Roger_van_der_weide

I think Iizuka mentioned in an interview he has no idea what to do with a Mania 2. Wait, let me check... "Speaking to Famitsu magazine Sonic Series Producer Takashi Iizuka stated that SEGA had effectively done "everything" it could with Sonic Mania." There's the exact words. So he ran out of ideas with Mania. Which baffles me. Just let the Mania development team worry about the specific content of a Mania 2, I bet they have tons of level ideas. Now, this is totally my speculation, but he comes across to me as someone who can only look at Mania as a Sonic Generations 2 kind of deal, the whole idea that you could make another Classic style game that's entirely new experience seems alien to them. At least that's how his "we've done everything we could do" comes across. "Hey, we did Green hill and chemcial plant zone, What else is there?" At the very least this fuels my suspicion that the concept of "Just make a damn Sonic game" is not a possible option in their mind. There always has to be some kind of grand gimicky crazy angle and theme to each game that's the true focus and identity of each game, with the Sonic gameplay just awkwardly plastered on as an afterthought. Hence why only when their wacky sceme of the week just HAPPENS to involve something Sonic esque, like Boost or Nostalgia, we get something resembling a proper Sonic game, but whenever their zany sceme of the week is something weird and alien, the entire game is going to be another Frankenstein monster of conflicting bodyparts. But that's just my interpretation. If anything, I really wish someone interviewed him more indepth about his thoughts on Mania. I'd love to see his opinion on why Sonic 4 got lukewarm reception where Mania exploded. I have severe doubts he understands what Mania is other then nostalgia parade #72.

I suppose a reason for them having the same body proportions is to make it easier to implant them into the gameplay. The closer they are to Sonic's size and presence, the easier they fit in the levels with him. Playing as characters like Big or Vector always feels a bit off for me for having entirely diffrent dimensions. So thanks to the cast occupying a more universal character template since those dark days, all those beloved characters can now be easily implanted into the modern games and join Sonic in the spotlight in many of the recent games, such as... ....uh.. that one where... uh.. Hmm... Racing games.....Where their dimensions don't matter since they're in a car... Uh. Errr.... Well, the mobile phone games.

I vastly prefer the PC version of the tracks. Mostly for nostalgia, that's the one I played in the day. But there's also more diffrence between the 2 acts.

Perhaps it'll take until next year's 30th anniversary celebration for them to reveal the games, now delayed to 2022. It'll be like 2016's dissapointing 25th anniversary party all over again. Altough at least they have an excuse this time.

Hey, good news, I found more exact sales numbers for Sonic Forces. Bad news, that's the salesnumbers for Sonic Forces and every other Sega game released around the same time. https://www.gamereactor.eu/sega-is-pleased-with-sonic-forces-sales/ So in the third quarter of the fiscal year, they sold 14.3 copies of games in retail. But that's including all games, the article specifically mentions Sonic Forces, Football Manager 2018 and Yakuza Kiwami 2. That article uses this report as a source, so have fun combing this one out for relevant information; https://www.segasammy.co.jp/english/ir/library/pdf/settlement/2018/20180207_3q_siryo_e_final.pdf I can't even find the 14.3 m copies statement in there. It does mention that Sonic Mania, Hokuto Ga Gotoku, Total War: Warhammer 2 and Valkyria Chronicles 4 were also sold that quarter and are persumingly included in the 14 million number. So 7 games sharing 14 million copies, so give or take 2 million per game depending on how popular each is. Also I'm not sure if this includes digital sales. It specifically says "retail" so I guess not. That would explain why Mania isn't mentioned among the main titles. So now we can put on our detective hats and try and figure out if any of the other games have their salesnumbers mentioned anywhere. Joy. Quickly searching around I find that Football manager 2018 had 1.2 million players in June, so at least that many copies sold (But does June still count as part of the Q3 sales Sega had?) I looked for WarHammer 2 salesnumbers but either get how much it sold on it's first day alone, or how the entire series in total sold and krrggrrr- Sorry, my brain crashed. It's not made for this sort of thing. One thing I CAN tell you is that you don't have to worry about Sega doing well, appearently they are the 4th richest game company in the world: http://www.thedailyrecords.com/2018-2019-2020-2021/world-famous-top-10-list/highest-selling-brands-products-companies-reviews/richest-video-game-companies-world-designers/16289/?fbclid=IwAR3iIML0wS0apa2vvN_3dmw3SktiuRMYV2DhmlackqxFPvAHftbKP3wr87s I did not expect that, I wasn't even expecting them in the top 20. And this was before the Sonic Movie's release. (....But also before the virus outbreak that's crushing Disney now.) Pretty sure it's their pachino and other entertainment doing more of the heavy lifting then the games, but still. Seeing them listed on top of Activision and Blizzard looks surreal to me. In fact, with nintendo, Sony and Xbox on top, it seems all the (Ex) main Console manufacters are the top dogs. Only Atari missing out.

