Playing Sonic Games for Score 

UPDATE: After trying to play for score more, I've found that I don't really enjoy it. Trying to maximize score through exploration can be fun to a point, but the ring bonus really harms the experience. Losing everything to a single mistake makes for a very unbalanced system of player punishment. I talk about it more in my second 06 video, if you want to hear more on that. It also feels very unintentional that some levels rushing is the way to get the optimal score, but in others exploring around slowly is the way to go. It makes no sense for that to change arbitrarily on a per-level basis depending on if the 50000 time bonus is obtainable. There are also other flaws and exploitable things in the scoring system. The time bonus' massive score discrepancy between the 50000 and 10000 means small mistakes that cost less than a second can destroy your score. Even if you play significantly better, you can get a dramatically worse score due to a time difference of less than 1 second. Also, you keep your score upon death. Which means you can easily exploit the system for infinite points. And even if one wanted to avoid this exploit, any death means your score is compromised and artificially inflated. But I don't think these are flaws. I've now come to the conclusion that the scoring system is not really something that's meant to be pursued for a high score. I think its real function is to help players earn lives. Then, all the design decisions make sense and work better. Though I don't like live systems either. So there are still issues. So my final conclusion on this whole thing is that, after trying it, I don't really care for playing for score in these games. And I would still prefer a design where everything was focused more on intrinsically valuable gameplay decisions.

If you play for Score, you can learn the game as you explore. After you learn it, you can time attack it! It all comes full circle 👍

The classic games do have *one* extrinsic motivation for scoring, the fact that high scores gives you extra lives and continues. But if you're good enough to get that level of score, you're probably not at risk of running out of lives anyway, so it doesn't wind up working that well as a motivator.

Heroes being more combat focused does a fantastic job of having a score based ranking system, where defeating enemies in quick succession grants you a huge amount of points.

Great video, and thanks for the mention! It's interesting to think about this score concept in the Adventure games (in this video and your previous ones) because I personally have not yet even engaged with Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 in a score/rank capacity (I haven't been tempted to yet) but Sonic Heroes is a joy in that regard. In Genesis Sonic games the reason why I've never been tempted to get the highest possible score by taking longer paths and grabbing every ring while essentially disregarding time bonus, is because it's not associated with the core sonic experience & philosophy. In the sonic CD intro animation Sonic is running quickly and stylishly but he's not stopping to check under every rock and look down every mountain crevice alleyway. In real life it's hard to imagine sonic accepting a time bonus of 0 in service of maxing out the score by any means necessary. He couldn't live with himself at the post-game analysis conference. I think of each act as having a default-best-achievable time: 2 minutes in Angel Island Act 2, 3 minutes in Carnival Night Act 1 etc...then finding ways to maximize rings/badniks points within that time frame allowed. Especially since games from this era were presented as a "beat the game in one sitting" arcadey philosophy. Beating Sonic 3 takes 45 minutes and I wouldn't be excited/motivated to play it time and again if each playthrough took upwards of 90 minutes and was laden with extensive collect-a-thons instead of action platforming. It's also not an objective that that Sonic Team seems to have invested a lot of attention to, so the degree of balance and challenge would be incidental rather than a more focused product of thorough design. It's perfectly legit that some players would enjoy that max-rings way of playing, however I would not guarantee someone's enjoyment if they undertook that playstyle. Whereas balancing reasonable time bonuses with on-the-way rings & badniks is a well-rounded gameplay objective that I recommend to anyone. In the recent past I've begun to play Super Mario 3D world this way which has enhanced enjoyment, especially when you play in multi player competetive mode. In Sonic playing for points can be regarded not just "to get the highest score" for its own sake, rather it's to use the scoring system as a meaningful barometer of gameplay performance. If I ignored the time bonus entirely and spent 8 minutes collecting every fathomable ring, then my score doesn't indicate that I've improved at the game - just that I kept with it and didn't give up, kind of like how if you keep at a jigsaw puzzle you are guaranteed to solve it eventually.

SA2's system always stuck out to me as the most fun. Not because of the ranking system (I grew up with more of the boost games than anything else) and the ranks there were meaningless; I really liked SA2 for making me feel *like* Sonic. Doing crazy tricks, showing off high-speed close-calls, it was all incredibly stylish and showboaty, and that's what I liked. Playing for time has its own fun, but SA2's score system in specific had most of my time because of the level design's crazy shortcuts and setpieces that *made* me want to nail them (like the Metal Harbour rocket thing) just because it got my blood pumping and made me feel stylish.

I think a good system would be if instead of time giving you bonus points it gave you a score multiplier, that way score and time are 2 sides of the same coin. You could b-line it straight to the end ignoring a good portion of the level design, and get a high multiplier but if your score is super low it still wouldn't add up to much (50 x 0 is still 0 after all). But at the same time if you spend 10 years in a level combing over every pixel and milking ever piece of the level for points you'd still be missing out on the multiplier, perhaps after a certain amount of time the multiplier could even go into the decimals as to further disincentivize jank strats. So in order to get a high rank in this system you would have to for speed while pulling off the scoring opportunities in your path. If tuned correctly this could have a bit of freedom to it as well, if you're not too hot on the time attack you can make up for it by little more thorough with the exploration and scoring opportunities. However if you don't like some of the scoring opportunities you can skip over them if you can make it up with time. Either could work so long as you don't completely neglect the other half of the games design.

