Dreadknux

Sonic Forces wasn't actually announced at one of these panels, was it? My memory Is hazy. I don't know if we should expect anything huge like next-mainline-game-reveal, but it should be a good platform to announce something smaller scale like a cross-promotional deal or something media related. I think the main franchise focus is going to be the movie this year, most likely, and we barely know anything about it so it's likely there could be some teaser trailer or something for it (although, like a new mainline game might be saved for E3, something like that might be saved for Comic Con instead). I suppose SEGA wouldn't want to waste Iizuka-san and Senoue-san's time (the latter would be travelling from Japan to make the event I expect, unless he's gonna be in California finishing off TSR stuff with Sonic Team HQ) if they had basically nothing to share, though.

Maybe we'll finally get to see mutant movie Sonic... in the 'flesh'.

I think you should do some reading on the effects on online harassment / bullying, as it's not as simple as you seem to be making it out to be. There are clear negative psychological effects and people have been driven from homes and moved to attempted suicide over things like this. Just because it's online doesn't mean it's not as real or dangerous as 'real life bullying'. In fact on some levels it can be worse because bullies don't even need to own up to their actions (they can be anonymous) or suffer any consequences (a block is not going to deter a troll from making someone feel like they're not worth a penny). Celebrities are people too. Criticism is one thing, but you should know that the shit that Jones et al went through went far beyond that. Just because you may not have seen it, doesn't mean it didn't happen. Let's move on from this debate, okay? ----- I don't know how much stock to put into this, given the source covering it, but it's possible that the 'next generation' of Ghostbusters might end up being closer to Gen Z than Millennial in nature: https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/288372/ghostbusters-3-audition-tapes-offer-insight-into-what-fans-can-expect/ Young Ghostbusters, anyone?

Yeah that's true enough, but I wouldn't exactly blame Leslie Jones for that. It's Sony that's consistently screwing up, Jones just worked hard on a movie and got nothing but abuse for her effort. I don't know how truly difficult it is for talented minorities (women in general, but particularly black women in this case) to get a good gig in the entertainment industry, being a dude and all, but I know that an all-female starring cast for a brand like Ghostbusters is an absolute rarity, at the very least. Opportunities like that for minorities are super-thin on the ground, so I can only imagine how gut-wrenching it must be to work hard on something like that, only for it to be casually taken/thrown away or worse, forgotten. I think Jones didn't do herself any favours by flying off the handle like that, but I can certainly empathise with her frustrations in general.

Just in case anyone is interested in reading up on the delay of the vote, as the conversation in this topic kind of jumps and assumes that it's stalled: https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/copyright-directive-faces-further-setback-as-final-trilogue-cancelled/ From last Monday: Personally, while I'm all for fair use (I work in media and all, having that right is kind of our bread and butter lol) I'm unsure about the real impact of this bill as a lot of the nitty gritty seems incredibly vague, and I don't know if I can really trust users (who rely) on YouTube (a platform whose interests will be negatively impacted by Article 13) to fill in the gaps on this. Having said that, there's definitely a huge concern here, and I'm glad that there are efforts to lobby against it (from Internet users in general that is; I'm not really here for Google's lobbying against it as it seems a little slimy to be honest). The thing about the EU though, is that a lot of these sorts of things go through a million and one revisions and do-overs; it's difficult to understate how challenging it is to get a bill of any sort unanimously agreed between 28 countries on the first read! So panicking about this sort of thing always seems a little premature, in my opinion. I have faith that whatever kinks people are concerned about can be resolved with revisions. I would hope that future versions of this bill will take into account an equivalent of Fair Use rights and guidelines that allow content creators to use material in news coverage and commentary contexts. That seems to be the major stumbling block (I don't think 'only big corporations will benefit from Article 13' is a legitimate argument. YouTube/Google etc are going to be the key platforms that will suffer negative consequences from this. It's why Google is lobbying against it). Sounds like, going by this report, that the main concern from Germany is that the bill as currently proposed is a little too harsh on exactly who is liable for this kind of thing. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-eu-copyright/in-win-for-tech-giants-eu-copyright-reforms-stalled-idUKKCN1PF1AO Hopefully this will evolve over time and iron out the wrinkles. I'm not a fan of big copyright owners slapping media creators down with legal challenges if they're using the media in a genuinely Fair Use or transformative way.

