Another amazing episode! Love it

*Episode starts with Sonic OVA music* yep dis gon be good

Yes I'm guilty I bought Sonic CD for my Sega CD player back in the days when I had a supermarket job and I spent all my money to get this game, they said I was crazy but I still love it and play it to this day!

I had this and drove my family nuts just replaying that FMV intro with the BEST version of the Opening Theme, Toot-Toot Sonic Warrior - Yeah I said it! come at me! - over and over and over and over and over and over again, and getting really frustrated as a 9-year-old trying to get the 'Good Futures' and resetting it (again with the theme tune playing at top volume and in full) when I didn't because I didn't understand *how* to get Good Future's for definite at the time. Such happy, fond memories.

I got my start as a QA tester during this era, and my first job was at Intel, testing the now defunct S3 Virge 3D chipset. During my time there, we had a team locked away in a lab, working on the very first Unreal. My secret project ended up being the PC game version of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Eraser, which isn't nearly as exciting. I also did some testing of the 1997 game POD, as it had a 3D accelerated mode, and a Pentium 2 accelerated version.

GOTTA GO FAST... TO THE PAST

My favorite Sonic game of all time, and the BEST soundtrack. And yes, I'm talking about the American Spencer Nilsen soundtrack!

A great episode as always! I enjoyed your guest appearance on the My Life in Gaming livestream, and I'm looking forward to a DF Retro episode on Sonic Adventure.

Awesome use of the Sonic Movie theme! Love that song. I got the chance to play the game when it came free with our first HP windows PC we got in fall 1996. I loved how you could pop the game disc in a CD Player to listen to the music.

The way you threw the disc into the Sega CD like that made me jump just thinking of those scratches.

What is this? Oh, it's just the best DF show ever. Commenting before I finished watching and not even ashamed, I know it's good.

Can you imagine if they re-released the Taxman version of Sonic CD in a big box format? That would be so cool. Especially if the disk came in a CD jewel case :D

By the way, the PS2 release on Sonic Gems Collection features both the Japanese and American soundtracks, it switches to one or the other according to the console's language setting. And the FMVs on the PC version look much better on a bespoke media player, seems the one included with the game itself is very poor due to the requirement to run Windows in 256 color mode in order to play the game.

I always love your detailed analysis of different versions of the game with their own tech quirks. DFR is top tier content on YT. Keep up the good work John!

Gosh, I love this game! Excellent episode of DF Retro. THANK YOU, JOHN!

amazing, nice to see a new DF Retro on Sunday. I love this channel!!!

It's bizzare that SEGA thought the original Japanese/European soundtrack for Sonic CD wouldn't fly, when most of the genres on that soundtrack (house, techno, new jack swing) were originally from the United States. Ah well.

Thanks so much, John & DF, for showing the love for my favorite Sonic game!

I love classic Sonic, and I'm so happy that you do as well. What a fantastic video to watch! Sonic CD is my favorite Sonic game (at least until Sonic Mania), and it is so nice to see the various versions and their differences exhibited here.

Thanks John for another excellent and informative episode of DF Retro! Easily my favorite show on KZfaq.

I have a suggestion: a DF Retro episode about Rayman 2 would be great.

amazing video and an amazing game by the looks of it! the amount of love that must have gone into making all these levels back in the day

Nice work John. Your Retro shows are some of DF's finest. Cheers!

Just one little tidbit about the Christian Whitehead version: it received a bugfix for mobile versions that never saw the light of day on console or PC, for whatever reason. Probably something to do with the contractor hired to port the game from its original mobile version to the other platforms, for which the contract had expired before the bugfixes came in. Now, _largely_ that's not a problem, but I find it makes time travel in Quartz Quadrant 2 a pain, as one of the bugs that was fixed was how using the vertical conveyors as an infinite loop doesn't work for time travel (when it _did_ work in the Sega CD and PC versions)...

After going back to playing Sonic CD on my GameCube with the mindset of a exploration / Platformer, I now enjoy Sonic CD much more.

The thing that held the scroll on PC the most was the ISA bus. No matter how fast was your CPU, the ISA bus would pull the speed back to the original IBM PC era speed during frame buffer writes. But then we got PCI.

the opening animation to this is by far the best thing in the entire franchise.

Awesome EPISODE. Please keep doing this incredible job!

