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yamamanamaBack in 2005, I played this on iNES which didn’t have save states. So I didn’t get very far. It also crashed randomly, or that could just be the game. For what it’s worth, the game didn’t crash on me when I played it just now on Nestopia but who knows, there are very definitely instances of games crashing on actual hardware that emulators can handle. Action 52, anyone?
I also left a request in the comment section on Gamingforce but it's a SECRET TO EVERYBODY. Including me.
Somari Team is a euphemism for Hummer Team from Taiwan.
Called Somari The Adventurer on the box art.
Gone is Sonic's super speed, the play control, and everything that makes Sonic the Hedgehog a fun game.
Buzzbombers have a tendency of reappearing at their spawn point whenever scrolled offscreen and are positioned so that they will hit you.
Crabmeats fire faster and don’t telegraph their attacks.
As you can see, the level design is radically different from the original game.
Remember that spike pit of doom from Mystic Cave?
They’re ALL spike pits of doom here. And it doesn’t matter that you’re not Super Sonic because rings bounce off of walls.
Most of the enemy behaviors seem to be similar to the actual Sonic game. Choppers leap out of the water. Moto Bug doesn’t exist anymore.
At least the loops work. There don’t seem to be any actual physics involved but it’s a good thing here. Oh, sure, you won’t pick up all the ring but you won’t even notice unless you’re watching footage of yourself play and because you ran right into a buzzbomber's shot and lost them anyway.
One newtron darts towards you. One newtron sits there and fires projectiles at you.
Both types of newtron use the same colors.
I can hardly tell that's Robotnik.
So there's no story for this game. It's probably just the Sonic the Hedgehog manual's story with Sonic crossed out and Mario written in red crayon.
Sometimes the goal sign changes to an !
No matter how long it takes you to get through a level, you always receive a time bonus of 5000 points. If you time out at the exact moment you beat a level (whether they mean “timing out because the clock runs for a few seconds afterwards” or “timing out the moment you hit the goal” I can not say), a glitch happens and you end up with 255 lives.
The background was ripped from the Master System here.
Mario’s sprite is from Mario 3 and modified somewhat by the pirates. He’s now wearing Tails’, whose real name is Kilometers if you’re in Europe and Kawtha in Burma, shoes.
Mario has a weird lack of horizontality to his vertical jumps.
There isn’t even a special stage when you beat a level. There might be a version out there that adds the special stage but this ain’t it. Wikipedia links to something in Russian and then claims that if you get 100 rings, you can access a special stage. But to do that, it would require that I make it through a stage without getting hit. What I can tell you is that 100 rings will not grant you an extra life. And there aren’t any continues either.
You only lose 20 rings when you get hit, says the bootleg games wiki. But I don’t think that’s true, or maybe that’s true in some versions but not others.
But wait! There’s a secret code and you can use it to access the spacial stage.
Left, Down, B, A, Right, Up, A, B, Up, Down, Up, Down, Start on the title screen. I'll be making use of this later.
The special stage here is from Sonic for the Sega Master System / Game Gear. It's quite obvious why they couldn't use the Genesis' version.
Beating the special stage sends you to Green Hill Zone.
Robotnik’s ball is unattached to his egg-o-matic and it flickers in and out of existence. And you won’t bounce off of his egg-hover, you’ll just phase through it and clonk into the ball.
He takes eleven hits instead of eight.
We still free all of Sonic's furry friends.
Marble Zone doesn't have an eight bit version so they had to go with this cluttered mess.
Marble features a white sky and ground that blends in with the trees in the background.
Some of the platforms ignite for whatever reason. In Sonic 1, it’s easy to tell which ones do. In Somari, not so much.
Somari only drops three rings when he gets hit. That’s NES hardware limitations for you.
Underground is still hideously ugly but at least you can see what you're supposed to be standing on.
The bats are officially named Batbrain, according to the Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia and are ignored completely in the manual.
They gave him a spin dash. That was nice of them. Suspiciously nice.
The spike there is just sort of hovering.
