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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
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.
Then you would have to disregard sonic 2 and 3, given the fact Amy was on the sega CD game.
Sonic screwed it up when they forgot the main selling point of the game that was the fact it used a pinball like physics.
Sonic adventure and up have a greatly simplified physics that requires no skill other than paying enough attention.