Seems it's meant as a joke to mock people believing the rumor. It's cute how video's like Badnik mechanic's dismanteling video and that mockery video will only throw more coal and oil on the fire with the click baiting. Whether the rumors are true or false, there's gonna be a heck of a lot of obnoxious people yelling about the hypothetical Sonic Adventure remaster when the reveal panel comes. Poor Sega. Ah screw em. They had it coming with the endless cockteasing anyway.

Fair enough, this is a tough and murky subject. I am inconsistent on it myself, it isn't a black and white situation. Altough I think you misunderstood me on some details. It's not really about Plot reasons. I don't need a plot reason why Sonic goes trough Labyrinth zone. I know South Island is a location filled with ruins, and Sonic happens to traverse trough one. Sure, makes sense. Robotnik blocked off easier roads to Scrap Brain zone offscreen or something, sure, whatever. The location looks natural in the envirement, so it works well enough. The story can help, but it isn't relevant. And when I say "Story', I mean that in the loosest of sense. So not necesairely "10 minute cutscene of Tails reading a monologue about the lore of the world". It can be something as simple as a level transition, world map giving context, background details. Sonic CD is rich in detailed backgounds (Especially with the time travel component) and has a worldmap. That gives it weight, like SonicFan J says. And yes, Sonic Lost world also has a world map, but it doesn't seem very interested in giving shape to the levels I'm seeing in-game. They're not represented at all. So it never feels like a proper world map. It's a gameplay element, not anything designed to create meaning to the Hex. But I am inconsistent, now I think about it. I'm nicer toward Sonic Advance 2, that also has weird locations like Music plant. Tough it helps Sonic advance 2 isn't so tied to a specific location. And Music plant is just one zone in an otherwise more down to earth set of locations. So fine, there happens to be a weird music theme'd island smackdab in the middle of nowhere. Probably one of Robotnik's wacky scemes again. Not a big fan of it, but the game does have more grounded locations whenever it matters. And I welcome some visual variety, if you don't over do it. Like I said, all Lost world had to do was confirm The Hex is a world of illusions and the Zeti can screw around turning the landscape in any kind of weird visual for their amusement, and it can get away with anything. Context helps. And would help with the level design too. Imagine if the Zeti are actively using the illusions to screw with Sonic's head during the levels, especially the boss levels? Playing up his fears and desires? Could put a fun twist and a dramatic spin on the zany levels. Also not helping Lost World is that I'm really dissapointed the levels didn't have more wide open platform heavy area's for Sonic to really showcase his parkours abilities in. If I enjoyed the gameplay more and the levels felt more immersive, I think I would have been more tolerant toward them too. But that's an entirely diffrent matter. But what I missed the most with Lost World is something that ties it all together. Something that gives the Hex it's own identity. But The Zeti have no house, or palace, or city. Eggman didn't even have a base, other then lightbulbs in black room. Well okay, to be fair, the semi-final level has a fortress. Too bad it looks so aggresively Mario-esque with little to no hints of Eggman or Zeti personality to it that it's too little, too late. There's nothing that gives Hex it's own shape. No central location. Nothing that's HEX. It only has the level design, the weird tubes flying in the sky. In the end, it leaves me with nothing but the bare naked level tropes. Mario Lava land. Sonic Green Hill Zone land. And that's when I get dismissive toward them. Green Hill Zone for the sake of Green Hill Zone, rather then it being a legit landscape. To Sonic Lost World's credit, it does have a unique art style that's instantly recognisable. But it leaves nothing to the imagination. But yeah, this is all murky and I'm not even sure if I truly understand it, but something just feels off. Especially in the larger context of all the other Nostalgia heavy games around Lost world. It's not fair toward the game, but it having Generations, Mania and Lego Dimensions hovering around it doesn't help at all. It puts more pressure on Lost World to have a really strong identity, being the only Original Sonic game in a long time. I have been a lot more tolerant with Green Hill Zone esque locations in other Sonic games, Sonic advance 2 once again gets a pass. Seaside hill did, up until the spinoff games kept repeating it too often for my liking. Lost world has the really bad luck to be released inbetween all the nostalgia games that overplayed that trope, so like I said before, there was more pressure on that game to be unique then most other Sonic games have. It's a shame, I wish I could love Sonic Lost World, I love a lot of its ideas. And some of the reasons why I'm dismissive toward that game are not fair and are more about circumstances. But it all adds up. Fair or not.