For me, A-ranking SA2 is about playing for “style”-it’s like going for speed plus tricks and finesse, which is why I love it

it’s so funny how the dev intention was in plain sight all along but was hidden behind casual players ignoring the system. it just makes the ring counter stand out as a big bonus for not getting hit through a stage

You know, playing for score weirdly makes the most sense from a narrative standpoint. After all, Sonic wants to free the helpless animals, right? Always did feel weird to me that you're encouraged to ignore 90% of the enemies, so this actually explains a lot.

Hearing you say rings correctly is like seeing Demoman with two eyes

Bringing up Metroid's game clear rewards and end screens, and then immediately talking about SA2's ranking system, made me think of a really interesting way to more closely tie gameplay and story, while also incentivising higher level play. We'll use Shadow the Hedgehog as a base, so say you have three different objectives in each stage, finishing one of these objectives takes you to the next stage, with each objective sending you to a different stage. Now what if your rank for the objectives effected the story and gameplay directly? Like say you take a really long time in Westopolis killing all the Black Arms, so then in the story segment before the next stage, all the GUN troops are worn out and scattered, and in the next stage itself, there are fewer GUN troops and more Black Arms. This would make players want to git gud at each objective, and doing so poorly would make new players go for a different morality objective in that second stage if trying to fight the Black Arms this time is going to be even harder because there's more of them. Hell, maybe even getting a D or E rank could FLIP the objective and send you the opposite way on the morality chart, taking 30 minutes to wipe out the Black Arms in Westopolis could see Black Doom as interpreting Shadow's actions as "playing the hero" and acting as a distraction to cover the escape of the more important Black Arms units Obviously budget and development time would factor largely into a system this deep, but that's what text-based cutscenes with static sprites instead of fully voiced animated scenes are for and also this is just a thought experiment

I think a good system would be something like what Frontiers is trying to do. In Frontiers, you get collectibles for beating the level, beating it within a certain time (S ranks), beating it with a certain number of rings, and beating it with all five red rings. Thus you have extrinsic motivation for having time attack runs, exploration runs, and score runs of each level which could, in theory, all play out very differently. Now, whether the level design in Frontiers is good enough to really support all this is another matter entirely but on paper I really like how it's structured.

I think it's possible to marry speedy play with the stylish play that score tries to encourage. - Let's say we gave Sonic a style meter. Anything that would increase score (collecting stuff, chaining enemies, doing tricks) proportionally increases style. While not doing these actions, style decreases. Filling the meter to the top makes Sonic enter a state of higher top speed, which lasts until the meter runs out. - This would be like an evolution of Advance 2's boost meter encouraging you to collect and keep rings. Enemies are often easy to avoid in 3D, unlike the 2D games, but this makes dealing with them tie into the objective of going fast. - I want to implement something like this in my own game, but still working out the details. One idea was to have several degrees of style boost that become harder and harder to reach. Another was rewarding enemy kills with "rings" like you touched on, making that item count decide your ranking, and eliminating the score counter itself from the level. - Also, even in classic Sonic, you do get an extra life every 50 000 points or so. That's at least something.

SA2 actually give you a extra stage if you get all A ranks for every chararacters.

I love the way UnWiished handles ranking. You're still encouraged to explore and memorise the levels in order to find shortcuts, alternate routes and upper paths in the pursuit of the best possible time. I think that's just the most focused approach.

I've always been playing the classic games for score.

So glad that people are finally figuring this out ffs

It occurs to us that part of the reason people stopped caring about score could be that games stopped keeping high score boards. Most console games would only be played by the same few people in one family, plus having non-volatile memory in the cartridge just for this (as opposed to an arcade game just being on All The Time Forever) is an added expense that would be hard to justify, so it makes sense that game creators would just stop having the high score board at all, but it definitely still has an effect. ... Online leaderboards, on the other hand, have _way too many_ people on them. And if one (1) person finds a way to cheat the system, they'll be flooded with fake max-possible-score plays and become useless that way.

