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Sonic Mania Adventures


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3 hours ago, Diogenes said:

I'd say we should blame it on Sonic Team first and foremost. But acting like things were fine until a bunch of classic fans "forced" things to change is a pretty dishonest spinning of the situation.

If Sega developed something that people liked, I don't see why not? Modern Sonic was Sonic's evolution until Sega made shitty games and they decided to bank on nostalgia, now they're back here but at least they are making good stuff for you guys. I would love a series of new Mania games as well as a Mania cartoon outside of these 5 episodes, so I don't really mind, I just love all of Sonic.

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4 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

If they bury Modern Sonic, where do you think will we get games with Shadow, Rouge, Silver and other popular modern character?

Bury Modern Sonic and we lose 70% of the fanbase!

I HATE the divide between modern and classic fans. For me it was always one Sonic, I never thought about eye color change! I just thought it was a designer's choice for the 3D transition.

But no! There had to be some angry fans who hate green-eyed Sonic to force Iizuka to shove him into Sonic Forces and making them 2 SEPARATE CHARACTERS (how much I hate that), and thus, messing years of established lore (even it's not perfect, like Blaze or Nega's origin, Sonic's world was consistent!).

I consider Mania in the same world as Adventure games, there is no direct contradiction to modern world (it's only in Sonic Forces).

I hear you. I don't exactly know where you get those 70% modern fan proportions from because it doesn't really seem backed up by anything.... especially not sales....

But I do agree that SEGA can't just ditch Modern fans, even if I do believe Modern Sonic needs to see his presence reduced in terms of the things he typically does stylistically.

The irony in all of this, is that to me, Modern Sonic is really the same Sonic from the 90's. This may sound weird with the Classic era seeing a current resurgence in mainstream popularity, but for me "that Sonic" from Sonic 3 and Knuckles, the one who transitioned to Sonic Adventure, and then to Heroes, and then to Unleashed....to me, he never died. He just changed over the years, often for the worse and he lost his identity. Like a way past his heyday rock star. That to me is exactly what Sonic's life has been like and I see it manifested in Modern. Sonic never died.... but he probably should have (I've never wanted Sonic to die which is why I've continued to support him all this time).

To me, the "Neo Classic" we see today is a bit weird for me. Though I completely understand the marketing angle, its like SEGA wants us to pretend that that Sonic is an entirely different character from an alternative universe...even though we've watched Modern transform all these years and know that's where he came from. They want us to pretend that Modern's roots are somehow different than Classic's and, as someone who has very badly wanted to see Sonic succeed in 3D since 1996, I find that incredibly offensive, even while completely understanding the move and being much more a Genesis era fan. To me, even though I'm a diehard fan of the Genesis days, Modern Sonic is the only Sonic that should exist.... and we should not be calling him Modern at all. It creates a fake separation and fanbase segmentation that should never have existed; its like marketing 101 really. You don't do that ever, period. You can target certain games for certain fans who like specific things but should not outright segment your fans in the way they have by creating multiple universes that get equal attention, having your fans fight it out to see who will get "their turn" next. I'm completely against that philosophy in every way because it leads to less popularity overall for the franchise's biggest efforts. Sonic's big budget efforts need to have the overwhelming majority of his fanbase backing every time, not one side or the other, and SEGA just has to fix that if they ever want to see him return to the top again.

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22 minutes ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

To me, the "Neo Classic" we see today is a bit weird for me. Though I completely understand the marketing angle, its like SEGA wants us to pretend that that Sonic is an entirely different character from an alternative universe...even though we've watched Modern transform all these years and know that's where he came from. They want us to pretend that Modern's roots are somehow different than Classic's and, as someone who has very badly wanted to see Sonic succeed in 3D since 1996, I find that incredibly offensive, even while completely understanding the move and being much more a Genesis era fan. To me, even though I'm a diehard fan of the Genesis days, Modern Sonic is the only Sonic that should exist.... and we should not be calling him Modern at all. It creates a fake separation and fanbase segmentation that should never have existed; its like marketing 101 really. You don't do that ever, period. You can target certain games for certain fans who like specific things but should not outright segment your fans in the way they have by creating multiple universes that get equal attention, having your fans fight it out to see who will get "their turn" next. I'm completely against that philosophy in every way because it leads to less popularity overall for the franchise's biggest efforts. Sonic's big budget efforts need to have the overwhelming majority of his fanbase backing every time, not one side or the other, and SEGA just has to fix that if they ever want to see him return to the top again.

