Tornado

I'm sorry you like to make arguments without having any knowledge of whether they are true, then? Anyway, I think this thread, which has been nothing but back and forth between everyone on this forum and two members for the past 3 dozen pages, has run its course for the time being. When there's actual news to talk about instead of just a shoutfest between the rest of SSMB and people who seemed to have accepted restitution from Paramount pictures, we'll open it back up.

Certainly sounds like grounds to call it execrable garbage. One of these things is not like the other one. And you could do much better for making an argument for "why do you people say that this premise is bad" and then using Sonic X and STH '06 as examples where it was done before. I'm sure you think you have a point with this, at least.

No, not "technically 4." Technically and officially Sonic has had probably a dozen; one for each different type of media he has a appeared in. People who are mostly just aware of Sonic from a point of view of character design not noticing much difference between his Classic or Modern appearance and his supposed appearance in this film probably wouldn't even be aware of most of them. Casual fans of the series don't even necessarily acknowledge (be it through ignorance or refusal to accept the retcons Sega threw out when they functionally rebooted the series with Sonic Adventure) the difference between Sonic in the Genesis games and Sonic in the Genesis games as those games were presented by Sega of America. Ohshima probably wouldn't have been too happy with SoA's changes and the wild derivations therein to his original designs either, but up until Sonic Adventure they were officially the same thing as the game one and probably all someone with casual knowledge of Sonic would know anyway. Going a bit further: You're talking about design, and Sonic's design specifically at that. We're not talking about gameplay or tone or place in the series hierarchy. These are not obviously different characters. Boom Knuckles is what everyone got pissed about when Boom was announced, for those who even cared; but no one had a coronary about Boom Sonic's arms being blue or Amy wearing a different dress or Tails being exactly the fucking same. Sonic is in fact so similar that I hadn't even remembered that his arms were blue in Boom until I grabbed that image. They were seen as unnecessary changes certainly (but even at the time I found it hard to entertain the arguments that anyone other than Knuckles were actually worse), but it's not even in the timezone of the TMNT images you posted. It's like arguing that Princess Peach is a notably different character design in Mario Tennis because she wears athletic clothes instead of her dress. So in this discussion that still leaves two, which Sega themselves have reinforced several times over the past 8 years or so: Classic (and the things a casual fan may conflate with Classic Sonic since they were notably different but close enough and treated as the same thing by Sega at the time regardless), and Modern (and the things a casual fan may conflate with Modern since they are barely different, like Boom for most of the characters and STH '06). Now speaking of those TMNT images you posted, people who were casual fans of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could, just in the time I've been a casual fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since the early 90s, been exposed to and/or are possibly aware of: The 1984 comic The completely different looking 1987 series (and its comic adaptation) The completely different looking (and concurrent to the above two) movie series The completely different looking 2003 series (including its finale movie that discussed all of the above things as the main thrust of its plot) The completely different looking but technically-related-to-the-above-films 2007 movie The completely different looking 2012 series None of those shared much in the way of design work or aesthetics with any of the other ones, so BayTurtles (with again another concept for character designs and aesthetics) is only another significantly different set of design parameters in an IP rife with them. At the very least, any kid growing up in the early 90s would have known about the 1987 series and the completely different looking 1990s movies and recognized that they were the same franchise.. I can raise more examples if need be. While I hated Arise anyway, not every Ghost in the Shell property needs to be a slave to Stand Alone Complex and its aesthetics because there are already plenty of different designs of the core characters that a new one would be easily understood, even if their complaints are usually that they'd rather just have more SAC. Mega Man is the same way, no matter how much hollering that SSMB thread liked to pretend otherwise. There's an inherent ability to better comprehend aesthetic changes in an IP that has already had quite a few than there is with one that treats a bunch of similar ones as the same thing, treats an even closer one as completely different and reinforces the single main deviation in style in the series' history to the extent of making it a plot point in several games.

There is a major difference in that even the "this" example you are using was the fifth or so completely different stylistic deviation in fifteen years of TMNT, whereas Sonic had... 2 with blatant aesthetic differences? A lot more "officially" I suppose, but no casual viewer would treat the loose rolling collection of SoA Sonic material and Genesis Sonic as being different from each other, and the only thing people even in the fanbase could get in an uproar over for the changes Boom made to the character designs was Knuckles.

