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How Sega Ruined Sonic the Hedgehog
The always entertaining RetroGaming with Racketboy has a long post up railing against Sega for ruining Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue, spikey hero has had a rough time of it of late. Outings from the series like Shadow the Hedgehog, and even the next-gen title simply named Sonic the Hedgehog, have gotten simply terrible reviews. He longs for a return to simple, fun, not-creepy play. From the article: "As the new generation of platforms emerged, Sega used Sonic as a way to show off their newest graphical technologies. There is no doubt that the new Sonic the Hedgehog for the XBox 360 looks nice, but as the abysmal reviews indicate, graphics are not everything. In order to push its cutting-edge graphics to the limit, Sega, in their infinite wisdom, felt the need to bring Sonic and his friends into a more realistic world, filled with life-like humans. As you can see from this video, there is something creepy about some giant hedgehogs interacting with humans. My point is that Sega doesn't seem to know what it wants to do with Sonic. It seems like Sega assigns various quick-and-dirty development projects in order to see what ideas sticks with consumers. Unfortunately, Sega fans have had to suffer through this process."
Start the video at 00:34 to avoid the blithering asshat.
For the first time since the 2D Sonics, here is a really promising looking Sonic game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruxm9D0p6P8
Some of the environments in the screenshots look fantastic too. The game looks just like the 2D games in 3D, which is probably what they should have done in the first place.
to whatever god she was praying to for sonic's revival is even creepier than the kiss. I want to convert to whatever religion it is where you can pray for the revival of giant anthropomorphic hedgehogs.
Monstar L
I have beaten almost every sonic game for genesis (3D blast being the exception.) I was also younger than 12 at the time, and all I can say was that despite recycling themes and gameplay for 3 sonic games, the first sonic trilogy was FUN. They had a formula that worked for level design, bosses were always different and creative, certain levels had other things to do(slots in casino night zone? checkpoint minigames?) Now, I'm glad they didn't make another sonic side-scroller back then, as it would have been simply milking for cash.
/.er's video of the Wii Sonic to come out, and I must say it looks closer to what a 3D Sonic should look like. Fast paced gameplay, ring collection, but in a 3D environment. Sonic should feel faster than Mario and other platformers.
But how should Sonic look and behave next-gen? (now, current gen?) It's simple.
-Keep sonic badass. Sonic has always been badass, but not OVERDONE. He always looked badass just by looking mean and shaking his finger. Tails should serve as a foil to his badassness. Shadow makes me cringe as a one-time sonic/sega fan -- way too overdone.
-Keep the former cast of Sonic. There was no need to create a slew of new characters, IMHO. With the comic book series from a few years back, plus minor characters from other games, was there a need for new characters? Guess the old ones weren't cool enough for 'next-gen.' Familiar characters would have kept old fans coming back. Sonic has even had love interests in the past! Don't tell me you can't work that into a game.
-Most importantly -- KEEP the feel of GAMEPLAY. The old Sonic games were easy to pick up and play. You couldn't really get lost, and there wasn't a myriad of moves to learn just to understand the game. Mario made the transition well into 3D; Sonic didn't. I saw another
So ends the rantings of a former fanboy. I must also admit, I haven't played many of the recent Sonic iterations, but if reviews (user and site) are any indication, I'm not missing out on much. Sonic needs to return to its roots.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Every day there is an argument as to why someone should care whether their gaming company of choice should turn a profit, and I think Sega demonstrates why it is important. Back in the Genesis days Sega was nearly as good as Nintendo was at producing a large number of high quality titles; as the Sega CD, Sega 32X, and Sega Saturn drained Sega of their profitability the quality of their product diminished because they could no longer afford to produce the high quailty games. The Dreamcast had many gems, but most of Sega's games demonstrated their problem in that they were reasonably unique but lacked the polish to get the most out of the game.
Today Sega's games are (pretty much) released 'on schedule' whether or not they're complete or not; this means that Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog are terrible games that never stood a chance of being good in the first place.
Sonic goes super saiyan! Does the 360 game have Freeza in it?
there is something creepy about some giant hedgehogs interacting with humans.
:D
Boy, I bet Disneyland is going to give you a heart attack.
Actually, it'd be really funny if we could have a "Grand Theft Sonic" game, or Ico with Sonic, or "Metal Gear Sonic". Putting a giant blue hedgehog into a realistic, serious game = comedy gold. I'd love to see Sonic beating up hookers or sneaking up on a guy and snapping his neck.
Seriously, though, the clip looks like they combined Sonic with Final Fantasy and Dragonball Z. WTF? The realistic humans I don' care about, but it looks like they took some of the cheesiest parts from the "kid's anime epic playbook" and put it in Sonic.
And despite what the title of the video says, no Sonic does *not* get an erection in the clip. That's his hand, maybe his thumb, which is on the other side of his body. Too bad, it'd be *awesome* if it was
These days, the only new Sonic game I really want is Project S. It's a fan project that aims to complete the infamous cancelled Saturn title Sonic X-treme . And here's the most interesting bit: the project is being led by Sonic X-treme's own director, Chris Senn.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Revisiting old video games while minimizing the impact of decade+ old prejudice yields fascinating insight into the mechanics of electronic entertainment from the past. The original Sonic the Hedgehog games were very tightly designed, fast-paced action games with emphases both subtly and distinctly different from Nintendo's action roster. A non-verbal, edgy-looking character in a surreal universe having to balance his strengths (i.e. going really, really fast and being nearly invincible when attacking) with the demands of the game world in which he lived (sometimes having to be patient and waiting for an opening) made for memorable and challenging experiences. Initially the addition of new characters didn't detract significantly from the gameplay; it was sorta cool for Sonic to have a sidekick, and both Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 allowed you to get rid of the little guy if you wanted to. Playing as Knuckles forced you to re-evaluate old choices and visit parts of levels previously inaccessible - in a way, it was like getting a new lease on the same old game.
But ever since the last Genesis and Game Gear games (including the Sonic & Knuckles pack, which took the entertaining Sonic 3 and turned it into a weird little epic), the series has completely lost its focus. This is somewhat surprising since one of the series' original founders left Sonic Team. bersl2 pointed out that a good deal of this is due to the desire to balance the needs of young and older gamers. Frankly a choice should have been made a long time ago: cater to the needs of younger children by rounding out characters in squeaky-clean fashion, or just go abstract and sophisticated, introducing complex new techniques and making the games artistic little masterpieces of old-school design with creative new wrinkles.
Compromised game designs lead to compromised games. It's not complicated.