Sonic-related pet peeves?

[Kuzu]

A recent peeve of mine; I'm really getting tired of people who are fans of a certain game who somehow feel it's a problem if someone else likes another game they don't, and just insult the game or the people who do. It's like people can't accept that not everyone likes their treasured game or that it's not immune to criticism. I mean does it really matter in the end?

[Tara]

Some that I saw as I scanned the topic that I can echo:

 

• People referring to rings as coins.  I mean, it's such a silly thing to get upset over, but it's like when people refer to anime as manga or vice versa... or even more annoyingly, when people refer to anime as "manga shows" or manga "anime books."  It's trivial to get upset over it, but yet it does annoy me.
• CG coverarts.  My 90's/early 2000's nostalgia has me missing hand-drawn cover arts as well, though I have nothing against CG in general.  Really, what bothers me is not the use of computers but the perspective of it. I'm okay with the game's graphics being in 3-D, but what I hate is when the artwork is in 3-D.  For a cartoon, it really doesn't immerse you at all.  Anyone familiar with that extremely forgettable CGI Garfield show that began airing on Cartoon Network around 2010?  The characters aren't graced at all by having one extra dimension.
• People who assign the age of the franchise with the age of the characters.  Although this is a lot more annoying in the Pokémon fanbase than it is in the Sonic fanbase.  I mean, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but whenever I hear "It's been fifteen years and Ash still hasn't aged!" I almost want to tear my hair out.  The reason this bothers me the most is that this only applies to SOME franchises.  Nobody looks at Family Guy, or Spider-Man, or Mario and says "Man, it's been so long, you'd think they'd age!"  Yet, somehow Sonic and Pokémon get all kinds of backlash because the lead characters never age.  Finally, I wouldn't have this problem if someone could explain to me why the series would be better if they aged.  What about an older Sonic or an older Ash Ketchum would instantly make for a better narrative?  Of course, that question is always completely thrown out the window and replaced with the excuse "It's been over a decade!"

 

 

 

Okay, with that said, here are some of my own that I don't know if they've been addressed or not as I didn't bother to read all 149 pages of this topic.

 

• I know this is a hypocritical thing to talk about in a topic such as this, but I really hate it when people complain about the fanbase being stupid.  This applies to anything, really.  It's become sort of a trend to blame the fanbase over the actual material.  With the Sonic fanbase, it constantly grates on my nerves when people complain about how Sonic fans complain over everything, whereby they don't complain over everything because they're too busy complaining about Sonic fans complaining ASDFHSDKJFHSDJKFHSDKJF.  Excuse me, I uh... sort of uh... sorry about that.  Let me continue by saying that it doesn't matter where you go, the harshest criticisms for a series will always come, not by the people who dislike the series, by people who DO like the series.  The majority of Sonic fans may have a long list of complaints, but that's only because they love the series so much.  On a different note, I hate it when people say the fanbase is divided as though that's anything new.  It doesn't matter what you're into, people have different opinions and like different aspects of different games for different reasons.  Going back to Pokémon, we have what we call "genwunners" which describes people who only like the first three Pokémon games.  Then we have "newgenners" which describes people who are enthusiastic about the series.  Both are derogatory when used in the right tone, and... really, I think it's stupid.  I have a bit of a bias for the first generation because Pokémon Blue was my first Game Boy game, but I don't think that makes me better or that my opinion is any more valid than the other, and certainly I don't coin a silly term to disenfranchise those who think differently.  It's like when gamers refer to people as "casual" as an insult.  "Ha, what a loser!  He has interests OTHER than video games!"
• When I was younger and Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were already out, there was this nagging frustration when my friends would say "Knuckles is faster than Sonic."  Can you imagine how difficult it is to talk to people in that age range that it's just that the character animation looks faster and that canonically speaking Sonic is supposed to be faster?  Then you have the "Shadow is faster because he has rocket boots" thing.  Apparently being able to levitate is synonymous with being able to run at supersonic speeds by default.

[Spin Attaxx]

Well, the jets on Shadow's shoes let him run fast. Take his shoes off, and Sonic will run circles around him.

[Tara]

Well, the jets on Shadow's shoes let him run fast. Take his shoes off, and Sonic will run circles around him.

That's pretty much what I thought as well, though I think there are scenes in different media where we see him running as fast as Sonic minus the jets, but correct me if I'm wrong.