Seems like some of the corruption got loose.
Like in the Genesis version, Robotnik flies back and forth and drops fire on the platform. It's a fairly basic boss there but Somari's lack of acceleration makes this way more frustrating than it should be.
The bumpers in Spring Yand (sic) are probably the most janky thing I’ve seen in this game, and that’s saying a lot. And the moving platforms don't actually move here.
My friend and I had a name for this guy but I forget what it was. Crab… something. His official name is simply “Spikes,” named for the spikes on his back that he uses every day at every opportunity.
Spring Yand likes to rely on long passages where you will get hit and you probably won’t be able to get your rings back because sometimes they get stuck in the ceiling instead and there aren’t any rings in said passages.
At least there aren’t any Rollers.
The spike balls rotate in the opposite direction you’re trying to go and are nearly impossible to dodge.
The ones in these passages move as slow as Somari though.
That shade of yellow just doesn't look good here.
It’s the same thing as the Genesis’ Spring Yard boss except a million times worse because of the knockback, the shoddy hit detection, and Mario’s inability to jump any direction but “straight up” and “straight up and a few pixels to the side.”
There are no checkpoints. There are checkpoint monitors in the data, brought over from Sonic 1 for the Master System and Game Gear, but they’re never used in game.
Water makes you even slower than you already are.
Despite Labyrinth also getting an eight bit treatment with black backgrounds with the occasional dark blue bricks, we instead get the standard overly cluttered background that is hampered by sharing a color palette with the foreground.
If you thought they were incapable of adding the drowning mechanic or simply too lazy, guess again.
The bubble generators take forever. By the time you actually get to hear the drowning music, you're already dead. And some of the generators don’t actually generate anything. Lovely.
I think Burrobot, which is not Burrowbot, those badniks are in Sonic 2 8-bit, acts differently, in that he goes back and forth and does a little hop before he turns around. Or maybe Burrobot does that normally.
Orbinauts throw their spiked balls when they're off-screen.
The levels are all built out of metatiles, which I assume is a fancy of saying you see the same schemata over and over again. It’s a great memory saver on the NES.
Ugh, look how long that took. And I remind you again, no checkpoints. If you drown towards the end, you got to do that shit all over again.
So I'll just jump up on to this platform and...
What the?
I got it to work once but I think it only works if you're on the platform's apex.
The waterfall in Act 3 dumps you on to some spikes.
It turns out this jump is actually possible. You can jump from that higher part to the right of my position.
Star Light only looks daunting when you look at the map. It’s actually composed of many branching paths. The music is the worst part.
The loops that end in a vertical drop are glitchy as well.
This type of orbinaut are meant to be rolled under in Sonic the Hedgehog. In this game, you can do that but when you're spindashing or rolling, you can't control yourself. If you try to roll under the first orbinaut in act 3, you'll roll down the ramp, fly up into the air, and collide with a bomb. And you'll die because you have no rings.
The loops that end in a vertical drop are glitchy as well.
Bombs, of course, don’t flash when they’re about to explode.
Since they couldn’t get the teeter-totters to work, the boss here is completely different. He’ll fly across the screen dropping explosions and then repeat on the bottom half of the screen.
Scrap Brain Zone isn’t in this game. Good, because this game is already a slog.
There are some relics of it in the game but it’s just a garbled mess of Star Light and Final Zone tiles and Star Light’s music. But you can’t get there via the stage select code. You have to use a modified savestate or a Game Genie code to access it.
Much like in Sonic 1's final zone, you get no rings.
You’ll actually have an easier time if you just run from the electricity.
And he has no invincibility frames so he only takes about three rounds. It's just really hard to know where he's coming from.
Robotnik spontaneously combusts.
Since there are no chaos emeralds, there's no good ending.
It's one of the better pirate roms. Not that I'm saying much. This game has also been released (with Sonic’s sprite instead of Mario) as Sonic 3D Blast 6. Note: not 3D. Note: Not a blast either. Sonic 3D Blast 5 is that with Green Hill and Marble taken out of the game but in the data with a few improvements regarding inescapable spike pits.
