Sonic the Hedgehog Community |OT| There’s no end to this franchise!

[Virtua Sanus]

So, in an interview with Walmart Iizuka revealed that Team Sonic Racing ditched general SEGA characters because they like the speed/technique/power dynamic in Sonic Heroes...



Not only is this completely stupid and overall a horrible reason (since when are no other SEGA characters based around speed, power or techniques??), but every Sumo Digital game with Sonic stuff is absolutely littered with Sonic Heroes like some kind of disease. It was already such a huge complaint in 2010 that some devs apologized for it's overuse in Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing!

I am absolutely tired of these constantly horrible decisions with the Sonic brand. They must realize Sonic Heroes is not all that popular because we never got a port, so what gives? So much of Team Sonic Racing is such a blunder, especially in a time where a large amount of gamers actually are quite fond of other current SEGA franchises.

But hey at least maybe a Sonic Mania followup is bound for the 30th anniversary or something.

 

[Zubz]

So, in an interview with Walmart Iizuka revealed that Team Sonic Racing ditched general SEGA characters because they like the speed/technique/power dynamic in Sonic Heroes...



Not only is this completely stupid and overall a horrible reason (since when are no other SEGA characters based around speed, power or techniques??), but every Sumo Digital game with Sonic stuff is absolutely littered with Sonic Heroes like some kind of disease. It was already such a huge complaint in 2010 that some devs apologized for it's overuse in Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing!

I am absolutely tired of these constantly horrible decisions with the Sonic brand. They must realize Sonic Heroes is not all that popular because we never got a port, so what gives? So much of Team Sonic Racing is such a blunder, especially in a time where a large amount of gamers actually are quite fond of other current SEGA franchises.

But hey at least maybe a Sonic Mania followup is bound for the 30th anniversary or something.

Click to shrink...

Yeah... this stuff's just frustrating to hear.

 

[ValKiryuSonicEX]

Iizuka must really have a hard-on for Sonic Heroes or something, but overall, that was a dumb reason to dump the SEGA characters...when their mobile game SEGA Heroes categorizes them into classes (or even the first two Sonic Rider entries). I really wish someone that's not Iizuka or Shun Nakamura took over, it's just frustrating to hear their excuses time and time again.

 

[Waddle Dee]

C'mon guys, you know that's not why they ditched the non-Sonic characters. Iizuka isn't gonna just say in an interview "Well, Sonic is by far and away the most successful of our brands so that's why we're only focusing on him this time". Like, there's a reason it was called Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed and not Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed.

Whether it was actually the correct move, financially, we won't know till it's out.

Spoiler

CTR is gonna outsell it, hard.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

I mean I actually do think that Heroes was one of the best jobs of translating the Sonic aesthetic into 3D space even if the gameplay was frequently a pain.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Something I've picked up on is that comments like "We changed it for [some artistic or gameplay reason]" are sometimes just a cover because the real answer is "we felt like doing it that way"

Rather than suggesting something like that could be a conversation (or even an argument) that fans can have to sway such personal decisions, they just come up with a deflection that maintains their authority and keeps their guard firmly raised.

The same thing goes if the real answer is "marketing said we'd do better numbers if we focused more on the Sonic brand"

Sometimes this stuff is about maintaining the illusion that every decision was made humanely instead of exposing the harsher reality of Business™

And it's something I think Sega has been historically bad at across the board, but especially so when it comes to Sonic. Like, why is Takashi Iizuka even speaking for Sumo Digital?

 

[Virtua Sanus]

I do not believe they think the game would sell more if it was Sonic-only, they probably just wanted to make a different style of game that focused on them building a more overall coherent package. Stuff like a story mode, character interactions and more thematically appropriate weapons are something Sumo has always wanted to do with their crossover games, but struggled to do because they normally had to make agreements with individual SEGA studios every step of the way.

Plus, Sonic is just really not a very strong brand currently. Games like Yakuza 6: The Song of Life are beating stuff like Sonic Forces in sales now. They are fully aware of this.

Personally I really think they should have just taken Racing Transformed and refined it instead. Make a few more cups, remove some of the guests and bring in some new characters from missing IPs. Easy sell. Instant classic.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

Sonic was slowly taking over that brand, though. Remember, it originally launched as "Sega All-Stars"

Which became "Sonic & Sega All-Stars" and then "Sonic & All-Stars"

Somebody in there has been pushing for more Sonic.

