Hey there! I come with major news -- I HAVE JUST RELEASED SONIC XA v0.6, NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD.

We're still on the road to SAGE 2025, but since I was on my job vacation, I couldn't resist to making progress on Sonic XA.

It comes with some quality-of-life improvements that will make a lot of difference, but most of all...

Yes, you read that right! Amy Rose is now a playable character in Sonic XA. But you have to work for it a little bit: Amy is only playable after you beat the main levels, specifically the ones that are not the test levels. Same goes for unlocking the level select screen too.

But if you may be wondering whether you'll have to finish all levels every time you boot up the game, fear not! There is a special cheat code that will be available to you, since Sonic XA doesn't support memory cards yet. Just beat the game once, and it will all be revealed.

Amy's special actions

Amy is the first character to use the Square button on PSX controller, since she may perform a special action that is not tied to jumping, crouching or looking up. She is a character that focuses on vertical movement, and even though it may not make much difference on most areas, she is slightly slower than the rest of the cast.

To be more precise, Amy jumps higher, but takes a little longer to accelerate, runs at a lower speed, and has a lower top and max speed than the other characters. She may also slip down more easily on steep slopes, and you might notice that speed shoes will not be as effective as well.

But all of that is worthwhile once you explore her unique abilities! Not only can she reach higher areas with less effort, she can also be quicker on combat, even being able to beat bosses much more easily. Here's what she can do.

Piko Piko Hammer attack

While on the ground, if you quickly tap the special action button (Square), Amy will stomp the ground with her piko piko hammer and perform an attack. This is useful for a number of reasons: it destroys monitors and enemies and may even hit bosses. But not only that: if enemies spawn bombs or projectiles, Amy is also able to destroy those with her hammer. You can even use this attack while rolling on the ground -- it will also prove to be very effective if you need her to stop rolling immediately, something that other characters cannot do.

Piko Double Jump attack

Another useful action that Amy has is a double jump. You can perform this by tapping X again while on a jump state.  Not only does it give you a slight boost up, but it also extends Amy's hitbox so you can reach enemies and bosses more easily. Be wary, though: Amy cannot destroy bombs or projectiles with her hammer while she is on air!

Piko Spin attack

This next action is a sort of combination of the previous two actions. If you are running wish to perform a Piko Piko Hammer attack, you can choose to press and hold the special action button (Square) instead of quickly tapping it. If so, after the Hammer attack, some of your horizontal momentum will be transferred to a vertical momentum, and you will jump upwards spinning with the piko piko hammer!

This action is obviously inspired by Amy's gameplay on Sonic Adventure, and the main advantage of performing this action is that, depending on how fast you are running, you will jump much higher than you can reach with Amy's usual jump (which is already higher) plus the double jump. So not only may you reach even higher areas quickly, you can do so nearly instantly now. A small tip: perhaps combining this with a charged Spin Dash may give you an extra boost!

Other changes worth mentioning

I have also taken the opportunity to stabilize some things and improve some behaviors. Here is a quick description on some major fixes and changes:

• Fixed a problem with player top sensors that would allow unusual vertical zips;
• Added some fallbacks for eventual failures on loading disc track's table of contents;
• Added a framework for managing extra hitboxes on players, and generalized some player interactions with objects and bosses;
• Fixed Tails's tails not having hitboxes while flying. Now you can hit bosses and enemies while flying;
• Animals will render in front of player and will dance around you when freed from end-of-level capsules;
• Added the number of recognized disc tracks to the OPTIONS screen (you can use this information if you're having trouble with music playback);
• Added missing spin dash dust effect;
• Added information text at end of credits, that shows when necessary;
• Fix Tails's spin dash animation.

What about the future?

It has been more than a year since I started working nearly every day on Sonic XA. I still want to see this project finished, but I need to take a break from it. I kind of wasted almost my entire vacations working on extra stuff that came out of my head, just because I felt like it. So now this is it: This is the build that will be on SAGE 2025, and I will only work on it if a game-breaking bug is found, at least for now.

I don't know how long it will take for me to come back to this project, but I don't want it to be long. It's just that I need to work on some other interesting projects that have been delayed for a while. I have this project of a programming language that needs refactoring, and I want to fully embrace it right now.

If I work on some fixes for Sonic XA in the meantime, I'll come back here and post about it. But for now, thank you for reading this and taking you for being interested on this project! I hope you have loads of fun playing the latest demo.