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I guess people just really miss the other characters nowadays. I could have used a couple more of you guys on my side back when everyone was hating them. It must have either been a vocal minority situation that was so loud that it shaped the way the games were for the next decade and a half (and still ongoing) or everyone just changed their minds. I doubt it's the latter but it could be. Anyway, to answer the question, it's a detriment if the other characters were a big part of why you loved the series. They are for me, so most definitely it is. A huge one in fact. It might not matter at all to someone else though. Funny thing about that phrase is that back then they technically weren't all his friends. Some were rivals and a few more were just acquaintances. That would always nag at the back of my skull even though it literally didn't matter. IGN didn't care either. They still found ways to blame shit they didn't like about Generations on them even though they didn't do anything. "Most of these bad missions star Sonic's shitty friends" is a thing that was written and said by an actual reviewer. He just really wanted to let you know that these bad missions starred Sonic's shitty friends guys. He wasn't trying to subtly hint that the reason they sucked was because of their presence and not because the missions themselves were designed badly. No, no. That'd be totally passive aggressive and logically unsound. That's just not the IGN way. God, you know, I haven't talked or cared about IGN in years. That shitty review is the last memory I have of them honestly.

Maybe you should because, uh...maybe Lost Levels aside those are all good games? SMB2 US is weird but it's still a solid game that ended up adding quite a bit to the Mario universe, the NSMB games got kinda samey but they were all fairly solid and fun games, and Galaxy 2 is great. I'm not saying Mario has an entirely flawless record, but I'd struggle to call any Mario platformer bad, and he's certainly not had anything on the level of Sonic's biggest failures.

You want to know why Sonic and Shadow don't just kill Eggman? This is why. I'm not even going to fucking entertain this topic's existence. I'm thinking this series is genuinely not for you, so please stop talking about this crap here.

Ah, Forces. A game that failed to meet even my rock-bottom expectations. I was turned off from the very first teaser, and everything revealed after only confirmed or exceeded my worries. Modern Sonic's gameplay is a mess. The boost gameplay has managed to get even worse, with levels being shorter, more linear, and more automated than they've ever been. I've argued for years that it's a rotten style that we desperately need to replace, but I'm still shocked at how far it's fallen; I could at least understand some of the appeal when it was big, fast, and flashy, but now it's just completely rotted out. Classic Sonic continues to prove that "classic" is just a cheap gimmick in Sonic Team's eyes. There's literally no reason for him to be here other than Sonic Team being able to say "hey look Classic Sonic is here! From Generations! And those other games you like!". The closest thing to a narrative justification for his inclusion is that he cheers up Tails, but this amounts to him showing up, being a Sonic, and this apparently cures Tails' depression instantly. And his gameplay is, of course, still trash. They've apparently tweaked some values since Generations, but they still haven't bothered to figure out how classic Sonic gameplay actually works nor do they have the guts to genuinely try to come up with their own take on classic Sonic, so it's basically the same broken mess again. The Avatar character maybe manages to be the least awful of the three styles, but that's no compliment. As a player-created character the customization options are pretty weak, with the focus largely on unlockable clothes and accessories that tend to result in characters that look overdesigned and out of place, while options that more properly define a Sonic character's design like species, hair, and color patterns are disappointingly limited. Their gameplay is little more than a stripped down version of Modern Sonic's; swap the homing attack for a no-less-automated grappling hook and the boost for one of a few wispons to chew through excessively large hordes of passive enemies and that's about it. The wispons are largely interchangeable as weapons, and the wisp powers associated with them are a crapshoot; some are decent, some are bad, and if you choose the wrong wispon for a level, well, you get nothing, sucks to be you. And of course the tag-team gameplay fixes nothing with either character. And the story is no better. It's an absolute waste of the "Eggman wins" concept, an idea that you can only really try once; instead of getting a world that actually feels like Eggman has taken over, he gets pushed entirely into the background in favor of the dull and unfitting "war" theme and the complete non-entity that is Infinite. And that guy, fuck me is he bad. Nothing more than the most generic edgelord villain personality combined with a power that could have interesting uses but in practice is only ever used as brute force. We don't even get anything close to a proper motivation until Shadow's campaign, and the answer still doesn't make any goddamn sense. They couldn't come up with even one interesting idea to do with this guy; he shows up, he's evil, he beats you, you beat him, he dies, the end. Not that anyone else is much better, of course; Eggman, again, is pushed entirely into the background, Modern Sonic just does the usual Sonic heroing thing with his early defeat never actually meaning anything, Classic does nothing, anything interesting with Tails ends as soon as it begins, the copy villains are a narrative bust, and most of the resistance just stands around talking at you the whole time. The Avatar is the closest to having any kind of actual story arc, and that just amounts to "I'm scared and I suck but I'm gonna try hard and Sonic believes in me so now I'm strong!". Except it doesn't even land since you can already do crazy grapple hook flips and take out tons of enemies from the first level and the only indication that he's not already basically a superhero is that he stumbles in one QTE. It's just, like...everything is bad. It's not an utterly broken game like '06 or RoL, but from start to finish every choice they made was the wrong one. I can only hope that Sonic Team's learning the right lessons from this and from Mania, but given they made this mess in the first place, I don't have much faith in them figuring it out.