[Semi-colon e]

As much as the Colours bosses are very samey because they're split into three archetypes as it were, it kind of annoys me a bit when people give it shit, yet Unleashed gets away with having the 3 Daytime bosses being almost the EXACT SAME THING each time. The last one is just the first two combined with some fancy wall running, and I don't find any of them particularly engaging or memorable.

At least the Werehog bosses had some variety.

[Tara]

As much as the Colours bosses are very samey because they're split into three archetypes as it were, it kind of annoys me a bit when people give it shit, yet Unleashed gets away with having the 3 Daytime bosses being almost the EXACT SAME THING each time. The last one is just the first two combined with some fancy wall running, and I don't find any of them particularly engaging or memorable.

At least the Werehog bosses had some variety.

That's probably the game was paced much better so people were more forgiving of the repeated bosses, or are like me and didn't notice that the bosses were repeated, but now that I think of it, I do remember now and that is very true.

 

Although in fairness, the three repeated bosses were actually fun to fight.  I might have forgiven Colors for repeating the boss three times if it was a good boss, but I didn't like them.

[Amomynous]

 The authors tend to over exaggerate his mental strength. I call this immunity, because they literally make Sonic immune to any and all types of fear, anxiety, sadness (-cough- unless it is regarding their Mary-Sue OCs -cough-). Fear and anxiety are human reactions to stressful situations, which Sonic is constantly in. One could argue that he has become desensitized to the danger, because of that (the constant fighting), but I beg to differ. At least initially, where Sonic is first introduced to a new enemy, there is some form of anxiety. Sonic would have just met the enemy; he doesn't know what the bad guy has up his sleeve, his power, his intentions. This uncertainty would instill fear. Over time, I'm sure the anxiety would diminish as he became more familiar with the enemy's tactics, but, in the fan-fictions I am referring to, the authors makes absolutely no mention of fear or anxiety. Sonic is mentally strong, yes that is a fact, but he still has human emotions. When you are humanizing an otherwise inhuman character, at least give them adequate emotional responses. Sonic is not immune to distress. That being said, I can understand how people can make that mistake; they are trying too hard to keep him in character. It is a respectable effort, but it makes the story unrealistic and more unidentifiable; people cannot entirely identify with Sonic in the stressful situations he gets into if he shows no sort of emotion, other than confidence. Any normal person would feel anxious. They can't empathize with someone who doesn't.

Wouldn't exactly call it an exaggeration of mental strength, exaggeration of his arrogance more like (or possibly his physical strength,if he's too god-mode to be scared). 

Edited January 13, 2013 by Mysterics

[Anti Alias]

unpopular opinion I find worthwhile to repeat.

 

I would rather have a canon character derailed to be in a romance with a fan character in a crappy fanfic, than having a ubber crappy fanfic with two derailed canon already established character's making kissy faces at each other and acting nothing like themselves.

 

it irks me to no end, seriously.

 

but I don't peeve anymore with the shipping fanfics fandom, they just don't care about the characters, they care about the paring, period.

 

by the way, I'm not the main audience of such stories, so, it's just better to ignore...

Edited January 13, 2013 by Anti Alias

[Frogging101]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but eh, I'll say it anyway.

Why the hell do some games (Generations and SA2, at least) take away a life when you restart the level from the menu? I guess it's to prevent you from abusing it when you're about to die, but that argument falls flat when you realize that dying and restarting the whole level aren't the same thing (unless you have no lives, but I'll get to that in a minute); dying will send you back to a checkpoint and starting over will restart the whole level. Not to mention that it's just bad game design to punish the player for intentionally making a choice to restart the level. Besides, I can circumvent the whole thing by just going back to the menu/hub world and re-entering the level, so what's the damn point?

It's hella annoying when speedrunning, where I have to restart whenever I make a dumb mistake. And compounding this poor design decision is the fact that you can't restart the level if you have no lives left. But guess what happens if you die with no lives left? You restart the level. I just don't know what was going through their heads when they thought up this system. It's pointless for multiple reasons and it's annoying on top of that.

Edited January 14, 2013 by Frogging101

[JonoD]

This doesn't exactly bother me, but it's something I've always wondered:

 

 

...What exactly is Robotnik's giant mech walking on? We establish that it's a bottomless pit, So maybe it's some ground far below... but they're in space? Where's the solid ground?