Problem with Lost world is that it didn't do anything to create a real identity to the Lost world. I mean, it's the titular central setting, and could have been a great location. But Lost World never shows interest in making it's levels be anything more then random aesthetics in limbo with no thought or weight to them. Hence why a lot of people, including me, dismiss them as either nostalgia pandering, Mario Rip offs or utterly random. I would have had mor tolerance for these elements if there was any attempt to make the Lost world feel more like a genuine setting rather then just the generic Mario world themes with the occasional Casino or donut level inbetween. There's nothing wrong with these themes in and on themselves, in fact Lost world technically had a built-in reason for why the setting could be random- it's the Land of illusion according to the Japanese manual. Perfect oppurtunity to use that as a plot point, but alas. Nothing is made of it. They're just random shapes in the sky. Just "level" because it's "Videogame". An insult to a series with such rich envirements. Give me South Island, or Station Square, or Space Colony Arc, or Color's intergalactic amusement park any day of the week over "Shapes and colors in limbo" land. That, to me, is the real underlying reason why I'm dismissive and irritated by nostalgia pandering. If it's used legitmatly like a real location, just like the Classic games actually did, then fine. But there's this aggresive lack of context or thought to it. Aesthetics just for the sake of aesthetics that makes everything feel so soulless. ESPECIALLY when the setting seems to be a vital element to the game, like The Lost World. It's right there in the title, it's what the game is about. The lost continent. I don't mind revisiting Green Hill if we're legitamatly back in South island. Or it's a new Green Hill esque beach strip on a diffrent island. But that isn't how it's often used, it's just a soulless aestehtic floating in limbo that you revisit because it was in that other game too. But Mario does it, so Sonic should do it too. Sonic games seem to steal all the bad ideas from Mario games and none of the good ones.

Good video about dismanteling the Adventure rumors, altough it doesn't adress one detail bothering me. Every animated cartoon so far was to directly tie-in with a specific game in stores, Mania and Team Sonic racing. The Chao in space video is the only one that doesn't directly advertise a relevant game. Probably empty fanservice as usual, but I'm still wondering why Sega would invest so much money in a cartoon promoting obsolete elements from the series. A cartoon about the Wisps would make more sense then the Chao who haven't had relevance in over a decade, other then being character #15 in a spinoff game. I suppose the answer is that Sega wanted to ride the coattails of Star Wars, like that video implied. As an Adventure fan, this empty fanservice it pisses me off, tough. You spend all this time, energy and money hyping up Sonic Adventure stuff to keep Adventure fans engaged and hyped up....for products that has zero interest in furfilling these expectations beyond the most superficial surface level stuff. Great, thanks. I much prefer them to be honest. Using the dead decaying corpse of Sonic Adventure as a leash to drag me to another one of Sonic Team's mad delusions just makes me increasingly toxic and disrespectful toward Sega. Either do a Sonic Adventure thing, or throw the entire Adventure direction in the furnace so I can stop digging trough Sonic Team's trash to find a bone. But Sega desperatly wants to keep us around, so off we go buying the next insult like the dumb little zombies we are. This empty fanservice is driving me insane, like a cabbage restaurant filling the place with Pizza ovens, pizza llustrations, putting Pizza in big letters on all menu's, and then only serving cabbage still.