that tangent about scoring systems not being a substitute for engaging design in and of itself took me a bit off guard. Not because it's off topic or anything, but because I was chatting with a friend about exactly this earlier today. We were discussing this video by UnderTheMayo ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Tiwrz9cGLuU.html and how it caused some controversy in his audience, and it essentially just corroborates the exact point you made with Aragami. And I do fully agree with that point. So since this topic is on your mind, maybe it'd interest you to take a look at this video while it's fresh. This is a large reason why I don't find SA2 to be super engaging, even when taking into account its ranking system. Going for score in the classics is fun as an alternate mode of play because the classic Sonic games are already extremely well designed in the first place, so this extra level of enforced engagement ask of an attempt at a high score is just a cherry on top. Meanwhile, SA2 is, relatively, a very simple and basic game in regards to its platforming challenges. Going for score in SA2 doesn't really amount to anything much different from playing it normally, aside from a lot of busy work of trying to kill everything and grab every ring. There's no moment in SA2 like in the classics where you can chain badnik bounces for score multipliers, for instance. The best SA2 can do relative to that is a homing attack chain, which, honestly, I'd much rather skip whenever I can because all those amount to are glorified quick time events. Going for a high score in SA2 doesn't ask the player to engage with the games mechanics really on any deeper level than they would anyway, because a lot of the platforming and obstacles in SA2 don't afford the player much in the first place. They're often binaries or involve some level of automation. it's just a matter of making sure you're ticking boxes before getting to the end. Nothing about stopping to clear every enemy in a room in SA2 is going to help me overcome any challenge it throws at me, for example. In the classics, the scoring system is just a cherry on top of something which would already be fantastic without it. Adventure 2 uses it as a bit of a crutch to cover up the fact that not a lot is actually going on otherwise. And that's the major difference, and where the point arises that scoring systems can't act as a replacement for engaging, deep game design. I think Sonic games could benefit, though for a set score attack mode, just like how time attack modes have become standard, which does exist in Sonic 1 Forever and Sonic 2 Absolute in the form of Arcade mode. it's pretty neat. More Sonic games should do it. I think it serves much better as it's own sidemode for hardcore enthusiasts to dig their teeth into than what SA2 does with it, in using it as a substitute for relatively lacking design otherwise.

Sonic is as the players decide it wants to be, Which is why it's a true classic.

I can't remember if this actually happend to me or my mind is just making something up but I swear I remember when I was young that I got a MASSIVE score for completing Marble Garden act 1 in 9:59 by complete accident. Just 1 second before a time over. Can anyone confirm if this is an actual mechanic or if my mind is lying to me?

I really liked the idea of SA2's mission structure. Mission 1 was score attack Mission 2 was time attack with some exploration Mission 3 was time attack with A LOT of exploration Mission 4 was (in theory) pure time attack Mission 5 was score attack but remixed level design The only thing I hate about it is that mission 4 used the same scoring system as mission 1 (or it might've been 5). If it was purely a time based thing, it'd feel so much less redundant since it's basically mission 1 with no checkpoints.

Sonic is about exploration and maintaining momentum. Sonic is still a platformer, and exploration is a big part of them. And it allows you to find new areas.

This is honestly fascinating, I've never cared about score in the 2D sonic games (and probably still won't) but the design intentions are clearly there. Regarding SA2, I think most players playing for score just want enough to achieve A ranks (like myself). The game gives you enough leeway for this to where you can pretty easily go for a balance of speed and score. It also allows for flexibility in that you don't need to do every single score based challenge in a level.

What happend to part 2 of playing sonic games for score?

It feels like your third eye has opened. These games had so much more depth to them than I realized

In Sonic 2 Complete and Sonic 1 Forever fan mods, the arcade mode converts all 1ups to point boxes, and you only get 1 life. This mode encourages exploration and knowing where the goodies are more so than speed.

That point about players generally not caring about score at all is so true. The only time I have ever cared about score in a video game ever was when I was playing Touhou 6 aiming for that 1CC. The extra lives rewarded at score milestones saved my run, and it wouldn't have been possible if I didn't go out of my way to get some score bonuses.

I always loved the mod that re implements the score system in Generations to be more like the older games. It really did make me consider the different paths that I am able to go to and maximize my play to reach new heights at a quick pace.

Aside from the bounce exploit and rails cancelling previous chains, I think SA2's score works pretty fine. Pretty good video! Completely changing subjects, do you plan in doing reviews of shows like Sonic X? You already mentioned the anime some times and I would love to see your opinion on it, especially since most reviews are so bland and always using 4kids dub, pretty much all like "Chris is annoying, the end", I'm pretty sure you're not a fan of this character considering you comprared to Elise in a negative way, but I believe you would elaborate that in a very interesting way, I would certainly look forward to it.

Beating the game with one credit (or with high scoring actions like Perfects or no Continues) also has unique endings, bonus bosses and other extras in arcade/console games, besides being powered down in many games if you get hit but very true that the arcade influence has died down. Score, speed and style (player imposed score) are all valid but not all games reward them equally. Survival (just normal play) tends to be how people play without a bonus incentive. Speedgames have big speedrunning scenes and events. Scoring is behind but just like speed, games can be balanced around it poorly though it is likely harder to mess up speed in a way that score isn't broken too. Style is based on player perceived stuff which doesn't translate too well into Sonic where killing stuff or covering ground is more important than the actions in between to the community, by comparison DMC and Bayonetta viewers are looking for interesting interactions with enemies and environments not just getting to the end of the level not that the levels don't reward a mastery of exploration, score in battle and speed since all values were captured together. Your thoughts on specific missions to give each of the elements value with deliberate balance for separate levels is basically what these action games do though it is usually based on thresholds with a bit of other trickery going on. Secret Rings, Black Knight and Generations 3DS didn't get everything right with missions, same goes for the latest Sonic collection, but there is some merit to deliberate challenges if they don't have the capacity to design them to reward score and speed to a reasonably even level.