You are 100% right, I could not word this any better, it hurts us fans that just want a cohesive universe.

 

For the modern fans, I got my 70% from all the fansites and blogs about Modern characters (Shadow, Blaze... these are popular guys!), Fanarts that include modern characters (along Sonic, Tails...).

90% (if not more) of fanarts are in MODERN STYLE.

ALL fancharacters I've seen are in MODERN STYLE.

I did not do calculations whatsoever, it's to show the idea.

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They did say during the panel how they intended to continue with the modern branch, characters and all didn’t they?

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2 minutes ago, KHCast said:

They did say during the panel how they intended to continue with the modern branch, characters and all didn’t they?

They didn't outright say it but they did say that the Modern branch is very important to them and have throughout this year even in the face of Mania's success. And I fully expect the Racing game to be based primarily on modern characters as well as the next main effort which may or may not already be in development (I suspect it probably is).

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4 hours ago, DabigRG said:

I've seen people say Mighty and Ray are in this. Is there any matter of truth there?

This was asked at the panel and they gave a vague answer, which suggests either there aren't any plans for them being in it but the later episodes haven't started production yet so it's possible to include them OR that they are definitely in it and Tyson didn't want to spoil the surprise.

57 minutes ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

They didn't outright say it but they did say that the Modern branch is very important to them and have throughout this year even in the face of Mania's success.

The "<thing> is very important to us" line is basically PR speak for "because we have no product to announce at this time that contains what you're asking for, we can't say yes or no even though the answer is obvious".  In modern Sonic's case I'd say the obvious answer is that yes another modern game is in the works.

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Look, Classic, Modern, none of it matters to me. All that matters is that it's Sonic. If it so much as resembles a blue hedgehog running fast, I'm fine with it. SEGA knows better than to leave its fans in the cold, and I'm sure they'll get to a new Modern game eventually, so for now, I'll trust their judgment.

I'm just going to enjoy these shorts for what they are and not worry about any kind of "separation" business.

Sidenote: I do love the small touch of how Classic is still in the middle of waving when he reappears like he was at the end of Forces. Adds a touch of continuity.

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Ideally, there should be one unified brand of Sonic that anyone can enjoy. Sadly, Sonic Team's incompetence made it so that can never happen (Or made it extremely hard) since the games since Adventure are so vastly different from the pre-Adventure era in everything; from gameplay, to storytelling, to aesthetics. Combine that with the fact that said games are of varying degrees of quality, I completely understand why they decided to double down on the focus of Classic Sonic and it's conventions.

I don't agree with it, but they had to to get some kind of brand recognition back after losing so much face for screwing up the series for so many years, and still continue to do so. So for better or worse, Classic is it's own sub-series that fans of that era and the general public can enjoy as the "good" games, while Sonic Team can hopefully, by the grace of god, actually start establishing something with Modern Sonic.

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I was once super tired of Classic Sonic being in everything....but now he just bring along all his pals and just give the boot to the modern universe. I loved the modern universe once, I wanted to love it again, but Sonic Team and the writers have no idea what they want it to be. Meanwhile Classic Sonic and his universe has a consistent identity, it knows what it is, and what it aims to be. It keeps everyone's mouth shut so we don't have to hear poor dialogue and dumb jokes. It keeps the characters moving so we don't have them standing around wafting in their own farts, and instead just moving along as they should be. It lets action speak far louder than words which makes the characters infinitely more charming for me than what they even try to call Sonic characters as of late.

