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Iizuka: “We Will Probably See Sonic Going into Other Genres of Games”


Detective Shadzter

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I can finally prepare my list of Sonic games SEGA should make!

Call of Flicky: Modern Hedgehog

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Tetris

Peel-Out: Paradise/Revenge/Crash

Eggman Origins (I'm actually serious about this one)

Most of all...we NEED a SEGA Big Fishing. That's enough genres covered for a few years I'd say!

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Just don't try to hype these other games up as a 'return to form' (Not that Sonic needs it anymore) when in reality you're really making a beat-em-up/shooter/fighting game/whatever, and I don't think there will be too much of a problem.

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Just don't try to hype these other games up as a 'return to form' (Not that Sonic needs it anymore) when in reality you're really making a beat-em-up/shooter/fighting game/whatever, and I don't think there will be too much of a problem.

Why the hell would SEGA do that?

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I guess a cg animated tv show would allow for all that character development you've all been begging for.

But in order for it to reach a wider audience it'd have to be on either Nick or Cartoon Network. Put it on Disney and I don't think anybody would ever see it.

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I don't really want a CG animated show. :l CG movies usually look great but CG TV shows usually look cheap. CG usually only looks good if you throw a ton of money at it.

...

Flash would also be a big no-no as well...

Edited by 'Ferno
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I don't really want a CG animated show. :l CG movies usually look great but CG TV shows usually look cheap.

...

Flash would also be a big no-no as well...

I agree, unless the CGI is on par with what we get in the games and Night of the Werehog, I would want a Sonic Anime that kinda looks like this:

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Why the hell would SEGA do that?

That's kind of what they did with every game after Sonic Heroes, Unleashed in particular. Obviously it's not like the entire game is a beat-em-up, but I remember the first time I saw the trailer, accompanied by an article with a quote from SEGA acknowledging that they needed to give Sonic a 'return to form'. And then the trailer itself looked so good. Sonic boosted along on grind rails and springs...and then not long after that they revealed the werehog. (It might have even been at the end of that exact trailer)

I just want SEGA to avoid stuff like that again, is all.

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I agree, unless the CGI is on par with what we get in the games and Night of the Werehog, I would want a Sonic Anime that kinda looks like this:

Off topic:Watching that video while listening to planet wisp classic is just bad ass!happy.png

On topic: Something like that...I guess. I would hope more of a pokemon movie kind of animation look with beautiful scenery and good looking animations of characters.

Sorta like this:

movie10_ep1_ss2.jpg

movie12_ep5_ss1.jpg

Edited by Classic Hedgehogs Boost
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CG usually only looks good if you throw a ton of money at it.

The same could be said for any form of animation. Regardless if it's 2d or 3d.

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Off topic:Watching that video while listening to planet wisp classic is just bad ass!happy.png

On topic: Something like that...I guess. I would hope more of a pokemon movie kind of animation look with beautiful scenery and good looking animations of characters.

Sorta like this:

movie10_ep1_ss2.jpg

movie12_ep5_ss1.jpg

While that would be awesome, that might be asking for a bit much. Sonic's not popular in Japan, and Sonic X was kinda low budget (the animation quality was inconsistent). ...On the flip-side, however X was very successful in America, since 4Kids still airs reruns of it on Saturday mornings, despite it finishing about 5 years ago. Then they could take the Thundercats reboot route and have it animated in Japan for American/European broadcast. I'm not sure how much money SEGA or whatever animation studio they would get to do it would be willing to spend.

Edited by Spider-Man Noir
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While that would be awesome, that might be asking for a bit much. Sonic's not popular in Japan, and Sonic X was kinda low budget (the animation quality was inconsistent). ...Unless they take the Thundercats reboot route and have it animated in Japan for American/European broadcast. I'm not sure how much money SEGA or whatever animation studio they would get to do it would be willing to spend.

I Guess. Hopefully for a movie they use that kind of animation though. That seems more realistic.

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I'm glad they're taking the risk to bring more variety to Sonic, as long as it takes the Mario route and stays out of the main games. I'm hoping though, that SEGA puts some better effort than they did with their Mario party clone, Sonic Shuffle.

Anyways, moving on to the idea of an animated series. I'm for a Hand-drawn series 100%, and if SEGA are pressed for money, a Flash series. MLP:FIM proved that good animation can be present in Flash toons as well, along with the vibrant and stretchy nature of many theatrical shorts.

Another thing; when SEGA hires writers, I hope they go for writers who try to go for a more universal script in the series. The biggest problem I had with Sonic X was that it was just too Japanese in just about everything it did and that limited the first two seasons substantially in terms of appeal, but subtracting the audience size to that of Japanese children and the more forgiving Sonic fans.

The same could be said for any form of animation. Regardless if it's 2d or 3d.

Yea, but Hand-drawn animation has more advantages in terms of budget. As an avid animation fan I can tell you stories of how limited CGI toons can be on TV. Many writers can dish out great stories for shows, but often times CGI can be too expensive to allow many stories to come to fruition. One writer of the Clone Wars show mentioned how he made an incredible season finale for season 3 that was well praised amongst the entire staff, but when the budget was accounted for, they were forced to scrap the idea and settle on reusing a planet for the finale.

In Sonic's case, CGI would limit a lot of the flexibility in Sonic's model, as he would be reduced to very cramped areas, as is the problem with many CGI shows. They usually are kept in cramped CG environments so as to save money on render budget which also limits camera angles, character movements, etc.

