I thought you just came in here to let me know you tagged me in that thread again

Not only is this one of the most authentic Sonic tributes I've ever heard, but the melodies in here are really above and beyond

Felt like bumping this because I'm about halfway done with Act 2

Thanks y'all!
If you missed the mix it's on the datafruits soundcloud

Zones 1 is also streaming on soundcloud and available as a youtube playlist!

When it was newly finished I was bummed out and just wanted to post it around and be done with it but here's a little more info:

I used:

A bank of FM8 patches from Sonic 3 & Knuckles, never having more than 5 channels playing at a time
A bunch of percussion samples ripped out of various Sonic games (Mostly Sonic 2)
No EQing (except some Sonic 3 samples because they're super bassy)
Chipsounds for PSG emulation (3 squares and a noise channel)

Other tidbits:
Mystic Mines Zone started off as "Ballistic Factory Zone" and then I was like "that's dumb" and "that doesn't even sound right". The record scratch is from
Metropolis Zone from Sonic 2, it was really hard not to use it on every single track

Dusk Metropolis started off as Metropolis Dusk but then I was like "If I switch those it's an Anamanaguchi reference" I also remade the drums line from Chemical Plant Zone but this one turned out completely different. Half way through I was like "that's fine, I need sort of a happy, Green Hill Zone style track anyway"

Lava Palace Zone started off as Lava Factory, based on Lava Powerhouse from Sonic Spinball. I extracted the groove from another track (I'm not sure which, probably the bonus stage) in Ableton and toned it down a bit.

Egg Gadget Zone is sort of halfway between Death Egg and Flying Battery from Sonic & Knuckles. It's the only track that exclusively uses S3 samples. They're all sort of muddy and hang out in the lower end of the frequency range, I'm assuming because there's about 20 samples in S3 and usually about 5 in S1+2. I think the main thing going into this track was knowing I wanted to use the clap section from the hook of Flying Battery 1+2

Twilight Hill Zone was a poorly executed attempt at doing something that sounded like the Knuckles Chaotix music. The name was sort of a conceptual combination of Midnight Greenhouse from Chaotix and Green Hill Zone. The Chaotix soundtrack is another favorite, because it goes between being incredible and extremely weak. But pretty much any of the slower tracks with a nice groove to it are amazing.

Gonna listen to this all day.

Fwiw, Mania is superb. More like CD than any of the others.

This is heart-warming

Lava Palace is groovy afff

This is good!

Also, tonight (about 4 hours from this post) on http://datafruits.fm

I'm about to get zoned !

So hey I wrote some tracks because I was excited about sonic mania. I pre-ordered the PC version though so I can't play it. Whatever. Pay what you want.

https://saskrotch.bandcamp.com/album/zones-act-1