Indigo Rush

Basically sonic 1.

Bruh if that story structure is the same you can keep it lol 

Cel-shaded Sonic looking like any games 2d key was a thing I wanted since before the dawn of time. Too bad whatever cel shades textures they do Sega would just lazily paste them onto the same decade outdated models with practical no stylization, completely ruin the look from the start

For instance, what ever the hell they were going for here-

Also, I used to think SatAM was a bad Sonic cartoon because of how far away it strays from the source material. Nowadays I love it for what it is and I even think the games should take some cues from their world building and character development in their stories. 

I've come to appreciate the story of Unleashed a lot more. I also like the around-the-world aspect as a geography nerd.

I used to think Sonic Lost World was a genuinely shitty game but it turns out people were just (You guessed it!!!) complaining about the story.

It's honestly just fine, not bad, not great either. Gameplay is kinda clunky sometimes but otherwise enjoyable. The story doesn't waste too much of your time and is honestly serviceable, probably the best the current writers have done (which isn't particularly great or even good, but still).

My only main gripe is the Mario thing. It absolutely stole ideas from Mario and executes them way worse. No, I don't want the NSMB Wii Bowser fight flipped 90 degrees, Sega. I don't want alien Bowser. What is this shit?

EDIT: Oh yeah, and Shadow the Hedgehog is a good game.

I used to hate the modern/classic split like everyone else, but honestly? I'm okay with it at this point. The aesthetics, themes, and gameplay have changed so much over time that I think it would make sense to go even further and split the franchise in two and treat Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic as their own series, similar to Classic Mega Man/X/Battle Network/etc etc...

I used to think Colors was good and Unleashed was bad lmao

I used to heavily defend SLW because I really wanted to like it but years have slowly lowered my opinion to thinking it's just barely mediocre. I don't think it's really worth hating but it's just a very unmemorable game without an a striking identity to call it's own which is why it's the least talked about 3D Sonic game.

I honestly used to think the 2000's were the "best" era for Sonic, and Colors onward just ruined everything. 

In general nowadays, while my preference is for the 2000's and probably always will be, I understand that it's not that clear cut. There are things I love and hate from almost every era of Sonic and I think its pretty limiting to just generalize my opinions like that simply because of my biases. 

I used to think that the boost gameplay was absolutely the direction for the series to go after subpar entries like Heroes and Shadow. But after seeing game after game featuring it and making it progressively worse, I realize how limiting it is. Great as a one-time thing, I think, but not sustainable over multiple games.

I used to think the boost games were inherently flawed compared to the classics/Adventure style, even if I still liked it. Today I feel like it has just about as much merit, and various ideas from it were undoubtedly fun in both concept and execution (such as drifting, quick stepping, and yes even boosting itself). I just wish they didn't throw away rolling and Spindashing to make it; that always felt like a pointless removal, especially when it could've added an extra layer to the gameplay.

Spindashing I get because the boost essentially overrides it's function and feels redundant (as Rush has shown) rolling could have more applications but Sonic Team didn't wanna think of any I guess lol

i think in a game like colors, or any boost game not designed to just hand you boost power constantly, the spindash would've been a great addition. something to keep the pace up and not make the game feel like it's punishing you for running out of juice, but still not necessarily as fast as boosting.

there's a lot of moments in colors where i just wished they let you use it lol. would've really improved that game's flow

The concept of the Boost is to go fast and keep going fast and not letting anything stop you. 

Spin Dash was designed as a short, burst of speed to get Sonic going but it's still up to the player to maintain that speed. 

I'm not saying their concepts are incompatible, but their functions are pretty at odds with each other; one is designed for the player to keep going fast, while the other is designed to just get the player started at a faster pace. 

i used to be a bigger fan of the adventure games, both their gameplay and story. but the more i've looked back at the gameplay the more i've found it underwhelming, just sort of a bare minimum attempt to translate sonic into 3d, and not having much to say about how sonic should play besides having the homing attack and not having the boost. and the storytelling, i've come to feel like a lot of the things i wanted out of sonic stories back then were trying to force it to be something it wasn't, pressing my nascent interest in anime onto it in ways the series wasn't designed to be, at the expense of things i've come to appreciate more since.

it's not that they're terrible games, but i see them more as being awkward attempts at figuring sonic out like most of its 3d games rather than being the defining bedrock of what 3d sonic is.

