WWCE-31265: SONIC THE HEDGEHOG CD Original Soundtrack 20th Anniversary...

[RingoStarr39]

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned that the entire US soundtrack is in Redbook audio on the 1996 PC version of Sonic CD. The past tracks are also on it, though not in as good quality as on here.

[dissident93]

Unless I'm misunderstanding, why wouldn't they be?

[Despatche]

Alright, this album.

1. The Sonic Retro looping project isn't really all that clever. They forced the unused loop bits as hard as they possibly could to the point where just about every song suffers from the unneeded addition (a lot of songs just slap it at the beginning and don't even use it for looping, eww). Some of the actual looping effort is... okay... but it's only as good or worse than what this album does.

2. Sonic CD 2011 is even worse. The fadeouts are still in and the loop bits were forced in right after the fadeouts. It's far more disgusting than anything on this album.

3. This album does a lot right. Whoever was responsible for this realized that maybe there was an actual reason for scrapping the loop bits, and decided to keep them scrapped; that's something so many fans don't seem to get. The actual looping effort is usually as good as it ever could have been; there are a few issues like Stardust Speedway, but even that is still better than the monstrosity that's in the actual licensed remake of the game.

The problem is that these songs basically aren't supposed to loop as they are; CDDA games just plain tend to suffer from this, and it's not anyone's fault in any way. Undertale is a game that suffers from a similar problem for a similar reason, and it's one of the worst things about that game. Everything you could possibly do with these games is a hack. If source still exists, someone isn't letting Wavemaster and Taxman have it.

Meanwhile I'm over here kicking myself that Taxman didn't use this album as a reference. I should just be glad they didn't get someone to try and "arrange" everything in the spectacularly bad way so many arranges turn out... I suppose...

[fusoxide]

It's a shame there's never been a good release of Sonic CD's Japanese/European OST, and I too am not a fan of Sonic Retro's looping project especially when their versions are treated as the main official versions by fans. Given how this one was handled, I highly suspect that Sega do not have the original project files or stems for the tracks anymore, so they just took the tracks directly off the disc and tried to remaster them, but at times feeling very clumsy due to short fadeouts right before it loops.

Makes me wish it had received a proper OST release at the time with longer versions of the tracks (+ HQ versions of the past tracks), similar to what the US version got. Guess they're just lost to the sands of time.