What does Japan see in Forces?

[PKGaming]

4 hours ago, EmmBee said:

If I had to guess, this thread was made in reaction to the rather positive Famitsu review of Forces. That's the only reasoning I could see behind it.

That was one reason, yes. It just made me curious if Japanese fans just like Modern Sonic more because of the style and story or if they actually prefer the gameplay. I know a lot of us harp on the flaws of Boost gameplay and it just made me curious if Japanese gamers see it the same way or see it differently. 

[goku262002]

why not ask somebody like @Woun, whose involved in 3 region's fandoms (Japanese, Russian, and American) and can give a general idea?

Otherwise your best chance is probably Japanese social medias like 2ch and twitter.co.jp.

[Gabriel_Lloyd]

10 hours ago, Remy said:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179689675&postcount=304

Regarding Sonic 2 sales in Japan, I've found something interesting taken directly from the same topic.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=179740324&postcount=307

If those informations are true, then Sonic 2 for the Mega Drive would have probably been the best selling Sonic game for the Genesis. There's still nothing regarding Sonic 1 though.

[rahkeesh]

So I listened through Nakamura's interview at the 2017 TGS 1st day a while back, a few things I made sense of from it that are relevant:

"In Japan [people say] 'he's too fast',   'too many characters', or something, so [Sonic]'s not yet popular here... but of course in America and Europe [he is.]"

He wants to bring back the "feeling" of SA1/2 that has faded over the years. (Nakamura said he started working on Sonic games with adventure 1. Also it was pointed out here that Adventure outsold the classics in Japan.)

Anime is self-consciously being aped for Japanese players, in terms of "serious" story and vocal music. He hopes Americans might "grow to appreciate" it as well.

The avatar would be big in bringing new players to the series.

 

Bottom line it feels from his side that they are making efforts to try and reach a larger Japanese audience with Forces. They might make be making a bigger marketing push than usual in Japan if they are hoping to improve sales compared to typical Sonic games. Trying to ape Mario in Lost World might have been done for some similar reasons. (Not that it helped there.)

[Maxtiis]

21 hours ago, Cayenne said:

Sonic, Sega Genesis and Sega of America were successful thanks to two things: #1 - Heavy marketing (Blast Processing, Genesis Does, etc.) #2 - Nintendo losing their monopoly. Sega of Europe had #1 and one additional advantage: The Master System was released and enjoyed a good wave of popularity before Nintendo could do anything in that territory.

Sega of Japan didn't have the same luck. They had very strong competitors. The Famicom gigantic sucess, PC-E had one year of advantage over the Mega Drive plus a CD add-on and the SFC simply kicked everyone's butt with Nintendo franchises, the first Street Fighter II port and games from Square and Enix. Every Sega home video game console was niche until the Sega Saturn finally hit the shelves there.

Yeah I know all that stuff, but you bring up another interesting point that the Saturn would have been the best opportunity for Sega to make Sonic a household name in Japan, had they actually made an original Sonic title for the system instead of a port of 3D Blast, a compilation, and a racing game. Seriously of all the systems to not have their company mascot, it had to be their most popular console in that region. What weird circumstances.