Sonic Team USA was Iizuka's studio, and that happened to be the one that made all of the mainline Sonic games while the Japanese portion of Sonic Team worked on stuff like Phantasy Star Online and Billy Hatcher and overseeing the Dimps' output up until STH '06. For the purposes of what this thread seems to be asking, whether or not he had the formal title that Naka still retained at the time but was disinterested in following the original Sonic Adventure, the Sonic series was under Iizuka's control at two separate points; which is why I felt Iizuka was singularly unsuited to be given the franchise reigns back after Sonic Team USA was reabsorbed into Sonic Team following Unleashed and had very little expectations for what he would do with it. But, again, following Naka's abrupt departure and the studio spinning in circles for the next few years afterwards among different people who all seemed to leave for Nintendo, he was probably the only one who was willing so I assume it could be worse.

You mean the first time when I was 8 years old or the second time when he was inexplicably put back in charge after deciding the best course of action at one point was to make Shadow shoot everyone and swear like someone in elementary school? Because I was 8 years old the first time and I didn't expect very much at all (beyond "he was the only one willing to do it after Naka left") the second time so it's hard to consider whether my expectations were actually met.

That doesn't mean that it is outside the realm of possibility. I can easily see a marketing guy in Hollywood trying to leverage the Sonic fanbase's almost inevitable outrage to something this movie was going to do at some point as deliberate marketing fuel. It wouldn't even be hard to know about instances in the past of that happening in a similar context, since a big example has already been posted recently in this thread; not to criticize Blacklightning's excellent post about character silhouettes as they pertain to overall designs. Now, whether that's a wise path is a question that we won't know until the returns come in, but I will note three things: The fandom's response to this movie outside of these is already not necessarily in lockstep with the people outside of the fandom. Even only broadening it to casual fans like those on dedicated videogame forums (and not the general moviegoing populace who may just go to "I recognize Sonic" rather than even a casual fan of the games themselves), I've already seen that on places like ResetEra that the response is frequently "wow those Sonic fans sure are being fucking overdramatic assholes about this. Again" rather than "I now have no intention of seeing this movie just like those Sonic fans." This movie now has a whole hell of a lot more attention than the fucking Ratchet and Clank PS4 remake's 90 minute advertisement ever had. If this poster stuff was a stunt to obfuscate his actual design, you know how easy it would be to spin it in a way that people would adore? "We took the design criticism into consideration and tweaked his design to something more recognizable." That was a single sentence; and the film is early enough in post that they could explain it away as being the truth.

Ignoring any of Sonic Team's output, I'm not very inclined to put stock in SoJ's feelings on the matter because this is the same fucking rope to hang themselves with they gave Archie pre-Penders and Big Red Button. The time to object to the portrayal of their licence that they let someone else handle was a long before principal photography has already wrapped and the film is in post. If they cared so little about looking in on and putting a stop to things even back in preproduction, which is when this design work would have been hashed out, that's their own damn fault.

Are you a paid representative of Paramount and/or Sega? Because no one else is required to defend a probably-shitty videogame movie. You don't like that people don't like what you do, even though your basis for liking it is based on just as little as those people? Build a bridge and get over it. You want this place to not become an echo chamber? Express your opinions about why you like it. Maybe they will be challenged, but no one will try to shout you down for having them. But this complaining about other people thinking what we've seen so far looks like shit? That thing that as far as I can tell is all you and Bucket have been doing here? That stops now. And yes, if a thread was made where people were only allowed to echo chamber nice things about what we've seen about the movie, it would be merged back into this one.

Shit doesn't look that bad now, does it?

No (I mean, come on, but that wasn't what I was saying at the time). I'm saying that we get it. There's no need to keep jerking CTR off every time other people who have probably also played it dare suggest that they'd like to see something more from this than a graphics patch.

You don't say.

It also factors in that it is probably only that way still because otherwise Game Freak would have to put in some effort.

Be curious how it is received when it comes out, depending on how close it stays to the original. When it was new it was the best kart racer on the market, which was a title I think it held until Mario Kart DS released over half a decade later; but that was a game that came out 13 years ago. Even though Nintendo made a couple shit Mario Kart games after DS, I don't think it is just a coat of paint away from going hit for hit with All Stars Racers Transformed or Mario Kart 8; certainly not with the amount of gameplay it actually had versus how long the game was.