I thought that Spark 3 was my introduction to the concept that score and time could be separate goals when completing a level because they each have their own ranking systems. But Sonic was doing it all this time.

Alex Yard's video on the matter inspired me to make a Bullet Hell Sonic game, as I've played a lot of Bullet Hells, and they, too, are often designed for high scores with very intricate scoring systems.

--I'm glad you watched the Alex video.-- Wasn't expecting a whole video over it though. I was surprised when Alex made that video to begin, as I mainly watched his stuff for music theory which is great, especially since his points about the scoring system has always been a thing I noticed about these games and a huge part of why I always viewed the ranking system as introduced in SA2 as a cornerstone addition to the series, but also why I view how it is implemented in say Generations to be a complete missing of the point, in that it existed to tangibly reward and encourage players to interact with the intricacies of the game's design and get more out of them as opposed to just applying path of least resistance to merely see the ending. Another thing that I think should be noted, which few people seem to know, is that SA2 actually gives the player an A rank for completing its levels with every Ring collected independent of time entirely, so the multiple avenues thing seems to very much be the intent.

19:33 The thing about this particular set of routes is that the score for time is threshold-based, so losing a few seconds can actually mean literally nothing for getting the score. If the top score threshold is 30 seconds, then it doesn't matter if you took 15 seconds or 29 seconds. So having the slower route also offer more points seems like a way to reward players who saved a lot of time earlier on and still have enough wiggle room to take the slower route with more points and not sacrifice any points from time. In terms of games that did scoring well, I always thought DMC3 was great at it. Motivated you to play stylishly by having a cooldown on the same moves, with heavy penalty for being hit, which exactly fit Dante's character. Also factored into mission score, which affected red orbs. The game really opened up once you started going for hitting SSStylish every battle. Just a great game overall.

Really nice technical gameplay over the 17:00 minute mark. It looks fun, and you even say it is yourself.

Seeing the spin dash and super peel out in Sonic 1 feels so wrong.

i think we can look at sonic teams later work, to decipher the intent behind the levels and systems in sonic 3. the same way you can do "exploration" and "enemy combo focused" or "time attack" runs of an act, you have those playstyles staring right back at you in sa1. like how the emblem and rank system were developed to more clearly translate to the players the multiple layers of interaction you can have with a sonic game, the multiple playstyles are exxagerated versions of the playstyles in sonic 3. tails is the speedrun path, knuckles is the exploring every corner path, gamma is the enemy highscore path, and amy is the "dont get hit" path, with sonic being the all rounder.

I don't know how to say this but you always sound so mature and so are your videos

Even more proof that the original Sonic games had Intentions for score is the manual itself You had 1-2 pages with places to write your score. And maybe you could also compete with me and Alex on the Wager we do, Sonic 3 and STT16 (of course going by wager rules)

But something you forget is Special Stages also add to your High Score, getting a perfect gives you an extra bonus in SA3 and Knuckles getting to the end of a special stage gives you an emerald bonus and not getting an emerald still gives you a bonus for your rings acquired

One way to look at the time bonus is to kill as many enemies and collect as many things within a specific time threshold eg. Under 1 minute or under 2 minutes. Sonic 2 is the best game to play this way

Just about the time bonus at 18:15, the biggest time bonus you can get is if you complete the level at 9:59. If you want the max possible score you are basically required to do this, since it is a shit ton of points. Its like 100000 or something. This being one of the two main reasons I rarely take the score challenge seriously. Imagine playing Sonic 3 & knuckles, but every single level takes 10 minutes. The other issue I have with time, which is even worse since the first issue exists, is that sonic 3 doesn't save your score, only your level progress. So you are basically required to use save states, unless you want to do all of those 10 minute levels in one sitting. It does give you a thrill trying to match a boss fight last hit with the timer at 9:59 ngl.

The GBA port of Donkey Kong Country 2 does a good job integrating scoring like objectives into its time trial mode, where killing multiple enemies in a row stops the counter for a few seconds, effectively giving you a time bonus. Super Monkey Ball does so as well, where 1 banana = 100 points = 1 second more time bonus, so you have to decide which bananas you can collect without too much of a detour. It's a tight trade-off which means there are quite a few levels with multiple viable high score strategies, even at top-level play.

YES. I've always wanted to see someone talk about high scores in Sonic.

Sonic CD sounds like the best game for scoring and play normaly actually

Will you review Sonic animated shows in the future.

In sonic 2 extra lives AND continues are tied to the score system! And there’s an achievement in Sonic 3 AIR for scoring one million points! Also if you run down the clock in sonic 3 you get a 50000 point bonus…

The design flaws that the rings give you so much score that is much better to ignore time at all, I don't think it was something they thought through that much, older games are full of similar conceptual flaws (also modern games), they were not infallible just because they made the Sonic games.