I definitely don't think it's a great look to second-guess the harassment that Jones and co faced over Ghostbusters. It definitely happened, and happened big time, and asking whether it was all blown out of proportion or not is probably asking the wrong kinds of questions on that issue. That said, it's a shame that Leslie Jones got upset about the Ghostbusters 3 announcement... although in a weird way, I can kind of see where she's coming from? Sony made this big song and dance about making a 'Ghostbusters Universe' and, whether you liked Ghostbusters 2016 or not (I personally didn't mind it, wasn't terrible but it wasn't the best either) it at least seemed to indicate the start of an interesting refresh for the series. As much as I love Bill Murray, there's only so many times you should get him to don a proton pack before it starts looking a little lame, you know (and Murray famously didn't even want to do Ghostbusters 2, so...). My hope was that Ghostbusters 2016 was going to mark the start of some interesting new teams and stories. But I guess not. I'm not going to pre-judge this new film, it'll hopefully work out being quite a nice send-off for the original Ghostbusters gang (sans Egon), but yeah. Just not sure how this will work out beyond a 'Blues Brothers 2000' kind of deal (i.e. it's crap but they made it just to 'bring the band back together'), though. If you were a part of that refresh in 2016, like Leslie Jones, you'd probably think you'd be in it for the long haul too (or at the very least, a contributing part of future films etc). Going straight back to Stantz and Friends does kind of seem like the studio is sweeping all of that under the carpet. And if you worked hard on a film like Ghostbusters 2016 for seemingly little reward and a bunch of harassment for your trouble, you'd probably be a bit mad that you'd be forgotten about too. It's like, if you knew that was going to happen you'd have probably not signed up for Ghostbusters 2016 in the first place.

So, who's bought OutRun yet and is it any cop? I heard the widescreen feature in particular, on that Switch handheld screen, is a beauty to behold. Might end up getting it soon with my spare Gold Coins. I have the other three SEGA AGES titles on my Switch though, they're all great for different reasons. Thunder Force IV, I never actually had on my Mega Drive as a kid so it was great to be able to play through it (it's rock HARD though, what the hell). The soundtrack in particular is awesome - very 'late-era Mega Drive' kind of sound that always gets me real nostalgic, if you know what I mean. I don't know if I'll ever beat TFIV legitimately, haha, but I'll pop back into it every now and then. I've played Phantasy Star a couple of times before, but I never really got very far. As much as I really want to play all these old 80s NES/Master System titles, to experience classic game series from the beginning, it's always a little difficult to persist with them after a while as they get a little too confusing to play or know where to go (Legend of Zelda's a bit like that for me, trying to figure out where to go, and Phantasy Star was basically the same). Playing the SEGA AGES version, I've finally found the time and energy to play through the entire game and complete it for the very first time! That last boss is surprising! To be honest, I quite like the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog isn't the Taxman mobile remaster. As much as I want to have the Taxmans on my Switch, I'd prefer it was a separate release rather than part of the SEGA AGES lineup. I feel that SEGA AGES are supposed to be like, the Criterion Collection of SEGA classic re-releases - the original games largely kept intact, with a few Quality of Life enhancements here and there. I think M2's Sonic 1 is much closer to that mission statement than Taxman's Sonic 1. Taxman adds a whole lot of extra content that wasn't in the original release, and it kinda feel a little too much like a Sonic 1.5, you know? Not that that's a bad thing, just that I think it doesn't quite fit in with the SEGA AGES approach here. Also, Mega Play is rad.

