended to where Tails’ version ends, with new level design added to compensate. This level design is really good too, I’d be so down to see Chaos make more unique level design like this, although that is extremely unlikely.

    As there’s no patch notes for this release as they were unfortunately deleted prior to release, it’s a lot harder to recall all the little changes that were made. The first change is fairly immediate, with you being prompted with 5 whole save slots which is a godsend, complete with little icons you can assign to the files. I like having a file that’s for casual play and one file purely for speedrunning, as I have a different gem setup for the speedrun file. The characters now move their heads to look at things in the environment. It's such a small detail but it adds a lot to the immersion. The second area of the test stage now features a recreation of E3 Crisis City, which is a really neat addition, broken English and all. It’s also the only time Silver plays the stage during daytime, and Eggman’s mechs are also here despite never being present in the future during the regular campaigns. 

SILVER RELEASE 1.1 - 11/2/23

    This update is the longest we’ve had to wait for a patch and that shows with the sheer amount of changes made. Also yes, the change in numbering is annoying me just as much as it's annoying you.

    First, the camera has been massively overhauled. It goes through objects now instead of getting caught on them, which vastly improves the gameplay experience. The TGS camera type is no longer present and the camera options have been split into two parts: the camera type and the field of view. My personal favorite is the retail camera type with the E3 FoV, since it gives you the most view out of the other types. If you really miss the TGS camera, you can use the E3 camera with the retail FoV and get a similar experience, but why? The curved homing attack has been updated, but why bother when legacy is still as good as it is- in fact it’s better, because some of its nerf has been slightly undone. The fall speed has been increased and while it’s better and perfectly fine, I still miss the uncapped version. The jumpball visuals have been updated, as well as adding a new type that makes them look just like retail’s. Speaking of jumping, the badnik bounce has seen a catastrophic nerf, making it feel really bad to use. I get that it maybe wasn’t supposed to be as strong as it was before but man this felt like an overadjustment. And on the topic of catastrophic nerfs, Blaze is so much worse to play as well. Her Fire Claw attack has been slowed down significantly, to the point where you may as well only use it to attack enemies and nothing more. It now ends after one second and can be cancelled with a jump, making triple jumps more fluid but the speed nerf is so overdone it just makes me depressed. On a more positive note, Amy’s section in Dusty Desert has been slightly changed and extended and I am so thankful for this. Even though it’s a very small extension, I’m thankful for any opportunity to play as her. Shadow and Omega’s projectiles, as well as Chaos Drives and Light Cores have had their travel speed increase, which for the former improves their combat a lot more and for the latter eliminates the bug where they’d circle around you for an extended period of time, which is something I completely forgot was a thing until revisiting the older demos and man I am soooo glad it’s fixed here. Knuckles and Rouge can no longer indefinitely keep their altitude by constantly ending and starting a glide, with them falling a small bit before being able to reactivate it. The physics have also seen a slight change, with the most prominent change being the insane buff slope jumps have received, making the game just that much more fun to run around and discover cool routes in. Silver’s throwing physics have also been greatly tuned and solidified, making them not cause me great pain and pushes me to kill enemies by chucking stuff at them instead of just stunning, picking them up and releasing. His Psychic Knife is a bit wider and can hit switches now, which is pretty neat.

    The test stage has now been updated to feature a couple new parts to it, with this bike section for Shadow, and this one for Knuckles. I believe the Knuckles one is based on an SA2 test stage but I’m not sure if the Shadow one is based on anything. The XBLA version of Kingdom Valley found in the second section has been updated to include unused TGS layouts for Shadow and Silver. The other stages haven’t been neglected either, with a lot of them getting new secrets for you to explore and I love this stuff. I love that these stages are feeling more packed with secrets instead of being largely empty. This is something I hope he keeps doing going forward, as these levels have a lot of potential to add more secrets and incentivize exploration. A few stages have also seen a visual update, most notably Kingdom Valley. Although speaking of Kingdom Valley, the TGS bridge has been removed. Moment of silence for it please. Okay, moment over. The ramps at the end of Silver’s Dusty Desert no longer softlock you if the ball falls past the ramps. Speaking of balls, you can no longer bump the balls to move them without taking health off of it, which is a shame because I enjoyed teleport dashing into them to move them slightly. This also removes a really bad trick called pot balling where you’d use these pots to move the ball. Finally, Discord rich presence has been updated to add stage icons and names, which is pretty rad. There’s a lot more I could go over but for the sake of moving on, we’re going to move on.

SILVER RELEASE 1.2 - 11/4/23

    Released just a few days later, this patch is thankfully a lot smaller in size. A prevalent issue in the previous release was the white water bug, which I don’t think I’m allowed to make a joke about but you can infer what I’m going to say. Blaze’s Fire Claw has been rebuffed to its original speed, with the addition of making its speed dependant on your analog stick, which is really nice.

SILVER RELEASE 1.3 - 11/10/23

    Much like before, there’s not as much to talk about here. Another white water bug has been fixed, one that I didn’t even think about until it was mentioned here. Mach Speed Super Sonic finally has his bracelets fixed, and Sonic and Elise’s action gauge will now carry over across section transitions, which is SUCH a nice change for Tropical Jungle. Although now Shadow can get pushed inside the wall in Dusty Desert with a sandwave, oops.