Generally the longer a mission is the more leniency you should get in the rankings, which is why Metal Gear Solid V lets you go for perfect stealth, or complete optional objectives, or beeline to the goal in a gold-plated robot, while in Peace Walker even 1 alert or kill will immediately disqualify you from an S-rank. This is why even games that use something similar to SA2's ranking system like Heroes, Shadow, 06 and Unleashed's Werehog levels don't feel as rewarding, it's because the levels are too long. I think 06 made a mistake by giving you a ring bonus at the end of the stage because it's incredibly difficult to do so without getting hit. Whether that's due to a buggy physics engine, slowdown messing with your controls or Modern Sonic's strange lack of powerups like shields or invincibility. SA2 gives you the points when you collect rings, which encourages you to grab as many as you can without throwing all that in the bin if you make a single mistake. Just like I'm glad Sonic 3&K and Mania also never require you to tiptoe through the stage because you need to have enough rings to enter a special stage. SA2 also gives you an automatic S-rank for getting every ring in the stage, but sadly this isn't always possible. Generations only ranks you on speed and completing the stage without dying, so after you've found the red rings then both getting the S-rank or top of the leaderboard just involves taking the shortest line from point A to B. SA2 has things to find that boost your score like the Gold Beetle or even things to find while playing casually like the Chao boxes, which after collecting all 3 in a stage gives you a rare animal. Colours only cares about score, which requires you to waste time in wisp form (like spinning in circles as Drill) or sidestepping non-stop for the score bonuses. You thought you played well but you're given a bad ranking because you didn't stop to do these, or it's impossible to get the S-rank because the wisp you needed isn't even unlocked yet.

Ever since watching Alex Yard’s video I was very curious what you would think of it and your analysis did not disappoint!

I’m very impressed with how quickly you put this out lol.

I like to compare Sonic to Devil May Cry/Bayonetta. You got this cocky, overpowered, stylish protagonist in a game that focuses way more on performance and optimization than just surviving and getting through, which by itself would be way easier, creating a large skill spectrum. Sonic's basically to platformers what Dante is to beat-'em-ups ... ideally...

You know, the thing about Sonic as the character is that he is as free as the wind and does whatever he wants and here in Sonic games you can play however you want. Either speedrun the game or play for the high score while also collecting the chaos emeralds if you want. Fun fact: In Spark the Electric Jester 2 and 3 there was a time medal for speeding through the levels and score medals which encourages defeating enemies and collecting bits in the levels for high scores. I also wanna talk about Doom Eternal and it's speedrun. There is the any% category which is finishing the game as fast as possible and the 100% Ultra-Nightmare category which involves completing the game with all collectibles on the hardest difficulty as fast as possible. I'd say I prefer the 100% Ultra-Nightmare category.

I think the biggest issue in the classic games is not a lack of end goal, but rather the lack of a hook. I could go back to Unwiished any day and play those boost levels for time, but that is because the game already showed me that it is rewarding to go fast through the rankings. There is a reason why most games designed for score have a scoreboard, it is so your score does not vanish upon completion(without writing it down/recording gameplay) and so you don't have to manually compare your results. These games just don't ever tell you that score is worth anything besides making the game easier through continues, which is backwards because people getting better at a game(Aka. those that could get higher scores) need less and less help like that. Some rereleases have external leaderboards that theoretically address this problem and they reveal the other issue with it, being that the games actually have an anti-hook towards score runs. It is entirely possible to completely wreck the dynamic and optimize the fun out of the games with the 9minute 59 second-time bonus or spots where one can farm infinite points. The video that inspired this one basically said that it's up to everyone to decide how lame they want to play and that abusing such details is not fun and not in the spirit of the series...but the issue is just that playing it the "correct way" is a half-measure. If the point of the gamedesign was to encourage players to get as high of a score as they could, then it automatically fails when you have to actively choose not to use the objectively better way of doing so. If playing the game as is already seems to be great fun and score runs seem to be inheritly less fun and don't even give me bragging rights, why would I rise to the challenge? I have no bigger issue with splitting multiple ways of play in a way where they are incompatible, but the facts are that Score is broken and Speed isn't. At least on these early games.

I never gave a shit about time in Sonic. When I played the classic games, I would always try to go out with as many rings as possible.