Hmm, I didn't really get the implication the original post intended to tie him no longer working at Sega to the reception of Lost World. Every description ends with the current status of the employed in question.

I suppose the whole Team A/ Team B thinking comes from the 2000 era when Shadow, Sonic 06 and Sonic and the secret rings were all made at the same time as even Unleashed was being cooked up in the background. With how simple, short and lazy most modern games feel, I suppose many of us love the theory that "the real" Sonic Team is somewhere in the shadows working on the next"real" Sonic game. While the clunky games served up are mere spinoffs about to be erased in relevance as soon as that hypothetical real Sonic game finally shows up. Of course those feelings were never based on facts or reality, more a vague hope. But yeah, thanks for the research, interesting read. Now I lost even more hope and optimism for the next game. Was surprised I still had optimism left to be lost. I thought more ex- Sonic team designers moved on to Mario kart 8 and Mario Odyssey. Surprised I didn't see these games show up.

I think the better point with Mania is that that game had focus. It knew exactly what it wanted to be, what the audience was, and what they wanted. It had a very specific goal, specific focus. Make a Classic style game. And went 100% for that. Compare that to Forces that was trying to do it's own thing, throw in a half assed classic Sonic to appease classic fans, shove in Shadow and a half assed story to appease the Adventure fans. There's no focus, no identity, just a pile of things. So that's where I'd agree with Shadowlax. Do it Mania style. Make the occasional spin off directly tailored to a specific flavor of Sonic. Much rather have Sega either stop appeasing fans and just make what Sonic Team genuinely wants to make (If they genuinely want to make it, chances are we genuinely want to play it, even if it's a new direction) Or if they DO want to appease us, then SIT the *$& DOWN, take a good hard look at what people want and how those games operated, and genuinely make a game that carries on that DNA structure and evolve it further. Don't just grab surface level nostalgia and brainlessly shove it in a game where it doesn't fit. These fake attempts to appease me as an Adventure fan just piss me off. And It's impossible for me to respect and love the new ideas Sonic Team has since none of their new ideas ever had a chance to breathe. Technically I love what Sonic Lost World Tried to do, but boy does is that game making it hard for me to see it's qualities. Can hardly mock fans for mostly delivering singular tech demo levels when Sonic Team themselves can't carry most of their ideas trough an entire game either.

Far as I'm concerned, the main reason why fans change their minds so often is because they keep understimating Sonic Team's incompotence. When we scream "We want more Boost", we mean that in a "Take Sonic unleashed, improve on it's shortcomings and evolve it to the next level", where Sonic Team is just "Derp, here's more boost" in a way that doesn't improve or evolve Unleashed at all, but if anything makes it even more simplistic and worse. Sonic Team only solves problems by burning everything to the ground that fans complain about, which is why everything feels so hallow and empty these days. I wouldn't say they're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as much as they're straight up chucking baby's out the window whenever bathwater is even mentioned. Yet somehow it took us too long to realize this and we blamed the trouble on the direction Sonic Team mishandled, not the actual mishandeling. It's why I don't bother much with any "Sonic team should make 2d games/ Sonic adventure 3/ Stop with Boost games" opinions. Sure, I have preferences, but in the end it doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that Sonic Team is the one working on these games and they completely lost any control, passion and coherence over their franchise. It's Sonic Team themselves I'm concerned about, not what specific flavor of Sonic they're going to completely miss the point of next. As for 3d Sonic fan games, Sonic Robo blast 2.2 man. There's your Sonic Adventure style 3d platforming with multiple playable characters, full compaign, level gimmicks, the whole shebang right there.