 

[Supaidaman]

As a brand I'm pretty sure Sonic is much stronger than "Shinobi" or "Nights" for instance. Almost every sega franchise is dormant nowadays.

I understand that from a marketing point of view, selling a Sonic game only is much easier. Not that most gamers would be happy with that though.

 

[Virtua Sanus]

Sonic was slowly taking over that brand, though. Remember, it originally launched as "Sega All-Stars"

Which became "Sonic & Sega All-Stars" and then "Sonic & All-Stars"

Somebody in there has been pushing for more Sonic.

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It was SEGA Europe and how the management at the time (which is gone now) absolutely did not believe in any of their brands, not even Sonic. Remember the line "Focus on strong IP like Football Manager and Aliens"? Those people legitimately thought Danica Patrick would bring in more sales in places where literally no one ever heard of her than just about anything else in the game. From what I heard, they wanted more celebrities even.

This management had almost absolutely no clue about what video games even were, pushed back on stuff like M rated game characters showing up in All-Stars, Miku Hatsune games getting localized and rushed out seriously dozens of titles from way before they were ready to launch (Sonic Unleashed, Total War: Rome II, etc).

As a brand I'm pretty sure Sonic is much stronger than "Shinobi" or "Nights" for instance. Almost every sega franchise is dormant nowadays.

I understand that from a marketing point of view, selling a Sonic game only is much easier. Not that most gamers would be happy with that though.

Click to shrink...

Shinobi and NiGHTS are not particularly significant franchises for SEGA in any stretch, but that is also selling them short. Most gamers even now recognize the names Streets of Rage, The House of the Dead, Ecco the Dolphin, Virtua Fighter, Golden Axe, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi and more. They really only doubled down on Sonic in Transformed because poor management saw it as a kid IP. This is also why something as big of a failure as Billy Hatcher kept showing up instead of say Phantasy Star.

I personally believe having Sonic on the cover would have been enough honestly and I bet more people ignored the game outright (at least initially) because they thought it was directly a Sonic game. He carries a pretty negative recent history to him, after all.

Now when it comes to Team Sonic Racing, I am not sure of the specifics really, but I do know that the team behind it is almost entirely unrelated to the past games (I think most of SST, ASR and Transformed's staff worked on Crackdown 3 instead) but I do know that SEGA Japan was difficult with certain properties in the past and how they were seen next to one another. Focusing on one allowed them to use more of their budget for things like actual voice acting and a story.

TSR looks extra bad and out of touch considering we are seeing a major resurgence of SEGA franchises coming back.

I fear if this game does poorly enough they might just not do another Sonic spinoff for a long time, let alone another crossover title or racing game.

 

[NoName999]

Iizuka: We wanted a racing game that uses Heroes speed/power/flight gimmick

Sonic Riders series: Why does daddy hate me? *cries*

 

[Berordn]

man it sure would be nice if sonic riders had a sequel

it's a pity they let that die after one game, it's great idea to expand on

 

[Deleted member 48897]

I guess they thought Free Riders was unpopular for reasons external to bring Kinect exclusive

 

[Nali]

 

[Xpike]

i dont know whats worse, being a sonic fan and seeing your IP get mismanaged into oblivion, or a fan of any other SEGA IP and seeing just beloved characters just get completely ignored beyond an occasional rerelease...

 

[Berordn]

i dont know whats worse, being a sonic fan and seeing your IP get mismanaged into oblivion, or a fan of any other SEGA IP and seeing just beloved characters just get completely ignored beyond an occasional rerelease...

Click to shrink...

Being a fan of NiGHTS gave me a glimpse of the other side for a hot minute.

I'll take neglect with occasional rereleases.

 

[Cogniferous]

Being a fan of NiGHTS gave me a glimpse of the other side for a hot minute.

I'll take neglect with occasional rereleases.

Click to shrink...

Try being a Burning Rangers fan, it gets zero references!

 

[Berordn]

Try being a Burning Rangers fan, it gets zero references!

Click to shrink...

Not true!

 

[TheOGB]

At the very least, Burning Rangers got a wonderful Christmas present

 

[VariantX]

So, in an interview with Walmart Iizuka revealed that Team Sonic Racing ditched general SEGA characters because they like the speed/technique/power dynamic in Sonic Heroes...



