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Sega Announces Two New Sonic Games That Seek To Recapture The Glory Days (gamespot.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In celebration of Sonic the Hedgehog's 25th anniversary, Sega has announced two new Sonic games at Comic-Con in San Diego. The first game is called Sonic Mania and it's a 2D platformer that features visuals and gameplay reminiscent of the classic Genesis games. "It revamps zones and acts from Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic and Knuckles, in addition to introducing new ones into the fold," writes Mat Paget from GameSpot. The second game has no title [besides "Project Sonic 2017"], but it does have a holiday 2017 release date for PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo NX consoles. It reportedly features both classic and modern versions of Sonic, similar to 2011's Sonic Generations. Sega made two additional announcements. "Mobile game Sonic Dash has passed 200 million downloads and will receive a special in-game event that adds the Green Hill Zone and Classic Sonic as a playable character," reports GameSpot. "The event only lasts a week, but players can unlock both the classic level and character for use after the event." The second additional announcement is that the animated Sonic Boom series will be renewed for a second season. "Sonic Mania was born out of our fans' love of the classic Sonic 2D platform games,â said Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka. "This type of collaboration is a first for Sega and we hope everyone will be both surprised and delighted by this title. Sonic Mania has been a passion project for the entire team and we look forward to sharing more details about it later this year. Having the game actually playable at the event itself tonight was testament to the dedication of the team behind it.â
As a Sonic fan and a LEGO fan, I am excited for the new Sonic the Hedgehog minifig due out later this year :)
The glory days were the ones before the introduced a female character, right?
Well, I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Far as I'm concerned, last truly great Sonic game was Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Sonic Adventure & Sonic Adventure 2 were okay 3D platformers (for their time at least, the first being a bit better than the second IMO), but almost everything past that has been memorize the death drops go where the game wants you to go, and maybe for some reason push button combos to do tricks of some sort along the way. Even Sonic Generations, which a lot of people rated highly (for reasons I don't understand) was no better. They just haven't been any fun lately. Sonic has not aged as well as Mario, and as a long time Sonic fan I really hope they can go back to their roots and make more of what made the Genesis era Sonic so good. Judging by the small bit I can see in this video, it looks like they might be doing that.
And if you think this is just nostalgia talking, there are indeed modern games that are exactly what I'm talking about. If Genesis era Sonic type games are your thing, the best one right now is Freedom Planet. It is an excellent gem of a game, with developers who continue to add on for free what other developers would sell as DLC. It is what the past decade and a half of Sonic should have been, and if you're a fan of 2D platformers, I can't recommend Freedom Planet enough.
My problem with the newer games was never that they were in 3D. There are various stages in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 that are incredibly fun. But then there were tons of levels that were slow and boring. And they tried to add in all of these other slow, pointless characters and try to have a JRPG-style story. None of it seemed to fit. None of it was "sonic". I think that this problem started pre-3D, too.
My opinion? Sega should keep it simple. Breakneck and beautiful with just barely enough story to have a goal. Sonic should be speed porn.
They might bring the old gameplay back, but I bet they'll ruin it by staying annoying in some other way.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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I rate Sonic's first and second games.
Unfortunately, they jumped the shark with his third appearance, in a game called "Sonic the Hedgehog" IIRC. Don't think that one did very well...
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Sonic Mania looks like a very nice kickstarter video? It's probably the constant appeals to nostalgia. What I real want is those Android ports of Sonic 1&2 that were done by the same team that did the Sonic CD remake to show up on Steam. Sonic CD looks fantastic on my TV, but I don't feel like buying an Android micro console for 2 games.
Also can we ditch the Dystopia theme for Sonic 2017? It's a Sonic game. It's OK to be bright and silly. Sonic Generations only had those levels because it borrowed them Sonic 2007, the worst game since ET 2600.
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Well, this ought to make Chris happy at least.
Maybe they can modernize Sonic with micro-transactions and "energy".
Purely 2D Sonic with that newfangled 16:9 aspect ratio thing might work decently.
BTW, fuck that guy that came up with 16:9 : it's TOO wide. TVs would have been a bit better in 5:3 I think.
They shoukd have kept only 2 Sonlic lines going: the classic Soni linec (2 or 3d but not fucking with the formula that made it a hit on the Genesis) l and the Sonic Adventure line. And please, DO NOT have Sonic play like a 'rail shooter' whether in 2d or 3d. No rail shooter game has ever made it big, and there is a reason for it (rail shooters are barely a step above FMV games, and except for Dragon's Lair, those have been regulated to the shitbin of history). You're welcome Sega
They should have kept only 2 Sonic lines going: the classic Sonic (2 or 3d but not fucking with the formula that made it a hit on the Genesis) and the Sonic Adventure line. And please, DO NOT have Sonic play like a 'rail shooter' whether in 2d or 3d. No rail shooter game has ever made it big, and there is a reason for it (rail shooters are barely a step above FMV games, and except for Dragon's Lair, those have been regulated to the shitbin of history). You're welcome, Sega
Yep.
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Neither of those games feature Sonic or were created by anyone who had anything to do with Sonic.
Aside from the fact my original comment was very obviously tongue-in-cheek- no, I don't seriously consider those to be "Sonic" games(!)- it's still quite clear in both cases that the character is meant to be Sonic.
The first one is an official Sega release and it looks *really* like him, the second obviously isn't, but- as the video points out- given the ripping off of other mascots, it's quite clear that they've copied Sonic. (Granted, he doesn't move much like the real Sonic, but it's quite possible they hadn't even seen the original game at that point).
FWIW, the video is undeniably padded and a bit longer than it should be- as, to be fair, a lot of YouTube videos are- but it's still an interesting piece of video game history. (The background stuff on the company and game development is (ironically) probably more interesting to those of us who had an Amiga than Mega Drive owners).
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No rail shooter game has ever made it big
Since when did Nintendo's Star Fox and Star Fox 64 not make it? Or are they something other than a rail shooter because of the all-range levels in Star Fox 64?
There is one awesome rail shooter FMV game that came out on the PC in 1994 called Novastorm.
Unlike most other FMV games, Novastorm's prerendered environment could actually damage your ship by scraping against it or crashing into it. The gameplay has some similarities with Gradius with the power up system. The visuals are really good for the time but the music is utterly fantastic and worth playing the game for. It's a shame that there isn't a CD quality version available because I'd pay for a clean, lossless copy of the soundtrack.
There was a later PlayStation version (maybe other systems too), but it had horrible music.
So our choices are either "Retro pixelated 2D" or "First person 3D".
What's wrong with classic gameplay but modern graphics?
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