Very well done! I LOVE Sonic CD. It was one of the reasons why I had a Sega CD back in the day and why I have a Sega CD now. I also have the Xbox 360 version and I have it on the go on my Xperia Play Phone (love those physical buttons). Again well done and thank you for giving Sonic CD the respect it deserves! When I was a kid I had no idea I would be playing Sonic CD on the go on my phone. It is easy to forget how far gaming has gone because of advances in hardware and because of talented and passionate game developers.

168 mega power! Gotta be a game sack reference?

Great to hear about the technical details behind everything, too!

Watching this made me think how I'd love a DF Retro of the Lunar games. I first played the Sega CD versions of them over a decade after their original release, and I still remember being blown away by their quality.

Love this retro series. Keep up the great work.

Brilliant video. I own it for the PC, and watching this video has made me want to go back and try it again. I also like the comment about thinking of the game as an exploration game rather than the get to the other side as fast as you can game. Great video.

Amazing work DF Retro!

John, really enjoy your work man. DF Retro is the highlight of Digital Foundry IMO.

Amazing Job as always! well written and produced! thanks for this episodes.

Sonic CD is just fucking amazing. I love it.

Amazing episode. Love the detail you go into. Keep it up

Can't love this episode enough. Thank you for your amazing videos.

As always, this video is excellent, incredibly informative, and it features two of John’s best uses of the mighty word, “Bespoke.” He threw it in so slickly too, “A large variety of bespoke art assets...” “Consoles were built with bespoke hardware designed to support smooth scrolling...” It simply wouldn’t be a proper DF Retro video without “bespoke.” As for Sonic CD, Sega loved CD tech so much, that they felt compelled to add lyrics to both the Japanese and US versions of the intro, then again, later on in the infamous Sega Saturn Sonic R soundtrack, which had an instrumental and lyrical version of each song. It’s something that as a Hip Hop and RnB fan, I shouldn’t love, but somehow, I do. It’s a such a strange guilty pleasure. The other fantastic sound aspect of Sonic CD is how incredible the crossover sounds were. Every coin you collect phases smoothly from the left to right audio channels, which sounds great in headphones. Sonic CD may not be my favorite Sonic game of the early 90s, but it’s definitely memorable from a production value and artistic design standpoint.

One of the best videos I seen in homage to Sonic CD, great work!

This was one i got for the Sega CD (mk. II) and it's a FUN ride from beginning to end. Absolutely love the chiptune music in the past version of the levels. It's one of my favorites on the system so far :-) Great work as always John :-D

Great video, thanks DF Retro.

Another fantastic episode, as always.

I have the 1995 windows port of this game. Came with our first home computer, which also came with an Echo the Dolphin and I think a Quake? It was the first video game I ever played and I love it to this day. Of course being a young child who loved to draw, I somehow managed to 'hack' into the loading screen, which I think was just a bmp image hidden in the game's folder, and scribble all over it in MS paint. The scribbled-on map was then forever part of my game : )

this is my favourite game of all time, nostalgia holds a bias but i just love it. the music wow. just rushing through the game is short but if you try to get the teleporter capsules hunt down metal sonic hologram and get time stones the game is a lot longer.

Such a good video, think I need to support your patreon!!

7:52 I'd like to thank that song for going on to inspire one of the most unintentionally hilarious games of all time. Aside from pretty much every 3D Sonic... you know what, just a big THANK YOU to Team Sega for exploring the bowels of gaming and coming out the other side entact.

DF Retro is by far the best content in the chanel. Keep it up John!

Hands down the best series on this channel.

Love these videos. Great quality and charm. Keep it up.

Great video! More digital foundry minutes please!!!

Yes, Sonic CD is a classic that not many played back in the 90's. Not many owned a Sega CD. I love the 2 soundtracks, though the EU/JP soundtrack is definitely my favorite. They definitely took advantage of the CD to have CD quality Audio. It's literally on anything at this point. Windows 95, Gamecube/PS2 Sonic Gems Collection (PS2 version only in Europe and JP) The remastered Mobile, PS3, Steam and 360 port, with better framerates, physics, etc. The game is hands down the best looking game out of all the Sonic games from 1991-1994.

Yet another great video from DF, keep it up guys!

