Sonic Generations Soundtrack Edits
Wednesday, 18th January 2012, 8:08pm (UTC), 10 Comments
Hope you've been enjoying the recently released Sonic Generations OST as much as I have. It's a nicely made one, much clearer than the rips that have been available since the game's release, and many of them come to nice, exclusive conclusions rather than fading out, which I often find disappointing. Plus, it's brilliant to finally get the tracks from the 3DS version! But that said, there are a few things that I thought could be improved upon.

Perhaps because I've come to music in general oddly quite late in life, I'm usually more of a fan of having a big shuffled list of various things together rather than listening to albums in sequence. I have an ever growing Sonic iTunes list which I've been adding to for a decade now (in fact the initial building of it was kind of a personal pre-Zone: 0 Sonic project of mine - my own emulator recordings from it are the same ones I add to the downloads of this site's game guides), and all OST tracks get thrown in and often renamed according to certain consistent patterns.

Anyway, sometimes I'll try and edit some of the tracks to suit my preferences, such as looping them or cutting them, sometimes even adding two or more tracks together or separating parts of others. There were some things I was quite surprised by on the OST, so having not actually done this for a while now, I whipped out Audacity and tried to see what I could come up with. Thought you might be interested too, if you have a similar approach to your Sonic music.


I was rather hoping that they would combine the "normal" and "fast" versions of Green Hill Act 2 and Sky Sanctuary Act 2 into a single track for each, with the faster one directly following the normal. Perhaps because whenever I hear the normal ones, I want to cut to the faster ones at some point, because they're better. They didn't do this on the OST, so here you go!

Green Hill Act 2
Sky Sanctuary Act 2

While listening on my earphones out and about, I couldn't believe how many loops Speed Highway Act 2 went on and on for. It's a decent enough piece of music, but it didn't seem to ever end. It appears to loop four times, but it's actually twice, it's just one of those tracks for which a single loop consists of the same tune looped twice but the second one differs very slightly. I brought the conclusion forward so that it only does one full loop of the song, so nothing is missed, but it ends before you get sick of it!

Speed Highway Act 2

For the Act 1 music, to suddenly start embedding the speed-up versions of the tunes into Crisis City and Rooftop Run was quite odd, though I can live with it. Even odder though, I thought, was the unexpected gap of near silence after the speed-up section of Crisis City, before returning to the main track. I found this quite distracting, so I've removed it.

Crisis City Act 1


If there's any interest I might one day post up some more tracks I've edited over the years from past Sonic games too.

You can import the rest of the Sonic Generations soundtrack from here, here, or here. I think it's on iTunes in the US too now, but still waiting for it here in Blighty, it would seem.
Comments   10 Comments have been posted.
#1. Comment posted by Anonymous on Thursday, 19th January 2012, 1:09am
Great job! Keep up the good work.

