Game:

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)

Duration: 4:47

1,318 views

5

Please pick the 720p60 or 1080p60 resolutions to play back in 60 frames per second. (Internet Explorer, surprisingly, appears to be the best browser for playback.)

Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7IEN-HGlR46d-SMTAdIfWnf2JT41RLo0

Hey, there! This is a new series I've been wanting to do for a looong time: Sega Genesis at 60 frames per second! Why? Well... have you ever watched an older game on YouTube and noticed the main character turn invisible when hit, or some other such nonsense? That's because some older games use some ridiculously high speed flicker effects to achieve those crazy hitflashes on bosses or that "ouch I'm hurt!" flicker! These are not displayed properly at 30 fps, but now that we're able to upload at 60 fps we can see all the special effects that older games would use! (They'll be smoother, too!)
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Now on to Sonic the Hedgehog 2! This character really took off for the big-time once this title hit the streets. Heck, if I remember rightly, it was one of the few titles for the time that enjoyed a near-simultaneous worldwide release! Sonic was hedging its bets on this hog!

The game was faster, bigger, and brighter than the first in the series, taking advantage of all the power the genesis could muster. And now there was a second member to join the party: Tails! His real name is Miles Prower, but Sega seems to downplay that ("Miles per hour"~). The lil' dude will follow you to the ends of the earth and if you lose him can catch up by flying! This dude DEFINES tenacious. It also helps that he's pretty much invincible. Also, he made for a good way to placate younger siblings that wanted to play with you, though, the camera would often leave them behind.

Anyway, great game. This one's a classic!
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The first Zone in this game is the Emerald Hill Zone! Lots of bright cheery landscape, here, but populated by those horrid badniks! Break 'em open and free your animal pals!

One big difference in this game are how there are only two Acts per zone. I'm not sure whether this really impacts on the size of the game compared to the first, because there are a few more zones to make up for it.

Also, if you're really good at poking around, you can get all 7 chaos emeralds in the two acts for this zone! Oh, to get an emerald, you need to win a special stage. And to get to a special stage you must collect 50 rings and then activate a starpost and jump into the ring of stars. And these special stages are some crazy pseudo-3D stuffs, let me tell ya! At the time this was the real deal!

At the end, we meet Robotnik having a leisurely Sunday drive and wreck his car because why not.
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Some additional notes for those technically inclined:

This was captured from an original Sega Genesis system via composite output along with stereo sound to get as authentic a recording as possible. The Genesis used is one of the "good" models with proper sound and video output. Genesis can also output an RGB signal which is clearer, but I vetoed the idea because it breaks the dithering effect (color blending and transparencies) as seen here:
http://retro-sanctuary.com/comparisons%20-%20differing.html
Also, the vast majority of people could not use the RGB signal even if they wanted to, so the experience they remember would be the composite signal as shown in this video.

There are a couple things to note about the quality of the video, however. Sega Genesis has a very dirty video signal that often "breaks" attempts to capture it with a capture device. The capture device I use is considered one of the most capable when it comes to older systems, but the Genesis' video signal still introduces some inconsistencies. These usually manifest where there are extremely thin lines in game, mostly the text, and in some other places as well. As a whole, it is more than manageable, but it is worth noting.

Also, the original sega genesis resolution is, in essence, 240p at 60 frames per second. To take advantage of YouTube's higher bitrate offerings and to enable 60 fps I need to upscale that resolution to 1080p. There is also a step of video deinterlacing before that to create crisp video. That is a significant amount of video processing to the image, so I want to note that here as well.

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