SILVER RELEASE 1.4 - 11/30/23

    Now we arrive at the current patch of the game, and the best state the game has been in. The towers in Kingdom Valley no longer one-shot Shadow’s vehicles, instead just taking away HP. The badnik bounce has been rebuffed to its original state, but only if you’re holding the jump button when the bounce occurs. If you let go of it, you get the 5.1 bounce height. Silver’s main menu select animation has now been aligned so he faces the camera properly. Now he’s actually, finally, for real playable. It only took him 7 months.

    That about does it for the Silver Releases, and for Project 06 as it currently is. This release was very substantial in getting this game to the popularity it’s currently at. Sure Shadow Release was popular but EVERYBODY was talking about this release when it came out, shown by just how many videos were made on this release. I mean it was so good it got me to come out of content creation retirement and talk about it. I am forever thankful to Chaos for continuing to develop and release this game, as 06 is my favorite Sonic game and I mean that completely seriously, so seeing a fixed version of it that realizes its full potential is really nice. Although for me, this game doesn’t replace the retail game, however that is a topic for a later day, because if I went on about retail we’d be here all day and I have some bigger plans for that. I’m super excited for whenever the last release comes out and hey, let's talk about that a bit, because I’m not done yapping yet.

LAST RELEASE WISHLIST

    The next release of Project 06 has been dubbed the Last Release because, well, it’s currently planned to be the last major release for the game. As such, I thought it’d be fun to go over my personal wishlist. However, let’s get the confirmed content out of the way, so I don’t have to go over it much. The confirmed content is as follows: Last Episode, boss fights for every story, Team Attack Amigo and Very Hard DLC and silver medal implementation. Obviously there is going to be way more added, but this is everything that is officially confirmed. 

With that out of the way, what else would I like to see added? Well the first thing I’m excited for is a change to Shadow’s Chaos Boost, where you will be able to activate it without going through the animation, making it a lot more usable and coupled with the nerf to the tornado kick, will make Shadow’s combat a lot more fun. I hope the silver medals will act like the red rings from the future games, where grabbing them will unlock pieces of art, whether that's concept art for either game or any of Chaos’ renders. Maybe offer some behind the scenes stuff as well, as this game’s development is really interesting to me. I’d also like to see more customization options, like the background videos being re-recorded with the new graphics and maybe having the option to change the time of day, since we see stages at various times of day. It’d also just be nice to see stages that don’t get much visual changes between the campaigns with new settings, even maybe seeing stages like Radical Train with the End of the World setting since it’s left out of that stage. I hope the camera type changes from the patch stay around, because it’s too nice to be left behind. I also hope the general control and physics stay the same, because I feel they’re perfect as they currently are. I also think it’d be neat if some of the in-game cutscenes got touched up, because that Silver Tropical Jungle cutscene is so good it is jarring going from that to the Crisis City cutscene for Sonic and Shadow, as well as maybe getting some new cutscenes. I still think the hub worlds would be fun to run around in, maybe put them in the test stage as mirrors and let you change to any character and maybe add some small things in there too, like Sonic Man. Now that’s what this game really needs. Also there was this post Chaos made where he seemingly was remaking the E3 demo? I wonder if that’s gonna be included in the last release as well. Actually, I wonder if Project TGS will be lumped in as well. I hope more stages get new secrets, like these islands in Wave Ocean as an easy example. These are used for nothing, yet could be used to house an alternate path through here, like this. On the topic of stages, I hope Chaos eases up on some of the objects not allowing you to stand on it. Granted there’s not many examples of this but some objects that could be stood on in the original have been made to push the player off in P06 and I’d like to see some of that reverted, and maybe even letting you stand on these rocks in Wave Ocean because you can’t for whatever reason, or these rocks in Flame Core. Also it’d be neat if the stage loading cards and hints were re-rendered to use the updated graphics, because it’s really funny going from the vanilla 06 graphics to P06.

In terms of the confirmed content, I really do wonder how the bosses are going to work. Most are fine and probably could just use a few tweaks but some bosses–most notably the character fights–feel like a lot of work will be needed to be enjoyable or fun. Solaris could also use some work as currently if you don’t already know how the boss works you are going to have no idea what to do, meaning new players will have a hard time with it.The very hard stages are mostly gonna be fine, as with Team Attack Amigo. Something I’m hoping for Very Hard is that the stages have some visual differences from the regular stages, like time of day and weather changes. Maybe we can finally get that elusive nighttime Wave Ocean wink wink nudge nudge. Either way, I’m excited to see what Chaos and the team cooks up for the last release, and you can bet I’ll be there the moment it comes out.

CONCLUSION

    Overall, Sonic Project 06 is a very ambitious project that has seen a lot of iteration over the years, and I hope I’ve done it justice. There’s probably a million things I forgot to mention but unfortunately I cannot go over every little thing or we’d be here for an eternity. There’s so much attention to detail in this game, so if you feel inclined, I’d recommend stopping to smell the roses because you never know what you might find. Going through these old demos has been an insanely fun endeavor, and I cannot wait to marathon these demos again in the future after the last release. But for now, I’d like to thank you all for watching, stay hydrated and I’ll see you next time.

    video link: https://youtu.be/5egkjknAD9o

    short director's commentary: man what a journey this video has been on. being worked on very sporadically, only to lock in in april and finish it out in a month and a half. it's been 9 months since the marathon and i'm still having fun playing this game. also, the reason it's coming out today is because it's the 3 year anniversary of the original project 06 video i made, so happy 3 years to that. i've also found a production cycle that should help me not burn out and keep a semi-consistent pace, so look forward to that!!!! also shoutout mia for the awesome thumbnail/title cards, they came out super well!!!!!

word count: 14,000
video length: 1:12:03