Not only is this completely stupid and overall a horrible reason (since when are no other SEGA characters based around speed, power or techniques??), but every Sumo Digital game with Sonic stuff is absolutely littered with Sonic Heroes like some kind of disease. It was already such a huge complaint in 2010 that some devs apologized for it's overuse in Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing!

I am absolutely tired of these constantly horrible decisions with the Sonic brand. They must realize Sonic Heroes is not all that popular because we never got a port, so what gives? So much of Team Sonic Racing is such a blunder, especially in a time where a large amount of gamers actually are quite fond of other current SEGA franchises.

But hey at least maybe a Sonic Mania followup is bound for the 30th anniversary or something.

Click to shrink...

Bad decisions 101. Like maybe the first level of sonic heroes was pretty good and then the game just gets progressively shittier after that.

 

[Village]

Uh i'm not gonna go into that article. There are most likely ulterior motives and their ultierior motives are probably also bad.

I wanna talk about how the sonic heroes format for these characters keeps popping up in shit and its like never good. And not even games, different fiction and mediums to. They assign this Speed Flight Power format that wasn't really that well exicuted in the game it came from, doesn't really fit a lot of the teams forreal. And I feel like a lot of stuff would be better off a lot of stories and a lot of games might be a bit better if they were balanced around unique abilities instead of all around this unified thing. For example , in a sonic game you could have crazy racing based supers. Like shadow gets Franklin's ability from GTAV so he gets fucking bullet time so he can make crazy turns. Espio could make his car invisible so items couldn't aim at it. Vector could mess up your sound so you couldn't hear what your team mates. You could have knuckles have the ability to bust through obsticles, rouge could drive up walls or some shit.

Now obviously I'm just idea spitballing and designing a game and hypothetically thinking about a game ( especially one that needs to be balanced for competition ) are two very different things. But it always seems like this format was the absense of any good game design.

And like on a narrative or characterization front, its kind of made rouge boring in a buncha fiction. Its like they strait up forgot she's super strong and she just like shadow double as " power characters" instead of her fighting and doing cool kicks and stuff she's always throwing bombs or just not getting involved. This is ontop of those team formats being rather restrictive and not having characters interact with each other much ( though this game might actually fix this to some degree )

Sonic boom got problems but I feel like, despite some not great characterizations, allowed characters in both gameplay ( and potentially gameplay ) and narrative bring other aspects of themselves to the table and allowed for unique presentations instead of the Speed , Power, Flight format.

To end this, I'm just not fond of sonic heroes and what It brought to the franchise tbh besides the chaotix existing again and shadow being alive. And neither of those things have to be specific to that game, so it speaks to how I feel about that game and its weird continued influence. And while I think the game will be an do fine and I play to be TSR , sonic heroes claws contuining to reach out and grab other games continues to dissapoint me

Edit: also the haunted castle level, that was tight.

i dont know whats worse, being a sonic fan and seeing your IP get mismanaged into oblivion, or a fan of any other SEGA IP and seeing just beloved characters just get completely ignored beyond an occasional rerelease...

Click to shrink...

I dunno because technically i'm both

I just want a new Crazy Taxi game I swear to god

 

[Cogniferous]

So, this Sonic Mania Lego Ideas set looks great!

I posted it in the Lego thread first but in case there's not a lot of crossover I thought it was worth highlighting here.

Lego Ideas are sets people make that are voted on by the public. If it gets 10000 votes it gets considered for release as an actual set you could buy. I made an account just to vote for this!

 

[Professor Beef]

yo damn that looks hot

 

[Supaidaman]

At the very least, Burning Rangers got a wonderful Christmas present

Click to shrink...

Holy shit this is the greatest thing ever

 

[Village]

Damn sonic getting a lot of toys this year huh

 

[Cogniferous]

Y'all got to vote for it or it won't get made. Chances are slim anyway but if a Lego Flinstones Ideas set can get enough votes for a release then Sonic has a shot.

Also Yuji Naka is into it!

 

[Zubz]

At the very least, Burning Rangers got a wonderful Christmas present

Click to shrink...

We don't deserve Mr. Mitsuyoshi. This man is just so pure & jubilant!

 

[Deleted member 34949]

i dont know whats worse, being a sonic fan and seeing your IP get mismanaged into oblivion, or a fan of any other SEGA IP and seeing just beloved characters just get completely ignored beyond an occasional rerelease...

