JezMM

I think it's more that it sounds so generic and lacking in personality. Like if you heard it out of context it could sound like it comes from any kind of environment What makes me worried is that right now, we've no way of knowing if the whole soundtrack is gonna sound that way. Now that doesn't necessarily means it's gonna be bad, like, Shadow the Hedgehog had pretty forgettable music in-context but I enjoy listening to it out of context where I can concentrate on it and appreciate all the subtle things going on in each song. Maybe this will be another OST like that but... I'd rather it wasn't. It's just one of those things where if you re-use a location, the music for it will sound "off" if it doesn't match the established "feeling" of the stage. It's why people like Chemical Flow from Sonic Forces but not Faded Hills - the former is a new composition but it somehow manages to capture the same feeling of the original stage. Faded Hills just goes wild and doesn't feel like Green Hill as a result. I actually feel the same about Death Prison - good song but it feels too warm in tone and goofy in melody to make me feel like I'm experiencing the same environment as Sonic & Knuckles' Death Egg Zone, which had a song that was fairly cool in tone and focused in melody.

Going back a few pages but, regarding Tails' voice lines, I think what bothers me is that I never imagined him as being this "cocky wannabe". Even if we take the interpretation that the lines are cute/funny because he's trying so hard to be badass and failing... that's still just not Tails to me. It's this kind of annoying thing where like... not every character NEEDS to be funny. Stop trying to make us guffaw with every single line - especially if we're going to be hearing them multiple times over possibly the course of even a single race. My idea for Tails' voicelines? Endless positivity. He's psyched to be racing with his friends - I feel like the Tails I cared for wouldn't necessarily be as polite as Cream or anything but he'd show an actual respect for his opponents, a focus on technicalities and celebrations of his own success over downplaying others. Stuff like "Better luck next time!" or "Yeah, a direct hit!" Like... can't Tails NOT have an attitude and be a cute lil' dork instead. Regarding Jun's music, I am slightly afraid of it all being of a similar tone. I have to remind myself that Jun DOES have a range because Planet Wisp's song is nice but is completely lacking in any of the atmosphere or "serene"ness the original had. I am concerned that we're gonna get a very straight-played rock remix of Rooftop Run that does nothing to reflect it's beautiful new visual aesthetic. I dunno, it's hard what to make of Jun sometimes. You have cases where he's very creative - I still love his dark take on Chemical Plant in Generations for example, or how the poppy fun of Casino Park and Digital Circuit being leagues away from his usual rock stylings. He did some wonderful stuff for the menus in Black Knight. But then you also have dire tracks like Sonic 4 Episode 1's final boss theme, the utter "didn't give a shit at all" flavour of Episode 2's eggman boss theme, and how masturbatory he was about just straight re-recording all of the songs he originally composed for Sonic Generations (Speed Highway, Emerald Coast, Egg Emperor etc) rather than bothering to remix them at all, as if they're his babies and not to be tampered with. City Escape Act 2 was a pleasant exception (even though the Act 1 remix kind of overshadowed it still).

While my fantasy 3rd party choice would be Marina from Mischief Makers, I still maintain my opinion from Smash 4 that I feel Shovel Knight and Shantae are equally deserving of getting in if we wanted to have some indie representation with a close connection to Nintendo. I guess Commander Video is technically on the same tier as them (or above, considering he got a trophy in Smash 4) but he'd be such a lame choice tbh. People don't love those games for their characters, particularly. Rayman feels like a shoe-in at this point too with Ubisoft and Nintendo closer than ever thanks to Mario vs Rabbids but... eh. As for first party characters, I feel pretty much everyone I want is in at this point. It would've been cool to get octolings, the squid sisters and off the hook as alts for Inkling but that would take up a lot of slots for standard Inkling alts. I'm still kind of bummed that Bowser Jr. has the Koopalings instead of colour alts coz I like playing as him but I hate those guys.

Chamomile #61

This is a VERY deep cut but for anyone who used to go to SonicAnime.net, and was around at the time that the main site/forums exploded (Series 1 (eps 1-52) of Sonic X was still airing but nearing it's end in Japan, for the exact timeframe) and we had to migrate to some temporary boards hosted by another member (Bazil, to be exact)... Well, those temporary boards are still up. Sadly the main forum area is no longer accessible since when SA.net went back up the admins changed it to just link directly to the new, proper forums (which are gone completely now). But the off-topic, non-main Sonic boards, and RPG section are still accessible. Also if you want to browse topics you need to manually request it to display topics since "the beginning" or else every area will be empty.