I used to cut Heroes a lot of slack, and still do to a degree because it was my first Sonic game. I attempted to replay the GC a few years back and could not stand the slippery controls.

I used to like the Boost games a lot more than I do now, but it's pretty obvious that they were an extreme dumbing down of the series mechanics. Even the Boost games I like, like Unleashed and Rush Adventure, I would have liked even more if they were slower and more methodical. 

This is a recent one but I've gone back to not seeing much value in Sonic narratively. I like what it could be, but being in love with what something could be is a pretty terrible reason to be invested in something, as it turns out. All the spinoffs and adaptations are such weird mutations because they're struggling to fill blatant holes that have exist in the main games's storytelling since the start. Some of them have told stories and built versions that are just flat out superior to their game counterparts. Others have made some serious misfires, but all in all I think it's clear Sonic lore needs some serious tuning up to work.



 

I used to love sonic X because of the novelty of seeing my favorite game mascot on tv. Now I realized the show had a lot of issues with animation, voice acting and some of the plots. It's just weird and laughable at times. I do like how they characterized knuckles to an extent.

Also, I used to agree with sonic having too many friends in his games as well but now I kinda want some of them back.

Sonic lore is definitely something I've grown disillusioned with as of late. I think I just liked it more as a kid because I could just fill in the blanks with my own personal headcanon and rationalize it like that. As things progressed and I grew more mature, I couldn't rationalize and handwave the inconsistencies anymore. I suppose the emotions the lore gave me will never fade, but that's not something you can quantify into something of quality.

Before: thought that Unleashed was boost to win trash

Now: Its the best boost game. (And not because Forces took the bar and lowered it into the center of the earth, but Unleashed is an unironic thumbs up, Werehog included.)

I could honestly see wisps replacing at least the animals in a new chao garden.

you wanna make people mad, have wisp gardens instead of chao gardens

...zeti gardens

raise your own mini zavok

oh gosh

Thanks I hate it

@PickleBrows i always thought they should replace the chaos drives or whatever theyre called. Vials of random colors arent exactly iconic, but beings made of color that are good at like one specific thing are, and they make a lot more sense

I actually wouldn't mind this if they were implemented in interesting ways. Maybe they could alter the color of the Chao, give them different actions, power up their stats, give them new abilities or open up a new transformation similar to Chaos Chao.

The only things Sonic fans can agree on are the Chao Garden and the absolute cinematic brilliance of Sonic Underground.

The A life system seems reasonably complicated and Sonic games have been simplified heavily since SA2. I can't ever see it happening beyond the cameos the chao have already had.

It's a shame. If they had just kept toiling away at it it would be a pretty robust pet sim by now. They should have kept them in rotation, even if it had to happen outside the context of a  mainstream platformer

It kills me because there exists potential for a killer gameplay loop that SA2 barely scratched the surface of. Hurts, man.

There is so much they could do with it now! And yet! Nothing!

It's like, an ultimate extender for the game when you think of it. Gathering rings, unlocking new items/chao, obtaining certain animals, Races and Karate... let alone any new ideas that they could come up with.

I think what got me musing over it is the recent mod for SA1 and SA2 that lets you bring your Chao with you into action stages, something I've wanted since I was a kid. Right now it's mainly a visual accessory, but it's hard not to imagine the sorts of cool things you could do with that functionality.

They don't even bother with a Chao app or anything even though it would undoubtedly be very popular.

Actually the suggestion of Chaos coming with you in stages remind me of cyber elves from Mega Man  Zero where they can give you buffs depending on what you choose.

