Sonic Robo Blast 2: a 3D open-source Sonic the Hedgehog fangame built on Doom

The music for Sonic 3 is sometimes attributed as one of the reasons why it has been left out of retro collections ant hasn't been re-released[1].

[0] https://michael-jackson.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_3 [1] https://medium.com/@CraigJShields/michael-jackson-is-the-rea...

You couldn't save your progress in the original sonic games, so if you liked the game you ended up playing through it a lot. There are a lot of various paths through the levels.

I don't find it shitty or not really, just a different game mechanic.

Only superficially. It's really more of a racing and platformer hybrid. In fact it's probably got more platformer elements than racing. Though personally I don't think the gameplay works at all.

It's still a 3D Sonic game even though it sucks :)

> Sonic Jam's 3D level is just a level select, not a full game.

I said this myself. However lets not forget that the 3D zone did have have some mini-games in it.

> Sonic 3D Blast is isometric which isn't really it either.

Indeed it's isometric (I also said that myself) but you do have movement in 3D space. It's just not 3rd person. If you want to get pedantic then arguably this fan game isn't 3D either because the Doom engine is regarded as 2.5D.

> Sonic Adventure has lots of different gameplay styles for the different characters, none of which fits classic Sonic (Sonic's levels are too on-rails)

The classic Sonic games had different gameplay styles for different characters. But like with the classic Sonic games, you don't have to play as those characters in Sonic Adventure. You can just play as Sonic if you wanted (unfortunately the same cannot be said for Sonic Adventure 2).

Also the levels are not on-rails. You have full motion in 3D space. The camera adapts to angle it towards the next path (maybe you're confusing "on-rails" with any game this isn't "open world"?) but that was because the game came from an era when controllers only had one analogue stick and game developers were still figuring out how to do 3D on consoles.

> Sonic Generations is extremely on-rails, while the classic Sonic levels are classic Sonic in how they play, but including being 2D gameplay :)

Yeah Generations is on-rails but it's still 3D. To be honest I think this style of 3D suites Sonic better than open world.

> Sonic Robo Blast 2 is the first game I've seen that: 1) has full 3D movement and 2) classic Sonic exploratory level design.

I think you're being too restrictive in your definitions here to suit your conclusion. For example of the games you've dismissed are more 3D than the Doom engine and have more exploratory level design than many of the classic Sonics. Sonic R for example is all about exploration (which, to be honest, is one of it's issues given it's a timed game). Sonic Adventure had Adventure Stages that were all about exploration. And there's a whole plethora of bad 3D Sonic games where the emphasis is on exploration. Then when you look back at the original Sonics, they actually weren't about exploration, they were a path from A->B. Sure you had a few forks in the path but all the forks converged on the end. If you wanted exploration then there were plenty of better suited platformers (like Super Mario Bros) that had more secrets, hidden levels, multiple exits on a level, etc...none of which Sonic had (and I say this as a massive Sonic fanboy!)

What this game does that none of the 3D Sonics have done is gone for the heavily pixelated 16-bit style colour palette. Which is cute but honestly without modern lighting effects (which the Doom engine doesn't have) that actually makes the game harder to play is it's harder to distinguish between platforms in the distance. I don't mean this as a negative against the game, it's intended to be a homage to the 16-bit eta games. I just say this to point out that there is a reason why the 3D Sonics are styled the way they are.

They could. But they've already had a long history of not doing that. So while the risk is there, it is definitely less risky than doing it with (for example) Nintendo IP.

And to be honest I don't consider "Sega might change their minds" as a good enough reason not to do something. Intellectual property laws are already broken enough without suggesting people shouldn't engage with assets from the few companies that are more generous to their fans, just in case those companies change their mind. That feels like a senseless loss to me.

> And they still have to like the game to let you publish it.

While they are releasing the source, assets and some precompiled binaries for free, I don't think it's fair to say it's being "published" because generally when that term is used with regards to gaming it means something a lot different to releasing a project on GitLab.

Semantics aside there's always going to be risk with a fan projects. However suggesting they release with original assets misses the point of these projects. They're exist because of the parent project not in spite of it. Sure they could release an original game with the same mechanics but different assets, however the point of this is a re-imagining of Sonic...specifically Sonic. Releasing this with original assets would undermine the point that this is intended to be a Sonic game (albeit an unofficial one).

It's a little like asking a Queen tribute act to play original music. The point that band was formed was to cover Queen's music. I do understand that music royalties solves this problem, somewhat, so the analogy isn't water tight. But I hope you understand the sentiment behind it.

To go back to the StarFox example you gave in your original post, the aim of that project was to publish a commercial game rather than something for fan service. So the aims are different between that and this Sonic game (and this is also why I made the distinction about this Sonic game not being "published" even though technically speak it is).