There are a few ways to get around these monetary flaws. One such way is making the character's actions be so fast that you can skip a few frames -a common trait in most animation really, but in 2D it's mostly for style- a trick that could easily fit for Sonic if used properly.

However, another limit that plagues 3D is how many characters you can have on the screen, and how many characters in general. Character models cost money to keep and use. This is the major difference between CGI and Traditional animation.

Sonic has a large cast of characters, each with their own unique design, meaning there has to be a lot of models just for them all. Not to mention Robotnik's robots. The gimmick is that he continues to build different robot designs and inventions to rule the world, and as is that would have to be toned down in a CGI animated series. We'd be seeing a lot of egg-pawns in this series if it were CGI.

Now, if you want my opinion. I believe the solution is to go with DTVs and OVAs vs. TV series when it comes to CGI, unless SEGA were willing to put Clone Wars budget to make the series as anything lower would be severely lacking, especially if it were the standard 52 episode series. That's a good number of episodes to wear a budget thin, and after seeing how Sonic X's animation was funded, I'm a little sketchy.

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Sonic playable with Caliburn in the next Soul Calibur anyone? I kid, I kid.

As pretty much everyone said already, as long as it doesn't leak into the main series I'm totally fine with this. Some more solid multiplayer-focused games would be awesome. Sonic Riders and All-Stars Racing get lots of playtime when I have friends over. I'd like to see another Riders game that plays similar to the first one and doesn't strictly rely on Kinect or Move. I wouldn't mind a new fighting game either.

I'd love to see more Pixar-like animations featuring the main cast, much like the unlockable ones in Unleashed or Night of the Werehog. That would be a great way to promote the franchise and it would be much cheaper than producing a full-blown anime series. They could either be shown in theatres before the movie starts or as viral videos on YouTube.

Edited by Toothpaste
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I'm not really bothered about other media, but buttressing the franchise's visibility and profitability with spin-off titles separate from the main titles never stopped being a good idea. It's a good way to experiment with game-changing gimmicks without infecting the main series, which for the past couple of years has made Sonic look rather like a gimmick series. Although Colours and Generations handle their gimmicks better than Unleashed - Colours by not letting it dominate and Generations by having it be a legitimate reference to Sonic's history. As for Unleashed, I suspect the Werehog would've been less offensive to people if it had been in a spin-off title. Heck, I find Black Knight thoroughly unoffensive on a conceptual level for exactly this reason.

Another reason why more spin-offs would work is because it implicitly requires different teams for different consoles to focus on different projects, rather than attempting to make downgraded versions of games for the high-end consoles - I'm thinking of Wii/PS2 Unleashed, DS Colours, and 3DS Generations here (although DS Colours was barely even trying to be the same game, so it worked).

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I agree, unless the CGI is on par with what we get in the games and Night of the Werehog, I would want a Sonic Anime that kinda looks like this:

Hey a CG show can work you know. Have you seen the animation in transformers prime? If the animation in a sonic show were anything like that I'd be glued to the tv.

Edited by Dark Energon Johnny
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The last game which was of a different genre was ASR wasn't it?

So remind me again why people are freaking out?

Edited by Hogfather
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Methinks we'll probably see a Movie or a Show sooner or later. And people are overreacting on the whole genre thing...it's not like they will put some alt. gameplay out there again. Iizuka also said that he doesn't want to departure from the Sonic style of gameplay ya know.

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The last game which was of a different genre was ASR wasn't it?

So remind me again why people are freaking out?

I'm not sure ASR really counts, seeing as that was more the third SEGA Superstars title than a Sonic game. The other genre games we've had in recent years include the Riders series, Story Book series (to an extent), Chronicles, the Rivals series (again, only to an extent) and half of Unleashed being a brawler. I can understand why the mainstream audience would freak out.

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This could either be very good or very bad. If Iizuka means that Sonic will star in games of differing genres than the core games, such as RPGs, sports games, or fighting games (Sonic Battle or Sonic All Stars Racing come to mind), than I'd be very pleased. A lot of these spin-offs have ranged from being good to excellent (the Riders games not withstanding), and if Sonic Team or another company produces more so the main development team can have more time to bunker down and focus on their big project, much like they did with Generations, than I'm all for it.

However, if he's referring to the genre roulette that pretty much took half the fun out of games like Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Unleashed, than we're screwed. Colors and Generations have efficiently shown how to implement unique gimmicks into the game without impeding the core gameplay, and to throw that out the window in favor of half the game being a slow-as-shit Dante the God of Werehog ripoff, or a treasure hunting adventure through barren wastelands, or a mech-shooter... I mean, why? Why should these alternate gameplay styles even be allowed to return in the main-games? It's like if Mario was in a game where by day, he would platform his way through environments and bop his enemies on the head, but by night he'd turn into a hitman who snipes goombas. I mean... what the fuck?

Yeah, I wouldn't mind these genres returning, but in the form of purely optional mini-games. They have no business impeding the core experience because they conflict with the very groundwork that the franchise has established, and serve no purpose other than to provide padding to give the illusion that the game is "longer", when in reality you're just getting less high-speed platforming and more bullshit.

Edited by EXshad
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New Fighting game made by Arcsystemworks, with similar controls to Guilty Gear/BlazBlue. Every character will have their own special abilities different from everybody else.

And will everyone will have finishers like these:

Tis a pipe dream.

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