BTW, I'm glad this website isn't blacked out by SOPA. :)
#2. Comment posted by Hyper_Sonic on Thursday, 19th January 2012, 1:57am
You should make the background of the site black because of SOPA, sonic retro is down, you should sooooo read their statement. Basically they said that Sonic CD wouldn't exist if SOPA was in place, among other projects, and that retro would shout down is SOPA was in place :(
#3. Comment posted by Hyper_Sonic on Thursday, 19th January 2012, 1:58am
edit: "Up and down and all around" stuck in my head now!!!
#4. Comment posted by Super player on Thursday, 19th January 2012, 3:13am
I totally agree with you bro! But I didn't think SOPA would take away sites like this.
I sure hope they 'skip' over it.
#5. Comment posted by Anony-mouse on Monday, 23rd January 2012, 6:39pm
Hey guy! you rock! please keep working on your site because you are not alone with this love for Sonic! Thnxs!!!
#6. Comment posted by Anonymous on Saturday, 4th February 2012, 1:01am
I don't see much of a point to some of your edits. Green Hill and Sky Sanctuary were okay, I guess, but Speed Highway isn't too different from the one in game (except for on the second loop, the end is shortened in the in game version). And adding in the speed up music to Crisis City seems rather pointless to me. One thing that did bug me about the soundtrack, though, is that Modern Seaside Hill almost carelessly slaps on Ocean Palace to the end of it and doesn't sound very well as a whole track.
#7. Comment posted by LiQuidShade on Saturday, 4th February 2012, 8:10am
Take them or leave them, I didn't do them as a service, I did them for the sake of my own personal music collection. Just wondered if anyone else might happen to be interested. I agree with you on Crisis City, but you do realise I didn't add that speed up bit in, these are all from the OST CD release, not the game rip. All I did was remove the annoying bit of near-silence right after the speed up, which I found distracting, and I felt that the Speed Highway Act 2 track on the CD was too long. That's all.
#8. Comment posted by Anonymous on Saturday, 4th February 2012, 2:56pm
It wasn't that Speed Highway was too long, it's that the second loop of the song is too identical to the first. You could make the same argument for both versions of Green Hill and Chemical Plant as well. The original versions are just too short. At any rate, I don't need to rely on you for edited songs anyway, I have my own editing software.
#9. Comment posted by Tricky_E on Wednesday, 8th February 2012, 12:16pm
The OST CD is soo damn expensive! BAH!
#10. Comment posted by StickFight775 on Saturday, 18th February 2012, 11:41am
Nice.
Ricky Earl Returns to Zone: 0!
Tuesday, 3rd January 2012, 6:45pm (UTC), 4 Comments
First of all, Happy New Year everyone, I hope you had a good break with family and/or friends, and are ready for the return of Zone: 0's resident artist Ricky Earl! It's been about a year since he's been available to contribute, so in case you've forgotten, he's vowed to supply a piece of artwork to accompany each level page on the site, or at least as many as possible. You can do it Ricky! Keep up the good work.

We're up to Chemical Plant now, check it out!

Chemical Plant Zone by Ricky Earl

Meanwhile, I've managed to get quite far with the Sky Sanctuary guide. On the map, I've had to recreate the platforms that float up and down by hand from lots and lots of screen shots, which has set me back a bit, but I'm pretty sure I can get this one out there within this month. That's still pretty good, by my standards!

Also, a quick thanks to AAUK of Sonic Wrecks for giving Zone: 0 a couple of awards in his 2011 Sonic Wrecks Awards - we won Best Specialist Website and Best Use of Images/Graphics. Yay!
Comments   4 Comments have been posted.
#1. Comment posted by metropolisishard on Tuesday, 3rd January 2012, 7:56pm
"Tails, what are you doing? Stop drowning all the time, we have go work to do!"
#2. Comment posted by Hyper_Sonic on Wednesday, 4th January 2012, 1:07am
Tails, YOU DESERVE IT!
#3. Comment posted by Hyper_Sonic on Wednesday, 4th January 2012, 1:08am
Besides, you CAN swim (well at least in sonic 3).
#4. Comment posted by Hyper_Sonic on Friday, 6th January 2012, 3:05am
Eddie Lebron gets something spot on:

"TSSZ: Which Sonic game was the first you ever played, and which one is currently your favorite?

Lebron: The very first game was the first Sonic game I ever placed. I think I was around 6 or 7 at the time! My favorite is still my favorite game of all time, which is Sonic 3 & Knuckles. There is this epic scale to the game that makes it stand out for me. The music, the levels, the story, and the gameplay make this adventure you’re having seem so grand and important. There is such a beauty and lushness to the design of the game that separates it from the others. The fact this is all accomplished with the limitations of a Sega Genesis makes it my number one and has been for many years. I can’t say even bad things about the game: it’s perfect."


Although, if you combined sonic 1 and 2 in the way S3K was made I think it would be better :) (also I do miss running past the sign post in 3&K :( )
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