Click to shrink...

I once thought Sonic was the most mismanaged IP Sega had these days

Then a friend sat me down and told me about a little series called Shining

 

[Tizoc]

Damn sonic getting a lot of toys this year huh

Click to shrink...

...if that lego sonic set releases in july i may get thar dor my cousin's birthday.

 

[Seeya]

So, in an interview with Walmart Iizuka revealed that Team Sonic Racing ditched general SEGA characters because they like the speed/technique/power dynamic in Sonic Heroes...



Not only is this completely stupid and overall a horrible reason (since when are no other SEGA characters based around speed, power or techniques??), but every Sumo Digital game with Sonic stuff is absolutely littered with Sonic Heroes like some kind of disease. It was already such a huge complaint in 2010 that some devs apologized for it's overuse in Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing!

I am absolutely tired of these constantly horrible decisions with the Sonic brand. They must realize Sonic Heroes is not all that popular because we never got a port, so what gives? So much of Team Sonic Racing is such a blunder, especially in a time where a large amount of gamers actually are quite fond of other current SEGA franchises.

But hey at least maybe a Sonic Mania followup is bound for the 30th anniversary or something.

Click to shrink...

IT would be one thing I'd thus reduced scope also meant that the game was a bit of a side project, but it seems like they've spent as much of not more time and or money on this than they did with transformed.

Also I seriously don't believe in the games core concept of switching between racers like it's a relay. The last game that tried to move away from a racing format (Onrush) failed.

What a waste.

 

[Setsune]

Y'all got to vote for it or it won't get made. Chances are slim anyway but if a Lego Flinstones Ideas set can get enough votes for a release then Sonic has a shot.

Also Yuji Naka is into it!

Click to shrink...

They're not THAT slim, technically. Sonic played a big part of the Lego Dimensions franchise, after all:

 

[Lant_War]

lol. Reminds me of that TV channel that used Brawl's main theme for footage of a civil war or something.

Iizuka must really have a hard-on for Sonic Heroes or something, but overall, that was a dumb reason to dump the SEGA characters...when their mobile game SEGA Heroes categorizes them into classes (or even the first two Sonic Rider entries). I really wish someone that's not Iizuka or Shun Nakamura took over, it's just frustrating to hear their excuses time and time again.

Click to shrink...

A new Sonic Riders which focused on improving Zero Gravity's controls would be amazing. It still has some of the best aesthetics in the whole franchise.

 

[Village]

Sonic riders had potential

 

[BlackJace]

Riders was fun as hell. It was a bizarre and refreshing title, much like Battle.

 

[Waddle Dee]

I had some fun with the first two Riders games (wasn't crazy enough to buy a Kinect) but they both have their share of glaring issues.

The first Riders had an awful difficulty curve. The game doesn't explain its mechanics at all so some of the later story missions feel far too difficult, but once you learn how the game works, everything suddenly becomes too easy. There's no middle ground.

Zero Gravity has some amazing aesthetics but the game feels too slow without a boost button and there's no way to attack other racers outside of a rare powerup so that makes the races feel more like time attacks than actual competitions against other characters.

They definitely aren't the worst side games in the franchise, and for Zero Gravity in particular I think the critics were way too harsh on it, but they aren't anything great. The biggest issue with them was that they didn't have the pick up and play nature of other cartoony racers, so you couldn't really play them with friends unless they also owned and played the games.

 

[Setsune]

I preferred Zero Gravity, in part because it had the ExciteTruck tilt steering I adored at the time. They both had their jank (never touched the Kinect one, it looked like a step back), but I hated running out of air in the first game.

It makes me sad that spin-off board racing games put more time into freshening up the character designs than Forces did.

 

[ValKiryuSonicEX]

at some point, I will power up my 360 and Kinect to play Sonic Free Riders, among other Kinect games. With the recent momentum in VR, I'm surprised there is no VR version of Sonic Riders.

I enjoyed the first game, didn't really like the second one...to be fair, they had their own strengths and weaknesses, though I always found it weird that both used voice clips from Mike Pollock AND Deem Bristow.

I will say that all three had great soundtracks, bring back Fumie Kumatani!

