How Sega Can Save Sonic

You may recall the conversation we had at the end of last year, riffing off of a Retrogaming article on how Sega ruined Sonic. 1up has returned with a response, positing how the company can save their mascot from the death of ignominy. Their advice is simple: Go Fast, ditch Shadow, make fewer games. "Remember Blast Processing? It was a sham, sure, but the idea behind it was a perfect summation of what Sonic was about: A game so fast that the Genesis had to be specially programmed to keep up with it. Slowing down to drink in the ambiance or whatever is pretty much the exact opposite of Blast Processing. Being forced to, say, go fishing in a Sonic game is like buying a Ferrari so you can take naps in the backseat."

Comments

Clarifying a few points

[AKAImBatman]

Sonic Adventure ushered in re-branded "Dr. Eggman" [...] once Sonic went into 3D, Sega felt that Sonic was better suited on Earth

Just to clarify, the move toward Dr. Eggman vs. Robotnik and Earth vs. Mobius was a move toward how the Sonic story was told in its original Japanese. The elements we Americans are used to were localization and translation issues. That being said, I think we Americans liked the way Sonic was localized. Trying to cram a version better suited to Japanese culture down our throats is silly, especially since the early Sonic games supposedly sold better in the U.S. than they did in Japan.

IMHO, the Sonic Team should have used the SatAM show as its source material rather than coming up with the screwy Sonic X series. The result would have been far more appealing to the majority of American fans.

Last but not least, Sega should really consider reworking the Sonic XTreme concept. There's a lot of demand for that game out there. Enough to suggest that the direction it was going is actually where fans want to go. Yes, it was basically a straight-up translation of 2D Sonic into 3D Sonic. But what's wrong with that?

In case anyone is wondering why the article calls "Blast Processing" a sham, it's because more processing power is not necessary for Sonic's "speed". Speed is an illusion. As long as the frame rate is high enough to prevent choppiness (consoles are limited to the TV's 60 FPS anyway), you can move the playfield and characters as much or as little as you want per frame. This gives the illusion of speed. In cases where the actual speed exceeds the sampling rate of the television, motion blur tricks can be used to fool the eye further. For example, Sonic's legs weren't really a blur. The sprite was already blurred, then played back at a far lower framerate.

Re:Clarifying a few points

[Cowclops]

I don't even recall where I read it, but I read a fairly technical explanation as to what "blast processing" boiled down to. It was actually the ability to load background images into memory quickly enough that you can run across many background screens worth of data without it having to wait up for the next screen to load. Moving an individual sprite around a static screen means moving him a larger distance in 1/60th of a second, and both SNES and Genesis can do this with no problem. The issue is, the SNES takes a longer time to load a whole background's worth of data, which is required for the illusion of a character running quickly. After all, in the sonic games when you are moving quickly, the sprite is actually not moving at all relative to the screen but the backgrounds are flying by rapidly, which is the hard part. While I wouldn't go as far as to say SNES couldn't run a Sonic game, I think certain effects would have been impossible. Remember when you were invincible AND had the speed shoes AND were running through tunnels at the same time, how fast the screen could move? I don't think SNES could have done that at full speed, even if the rest of the game was quite possible. Uniracers on SNES moves "quickly" but also has repetetive backgrounds and just a single track in the foreground. Maybe, on Genesis, uniracers could have supported more detailed backgrounds. In short, blast processing wasn't a sham and there IS a limit to how quickly you can load up concurrent background images, but SNES could still deal with "fast" games. The extent to which its limited, I do not know, but the fact remains that there was a limit to how fast SNES could display concurrent background images.

2D

[Conception]

Nintendo did it. Konomi did it. Just make a really great platformer. Make it for the DS. Make it for 360 Live. The wii, whatever. Just make it fun.

Afraid of 2D Games

[matt74441]

Unfortunately in this day and age, 2D games don't really come out for major consoles anymore. People seem to expect every game that is released to have beautiful 3D graphics and huge environments to play in. This isn't a problem if you're starting a new franchise, but if you're taking a game that has always been 2D on older consoles, then its a hit or miss in my opinion. Super Mario and Metroid have done this successfully, but Sonic has completely failed at this. Like its said in the article, Sonic is too slow in 3D and that makes it almost painful to play for me. If Sega released a new 2D Sonic game, I'd buy it without hesitating.

Re:The backseats of Ferraris...

[RealErmine]

Therefore, I submit that I need a Ferrari to find out. And a Romanian gymnast to explore my previous hypothesis.

Pavel will get on ship! See you soon!