No. Just no. No more solo Sonic. No more minimalism. No more "roots". If you look back on the last decade of Sonic games and your biggest complaint is that Tails is too relevant then I'm sorry, but I think the problem may be you.

The onus to improve should always, always be on the company responsible for releasing the product. No matter how shit something is perceived to be in the mainstream there will always be some people that like it. There's nothing to be done about that. It's not like Sega has been rewarded on the whole for releasing bad products, either. Of course there will be a fanbase that buys into it, but it's easy to see the growth of the franchise has been stunted by the wave of middling releases. If they were satisfied with where Sonic was at they wouldn't be trying so much crazy shit all the time to begin with. Can we as a fanbase get over this 'trying to make people feel guilty for liking something' shit? If you just don't like something contentious at all you're probably really boring and also in the minority.

I think the whole argument comes from an incorrect perspective re: 2D Mario. Those games are actually the best selling games in the series by a margin so big that the so called ambitious 3D games started to take notes from them. They didn't actually flame out with anyone. They were an easy target due to am honestly pretty poor asthetic compared to other 2D platformers at the time, but that didn't really matter to the target audience of those games: less experienced players. 2D Mario mechanics are so polished, clearly communicated and accessible that it has an enormous appeal that other platforms don't. I don't think 2D Sonic has ever had the same type of appeal. I've noticed that the games have enough of a barrier of entry that it never catches on as easily. That, along with a lack of a decent drop in Co op mode will probably keep 2D Sonic in more of a niche unless they make some changes. The "niche" itself is profitable enough to keep up and could probably give 3D Sonic in its current state a run for its money but I'm not sure how successful it is when you really get down to it. Like, I'm not sure if something like Sonic Mania would outsell another 3D game with a good press run like Unleashed or Generations. Whether that audience grows or not depends on how they carry themselves with 2D Sonic going forward. It's not a surefire bet either way since Sonic just isn't as clever about appealing to novices as Mario, but I think the potential is here to at least build a solid run of successful games ala NSMB. One thing that's clear is how the 2D side of things is more than worth investing into though so let's maybe...not sleep on those types of games anymore?

This argument's been thrown around for as long as I've been active on this forum. Sonic Team is incompetent, we know. Even I brought it up as a reason I'm pessimistic about the prospect of a Sonic Adventure remake a couple weeks ago, but this just starts to sound like more and more of an excuse. "It's not your turn yet, they need to get x right." People have been waiting for that for ten years or more, man. There's never going to be a right time at this rate, and something like Mania is not going to light a fire under Sonic Team's asses to get there any sooner. If Sonic Team is going to flounder around trying to get the series "right" anyway, you might as well throw those people a bone in the process besides talking heads on a radio. Not like the current method is gaining them any ground.

A cartoon, similar to Sonic Mania Adventures, will be connected to Team Sonic Racing. Episode 2: Dangerous Distractions Episode 1: Dangerous Distractions Other Details: Characters will once again be mute This will only have 2 episodes (supposedly) Episode 2 premieres next month

I basically don't care what this is. I'm looking forward to it whatever it turns out to be.