Insightful. I was one of those people who had a hard time replaying the Sonic games I thought were good only to be dissatisfied when beating them. I originally thought “going for high scores is pointless” and tried to enjoy them by speedrunning only. After seeing this I now have a better understanding for why these levels are designed for what they are and that my method of playing them was extremely restrictive. I still have a problem with how the classic Sonic games handle your scores which is a feature you mentioned for Adventure 1: they don’t record them. I think adding a leaderboard at the end of each level for a convenient reference of your past scores with your recent ones would be so much more encouraging nabbing as many points as you can as fast as you can and seeing your results after your hard work. Going for points in their original form isn’t as much of a concern since I know they’ll be erased and forgotten after completing the level or game. I also think the time bonus should be more intuitive for how it works (kinda like how the hidden 10 minute time limit is). I thought every level had an under 30 second time bonus like Green Hill but Angel Island’s can be achieved in just under a minute like you said. If each level has their own specific time bonus to get for how long each one takes to beat then it should be clear right from the get go for how long you have to get the time bonus per level. Even if that was made more clear I would personally use an alternative method for getting points from time like losing points for each second that passes (ex: beating a level in 2 minutes only gives you 8000 points and beating it in a minute and a half gives you 8500 points or something). This would make it easier to get points for the time bonus which makes it more possible for the players who try to get points by exploring for rings, emeralds or robots. For limiting any possible exploitations I’d segment each level into their own mini acts like Nights Into Dreams allowing you to rotate as many times as possible for points before time runs out in each act. Even if the system is flawed and not the most encouraging way to make you want to interact with the game more its still kinda nice to try and play them this way just to see what I’ve been missing out on.

In terms of scoring and ranking systems that encourage players to play a game the intended way, I think Excite Truck for the Wii is an excellent example to draw from. In Excite Truck, progression through the game is not 100% determined by getting first place in a race; It can certainly help, but it won’t guarantee that you’ll move on to the next race. Instead, you need to focus on getting Stars, which can be gained through various methods, like tossing opponent vehicles into the air using the terrain (known as a “Truck Throw”), performing mid-air stunts, rushing through a bunch of trees without crashing into them (this is called a “Tree Run”), and of course coming in first place at the end of the race. To unlock the next race, you need to meet a certain threshold for the number of Stars collected during a race. And collecting more Stars beyond that threshold will unlock new vehicles for you to play around with, all of which have unique stats that are tailored to suit the different driving preferences for every individual player. I bring this all up because I think a Sonic game with this specific kind of scoring system - one that encourages and even requires you to play the game both quickly and stylishly - would absolutely knock it out of the park, in terms of replayability without requiring other external measures to ensure players are getting the most out of the game’s runtime.

Interesting video. At the of the day, it probably comes to which way you want to beat a game. Lol

When I was a kid, I always wanted to go for score when I played Sonic 1, but as the levels got more difficult, I no longer wanted to engage with that. I think if anybody out there wanted to make a mod for the classic sonic games which gave you a score rank for each level, as well as a score rank for the entire game at the end, that would encourage me to try it again through this lens

In sonic 3 you can ALSO get a big score bonus by beating the stage at the last second, 9:59 out of 10 minutes.

On the idea of playing for score vs playing for speed, perhaps a great Sonic game could include both. Maybe there are levels that don't have points and are built around the slowing consequences, while the majority of the game is built around points and the consequences of losing them. A lot like how there are Sonic games that have "high speed" levels.

Spark 3 has seperate rankings for score and time which is very good. Because you can play in 3 different ways, for time, for score and for both

The chaos emeralds should be tied to getting high scores in the levels, no bonus stages, if you get above 15000 score or something you get a chaos emerald and you are one step closer to unlocking super sonic, i think something like that would convey to the player how the game is meant to be played way more effectively

Also, if you complete an act at nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds in Sonic 3 and Knuckles and Sonic Mania, you will be awarded 100,000 points.

Great video! Completely disagree with the conclusion. I much prefer scoring systems in Sonic games. And SA2 did it the best where comboing enemies, performing tricks, & grinding on rails counted towards your score really emphasize that Sonic plays these levels kind of stylish similar to like Devil May Cry. And its sad that Modern Sonic games either do this wrong by making anything you do adds towards your score (Colors & Forces) or completely remove killing enemies or doing tricks as counting towards your rank (Gens, LW, Frontiers). Bottom line I don't think time should be the ONLY determining factor in showcasing rank.

In my mind's eye, as a kid, I played the game to learn it as completely as possible because I wanted to get as good as I could. I am also a game completionist. So the exploration aspects of the Genesis Sonic games came naturally to me as I wanted to learn the whole game and see as much of it as possible. As others have said, learning the complete game by exploration lends itself eventually to knowing the game so well that you can then use that knowledge to go as fast as possible. The two elements of time and score are distinctly different and yet not mutually exclusive. They have a symbiotic relationship.

Honestly I really don't care for getting a score i just wanna have fun exploring, getting some rings and getting all the chaos emeralds.

11:51 I've always had a few ideas for this, actually. 1: Let the player use the score as some kind of currency to spend on bonus monitors at the beginning of every stage. (I like this one, but it doesn't feel very Sonicy to me) 2: Lock the special stages behind a score requirement instead of a ring requirement. (not as compatible with Sonic 3, where special stage locations are designed exclusively around rewarding exploration) 3: Reward players with a better ending depending on how many badniks they destroyed. (still not really incentivizing good score, more just incentivizing something that gives you score as a bonus) or 4: Same as #3, but just base it entirely on score instead. (the downside here is that it's not really justifiable in any sort of in-universe way, with score being such an abstract and disconnected concept)

I think a big part of what conditioned people to ignore score is not the fact that scoring is intrinsically uninteresting, but the fact that most scoring systems in early console games are deeply flawed and have no correlation with skillful play. For example, the optimal scoring strategy in Super Mario Bros is to repeatedly grab an extra life, score some points, and die. If scoring systems were better designed, people wouldn't have stopped caring.