For anyone interested, figured out a reverse stage list for Ultimate - i.e. these are the (surprisingly few) stages that HAVEN'T been confirmed yet: N64 Congo Jungle Mushroom Kingdom Peach's Castle Planet Zebes Sector Z GCN Brinstar Depths Flat Zone Fountain of Dreams Icicle Mountain Mushroom Kingdom Mute City Poké Floats Rainbow Cruise Yoshi's Island Wii Delfino Plaza Flat Zone 2 Hanenbow Mario Bros. Pictochat* Pirate Ship Rumble Falls 3DS Dream Land Golden Plains Mute City Pac-Maze Paper Mario Pictochat 2* Rainbow Road Wii U Big Battlefield Gamer Jungle Hijinxs Mario Circuit Miiverse Orbital Gate Assault Pyrosphere Windy Hill Zone Woolly World * A Pictochat stage is confirmed, but unknown if it is 1, 2 or a new Flat Zone X-esque combination. My personal hopes are for N64 Mushroom Kingdom, N64 Peach's Castle, Fountain of Dreams, GCN Mute City, Rainbow Cruise, GCN Yoshi's Island, Delfino Plaza, Pirate Ship, Rumble Falls, 3DS Dream Land, Rainbow Road, Pac-Maze, Wii U Mario Circuit and Windy Hill Zone. N64 Mushroom Kingdom would be a nice fanservice what with it being the first - and for said game ONLY - unlockable stage in the series. Pac-Maze feels too iconic a locale to skip over in favour of the more obscure Pac-Land. And if Sonic doesn't get a new stage... I at least want him to not just be represented by Green Hill Zone YET AGAIN. The rest are all just ones I personally enjoy playing on. Hard to imagine how this would work in the relatively small space most Smash arenas encompass - it could work similarly to Fox's Side+B but... the boost in Sonic games doesn't ever suddenly stop like that. Either way, Sonic's moveset was created before Sonic Unleashed confirmed the boost as a mainline Sonic "thing" (at the time it was an invention unique to Sonic Rush), and Sonic just seems to be one of those characters they've not messed with the moveset of (probably partially because everything would need to be approved by SEGA every step of the way, which in-house fighters don't have the issue of).

Smash 4 had over 40 outfits. Do you even have the vaguest idea what an utterly colossal amount of time it would take to model and rig that many outfits for over 66 characters with wildly different body shapes and animations? While bits and pieces of modelling/texturing/coding/animation could be shared between them across the board, my maths makes that 2700+ unique costumes they'd have to create - and that's just with Smash 4's costumes for the currently unveiled Smash U roster. Like... sorry but keep dreaming on that one, a super unrealistic amount of work to expect for a feature only a minority of players would use. Hats and minor accessories wouldn't be so bad since they could have generic attach points for each character, but actual clothing would be nuts.

10 would be an utterly unacceptable amount of tracks in a modern AAA racing game - consider that Mario Kart games these days have 16-32 tracks as standard - I would say a flat 16, but honestly, MK8's retro selection was so heavily upgraded that the further back you go in terms of the game they're from, the more you can say "they may as well be new tracks". For my 20 number, I was simply going by how many tracks ASRT had. The vast majority of those tracks were locations never created in 3D before to modern-quality graphics, so I feel we should expect the same effort put into TSR. To be honest, if they're going to re-use locations from Unleashed, Colours, Generations, Lost World, Forces or any of the previous ASR games, where asset creation should be significantly sped-up compared to recreating locations from the classic and dreamcast era, 15 would be the absolute bare minimum I'd be satisfied with. I really, REALLY want to see at least a few classic locations we've never seen in 3D before here. There is really no excuse this time.

We've seen literally two, try to be a little less overdramatic. Even if every Generations stage was featured to allow for some asset re-use, that'd only make up 9 of (I assume) about 20 or so tracks, and Rooftop Run here makes it clear that we can expect at least some Mania-quality remixing of familiar locations.

Chamomile #60

Regarding side-mouths, I just wish they'd have some more quality control than they do. "Have his mouth be on the side facing the camera" was a good starting point (even if, on occasion, they fail to even follow that rule and it looks awful), but I think that needs to include front view too. I think as a general rule, if you can only see one of Sonic's cheeks, his mouth can be side mouth. If the camera is in front of him enough that you can see both cheeks, he should have center mouth. Surely this couldn't be a challenge to rig up any moreso than his current two mouths is already, especially if they plan to continue using FMV cut-scenes where they can cheat however they like with the animation behind the scenes. As for the topic thus far, I don't care for the white shoe soles (I think a dull grey is better for a body part that is gonna be flashing on and off screen multiple times per second as he runs) or keeping the SOAP shoes personally (I think they look fine in SA2 due to the flatness of the texture making it seem more simple, but in modern graphics they'd look overdesigned). However I do love the extra Sonic spike and the puffier Amy dress collar and the head curls for Tails. I'd love to see them take the "side mouth" idea further to be honest. Mickey Mouse was one of Sonic's inspirations, and they've done cool stuff like following the rules regarding the portrayal of his ear positioning in 3D games these days. I'd love to see all the Sonic cast get more "2D concepts rendered in 3D", like Tails/Amy's hair quiffs etc.

While Phantasy Star Online was a beloved Dreamcast game at the time, the offline experience is very grindy and setting up so you can connect to fan-made servers will require some additional effort. It isn't really at all the ideal way to experience that game if you are interested in it, better to play Blue Burst on PC, which has the content from the Gamecube release of PSO and even more, plus, doesn't require a ton of modding to get yourself running on a fan server since most fan servers will preconfigure the game to connect to them when you download it. At this point, the Dreamcast version of PSO is only really worth getting as a nostalgia item if you're already into the game, or to get your hands on the elusive Sonic Adventure 2 demo disc that came with it (which is notable for featuring a unique instrumental version of City Escape's theme and that Sonic doesn't wear his SOAP shoes). Anyway, other than that I can second Jet Set Radio. Tbh a lot of the classic recommended DC games didn't stick with me for very long, but JSR is definitely one that brought me back for a second and third playthrough over the years that I had my DC set up. Note that since you're in America, the original game was localised as "Jet Grind Radio" over there due to some copyright stuff.

I was simply saying both "why is Sonic in a car" and "why can other racers beat Sonic on-foot" are equally idiotic reasons to scrap an entire game concept and aren't worth entertaining in any capacity. And yeah it's pretty easy to imagine customisation features in an on-foot racer.