Tara

I'm skeptical about a fourth season, but not because of the series itself so much as that DC's recent attempts as revitalizing public interest in the DCAU have been so off the mark and misguided that I'd rather it just stay dead than bring it back with the direction they've been going.

It is an understandable mistake, albeit still fallacious, to assume that just because Sonic 1 is the first time we see Sonic and Dr. Robotnik that it must also have been the first time the characters ever met as well. But in reality, many shows, movies, and games begin with the status quo, rather than with an introduction. Both AoSTH and SatAM's pilot episodes are a good example of this. That said, many other media properties outright don't even bother with a "how they met" story. And I doubt that Sega even thought that far ahead when they were making Sonic 1. That doesn't mean that the movie won't be taking some inspiration from Sonic 1. It is always possible they could be re-purposing elements of Sonic 1 to work as as a first encounter story. But if that is what they're planning, then they're going to have to take many creative liberties in order to make it work.

This at least compensates a little for the disappointment I'm experiencing with Pokémon. So this will be a nice little holiday get.

I still enjoy the name Hot Dog Water. A serious name for a serious show.

Well, at least they understood that the reason Barbara Gordon stopped being Batgirl was because she had an awkward one-night stand with Batman and not because she suffered a career-ending injury at the hands of the most notorious villain in the series' history. So, it's not like WB is COMPLETELY inept when it comes to arbitrary edits that fundamentally destroy the works that came before it. Wait, sorry. I meant the opposite.

Can't even argue with that. Honestly best moment in animation history.

Same reason for all those pointless, baffling, and downright bizarre WWE crossover movies, I suppose.

The idea of an upgrade that increases the speed of base game functions has literally been a thing since the NES days if not sooner. Why would this particular instance be something made specifically for speedrunners? The fact that you don't "need" it doesn't mean that they don't think you will miss it if you don't have it or that it's not the optimal way to play otherwise. That's the whole point of making the game's upgrades based in a store system. Even if it's not fully realized as well as it ought to be, it's point is for you to evaluate your options and weigh your priorities. It doesn't really work out that way, since the in-game economy isn't so rigid that you'd have to spend more than an hour or so grinding before you're able to afford basically everything in the store anyway. But the idea that it's something that was made specifically with speedrunners in mind and not because they saw the base transformation speed was kind of sluggish and thought "people might actually want this feature" is a bit of a logical leap. Even though I don't necessarily agree with them, I am perfectly fine with people who think that the transformations are not as seamless as they otherwise could be. Pirate's Curse didn't "spoil" them, it showed that better game design was in fact possible. It essentially highlights the weakpoints of the system, just like the lack of Spin Dash in original Sonic 1 or Tails' in ability to fly in original Sonic 2 are all the more noticeable now that we've had 20+ years of games that rectify this and subsequent ports of said games that have also mended the issue. Surely, it's not the worst aspect of the series, and I don't think anyone is suggesting that it makes the games terrible, but that there are certainly ways of improving it that would make the flow of the gameplay much more palatable and less clunky.

Um, no? If it were meant only for speedrunners, it would be a setting, not a powerup you have to actually buy with in-game currency. It is intended to have utility for the player, meaning the default transformation speed is intended to be an obstacle to overcome. Not something you can OPTIONALLY get but only if you feel like it. Like sure it's possible to beat the game without it, but they didn't put it in thinking that it would only be used by a certain sect of people who are only interested in clearing the game as fast possible. That's like saying the back side of a hammer is only meant for perfectionists, but otherwise you don't need it. Regardless, the argument raised against it are not about requirement; it's about the quality of the mechanics. The same reason that open world games these days tend to have quick travel. Not just for speedrunners, but because it makes lives easier on the people who are playing it. And even those quick travels as well meaning as they are fall under the same general problem. When your core game is focused on exploration, but you require so much backtracking that exploration stops being fun and thus you need a quick travel to mitigate that, I feel that this is a misguided design philosophy. One that sees the weakness of the design and instead of thinking how can they make the design stronger, i.e. how can we make exploration more fun, they think "how can we make the less fun aspects go by quicker?"

Well, ideally, I think it should be a setting. The slow transformation speed is good for when you have only two transformations, so it helps ease you into the rhythm of doing it. Start slow first and work your way up to the faster speed. That sort of thing. Making an upgrade just seems like an acknowledgement of a poorly implemented game mechanic, and instead of fixing it, they give you a feature to make it slightly less miserable.

In addition to what Rabid-Coot said, I simply can't picture this. Like, I can maybe picture a studio that's struggling financially and was desperate for some good publicity to draw in some revenue, even though that would be fallacious thinking. But we're talking about Paramount; a company that is generally high regarded by both consumers and the film industry as being a high quality company. They don't need to resort to riding on infamy for publicity. I think they're just that out of touch. They probably posted that photo the same reason the company posts anything on social media: to foster audience engagement. No matter how vastly different live action Sonic will be from his Japanese counterpart, at some point they're eventually going to have to meet with Sega to sort out a lot of little details. The makers of Sonic Boom realized this, too, which is why it is said that they held off telling Sega of Japan about Boom as long as they humanly could, so that by the time the SoJ crew did see it, there would effectively be nothing they could do about it. I don't know if that's a similar situation here, and I highly doubt it is. Just saying, them meeting with Iizuka and Aaron and then posting about it on social media isn't exactly something I'd name as an indicator of anything aside from "advertising."

That's not necessarily untrue, but I don't think it inherently invalidates what I'm saying. The transformation time doesn't consistently conflict with the pace of the older games the same way it does HGH. Though I will admit it's not the most fully realized mechanic, either, and that the level design isn't exactly stellar enough to warrant it. I don't really agree with this, either, though. There's a reason why Risky's Revenge and Half-Genie Hero both sell upgrades that speed up the process and make it easier to transform. Because they know that the default transformation speed kind of sucks.

I could be mistaken, but didn't they say they were planning on "fixing" the design when the initial poster was unveiled back in December and then the trailer was released and it looked like... er... that? Sure I'll be happy to be proven wrong if it's actually significantly improved (though I still won't watch the movie because it looks pretty abysmal as movies go even ignoring the design), but there's a story you may have heard of called The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It reminds me a lot of that.

I wanted to say this film looks like garbage but honestly it just doesn't look like anything to me. They clearly didn't know anything about the original movie aside from the title and maybe some of the core zombie designs. But it doesn't even look like they tried to replicate the tonality or atmosphere of the original and just went about making the standard DTV shlock that we've been getting from Hannah Barbara cartoons for the past decade or so. I'd be so much more offended if I weren't already so numb to these movies by now. At this point, the only thing I want to ask is if John Cena is in it.

I kind of like Alcremie, but like Corviknight I don't really care for them as a Pokémon. Like I picture Alcremie as a minor character in a really surreal magical girl anime and it sounds cute and fun. But as a Pokémon, it comes across as pretty lazy and uninspired. Really, most of the new Pokémon, haven't really been doing it for me though. With some exceptions, I wasn't too fond of gen 4's designs and a lot of the Pokémon here sort of give me a lot of the same vibes. Though I'd argue that gen 4 at least had an understanding of color theory and composition. A lot of these designs just don't.