Finally! Nintendo has announced when it will be sharing news of the mobile version of Animal Crossing. There'll be a Nintendo Direct livestream set for 25th October at around midday Japan time (which is 4am UK time, or in the US it'll be 24 October at 8pm Pacific / 11pm Eastern). Apparently Nintendo UK will be sharing a second livestream at 7am the same day; it's likely that Nintendo UK has just decided to hold its own identical version of the stream a few hours later, when people have actually woken up here. I am unreasonably excited about this. In lieu of a Switch Animal Crossing game, I reckon this will get played so much on my phone. Can't wait to see what this will entail.

Yeah, most of the train wrecks you can see coming a mile off (06, Black Knight, etc), but Lost World was the one that gutted me in particular. I was totally prepared for it to be good. It had a really novel design concept (I remember watching a Japanese TV show where they interviewed Sonic Team about Lost World and they were showing off paper roll and dome concept dioramas; there was clearly some creative thinking behind it) and I liked the idea of the parkour moves, but playing it felt incredibly bland and inconsequential. I actually benched it post-World 2 for about a year and a half before going back and finishing the whole thing. It just didn’t feel right, man. :/ ——— I’ll throw my hat into the ‘if it’s a good game I’ll support it’ group, but it maybe wouldn’t be so difficult for Modern Sonic in particular if Sonic Team didn’t keep trying to reinvent the wheel every single time. Sonic Adventure was great back in the day; totally janky now, but had a good base that was sort of built upon in SA2 (at the expense of more expansive level design; definitely got more narrow). But then you had Heroes, which was like Lost World an admirable idea that fell flat on its face, then 06 (which added cheesy edginess, pointless overworlds, princesses and ideas from canned FPS projects), onto Unleashed (which again, great concept but ultimately unplayable unless you like memorising button presses like a crude Simon Says). Colours and Generations seemed to be the modern series really finding some consistency in design and building on it to make it better (even if they added Wisps to Colours - another gimmick, although that one was a rare case of a gimmick being both a great idea and working fantastically well). But then you have Sonic Team mixing things up again with Forces. If Forces doesn’t hit the mark, there’s a strong chance that Sonic Team will just try to rewrite the book again and think of some new thing to jazz up the next title. When what they really need to be doing is finding a groundwork that... works, and sticking with it.

Someone called Forces a ‘cinematic platformer’. A game with a story as deep as Another World or a similar adventure game. I was clearly being hyperbolic and humourous about it, but my point was that story and plot was never the key driving force behind Sonic the Hedgehog, and to say the story behind ANY of the games in the series even touches the level of depth of an adventure game like Another World is pretty laughable. I didn’t bring up the story, actually. Cinematic = plot, story. I’m saying no Sonic game has ever really earned ‘cinematic’ status, and Forces certainly won’t be the first either. The whole ‘cinematic’ argument is just a transparent attempt to explain away why the game looks terrible. “Who needs gameplay anyway, there’s a cutscene!” ‘The only part that makes sense in your argument is your core point.’ Okay. People thought Sonic 06’s story was going to be good, too. Then it came out. Point is, whenever SEGA and Sonic Team try to do this big apocalyptic story in the vein of 06, Shadow (and Forces seems to follow the trend) it always backfires. It comes across as the story equivalent of three kids standing on their shoulders in a suit pretending to be an adult. Edit: To be clear I’m not saying that Sonic should never have an ‘epic’ storyline. I’m saying it should act its age with it (see: Advance series, Sonic Mania, Sonic 3&K) and not give the corny presentation of a third-rate anime. ————— Anyway this has been derailed long enough, let’s get back on track - the gameplay video And, honestly I have to say that the Avatar gameplay seen here doesn’t seem vastly improved on what I played at Gamescom a few months back. Maybe it will play better in person, but I’m really not enjoying watching the player stop every five seconds to seemingly perform an action.