It's kinda funny, usually when old games get remade, they get a whole bunch of bonus features on top of it to make it more worthwhile, either the sequels included (Spyro/ Crash) or a Dungeon Creator (Link's awakening) or something. That's because these 90's games are much smaller in terms of content then what we expect a full fletched game to have in 2010/ 2020. Sonic Adventure on the other hand, has easily twice, perhaps thrice the amount of content that most modern Sonic games contain, so it'll probably be the reverse situation. I expect it to be half the game with all extra's eliminated. But hey, it'd be sold for half the price. So just like Sonic Forces and Team Sonic racing, half a game for half a price. Granted, a lot of folk in this discussion seem to like that, altough I'd still be irritated out of principle. And besides.... I hate it that Amy and E-102 and such are dismissed as filler. It's them that make Sonic adventure feel so rich, you get to live out a life as an Eggman robot, the ignored sidekick gets her day in the limelight and gets to investigate a mystery while in over her head. Etc. It's what puts the "Adventure" in Sonic Adventure. If you hate all the Hub stuff and playing as minor characters in side stories, are you sure you want a Sonic Adventure remake and not a Sonic Heroes remake? And unlike puzzles and gimmicks in Sonic Colors where it all feels abstract and puzzles for the sake of puzzles, I felt Amy's gimmicks and puzzles helped with the context, the whole "Innocent civilian heroicly trying to infiltrate/ escape Eggman's base". Sometimes figuring out Eggman's weird security systems, sometimes running for your life when scary overpowered robots chase after you. Character building for Amy and for Eggman. How often do we get a chance to really get a close feel of how Eggman's bases work, filled with his petty humor, wacky security systems and mundane facilities right inbetween all the deathtraps. We're truly navigating Eggman's base for real, rather then it just being a random aesthetic to Level #23. Again, putting the Adventure in Sonic Adventure. It's exactly the parts of Adventure I want to see sharpened, cleaned up and improved for a remade instead of dismissed as trash. Because yes, Amy's parts are clunky and glitchy as heck. But I love the idea behind it. In fact, that sums up the entirety of Sonic adventure up for me, awesome ideas, ambitions and gameworld as made by a team still figuring out how all this 3d stuff works. And why the idea of this game getting a remake with a team with a better mastery of 3d gameplay is so appealing. If they're going to strip out all the Adventure elements for being "not like Sonic" or "filler", then we'll just get Sonic Forces with Sonic Adventure wallpaper, exactly what I don't want. This is Sonic Adventure, not Sonic 4 in 3d. I want them to fix Sonic adventure, not dismiss it. .......... But that's all wishfull thinking. As much as I love dreaming about a solid tight version of Sonic adventure, I still have to remind myself this will be made by Modern Sonic Team. Seeing their attempts to recreate Classic Sonic, something they should be able to do in their sleep at this point, sucks away any optimism I may have. (I don't consider Mania to be made by Sonic Team proper. I hope assisting with that game did slap them awake, tough.) And with Sega's track record of "Fix the problem by burning everything to the ground", I have little hope. Fortunatly it's proably not THE Sonic team making this hypothetical remake, but a hired third party developer, so there's a chance to have a better shot at getting it right. Let's roll the dice and see if we'll get a Whitehead or a Big Red Button esque developer. As for fangames mastering 3d gameplay, my money's on Sonic Robo blast 2.2. Unlike most 3d fangames, that one is (Nearly) complete with a full compaign, several zones and bosses, not just a tech demo opening stage. Intense platforming, level gimmicks, bosses, story transitions, multiple playable characters with their own abilities, the whole shebang. And entirely focused on being a 3d version of the classic games, so huge levels with multiple pathways, exploration, speed, hidden levels, everything. Another thing I prefer over most other 3d remakes is that while Sonic still feels free and can make a lot of air, it never feels like he's almost disconnected from the level and constantly flying over huge chunks of the level. You have freeedom, but controlled freedom within a legit level design, rather then just randomly flying over random chunks of level that can't contain you. Only thing missing are loops.