Great video, as usual, DigitalFoundry. I will mention that both European/Japanese & US soundtracks are on disc for the NTSC-J Sonic Gems Collection. This can be altered, easily enough, depending on the language set in the PS2 you use. If the language is set to Japanese, you'll get the Japanese soundtrack, if its set to English, you'll get the US soundtrack. This is also under the assumption you use an NTSC PS2 system, but it works. There is a DAT file on disc that can be modified, and if the hex code flag is flipped you can get the Japanese soundtrack while your PS2 system is set to English language.

Was that a freaking Game Sack reference?

Awesome video to one of my most favorite games of all time

Well this is the most positive intro to sonic CD I’ve seen so far

One of my best retro games on DF Retro? Baby, I have something important to watch for the next 30 minutes! :D

Finally my Favorite Sonic Game gets some Love. Thank you

First user I've ever subscribed to, what an amazing in-depth video!

Yoooo that intro! Sonic OVA's Soundtrack is CRAMMMED with bangers!

This dude is badass and he doesn't even realise it. Keep up the brilliant content, you make this channel.

I remember that Sonic Boom video so well. My grandparents had a PC with the '95 version of the game.

DF retro vids are normally cool... but this was just way past cool !! THANKS for the Sonic CD appreciation. i particularly like that the Boss mechanics weren't bash it 8 times to win - but they had clever scenarios like the friction from the tread mill

Another great one!

Good choice on including the OVA music! Finally getting some love. :D

This really makes me wish it came out as one of the Sega 3D Classics on 3DS.

Take my like, good sir. I'll watch it on a few minutes, but I know I'll love it.

My first experience with Sonic CD was also on PC but it was bundled in with our Packard Bell computer along with Comix Zone. I don't have much memory of how it played but unless I'm missing something, I thought it ran well.

Wow, that was fantastic! Of course, I love the tech analysis, but you hit on why I never put much energy into it when it was new, or on the 360. Back when it was new, I never knew HOW to play it. I read magazines and such, but I never knew what to do. Going back and forth in time seemed tedious and over complicated. Now that I know what it's really for, I might install it on my One X and give it a shot again. Maybe it'll play in 4k! Hehe Thanks!

Digital Foundry does it again! Another amazing video of another game well worth checking out!

played it for the first time on my sega cd in mid 2000s then on my cell phone and now on my xbox one hell of a game so 90s man I miss the 90s

omg that game cd design is absolutly GORGEOUS!!

Sonic CD is my favorite Sonic game, yet I didn't learn about it until a decade ago. I had played all 4 of the Sonic games (as in 1, 2, 3 & Knuckles) when I was young in the late 90's on the Genesis. I got the internet in 2008, and, at the same time, I found the Genesis from back in the day. One of the first places I went to (and visit about every day since) was Sonic Retro. I quickly learned about a Sonic game I'd never heard of before: Sonic CD. It looked cool. A few years later, I saw Taxman was making an official release of Sonic CD on PC. I bought that not too long after on Taxman's name alone (I was big into the ROM hacks at the time on Sonic Retro). I can't remember if I set the soundtrack to the Japanese one or if it was already set that way, but the soundtrack floored me. It's my favorite game soundtrack of all time (I've been listening to it a work the past few days actually). I've played Sonic CD several times, using the Steam version, but I still haven't gone all the way on the good ending. It was in 2016 I finally got a Sega CD and the original US release of Sonic CD. I played it once, noted some of the things that were added into Taxman's version, and put it on the shelf as a collection piece. I couldn't tell you the differences in the soundtrack, as whatever they were, I can only remember the Japanese one. It's a beautiful game and the music always makes me feel better. Toot toot, Sonic Warrior.

Amazing episode, never played Sonic CD but now after watching this i want to!

I'm so happy you used the Sonic OVA soundtrack in this.

At this point, I think it's safe to say that's the "official DF Retro jacket". Nice video!