SMB Deluxe is holding its sides from laughing too hard

Have you ever considered that the experience is it's own reward? I understand the desire to optimize a playthrough, but I'm not sure if it's the correct approach to the game, and I like to think of score more as a vague motivator put in place to give significance to the games' design. Speed, exploration and score are all parts of how the game works and is intended to work.

You see, thats part of what i think made the old games great. you had at least 3 ways to play. First is slow and exploratory, so you can learn the maps and layouts. Experiencing the game at your own pace. Next is for speedrunning, the route many tune in for due to the rush of momentum based gameplay. optimizing your movements, momentum, and sometimes even bugs to get a best time. And lastly is scoring, to learn the combos, routes, and such to get the best score by the end. These 3 styles blended into one add replayability far greater than any players anticipate. and in some cases more than the devs intended. it helps to keep the games from getting completely stale. however that is only if you catch onto what they intended.

You might like the system in Spark 2 and 3 where there are 2 medals per level, one for a fast time and one for a high score.

This video is really good, though at around the 11 minute mark when you talk about how most people need an extrinsic motivation to play games a certain way (which I think itself is true); Sonic games not being played how they are intended is more of an issue with how poorly the games communicate the intention of the level design. I play games for intrinisc motivation, and have played all the original sonic games multiple times, and I never would have thought that score is how so much of the level design is justified / fun. I'd go as far to say this is also how people enjoy completely different things in Sonic games without knowing how they got to that point, so they assume the other is wrong. E.G. to me, Sonic is about scenic exploration, visuals, and music, so I enjoyed the werehog stages far more than the day stages in my playthrough of Unleashed. I understand why other people don't like them and like the day stages, but I'd have to consciously choose to play the day stages in a very different way to how I have grown to enjoy sonic. Edit: All this not to say that extrinsic motivators aren't valid ways of communicating level design, they are just one method that, as was one of your main points in the video, Sonic Team failed, and for the most part keeps failing, to properly implement. I saw your comment about score attack not being that fun, but I still thought this point was relevant. Once again, I love your videos. Keep 'em up man!

How I play a Sonic game depends on my mood. If I want to play casually, I'll aim for getting a high score by exploring the levels, defeating enemies, finding rings and items, etc. However, if I want to challenge myself, I'll try to finish the game as fast as possible. I think that's why Sonic, especially classic Sonic appeals to so many people. There really is something for every player.

I think this could even be argued as a criticism against some Sonic games - focusing on time and score being used as a crutch. In a good Mega Man game for example, you will never truly get to appreciate the bosses if you don't do things no damage and you especially won't get to appreciate much if you just abuse weaknesses - but also in a good Mega Man game, weapons themselves are more than just weaknesses and reward the player for experimenting with them outside of bosses and risking to not have enough ammo to just cheese the boss. While I hated the Mega Man 4 weapon set for a while due to it lacking any particularly gimmicky weapons or something that felt truly required to be used, I came to appreciate them once I just decided to experiment with how I use them. That said, the weapon sets of 7 and 9 could be argued to be even better, as they do that while also being very much so useful for environments and at taking down enemies. In some Sonic games, if you don't want to go for time attacking or scoring, you will likely not enjoy it, and reverse cases usually mean either the time attacking or scoring being compromised. And MMX2 even has that small reward - if you go in armorless, which makes the game way harder, Zero will appear in the credit roll.

It's a shame most modern games have completely phased out scoring systems

I did always find it strange there was a score system where u can earn points placed in the games but I never gave much more thought to it than that. This further shows that Sonic has always been very arcadey ftome the start & while varying has never really gone away in any game I could think of. Tho this might be part of why it's so hard to get into/understand the franchise a lot of the time for many even if u've played them for years. Not sayin it should go at all jus that it can seem to come as a hinderance to some or many

I remember there was a part 2 to this, what happened to it?

20:38 now that i think about it, i'd say a ranking system that rank 3 of these aspects would actually be a great way to encourage repeat playthroughs. one time you play for time, one for score and one for rings.

Why would they even bother adding a scoring system if they didn't intend for you to use it? That's the obvious proof. As for your comment that without scoring you could not see a reason to explore. The point of exploring is lives, rings (which give lives and continues), and power ups make you progress further. I haven't seen it but you have s video were with a title saying you dont like lives. So this whole idea of picking up things to gain lives to do better is something you would struggle with. And in order to have a proper life system you need finite or no continues which takes us into a realm of platforming well beyond someone that can't even handle limited lives. The entire 2D platforming genre is based on a limited continue/life model. Every element from how exploring works to the power ups and pacing was made to compliment that.

