Sonic Racing Rumors - "It's happening, FOOLS!"

[Salamander]

4 hours ago, Sean said:

My disappointment in the lack of Sega characters could be offset by appearances and references to obscure characters and games (like Nack, or areas from Chaotix or even the GG games) or at least tracks based on Sonic Mania zones. So, if nothing else I'm hoping that Sumo can get as much freedom in their references as possible. If it's restricted to the modern cast and settings, it'd be a pretty hard sell for me.

I absolutely agree; it would be much more exciting and unpredictable a product if they were allowed to follow the Smash Bros. approach of including some of the more obscure characters who haven't had an appearance in a long time.  Nack honestly doesn't seem too unrealistic under that line of thinking, given that he just got an outing in Mania which Sega apparently agreed to without much persuasion.

[Eurisko]

9 minutes ago, FFWF said:

I absolutely agree; it would be much more exciting and unpredictable a product if they were allowed to follow the Smash Bros. approach of including some of the more obscure characters who haven't had an appearance in a long time.  Nack honestly doesn't seem too unrealistic under that line of thinking, given that he just got an outing in Mania which Sega apparently agreed to without much persuasion.

Yeah, I like this idea. It would be cool to have some really obscure stuff in there like an unlockable Waku-Waku patrol car  

Or just give me some Streets Of Rage references. That series doesn't get nearly enough love.

 

[R.C.]

I love the All-Stars series because it had great gameplay on top of really cool and diverse worlds and characters. When I first started playing these games, I thought it was awesome seeing stuff from Super Monkey Ball and Billy Hatcher get included, and I was introduced to series like NiGHTS and Virtua Fighter. I still want to try out Skies of Arcadia some day should it ever get a re-release, because Vyse seems like a cool character and the Rogue's Landing stage was excellent. (Plus I just love RPGs...) And now that I've played a lot more Sega games, I was really rooting for representation from stuff like Streets of Rage and Comix Zone, or even more modern stuff like Yakuza and Valkyria Chronicles, or even Puyo Puyo. (I know the Tennis game had a Puyo Pop Fever mini-game, but I mean character representation... Someone like Arle or Amitie would be cool to see playable.)

By making it Sonic only, I feel there would be a lot less variety in characters, stages, and music, and the game would just feel kind of bland compared compared to what came before. It's like if Super Smash Bros. 5 had only Mario characters, stages, and music. I'm sure this supposed Sumo-developed Sonic racing game will be fun and excellent in it's own right, but I'd always be thinking in the back of my mind "man, it sure would be cool if the Sega all-stars got in on this."

[Red Hot Jack]

Some random thoughts after reading the posts:

- Obviously Green Hill and Chemical Plant will be there, but with a great amount of tracks I can totally see some fanservice and obscure zones being brought in as well, definitely some from Forces to re-use graphics and zones that are fresh in people's minds, but also zones from Mania like Studiopolis and some older zones, for the first time in 3D, that would be amazing!

- I'm also worried about the roster, I fear they will want to copy Mario Kart and add all possible variations of characters like Classic Sonic, Classic Tails, Classic Knuckles, Classic Amy, Classic Eggman, Boom Sonic, Boom Tails, Boom Knuckles, Boom Amy, Boom Eggman, or Werehog Sonic, I would be okay with the latter as well as some classic characters, but not the Boom ones because that'd be too many clones. But SEGA does what Nintendon't, they want to push their new characters like Sticks, Infinite, Zavok, but they don't forget their old supporting cast like Vector, Charmy, Espio, Rouge, Omega, Silver, Big, Cream, Blaze, Jet, Wave, even Tikal, Chaos, etc. so I'm not really worried.

- Also, I HIGHLY doubt the roster is gonna be Sonic-only, really doubt, not even Riders was like that, so I'm guessing some secret characters will be AiAi, Amigo, Ulala, NiGHTS, Beat or Billy Hatcher, and obviously some special guest star to improve sales. I hope it's not a real person like with Danica, but other videogame icons, like Pac-Man (since they bring him in Dash), Mario as a Switch and Mobile exclusive, since there is no Olympics game this year, Crash perhaps? I'd love to see that. I'm actually more interested in big name guests than Sega characters, because that's been done a lot of times in the past.

- About the difficulty and mechanics, as I said, don't redo the transforming gimmick, add something new, a new twist. As for the difficulty, I would love something in between ASR and Transformed, ASR was really generic and a lot of tracks played the same, not too many interesting mechanics to play with, Transformed did a lot, in fact it's my favorite of the 2, but apparently some people felt it was TOO Arcade and for expert players? I remember some people here didn't enjoy it sadly, it was too hard perhaps, as much as I liked that, maybe they should opt for a middle way between the 2 titles, something engaging for the player but not too complicated. Not like Mario Kart 8 I hope, as much as that game is amazing to me, and there are a lot of cool mechanics, it feels too easy, I'm not engaged, it would definitely help to have a bigger difficulty and more obstacles in the stages. And obviously MK8's roster is full of clones, I know THAT got a lot of hate.