And hey it'd be a easy way to extend playtime, something 3D Sonic games have perpetually struggled with. So many solutions but not even a single attempt in 20 years it's honestly baffling 

i could do without it, personally, but it is strange that they've never tried to capitalize on the obvious interest in it. even if they didn't want to build it into an actual sonic game you'd think there would've been some scummy microtransaction-packed mobile game at least.

What's cool about Chao is between their hero and dark alignment, general stats and age, there's so much variety to pick from to make your Chao a unique stat booster in levels. Plus spending time with them in stages could help build affection or help them level up faster.

Help I'm dreaming again

Sega won't let us dream...that's why we don't get NiGHTS games anymore

it's really odd how it was just...dropped completely. i dunno about, say, keeping it as a side game for the main titles, but spinning it off into its own subseries? that should had happened a long time ago.

like, of all of the experiments they've tried to do with sonic, that was the one that made the most sense to continue pushing in some form.

YOU'RE HISTORY!!!

I cant BELIEVE it 

You were LUCKy tHiS time!

I've been dreaming about pounding his sorry blue butt

Seriously though, been playing both SA1 and SA2 with the mod that lets me bring my Chao with me into levels and it's exactly what I wanted it to be

Agree to disagree agree.

Bringing in my full egg chao from Chao World Extended into levels as one of the multiplayer characters or Blaze is an absolute delight.

Almost inclined to agree at this point. Gameplay-wise I haven't gone very far with mods beyond the better Knuckles radar and tweaks to Sonic's somersault, but I've been playing a lot of SA2 recently.

...Steam says 60 hours in the last two weeks sweet jesus 

Mods never effect my personal rankings because I don't see it as fair but hey I appreciate any and all work done to improve those games 

they both improve dramatically with mods but i can still do a playthrough of sa2 without them. SA1 i just end up missing them a ton

@Wraith

Well, it IS the DX version after all...

Does Sonic Heroes get this sort of treatment when it comes to modding? 

There are good heroes mods. The game jumps from a 3 to a light 6 with them 

Didn’t mean to double post, but there are mods that adds widescreen, removes most of the in game dialogue, matches physics as close as it can to SA1/2 (removing the slipperiness), and removes the gloss from the models. It’s about as close as you can get heroes to being a good game. 

You can't improve on perfection but I admire modders for trying with Heroes 

I guess those Mods are for the PC version?  Sonic Heroes kind of freaks out on me when I force widescreen on Dolphin lmao. I would love to play a less slippery version of the game.

The best 3D Sonic game is a mod

The best 3D Sonic game is Sonic GT

I'm hearing $400-ish (well, altogether)

I didn't think anyone could make labyrinth zone worse until I saw this.

I think everyone is quite tapped out on wisps at this point 

I’m good mate

They should turn Tails & Knuckles into wisps. At least then they'd be playable more often

Let them shine with the abilities that make them unique.

I guess it would have been a cool idea for Forces or even Colors. But those characters can already fly, dig, etc. on their own. 

Y'all are boring 

Hey, you're the wisp fan

Lol that's what the CAF was basically for. Was apparently the better choice than doing something interested with raggedy old characters yuck.

I say give tails back his mech walker as well and let it utilizes the wisp.

White wisp=boost in flight mode

Green wisp=hover for longer times

Blue wisp= gives the walker a cube stomp move and shoots a wide range of blue cubes in flight mode

Spike wisp=shoots spikes in all directions in walker and flight mode.

Cyan wisp= Gives the walker a laser weapon that locks onto up to 50 enemies and in flight.

I got more later.

Hover Tails and Drill Knuckles are pure synonyms for redundant

Nah Sonic just has the same colour scheme as Mario and it all went wrong once they decided to give him green eyes. Sonic was a shameless Mario come from the start and can't stand on his own two feet (or eyes). True story.

*runs away while laughing maniacally*

Throw Heroes into the trash collection too while we're at it.

Introducing the Sonic Was Never Good collection!