Hopefully IDW tells good modern Sonic stories so I can fall in love with modern stuff again. I feel way to burned by recent modern material to have much care for it. Every time I want to care I feel like modern cracks me over the head with a gold ring, apologizes, and then does it again and again anyways. He ain't sorry, modern is just gonna keep on fucking up rather than getting his act together. I embrace the Classics now that feel like the only thing that give a crap anymore about Sonic rather than the confused mess that is Modern Sonic.

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For me it's gonna be Sonic Mania Shorts and IDW comics in terms of story hopes!

I can have fun with the racing game too, but not for the story, rather for the fun and opportunity to have the whole gang.

 

But about the consistency of classic Sonic, I dot not agree entirely. Even in his early days Sonic experimented with other gameplays (Sonic Drift, Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Spinabll, Sonic 3d blast).

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With things being separate, things can maybe get a little more stable on the non-classic side. I always had a feeling that it was being hampered by the mixing of classic stuff, trying to cater for everyone (and effectively no one).

The result of a game is typically a mix of a producer's vision and the restraints/wants of the investors.

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37 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

For me it's gonna be Sonic Mania Shorts and IDW comics in terms of story hopes!

I can have fun with the racing game too, but not for the story, rather for the fun and opportunity to have the whole gang.

 

But about the consistency of classic Sonic, I dot not agree entirely. Even in his early days Sonic experimented with other gameplays (Sonic Drift, Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Spinabll, Sonic 3d blast).

This is true but in fairness, those games were spinoff games, mostly not produced by Sonic Team. They count towards sales but they're not regarded the same way as Sonic's main series games and can basically be anything they want as long as it makes a profit. Most every popular series has games like this, even Mario.

Sonic's failures in consistency has primarily been with his main series games ever since the jump to 3D. After Sonic Adventure 1 (which though a very rough game, I do not consider to be a dramatic departure from the classic era compared with what followed), every game pretty much wildly changed the perception of what Sonic was and brought its own sub-legion of fans. That should never have happened with a character as big and impactful as Sonic.

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A portion of Mania's goodwill comes from embracing a lot of those spin-off titles though, it sort of blurs the lines and honestly makes the classic era wildly more interesting I think.

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1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Ideally, there should be one unified brand of Sonic that anyone can enjoy. Sadly, Sonic Team's incompetence made it so that can never happen (Or made it extremely hard) since the games since Adventure are so vastly different from the pre-Adventure era in everything; from gameplay, to storytelling, to aesthetics. Combine that with the fact that said games are of varying degrees of quality, I completely understand why they decided to double down on the focus of Classic Sonic and it's conventions.

Though I may be in the minority on this, I actually think that there is a way that the majority of Classic and Modern fans can be mostly united under one umbrella. In fact it sort of already happened once but hasn't again since: SA1. Its is the game that, many classic fans (like myself) who grew up with the genesis games were looking forward to with extreme anticipation, especially after Mario got his big transition to 3D. The game of course was automated and buggy as ever, with lots of alternative fluff in place of real gameplay, but there are an awful lot of elements that that game had that can be said to have maintained continuity with the classic era. This is partly why many people feel like even though SA1 is the actual progenitor of Modern gameplay, SA2 is really the spiritual beginning of everything most people associate with the Modern era in terms of the shift in tone and focus, and why most fans who played it for the first time on the gamecube have a drastically different view of what Sonic is than anyone who had experienced the franchise before. But SA1 has many elements that Modern fans come to expect out of the series, while also managing to be fairly consistent with the classic era in tone and gameplay (goals). The execution was the primary problem there.

I do not think SA1 should be remade but I do think a game in a similar vein (maybe based off the upcoming movie?) that uses the classic games as its foundation and builds some modern elements on top of it, would be the game that could fix most (read: not all) of Sonic Team's divided fanbase problems in one swoop. And if SEGA is thinking about where to go with its next big game (they probably are right now) they should think really hard about that problem and how something like that can address it, rather than what they did with Forces.