But still.
burning question: why, oh, why did thy make this?
I also left a request in the comment section on Gamingforce but it's a SECRET TO EVERYBODY. Including me.
Somari Team is a euphemism for Hummer Team from Taiwan.
Called Somari The Adventurer on the box art.
Gone is Sonic's super speed, the play control, and everything that makes Sonic the Hedgehog a fun game.
Buzzbombers have a tendency of reappearing at their spawn point whenever scrolled offscreen and are positioned so that they will hit you.
Crabmeats fire faster and don’t telegraph their attacks.
As you can see, the level design is radically different from the original game.
Remember that spike pit of doom from Mystic Cave?
They’re ALL spike pits of doom here. And it doesn’t matter that you’re not Super Sonic because rings bounce off of walls.
Most of the enemy behaviors seem to be similar to the actual Sonic game. Choppers leap out of the water. Moto Bug doesn’t exist anymore.
At least the loops work. There don’t seem to be any actual physics involved but it’s a good thing here. Oh, sure, you won’t pick up all the ring but you won’t even notice unless you’re watching footage of yourself play and because you ran right into a buzzbomber's shot and lost them anyway.
One newtron darts towards you. One newtron sits there and fires projectiles at you.
Both types of newtron use the same colors.
I can hardly tell that's Robotnik.
So there's no story for this game. It's probably just the Sonic the Hedgehog manual's story with Sonic crossed out and Mario written in red crayon.
Sometimes the goal sign changes to an !
No matter how long it takes you to get through a level, you always receive a time bonus of 5000 points. If you time out at the exact moment you beat a level (whether they mean “timing out because the clock runs for a few seconds afterwards” or “timing out the moment you hit the goal” I can not say), a glitch happens and you end up with 255 lives.
The background was ripped from the Master System here.
Mario’s sprite is from Mario 3 and modified somewhat by the pirates. He’s now wearing Tails’, whose real name is Kilometers if you’re in Europe and Kawtha in Burma, shoes.
Mario has a weird lack of horizontality to his vertical jumps.
There isn’t even a special stage when you beat a level. There might be a version out there that adds the special stage but this ain’t it. Wikipedia links to something in Russian and then claims that if you get 100 rings, you can access a special stage. But to do that, it would require that I make it through a stage without getting hit. What I can tell you is that 100 rings will not grant you an extra life. And there aren’t any continues either.
You only lose 20 rings when you get hit, says the bootleg games wiki. But I don’t think that’s true, or maybe that’s true in some versions but not others.
But wait! There’s a secret code and you can use it to access the spacial stage.
Left, Down, B, A, Right, Up, A, B, Up, Down, Up, Down, Start on the title screen. I'll be making use of this later.
The special stage here is from Sonic for the Sega Master System / Game Gear. It's quite obvious why they couldn't use the Genesis' version.
Beating the special stage sends you to Green Hill Zone.
Robotnik’s ball is unattached to his egg-o-matic and it flickers in and out of existence. And you won’t bounce off of his egg-hover, you’ll just phase through it and clonk into the ball.
He takes eleven hits instead of eight.
We still free all of Sonic's furry friends.
Marble Zone doesn't have an eight bit version so they had to go with this cluttered mess.
Marble features a white sky and ground that blends in with the trees in the background.
Some of the platforms ignite for whatever reason. In Sonic 1, it’s easy to tell which ones do. In Somari, not so much.
Somari only drops three rings when he gets hit. That’s NES hardware limitations for you.
Underground is still hideously ugly but at least you can see what you're supposed to be standing on.
The bats are officially named Batbrain, according to the Sonic the Hedgehog Encyclo-speed-ia and are ignored completely in the manual.
They gave him a spin dash. That was nice of them. Suspiciously nice.
The spike there is just sort of hovering.
Seems like some of the corruption got loose.
Like in the Genesis version, Robotnik flies back and forth and drops fire on the platform. It's a fairly basic boss there but Somari's lack of acceleration makes this way more frustrating than it should be.