 

What do you think about my points?

[BlueFlare]

We need Sonic R 2 even though the first game was kinda bad and is not a pure racer.

[DaN]

I think the other franchise are famous enough to deserve a spot in a potential new game.

as someone mentioned before, The Sonic franchise is more than well represented , they could just add a couple more entries like Silver and Blaze and still use a couple more slots for DLC.

Crazy Taxi is a respected and beloved enough franchise, and BD Joe is really iconic.

NiGHTS franchise is quite dead but the character is still well known due to cameos in Sonic games

Aiai, Beat , Ulala and Amigo are quite popular and iconic too

And then there’s Ryo Hazuki, the flag of one of the most important franchise of the history of videogames, and with all the stuff going on it would be a sin not to include him.

There’s room for new entries too

Bayonetta is a lot popular these days, and Sega still has her rights. They could  also use Morgana from Persona franchise and Hatsune Miku to draw attentions from the japanese folks. Then they could add an obscure one like Ristar for the sake of “pleasing old fans”

I would prefer more Sega entries but at the end of the day I’d be fine with the 11 Sega characters I mentioned combined with a larger Sonic roster. 

I want a funny game to play the most

[Jango]

I hope it's as hard and skill based as Transformed. Once you got good at this game, holy shit the boost chains you can pull off, it's amazing. I'm all for the transforming gimmick's return, it's fun as hell, just could be a little more polished and have more branching transformation paths: go left to transform into a boat, go right to transform into a plane, stuff like that. It didn't happened very often in the last game.

[Swing]

I don't think so. Forces, Boom and almost all Sonic games after Generations were also made for younger children in mind. Maybe this game will be also on auto pilot like Forces, so that younger Sonic fans will not have that much trouble in getting into the game. 

[Jango]

Well, that may be the case. It's probably gonna be toned down if it's Sonic-only. 

For example: Mania is easier than the classics because it's way better designed, but it doesn't mean it's an easy game. 

The difference is that we're talking about a competitive game here, what's the fun of easy wins? The only challenge you'll get is by playing online, and if the base game is just easy and tutorial-ish, the lobbies will be full of whiny players and rage quitters... Which sucks.

[Swing]

Sure. But look at Forces and the Boom games. This is will probably also be the direction for this new racing game. Sega targets more towards kids with Sonic. You know using stuff like OC creations, memes and simpler gameplay. This also could happen here.

I wouldn't be surprise if Sega really goes in this direction. The OC creation will probably also return and we will probably also get some meme characters in it. Uganda Knuckles is really popular right now. 

[AdventChild]

It is very upsetting that other Sega Ips feel like they're getting the shaft for something Sonic only. Though the complaint about a lack of variety of characters is sound with having Classic and Boom versions filling up the roster. I do think the other end of the spectrum is possible too with having a very limited roster for chars/stages (5 to 6 each) and hide the rest behind a DLC paywall even for guest chars/Ips, not just Sonic. 

Heck, if Sega stupidly think they could get away with Super Sonic as payable DLC for Sonic Forces, anything can happen at this point honestly. Even if Shadow was free, he was still DLC content as well. Sure, this is Sumo we're talking about but Sega's big thumb is still in the pie regardless.

[Patron]

Even Riders as a Sonic-centric game had SEGA guest characters and two tracks dedicated to them (SEGA Carnival and Sega Illusion), but seeing as the All-Stars Racing series always had DLC (except SSASR for Wii and Windows) they could always put out one or two heavily condensed SEGA packs (like Mario Kart 8 did for Animal Crossing, Excitebike, F-Zero and The Legend of Zelda), if it turns out to be too big of a negative.

As for content, it would be nice to see older racing games represented. You have former ASR titles, R and Riders to choose from (if you dive into the more obscure stuff there's Drift and Kart). Otherwise I'd expect Null Space to be this series' Rainbow Road (you could even spice it up with portals leading to other tracks).

[knuckles20]

On 2/16/2018 at 12:48 PM, Swing said:

It really makes me so sad that so many you guys really, really want to destroy a very special game, one of it's kind, just to have another generic Sonic game. And no, putting in hand full of other characters like in the first two Riders isn't enough. Fuck, the third one didn't even had one single Sega character! It is not even sure if the Sega fans will get a bit of fanservice. 