[TheOcelot]

This doesn't exactly bother me, but it's something I've always wondered:

 

 

...What exactly is Robotnik's giant mech walking on? We establish that it's a bottomless pit, So maybe it's some ground far below... but they're in space? Where's the solid ground?

 

The giant robot doesn't need to be walking on anything, because it's powered by the Master Emerald!

 

[JonoD]

The giant robot doesn't need to be walking on anything, because it's powered by the Master Emerald!

 

 

Even though it's still going 'crash crash crash' every time it takes a step and the whole screen shakes?

[TheOcelot]

Even though it's still going 'crash crash crash' every time it takes a step and the whole screen shakes?

 

Err....that's because the Death Egg robot is leaning/pushing against the platform, which is what causes the platform that Sonic is running on to shake and eventually start breaking apart.....

[StaticMania]

Litttle pet peeve here.

 

People who think that the Archie comics are true canon and the way the games go are based on the way they do them or the fact that they think that both universes are the same and are both the same canon. Its freaking stupid because they just assume that they're corerect without even checking to see if they're wrong and have to get told that every time someone thinks that.

[Tara]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but eh, I'll say it anyway.

Why the hell do some games (Generations and SA2, at least) take away a life when you restart the level from the menu? I guess it's to prevent you from abusing it when you're about to die, but that argument falls flat when you realize that dying and restarting the whole level aren't the same thing (unless you have no lives, but I'll get to that in a minute); dying will send you back to a checkpoint and starting over will restart the whole level. Not to mention that it's just bad game design to punish the player for intentionally making a choice to restart the level. Besides, I can circumvent the whole thing by just going back to the menu/hub world and re-entering the level, so what's the damn point?

It's hella annoying when speedrunning, where I have to restart whenever I make a dumb mistake. And compounding this poor design decision is the fact that you can't restart the level if you have no lives left. But guess what happens if you die with no lives left? You restart the level. I just don't know what was going through their heads when they thought up this system. It's pointless for multiple reasons and it's annoying on top of that.

Super Mario 64 got around the whole "restarting the level to avoid losing a life" exploit by disabling the pause menu in certain situations.  You'd think Sega would take a cue from that.

[Dizcrybe]

Super Mario 64 got around the whole "restarting the level to avoid losing a life" exploit by disabling the pause menu in certain situations.  You'd think Sega would take a cue from that.

 

I'm glad they didn't. What if I need a bathroom break or my mom calls me or something?

[Diogenes]

Super Mario 64 got around the whole "restarting the level to avoid losing a life" exploit by disabling the pause menu in certain situations.  You'd think Sega would take a cue from that.

But that was annoying, and lives basically didn't matter anyway. Down with lives.

[Tara]

I'm glad they didn't. What if I need a bathroom break or my mom calls me or something?

You can still pause the game.  You just can't exit the stage.

 

But that was annoying, and lives basically didn't matter anyway. Down with lives.

I'll give you it was annoying, but then, like you said, lives don't matter, so it was okay to just to kill yourself.

[Amomynous]

Robotnik was an adult from the start, so why is the classic one shorter than modern? In Generations of course.

Edited January 15, 2013 by Mysterics

[Your Vest Friend]

Most people gain weight when they overeat. He gains height. 

[iDEATH]

Robotnik was an adult from the start, so why is the classic one shorter than modern? In Generations of course.

 

He had that surgery where they break your legs and lengthen them. You have to be stuck in a wheelchair for a good while when you get that surgery so that explains Sonic's quiet spell before adventure.

Canon.

 

I'm sure this has been mentioned before but it really bothers me when people A)Mix canons and B)complain that stuff is different in various series as if they're  all meant to be contained in the same canon.

[Blue Blood]

Robotnik was an adult from the start, so why is the classic one shorter than modern? In Generations of course.

Because classic/modern is not the same as young/old.

[Spin Attaxx]

Aren't Classic Sonic and Tails officially younger versions of Sonic and Tails?

[Blue Blood]

Aren't Classic Sonic and Tails officially younger versions of Sonic and Tails?

Not really. As far as Generations is concerned, there's specifically no mention of specific time frames or even an age at Sonic's birthday. The Classic cast are from the past, and their Modern counterparts from present time. But there's no age involved. It's something purely done for the audience. Generations as a whole is like this.

[Amomynous]

^So you're saying basically the classic versions might as well have been from last week?