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2 hours ago, dbzfan7 said:

I was once super tired of Classic Sonic being in everything....but now he just bring along all his pals and just give the boot to the modern universe. I loved the modern universe once, I wanted to love it again, but Sonic Team and the writers have no idea what they want it to be. Meanwhile Classic Sonic and his universe has a consistent identity, it knows what it is, and what it aims to be. It keeps everyone's mouth shut so we don't have to hear poor dialogue and dumb jokes. It keeps the characters moving so we don't have them standing around wafting in their own farts, and instead just moving along as they should be. It lets action speak far louder than words which makes the characters infinitely more charming for me than what they even try to call Sonic characters as of late.

Hopefully IDW tells good modern Sonic stories so I can fall in love with modern stuff again. I feel way to burned by recent modern material to have much care for it. Every time I want to care I feel like modern cracks me over the head with a gold ring, apologizes, and then does it again and again anyways. He ain't sorry, modern is just gonna keep on fucking up rather than getting his act together. I embrace the Classics now that feel like the only thing that give a crap anymore about Sonic rather than the confused mess that is Modern Sonic.

But Classic shows signs of succumbing to what Modern fell into. 

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2 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

But Classic shows signs of succumbing to what Modern fell into. 

Everything has the potential to fail, but I trust the Classic brand far more than Modern as of late.

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2 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

But about the consistency of classic Sonic, I dot not agree entirely. Even in his early days Sonic experimented with other gameplays (Sonic Drift, Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Spinabll, Sonic 3d blast).

Don't use spin-off material when referring to consistency. Sonic Labyrinth and 3D Blast, okay sure...but not Drift or Spinball, neither of those are even trying to be main games...

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I think the animation in this looks great, but I don't think it would work as a full series of 11 to 22 minute episodes like some are hoping for. This will be a silent cartoon with a very small cast of 3 heroes and 1 villain, it would run out of ideas fast.

I would love to see this style of animation applied to the modern Sonic characters. It would be great to see other characters, like Amy, Blaze, Silver, etc.

If they ever made a new animated series of Sonic, I wouldn’t mind seeing short segments based on classic Sonic, but as a fan who grew up preferring the modern cast, I personally think a show that lacks the other characters would get more repetitive than Sonic Boom.

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If they did use a voice cast, it would probably be the same ones as usual. I.. don't want to see the reactions to Roger Craig Smith's voice coming out of Classic Sonic

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Really looking forward to this and see what type of stories they come up with, maybe with enough success they could think of going for a full series but that’s a big stretch but not impossible. Tyson must be working flat out at the moment on all his projects but he deserves a lot of credit for what he is doing, keep up the great work.

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On 3/17/2018 at 9:38 PM, Razule said:

If they did use a voice cast, it would probably be the same ones as usual. I.. don't want to see the reactions to Roger Craig Smith's voice coming out of Classic Sonic

My ears will bleed if that somehow in some horrible messed up future, became the case. <_<

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With all about that "Sonic has no direction now" or "since Adventure" or whatever, is that really true ? Because I don´t think the mainline games done by Sonic Team show that.

We all agree that the Classics = Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Sonic and Knuckles have focus, consistent world, gameplay and what not. Even Chaotix, despite not being done by Sonic Team, but another branch, shows some aspects of the gameplay.

 

Then Adventure era plays pretty much the same all over. Adventure 1 and Adventure 2 have pretty much the same style, dynamics and it´s why there are Adventure fans. Despite being different in terms of plot, gameplay and basically the visuals all over, they got praised.

Heroes, with the team mechanics, also plays vastly similar to Adventures and many stages are even more memorable than those in Adventures. On top of that, vast majority of level design in Heroes was done by Iizuka himself days and nights. Kudos to him.

Shadow the Hedgehog problem was akin to Chaotix in Classic era albeit done by Sonic Team. Introducing mechanics that do not really work well. That´s it.

And Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) was a compilation of Adventure era setbacks (emphasized problems of SA1, SA2 and Heroes), not very effective usage of Havok engine (character´s physics) and optimalization problems (loading screens). And even though it was unfinished by the release, they did quite well under time constraints.

 

And the modern/Boost went to more of a racing game... with the Unleashed´s Werehog setback, Generations´ final boss, Lost World as the odd one (Chaotix/ShTH case) and the major setback in Forces (akin to ´06, but more about the expectancies rather than glitches and three unexperienced level designers thing).

 

So again I ask... Modern Sonic and unfocused ?

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On 3/17/2018 at 10:32 AM, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

To me, even though I'm a diehard fan of the Genesis days, Modern Sonic is the only Sonic that should exist.... and we should not be calling him Modern at all. It creates a fake separation and fanbase segmentation that should never have existed; its like marketing 101 really. You don't do that ever, period. You can target certain games for certain fans who like specific things but should not outright segment your fans in the way they have by creating multiple universes that get equal attention, having your fans fight it out to see who will get "their turn" next. I'm completely against that philosophy in every way because it leads to less popularity overall for the franchise's biggest efforts. Sonic's big budget efforts need to have the overwhelming majority of his fanbase backing every time, not one side or the other, and SEGA just has to fix that if they ever want to see him return to the top again.

The whole Sonic Sepertists movement actually started before Sonic Adventure.  When the online fanbase was in its infancy, Sonic fans used to argue about the cartoons, comics, and video games despite them all centered on Classic Sonic.  During this era. you had Aosth, SatAM, SU fans, vs the Archie Comic fans Vs The Genesis fans.  Once Sonic Adventure was internationally released, then this whole re-purposing of the division shifted from simply Classic vs Modern.  Classic all of sudden encompassed everything Sonic associated with the 90s while Modern was strictly Sonic Advenutre.  So even as far back as 2000, there was this dichotomy of Sonic fans who couldnt be mutual on the subject.  You're either a classic or modern fan.  Are you a classic fan?  GTFO and go join FUS or Rat.org.  Im mostly speaking of the early 2000s SonicHQ days. 

In hindsight, I do agree with your statement.  Sonic should be a unified franchise instead of all these convoluted sub-universes.  My assumption is if the 3D Sonic games were consistently successful, this problem wouldn't exist.  Modern Sonic was basically Sonic evolving to reflect the 2000s, a new era.  Unfortunately, one failed experiment after another detracted fans and made them realize in comparison to the Genesis games, Classic Sonic could do no wrong.  Big bloated storylines with horrible dialogue and glitchy programming vs simple, streamlined and actions that convey the dialogue.  Even in the library of failed 3D Sonic games, theres still elements of potential, but they werent utilized. 

I think it was the criticism of Sonic Unleashed that actually forced SEGA to care again.  The number one issue gamers had with it, was the boring, lumbering Werehog stages while the speed stages received high praise.  Thus, Sonic Colors was essentially the "fixed" version of it.  The problem is that SEGA fell into this safe zone where they didn't want to innovate or branch out in fear of backlash.  This is why Sonic's games since Sonic Colors have utilized the same dashing-down-a-narrow-corridor mechanic.  Its what turned me off from Sonic Forces, cause it was the same damn thing I've been playing for 7 years.  So while Modern Sonic is this battered insecure sub-franchise that has no direction, Classic Sonic is just a reminder of the past.  When games were limited with their plot, design, and level design.  Plus retro-gaming is a huge craze now in the indie dev scene so if SEGA had a choice on what would make them a profit in 2018, Classic Sonic would be the obvious marketing solution.  

Mario for example, started out simple and then evolved by gradually adding subtle new elements.  Its not like Mario shaved his mustache, turned his hat backwards and spouted cringey yet instantly dated catch phrases.  Id say the only way to merge both, is to sadly reboot the entire franchise and create one simple storyline.  Sonic has always been a polarizing enigma from the very start and the issue has always been the pointless reinventions of the character.               

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