And for what? Only so we can play as Sonic's shitty friends for the 100 of time? Thanks a lot Sanic fans!   

I’d take any of them over the cheap nostalgia bait. Oh wait I meant to say Classic Sonic but what’s the difference.

[Badnik Mechanic]

If Sumo are making it, they won't allow the game to be automated to the degree Forces is.

[knuckles20]

On 2/16/2018 at 1:02 PM, Swing said:

What about those mobile games? You can play as over 12 different shitty friend characters in them? We had two of them in the last couple of years!

Yeah and I want them playable in the main games and actually doing something as opposed to acting like wallpaper because Sonic got an insecure narcissistic ego where he only calls on another version of himself.

 

[Red Hot Jack]

2 minutes ago, knuckles20 said:

Yeah and I want them playable and actually doing something in the games as opposed to acting like wallpaper because Sonic got an insecure narcissistic ego where he only calls on another version of himself.

 

Obviously that's not what happened, it's only SEGA's bad decision and it had nothing to do with the story and how the characters act, plus Classic Sonic travelled through worlds, no one called him^^

Heck, I'm all for the other characters being useful and doing stuff, in Forces we see them organizing missions, taking active part in it, and directly fighting the "clones", but if they aren't playable don't blame it on Sonic.

And this is off-topic.

[Blue Blood]

40 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

If Sumo are making it, they won't allow the game to be automated to the degree Forces is.

Can you even imagine? It's funny that a racing game with actual tracks would feel less restrictive and more open than a 3D platformer. 

Although I have to say now that the Vs Shadow fight in Generations would make for a potentially good (if not crude) template for a Sonic racing game.

[Badnik Mechanic]

2 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Can you even imagine? It's funny that a racing game with actual tracks would feel less restrictive and more open than a 3D platformer. 

Why is Sonic in a car?

Because that's the closest you'll get to working Physics.

[Red]

On 2/17/2018 at 2:12 AM, Sean said:

A Sonic-only kart racer would be lame as hell. With the exception of Sonic Drift, all of Sonic's racing games, good or bad, have tried doing their own unique thing to set them apart from other racers, from the on-foot platforming of Sonic R and Rivals to hoverboard racing in Riders. The kart formula suited the crossover nature of the All-Stars games pretty well, but I don't think it can sustain a Sonic-only cast and maintain the appeal of the previous two games anymore than a Super Smash Bros. featuring only Fire Emblem Mario characters could. If this is true, I couldn't care less.

You make that sound like a bad thing. I would be all over a Smash Bros. style Fire Emblem fighting game.

Anyway, I'm cautiously optimistic about this. I love Sonic but I honestly have a hard time getting into kart racers that aren't Mario Kart. If the rumors are true I hope it's unique enough to have it's own identity instead of literally being Mario Kart but with Sonic characters only.

[Razule]

7 hours ago, SaberX said:

Good times when people used to be against ASR because Sonic should be running instead of driving a car.

Why isn't "Sonic is in a car because it's a kart racer" a good enough answer?

[Diogenes]

30 minutes ago, Razule said:

Why isn't "Sonic is in a car because it's a kart racer" a good enough answer?

Not to reignite those old arguments, but Sonic competing on foot alongside actual vehicles would both be funnier and feel more true to the character, and the game is silly enough that they probably could've gotten away with it even if it's a "kart" racer. I wouldn't call it something to get mad about, but it is the less fun option.

[Wraith]

Sonic doesn't normally control like a car does and it wouldn't really make any kind of sense for him to, so that would create a weird disconnect unless he controlled differently from pretty much every other character in the game, and that's not really a good idea when's the face of the game. He's going to be a lot of people's default pick. 

That's not even getting into how much smaller his hitbox would be. It's a logistical nightmare for the sake of a "joke" thats only funny at a glance.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Sonic being the only one who isn't in a car would be dumb and serve nothing. It's not much of a 'joke' when it's an actual design element in your full-length kart-racing video game.

[GentlemanX]

If the game were just Sega All-Stars Racing I could buy not having Sonic and Shadow in vehicles, since you can call it a unique character trait like Opa-Opa flying around. But when you put Sonic front and center on it, Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing, having Sonic be the exception to the rule stands out a lot more.

And if the game is Sonic only, it'll feel even more out of place.

[Badnik Mechanic]

4 hours ago, Diogenes said:

Not to reignite those old arguments, but Sonic competing on foot alongside actual vehicles would both be funnier and feel more true to the character, and the game is silly enough that they probably could've gotten away with it even if it's a "kart" racer. I wouldn't call it something to get mad about, but it is the less fun option.

Nah... it wouldn't have worked.

For starters, his hit box would be so small he would have an insanely unfair advantage over every other character.