 

[SpookySkeleton]

lol Retweeting a fascist in an account for a product aimed at younger audiences. Good to see that the official Sonic account continues their downward trajectory into clueless corporate humor (See: the transphobic helicopter/did you just assume my gender joke years ago) . And to think they were novel once.

 

[Waddle Dee]

I had a head cannon theory as a teen that Sonic Riders Zero Gravity took place a few good years after any other Sonic game. The more futuristic vibe gave that impression to me.

 

[Jazzem]

lol Retweeting a fascist in an account for a product aimed at younger audiences. Good to see that the official Sonic account continues their downward trajectory into clueless corporate humor (See: the transphobic helicopter/did you just assume my gender joke years ago) . And to think they were novel once.

Click to shrink...

Had no idea about the helicopter tweet, was super bummed to see that just now :(

 

[Deleted member 48897]

It's a shame Zero Gravity never got a PC port. That's one game where what is arguably the ideal setup is a setup that's increasingly harder to provide feasibly (since the wii version is nearly unplayable, in my opinion, without the gamecube controller). At least it actually seems to run well in Dolphin when I tried it.

 

[Nali]

Had no idea about the helicopter tweet, was super bummed to see that just now :(

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IIRC Ruby got dragged for that and eventually posted a mea culpa on Retro, but the whole discussion was wiped after the fact.

 

[Weiss]

Following Ken Penders on Twitter is a comedy goldmine.

 

[ValKiryuSonicEX]

IIRC Ruby got dragged for that and eventually posted a mea culpa on Retro, but the whole discussion was wiped after the fact.

Click to shrink...

little surprised he didn't say that on twitter, seems like it would reach more people than retro.

 

[ckareset]

Yes, Yes, I know another failed Sonic Engine that people proclaim looks better than the actual games, but with no level design in place. But this is the best looking Engine I've seen. The graphics, effects, sounds. SEGA please. Give me an Adventure style game again. And no I dont mean 06. The speed levels in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 are so good. Give me a game with both styles. I know Sonic is expensive to make but I honestly wish just once they would bite the bullet and go for it. No padding with 2d sections, wherehogs, other characters. I dont want to hear it's impossible, they can do it. Im not even asking for rolling physics. Although I think gimped rolling is possible, unlike utopia which takes it way too extreme to make levels with.

 

[Nali]

That really is some nice effects and animation work.

 

[BlazeHedgehog]

That really is some nice effects and animation work.

Click to shrink...

Shame the developer is a bit of a homophobe.

Either way, maybe we're better off without them helming a project, even if it does look cool. The rest of their twitter feed isn't especially great either.

 

[TheOGB]

Yes, Yes, I know another failed Sonic Engine that people proclaim looks better than the actual games, but with no level design in place. But this is the best looking Engine I've seen. The graphics, effects, sounds. SEGA please. Give me an Adventure style game again. And no I dont mean 06. The speed levels in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 are so good. Give me a game with both styles. I know Sonic is expensive to make but I honestly wish just once they would bite the bullet and go for it. No padding with 2d sections, wherehogs, other characters. I dont want to hear it's impossible, they can do it. Im not even asking for rolling physics. Although I think gimped rolling is possible, unlike utopia which takes it way too extreme to make levels with.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, of all the test engines, this one was my favorite

Shame the developer is a bit of a homophobe.

Either way, maybe we're better off without them helming a project, even if it does look cool. The rest of their twitter feed isn't especially great either.

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but then that

 

[ckareset]

Shame the developer is a bit of a homophobe.

Either way, maybe we're better off without them helming a project, even if it does look cool. The rest of their twitter feed isn't especially great either.

Click to shrink...

Well fuck this dude.

Anyways, I just Sega to treat Sonic as a AAA property. Obviously they have very good reasons not to, but the series cant reach t's full potential if they dont even have enough faith to properly fund it.

And one of these days I want a 3D game that isnt padded out by filler content. Please Sega. One game. I know it's expensive and time consuming but it's doable.

Speaking of boost I think this guy Em Bani has hit the nail on the head on it if anyone is interested.

.

 

[Setsune]

Shame the developer is a bit of a homophobe.

Either way, maybe we're better off without them helming a project, even if it does look cool. The rest of their twitter feed isn't especially great either.

Click to shrink...

ARGH.

At least the code is out there now. It really is impressive work. Shame the person who made it has a lot of growing to do.