The bumpers in Spring Yand (sic) are probably the most janky thing I’ve seen in this game, and that’s saying a lot. And the moving platforms don't actually move here.
My friend and I had a name for this guy but I forget what it was. Crab… something. His official name is simply “Spikes,” named for the spikes on his back that he uses every day at every opportunity.
Spring Yand likes to rely on long passages where you will get hit and you probably won’t be able to get your rings back because sometimes they get stuck in the ceiling instead and there aren’t any rings in said passages.
At least there aren’t any Rollers.
The spike balls rotate in the opposite direction you’re trying to go and are nearly impossible to dodge.
The ones in these passages move as slow as Somari though.
That shade of yellow just doesn't look good here.
It’s the same thing as the Genesis’ Spring Yard boss except a million times worse because of the knockback, the shoddy hit detection, and Mario’s inability to jump any direction but “straight up” and “straight up and a few pixels to the side.”
There are no checkpoints. There are checkpoint monitors in the data, brought over from Sonic 1 for the Master System and Game Gear, but they’re never used in game.
Water makes you even slower than you already are.
Despite Labyrinth also getting an eight bit treatment with black backgrounds with the occasional dark blue bricks, we instead get the standard overly cluttered background that is hampered by sharing a color palette with the foreground.
If you thought they were incapable of adding the drowning mechanic or simply too lazy, guess again.
The bubble generators take forever. By the time you actually get to hear the drowning music, you're already dead. And some of the generators don’t actually generate anything. Lovely.
I think Burrobot, which is not Burrowbot, those badniks are in Sonic 2 8-bit, acts differently, in that he goes back and forth and does a little hop before he turns around. Or maybe Burrobot does that normally.
Orbinauts throw their spiked balls when they're off-screen.
The levels are all built out of metatiles, which I assume is a fancy of saying you see the same schemata over and over again. It’s a great memory saver on the NES.
Ugh, look how long that took. And I remind you again, no checkpoints. If you drown towards the end, you got to do that shit all over again.
So I'll just jump up on to this platform and...
What the?
I got it to work once but I think it only works if you're on the platform's apex.
The waterfall in Act 3 dumps you on to some spikes.
It turns out this jump is actually possible. You can jump from that higher part to the right of my position.
Star Light only looks daunting when you look at the map. It’s actually composed of many branching paths. The music is the worst part.
The loops that end in a vertical drop are glitchy as well.
This type of orbinaut are meant to be rolled under in Sonic the Hedgehog. In this game, you can do that but when you're spindashing or rolling, you can't control yourself. If you try to roll under the first orbinaut in act 3, you'll roll down the ramp, fly up into the air, and collide with a bomb. And you'll die because you have no rings.
The loops that end in a vertical drop are glitchy as well.
Bombs, of course, don’t flash when they’re about to explode.
Since they couldn’t get the teeter-totters to work, the boss here is completely different. He’ll fly across the screen dropping explosions and then repeat on the bottom half of the screen.
Scrap Brain Zone isn’t in this game. Good, because this game is already a slog.
There are some relics of it in the game but it’s just a garbled mess of Star Light and Final Zone tiles and Star Light’s music. But you can’t get there via the stage select code. You have to use a modified savestate or a Game Genie code to access it.
Much like in Sonic 1's final zone, you get no rings.
You’ll actually have an easier time if you just run from the electricity.
And he has no invincibility frames so he only takes about three rounds. It's just really hard to know where he's coming from.
Robotnik spontaneously combusts.
Since there are no chaos emeralds, there's no good ending.
It's one of the better pirate roms. Not that I'm saying much. This game has also been released (with Sonic’s sprite instead of Mario) as Sonic 3D Blast 6. Note: not 3D. Note: Not a blast either. Sonic 3D Blast 5 is that with Green Hill and Marble taken out of the game but in the data with a few improvements regarding inescapable spike pits.
But still.
burning question: why, oh, why did thy make this?
no subject
Date: 2023-08-14 12:12 pm (UTC)