ah, that sampled music... Your comparison to the SNES is makes sense, but keep in mind a few things that don't make it quite as comparable as all that. Firstly, the SNES has 64 kilobytes of audio RAM, sure, but the games are still on cartridge. 500+ megabytes (CD capacities vary. Not sure about the Sega CD specifically) vs 1-3 megabytes for most games is a pretty big difference. (there are games up to 6 megabytes, and 96/12 megabyte games when you include a dedicated data compression chip, but those are rare. Speaking of that though, consider Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicom which has a several minute long intro song with full lyrics. Storage space is not a trivial consideration.) Secondly I have no idea how the Ricoh chip is configured, but one of the things the Mega Drive's regular z80 audio processor has over the SPC700 in the SNES is that it has direct, independent access to the cartridge bus. Granted there are technical issues, and potential for bus collisions, but that means you can stream extra audio data directly from ROM. The SNES audio hardware is completely isolated from the rest of the system by means of a set of data ports. (4 single byte channels with independent buffers in both directions.) This means to transfer any audio data at all requires you to be using both the Audio CPU and the system's main CPU in tandem, running some kind of synchronised data transfer code on both. Needless to say this is a lot trickier to coordinate than just letting the Audio CPU read data by itself (even if it does block the bus in the process and have other quirks.) No idea how the Ricoh chip works, but I can reasonably assume it isn't constantly trying to use the main CPU as an intermediary. If you go back to Tales of Phantasia on the SNES for instance, that particular piece of music, and much else besides in the game is only possible because somebody wrote a data streaming routine that is constantly loading new samples from ROM into the Audio system. Of course, if space is no object that same logic combined with an abuse of the echo buffer lets you play back 16 bit 32khz uncompressed audio. but of course by definition that requires loading at least 64 kilobytes of new data each second. (so something like a kilobyte of audio data every frame. On the upside since you're not performing a VRAM transfer you can do this outside of vblank, but still....) Subtleties do matter, and saying something is comparable without considering the massive increase in storage space and any potential architectural differences could certainly give a misleading impression. Having said that, I know very little about the Sega CD. I know a lot about SNES hardware, and a decent amount about the Mega Drive, but very little about the CD unit and it's extra hardware...

sonic was a huge thing for me when i was growing up. i absolutely adore the sonic series and i still play them to this day Sonic Mania is amazing and i absolutely love it. It was so good even michael jackson was involved with the music, its THAT good

Few days ago, I saw a video which showed the unused assets of Sonic CD, and I think this was the first game ever that gave vocals to Sonic himself, but the small snippets of speech were not incorporated into the main game.

Never played it back then because I didn’t really knew about the Sega CD until in the early 2000. Didn’t even get the Sonic Gems Collection. Thanks Christan Whitehead, I was able to play it on my 360, PC, and iPhone. Mastered the game and I love the Japanese soundtrack.

For me, this is THE best Sonic 2D game ever. So happy to see it complete on this episode.

Thank you very for this episode! :)

I never played Sonic 2 until many years later because all we had was this one. And a fine game it is.

Thank you so much for this video!

I never liked Sonic but after this video I began to love it! Thank you John for this amazing episode of DF Retro.

I'll never get bored to write this: Make DF Retro a different channel please. So much awesomeness ! ! !

Awesome Game Sack ref John 😂 This is another incredible episode of DF Retro!

Retro series is the best of this channel.

Please, keep doing this thing that you are doing. Thanks.

Man, do I love this game. Easily my favourite Sonic game and probably in my top 3 favourite games of all time. The game is just a joy to the senses. It plays good, looks good and my God does it sound good. I can agree that it's a game that can take some time to grow on you but once you get a feel for the levels and mechanics, it just becomes a blast to replay again and again. My only regret is not playing the game as a kid.

God I love these episodes! I wish you guys would just make a separate channel focusing just on retro stuff.

DF Retro is, among other factors, one of the reasons i am a patreon

Going through the different versions reminded me that I've bought this game 6 times within the last 15 years ...and I'll probably do it again someday.

Great video. The ability to gather and break down all this detail is always impressive. Never knew about a pc version. Appreciate your content alot as Ive been using it for years to find the best version of multi-plat games. I can assume now it will be the Xbox One X version but always double check. It was a pain in the ass during the early ps3 and 360 period. Ps3 being the more powerful console, but 360 getting the better ports for a while. Keep up the great content!!

I miss gaming in the 90’s. Best time to be a kid growing up with the Sega vs Nintendo era!

Three things worth noting: 1. If you don't wanna explore every stage to get the Good Ending, that's what the Special Stages are for - getting all the Time Stones gets you the good futures automatically. (No Super status, though - they're not Chaos Emeralds...) 2. The ultrawide support on iPhone X carries over to Sonic 1 and 2 as well, as does playing as Tails and Knuckles. 3. It's 4:3 on all iPads, so if you want to experience the original game, that's the best way to do it IMO.

sonic cd was mi first real game, my dad buy the game when I was 3 y/o for the pc (I don't remember what version was, I think maybe the first one?) I remember my mind exploding because of the super awesome intro, it realy left a mark on me