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I Can't Believe it's Not Sonic 1

Project Overview

I Can't Believe it's Not Sonic 1 (ICBINS1) attempts to recreate Sonic 1 (Green Hill Zone, at least) faithfully in the Unity game engine while adding some new features. Everything is written from scratch; no pre-made Sonic frameworks here.

Best of all? It's all open source, with no paid Asset Store packages. If you're considering what to use for your next 2D Sonic project (or even if you just need some 2D character code), please give the GitHub page a look:
https://github.com/heyjoeway/ICBINS1

Download
In a hurry? Don't have Windows on your PC? Just plain lazy? Play the game right in your browser at the link below:
http://misc.jojudge.com/icbins1-b3/

Otherwise, download the Windows build (ZIP file in the sidebar).

Be warned that the in-browser version has a few extra bugs (blame Unity). Read the "Known Issues" section for more info.

Keyboard Controls
Arrow Keys: Move
A, S, D: Genesis A, B, C
Enter: Start

Controller Controls
Right Joystick/D-Pad: Move
X, A, B: Genesis A, B, C
Menu/Start: Start/Join

Known Issues
  • No GHZ boss. Just didn't have enough time to get them in; sorry.
  • Music sometimes goes off-beat for a second when transitioning from the intro to the main music loop.
  • Certain resolutions cause the scaling to get all screwed up. If you run into this, set your game to a higher resolution (or resize the window)
  • Never got around to implementing pausing.
  • ...or camera panning for looking up/down.
  • Various GPU issues: palette cycle stutter (Intel).
...and for web version exclusive issues:
  • Music randomly stops and doesn't come back.
  • Textures show weird artifacts on the side.
  • Some browser/PC combinations just make the game chug like crazy. If you run into this, switch your browser.
  • There's a lot more stutter and jitter.
  • Music speed up doesn't work.
  • Sound effects have no panning and are sometimes way too loud (rings).
Most of those are just Unity being Unity with the web version, and I don't know how much I can really do about it. I'm just surprised that the web build works to begin with. Use the windows version if you can.

Screenshots and media!

Screenshots

Unity_2019-09-19_15-43-19.png
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Unity_2019-09-19_15-47-37.png
Unity_2019-09-19_15-41-26.png
Unity_2019-09-19_15-49-22.png

Bonus Content

Core Features
These are all features that come naturally from using the Unity Engine.
  • Widescreen/Ultrawide support
  • High refresh rate support
  • Resizable window
  • In-browser version
Additional Features
  • Local Multiplayer (Press Start on a second controller to join, arcade-style! Up to 4 people can play.)
  • Spindash
  • Drop Dash
  • Peel Out
  • Homing Attack
  • Light Dash
  • Air Curling
  • Level Transitions (S3K/Mania style or instant)
  • Smooth Rotation
  • Centisecond/Frame Timer
  • Speed Shoes after-images
  • Smooth palette cycles (linear interpolation)
  • Integer Scaling
  • Tiny Mode
  • GBA Mode?
Some of these optional features are enabled by default but can be toggled in the Options Menu.

Oh, and there's an easter egg somewhere. Can you find it?

Credits

Special Thanks
  • MainMemory (SonLVL)
  • Various contributors to the Sonic 1 Disassembly
  • Various sprite rippers from The Spriters Resource
  • Various SFX rippers from The Sounds Resource
...and to anyone I may have missed. (Shoot me a message if I did!)

Latest reviews

Is pretty good, and FLOSS as well so that's also good :D

It's a very nice recreation of Sonic 1 and it works really well. Something like that.
  • Like
Reactions: sanic da heg
nice B) xd
:3
  • Like
Reactions: sanic da heg
RollyPolly
sonicgamer89O

Comments

this one caught my interest. the only other unity 2d sonic framework around was sonic realms, which i use extensively.
but you pop up and put together a whole new framework that performs super!
i also appreciate that you used unity's pixel perfect to get the sprites to stay clean on the screen :)
the transitions are a nice touch too!
seeing stuff like this always makes me feel good as a unity user.


p.s.
is she unbeatable? can i time her out? lol
 
this one caught my interest. the only other unity 2d sonic framework around was sonic realms, which i use extensively.
but you pop up and put together a whole new framework that performs super!
i also appreciate that you used unity's pixel perfect to get the sprites to stay clean on the screen :)
the transitions are a nice touch too!
seeing stuff like this always makes me feel good as a unity user.


p.s.
is she unbeatable? can i time her out? lol
Thank you! I vaguely remember seeing realms; I didn't realize that was in Unity! Too bad it's not in active development anymore. The pixel perfect-ness actually wasn't done with Unity's pixel perfect script (because it's a buggy mess) but by using a 224 pixel high (variable x resolution based on aspect ratio) render texture.