It just has a copy of Sonic Blast, an actual Game Gear cartridge that they found in the back.

Full price to make up for the cost of looking for the cartridges.

No use trying to top a game that was centered around bringing every prior character back plus more, and everybody takes the whole "just keep porting Ultimate but do more, both characters and modes alike" thing for granted; easier said than done. With Sakurai on his way out after this, it's only fair that who he passes the torch to can work this series from scratch

I agree on this, and I also think that R&D should go more into revamping and flashing out the movesets of the characters rather than adding more and more of them for the sake of quantity; it should also go into changing up the core gameplay a bit (new physics, new mechanics, etc) because the series is getting pretty stale too.

In general I think the series would benefit of some optimization: less content but with way more effort put into it.

For example, there's no need to have thousands of songs and .png files in the game (most of them directly ripped from already existing material) when you can have a solid soundtrack of like 50 songs (or even less), all remixed and designed to fit a specific part of the game, all coherent to a precise artistic direction; and a bunch of trophies made of all original models (redesigned to fit the overall common artstyle of the whole game) accurately selected to tell the history of each represented franchise. Apply this to any other element of the game as well and you got the point.

Yeah. Ultimate, for all the work put into it, feels like a quantity over quality situation more than anything. It's awesome we got some crazy additions like Sephiroth and Banjo, but I'm at the point to where I don't know who I want to play as; it's like the worst game if you have problems with choice paralysis. I think limiting the third party entries significantly or removing them entirely (sorry, Sonic) would be a good starting point, along with reintroducing and fleshing out modes like Melee's Adventure or Smash 3DS' Smash Run. Heck, with the right direction, even the Subspace Emissary could be brought back and turned into a much less convoluted and bland platformer.

I think the Quantity/Quality fallacy really does fit with Ultimate since a lot of if was built directly off of Smash 4 so a good chunk of legwork was already done for them like just because  a game has a lot doesn't always directly correlate to the quality suffering imo. At least in the case of Ultimate I don't think it does, since I think it's altogether a better product then it's Wii U predessesor 

That said it's going to be impossible to top this in sheer scope so I definitely support the reboot idea, slim down the cast and remake the movesets, I think third parties like Sonic, Ryu and Mega Man have earned the right to be mainstays at this point but they definitely should trim down them as well. Focusing more on the Nintendo celebration aspect then the "Gaming celebration" aspect that Ultimate was going for 

It's hard to say what they should do next. You're going to be throwing a lot of really good material out if you go that route because most of Ultimate's quantity IS quality, but I don't see any other way to go about it.

I wouldn't want to be the guy in charge of the next entry, lol.

A much smaller campaign with more depth, like actually using the characters abilities and attributes to design levels around...

That'd be cool.

But it's still gonna be a fighter first & foremost, so extra modes are...extraneous.

Yea, as much as its going to piss people off, there's really nowhere else to go from here. They're gonna have to cut back just to have something fresh. 

Its not like people are gonna play anything else but Fox on Final Destination anyways

I don't think they'd be able to get a roster like this again, and I'm happy they went all out for the hell of it. Everyone plays probably better in Ultimate than they ever have before and the newer additions are all pretty fun even if they don't all have the most mechanical depth or anything. I still feel like Ultimate deserves an encore run at least on the Switch's successor (provided everything can be worked out) with additional modes, but failing that, paring it back for new stuff isn't a bad way to go either.

There's only a handful of characters I'd want to really stay on anyway, and if I could absolutely only have one out of that handful, well... Guess.

I've said this in the last status but honestly, I really don't think Smash should be anything different than what it is now. For me, it's main selling point is the characters. It's been that way ever since I first saw Pikachu and Mario on screen back with 64 and only grew in importance since.

This series is how people often find other games and is honestly the only time a large portion of these characters ever see the light of day. To take that away (in any harsh way mind you) just to attempt to make smash into this more balanced fighter or to introduce modes that go against its core gameplay already would destroy what made it special in the first place for so many.