The original sonic games were never about speed for me, it was about exploration and getting to hard to reach places using the physics system. I never aimed for a high score either even though I would get as much points as I could. I only thought of score as a currency for getting extra lives.

It's interesting to see whether a Sonic game adjusts the values within the level like the ranking system in Rush the S Rank is always at least 5000 points so the time required itself is adjusted, or like most of the 3D games where the score requirement for the S Rank depends on the level. Also seeing how quickly you can do something how big of a score bonus it gives, like a lot of the things in SA2 or Unleashed 360 require you to still have fast reflexes to get that score bonus.

I saw the same video about playing for score. 1 day later , here I am 😅

Sonic 1 and 2 gave you extra continues for getting 10000 points or more. You could do that by either beating the level in under a minute or by having 100 rings before crossing the goal. Thats how a casual player can beat sonic 1 and 2 without save states.

I hardly ever play a game for score, but I always find scoring systems in arcade game fascinating since they usually have a ton of hidden mechanics that encourage players to play in a way that's riskier or turns the game into somewhat of a puzzle. I also game Nights and Katamari Damacy are good examples of post-arcade games that encourage score. The reason why I think those games work is because you're under a strict time limit and are encouraged to chain together as many collectables as possible. I don't mind having a ranking system to encourage getting a high score or something like the Spark the Electric Jester games where you simply get score medals for getting a high score with speed medals being a separate goal. I also think the way scoring works in Sonic should also change like have a multiplier system where your score multiplies by chaining together rings and enemies in quick succession and if you take too long the score multiplier resets. Pizza Tower so far looks like it'll be a game where both speed and score matter.

Eye opening video, as a kid I would aim for the life that 100 rings would give. Once you get good at the game that's not really important but for a new/bad player exploring the levels for the first time and grabbing rings had valid incentive. Never cared about score though, and I still don't.

Awesome!

In Sonic 2, if you get every ring in the act, you will get a perfect bonus worth 50,000 points.

I love your Sonic Was Always Good series, but I always thought the fatal flaw was how dismissive you seemed about any element of the games that wasn't conducive to your preferred play style (particularly when it came to special stages and bosses), even going so far as to say those things should be removed entirely. Those elements of the game are there for the sake of scoring, not speedrunning, and saying that anything that slows the game down should be outright cut always seemed depressingly short-sighted to me. Playing Sonic games for score rather than time really does paint them in an entirely new light. Sonic CD especially -- it's practically built for that style of play. It's really no surprise that the people who just like to plow through Sonic games as quickly as possible tend to really dislike CD, while people like me who play more for score usually adore it.

I think the games are meant to focus in the time. Hence the time attack modes. If they we’re focused on score there would’ve been a ranking system. Although playing for score is fresh new take to approach the levels.

the only games I care about score in is the asure striker gunvolt series they both provide a intrinsic value for gaining score and also make it very clear how much score you get from certain actions,also the kudos number is always within view and not in the corner of the screen

Fun fact, the Best score you can get in Aragami, SS I still say Kaoru is the best ending too

To steal a page from Silent Rob "does anyone say hey what's your high score in Mega Man 1? No! If they do they're creepy and tell them to get out of your face, what's their problem?"

I'm just waiting for the rank mods for the classic games.

It's crazy the difference this extrinsic motivation makes in games in order to motivate players, no matter how small. Before watching these videos, I only ever cared for time in Sonic when the game gave me the A-rank for it, or in SRB2 when the time attack gives you specific thresholds to work towards. A while ago, I used a Sonic Mania mod that gives you an SA2 rank system based on your score. It's far from perfect, but it totally changed my mindset when playing that game.

The importance of score in the design of Sonic games naturally comes from SEGAs history of developing Arcade games. Where the ONLY purpose was acquiring a high score. Games didn't even have endings, the session was over when you ran out of quarters. That philosophy started to change when beat em up games came with a hard ending, where you finish the final boss and then suddenly the game was over put another quarter in to start over from the beginning. Final fight and whatnot still have scores, but that's no longer the motivating factor, now the motivation was get to the ending. The games were designed with the arcade high score board chasing design mentality, but no one really cares for the same reason no one cares about what your high score in Final Fight is. The games being designed around the points thing HAS always been fundamental to Sonic tho which was why I disagreed with that point when you talked about it in your SA2 video. The ranking system of A ranks at levels end and whatnot was always a natural evolution of the high score board motivation for players. And we still see that same design philosophy with character action games like DMC and Bayonetta. Imagine doing a video review of Bayonetta and questioning why anyone is supposed to care about getting a Pure Platinum level rank. That's how silly you sounded in your SA2 video.

Hold up, YOU SINGLE HANDEDLY got the Aragami developers to change their game design and POST LAUNCH? I played Aragami and got the platinum. Decent game, but I've always preferred Styx much, much more. Gonna make a separate comment about Sonic stuff...