Also yeah, no time out and no game over. You can go into life debt though. :P
 
Made an account just to contact you.

Is there a license on usage for this engine? If I wanted to make a non-sonic game? Knowing if it's free for commercial usage or not is an important thing to know.

And is Beta 1 the only release or will you be updating the engine at all? I ask because in your credits you mention not really continuing work on it, but working on other projects.

There were a few bugs I found playing Green Hill. Such as walking slowly to a spring allows me to do the push animation instead of it just flinging my away from it.
 
Really great effort on this one. It's so faithful to the original, it becomes a game of "spot the difference" to see how this game is different from the original (I wasn't sure if there was something different about movement and momentum or if it was just me, I seemed to trigger a spring slightly easier, and then the obvious stuff like lack of boss and swigining platform). I liked some of the fun additions like spin dash, and actual level transitions, and overal blazed through it having a fun time!

Great work, and the open source part just makes it even better!

EDIT: Okay, meant to post this as a review, hang on...
 
Made an account just to contact you.

Is there a license on usage for this engine? If I wanted to make a non-sonic game? Knowing if it's free for commercial usage or not is an important thing to know.

And is Beta 1 the only release or will you be updating the engine at all? I ask because in your credits you mention not really continuing work on it, but working on other projects.

There were a few bugs I found playing Green Hill. Such as walking slowly to a spring allows me to do the push animation instead of it just flinging my away from it.
Doh, sorry! Forgot to throw a license in it. I'll make it MIT soon so you can do whatever you want with it. I'll probably make some more improvements but I can't really say when I'll stop working on it. (See: )

And yeah, spring collision is a bit weird. I may try to just redo it in general at some point.
 
Really great effort on this one. It's so faithful to the original, it becomes a game of "spot the difference" to see how this game is different from the original (I wasn't sure if there was something different about movement and momentum or if it was just me, I seemed to trigger a spring slightly easier, and then the obvious stuff like lack of boss and swigining platform). I liked some of the fun additions like spin dash, and actual level transitions, and overal blazed through it having a fun time!

Great work, and the open source part just makes it even better!

EDIT: Okay, meant to post this as a review, hang on...
The physics are based more off of S3K/Mania than S1, because they kinda just feel better to me. (No speed cap, no control lock while roll jumping) Also, the collision works a bit differently than it does on the Genesis, because it's represented by vectors instead of heightmaps. (See: gist) Some ground angles may be slightly off, but this allows for much more granularity in future projects.

EDIT: Who thought it would be a good idea for comments to embed github gists in their entirety? Seriously, what the hell
Double edit: Oh, and forgot to say: thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.
 
Feels good, man! Though, when I tried to press 'start' to pause the game, it instead gave me two players controlled using the same input. Maybe add a pause menu?
 
i like this game by heyjoeway love it somebody from team sonic fan group requested me to play i can't believe it's not sonic 1 i heard heyjoeway add homing attack and spindash in this game so i decide to speedrun it for my group team sonic fan group i love it i give it 10 out of 10 if you are on this heyjoeway I love it thank you very much it's great stuff you make changes for the demo
 
9726
I need help opening this up in unity, every time I do it says "no git executable was found please install Git on the system and restart unity", can someone help me, please?
 
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Heyjoeway,if you ever update the game,could you please change the normal peelout with a super peelout? Also can you change the drop dash sprite pls,it looks kinda weird,what im trying to mean is if you could do it like the sonic mania drop dash but with sonic 1 pallettes.If you could do it,i would be super happy :
10846


You could make the dropdash sprite like that,but instead with the sonic 1 pallettes
Edit:Btw the rom Its called 'dropdash in sonic 2'
 

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