Like, as much as I absolutely adore Subspace, stuff like that isn't why I play Smash. If it was, I would've never touched Ultimate lol. Hell, that mode was special to me because of the characters in it, not really due to the mode itself. I know Subspace wasn't great for some and they might argue that it would've benefited from a rooster cut but you'd still be dismantling what made it great for many in the first place with that.

And I'm saying all this like what we have now is some broken mess. It's not, none of these games are. Most of the things in these games are better crafted than the games they came out of.

I guess to end my tangent here, Smash shouldn't need to make such a drastic cut to what people find so appealing about it just to satisfy some other goal that was never necessary to begin with. As far what's next goes, again, I'd personally be fine if we don't get a new one for a decade or two honestly. Ultimate is great, even just porting it straight up to the next platform would be enough for me. If other companies don't want to have their characters in it for some reason in the future, then cut them and move on.

And, if they have to make a brand new smash in the next Jupiter orbit or so and they have to start cutting characters, I pray it's not drastic, really only focuses in on the characters with multiple versions or the series with the most slots, and isn't for simple balancing concerns. At that point, whatever modes they're adding better knock my damn socks off.

tldr: touch palutena and im swinging

I think it's almost guaranteed Rangers will have alternative costumes.

I'm in this weird place with that atm. Like, while I love the idea of this series getting custom options (and kind of enjoyed the avatar for what it was in Forces), I really don't like the way it's being handled in Colors Ultimate. Like, shit there just looks bad to me (though that might have more to do with the game itself not looking great visually to me but hey). It sort of has that lazy, alternate color vibe that Sonic is smash gives me. I want to see more out there cosmetics. More than just different shoe and glove colors.

Also... this series really needs to get past its fear of online multiplayer. It would pair stupidly well with this.

Maybe this at least means the next Smash Bros. will allow Sonic to have more varied alternate costumes. lmao

Bring stuff like this back

That's great to hear!  I've hearing lots of complaints about how bad it looks, but at least it's looking better now.  It has me hoping that the future of the games get much better from this point forward.

More plausible than you'd think 

He'd challenge him to a surfing contest obviously.

@TheOcelot Where did you find that pic?

SANIC laughs at the clown! The clown entertains him with a funny dance number!

TEH END!

Wasn't that already a thing back in April 2019?

You guys gotta take a swing next interview, ask him about solaris

Did I miss an old/new interview? I gotta see this.

Quote

It seems likely that a fair few decent, upstanding conspiracy theorists and proto-fascists are rapidly being forced to come to terms with the existence of a large chunk of the shitposting internet, or at least to acknowledge it outside of their secret bookmarks.

So there's a use for meme culture after all.

Almost did a spit take at this last night. gg degenerates lol

I'm almost too impressed to be disgusted.

Ew, Sonic Unleashed.

I mean, is this not describing Colours, lol

Wisps instead of Werehog. Erm, yay

I'll accept it only if Amy is also playable

Wasn't that just Colors in a nutshell

imagining a refined version of the werehog gameplay, but with wisps added as power-ups makes me excited

The tornado missions should utilize the wisps too.

You assume the Werehog is absent 

"That's Silver. I hate him. That's Amy. I hate her. That's Gamma. I liked him at first, then hated him. That's Orbot. ....I hate him."

They'll probably fix the lighting too as well by release. 

So, any new info?

Nothing new to report as of yet.

Been playing Colors DS in the meantime, definitely underrated.

@Indigo Rush

Yeah, Colors DS is basically the secret third Sonic Rush game.

Me too. Haven't played Colors in like 4 - 5 years. I'm looking forward to playing Ultimate to see if I still enjoy it as much as I used to and how different it will feel with the new collectibles, remastered soundtrack and different (hopefully better) visuals. 

I can deal with the lighting issues and remixed music but please give back the original Sonic model. I really loved the Colours model and how it looked and the new model just really lacks a lot of charm and barely even feels like it's part of the game with how little it interacts with things. It's so bare and lifeless.