Team Sonic Racing - Upcoming Sonic Racing Game

[Multikaris]

It just got dissected.

[DabigRG]

So a couple of things from my recent races:

• Teammates will sometimes mention that they're further behind or even ask each other if their okay back there. I have heard Zavok say something along those lines before, but never paid it much attention.
• You can play Story Mode with more than one player, but you will be forced to team up.
• Did I mention a timer popping up on the second players screen a while after I had passed through the finish line? Well it popped up again.
• The most perplexing glitch yet happened when my nephew was playing as Metal Sonic in Hidden Volcano: his whole screen went black and were so confused as to what was causing this! At first, I thought it was just him respawning in a pit since the screen would occasionally white out as if he fell into a pit; upon taking his controller, however, I was able to use the Drill Wisp he had for it's duration before activating Team Ultimate and a a few seconds afterwards, the music changed to indicate he went through the finish line before continuing on as "normal."
• Zavok: "There's worse in your future, Silver."

.

4 hours ago, Meta77 said:

But you said in your post before this I locked out a part of the game.  If they do not matter why bother to use them. And they do provide boost. In defense, acceleration, etc.  If that's not boosting some stats then they must be for show. The accomplishment for me is finishing everything without using mods to "improve" any of those stats.

Those worse one was the sky stage with the huge launch at the start. Its target challenge was the worse

Yeah, I noticed I was having an oddly difficult time getting the Silver medal, with at least 12 retries.

[Plasme]

After playing the game for a bit now, it really is quite poor.

Firstly, the game is glitchy and unpolished. The physics are all over the place, you often get thrown into reverse when boosting at high speeds and so end up in last place. Pretty game breaking. There's also other issues, such as being flung really far and fast for seemingly no reason when someone nudges into you. It's an unfinished mess.

The game is also quite unclear. It's very difficult to know what areas on the ice or sand levels are bad terrain and will slow you down. It's hard to know without memorising the stages because the areas just look normal or the lighting confuses you. This is just an issue of bad design.

The character roster and recycled content is also an issue. And I really do think it was dumb to excluse the SEGA characters without delving into the Sonic cast.

I played this game with my brother and hes a big Sonic and SEGA fan, but he doesnt browse foruma or anything and didnt play much of the SEGA racing games. But even he was surprised by how much is reycled.

He brought up a good point to me, as he said that most of the Sonic cast were already in Transformed, and he didnt even really get who was new in this game.

[JezMM]

14 minutes ago, Plasme said:

He brought up a good point to me, as he said that most of the Sonic cast were already in Transformed, and he didnt even really get who was new in this game.

Honestly I wouldn't say that's a good point. Transformed had 7 Sonic characters. Thus, this game more than doubled that number and fans were STILL unsatisfied that certain Sonic characters are missing from the roster. I'd hardly call Transformed's offering "most of the Sonic cast" at all under that context.

[DabigRG]

On 6/9/2019 at 12:42 PM, Miragnarok said:

It just got dissected.

I'm finally gradually watching through this and he's got some good points.

For starters, you would think that they would've made stages that mean more to the characters than they do to the other games. I couldn't help but notice that there weren't many stages I could look at and say is "Knuckles' Stage," "Silver's Stage," "Zavok's Stage," or even "Dodonpa's Stage," shockingly enough.

[Dr. Detective]

9 hours ago, DabigRG said:

I'm finally gradually watching through this and he's got some good points.

For starters, you would think that they would've made stages that mean more to the characters than they do to the other games. I couldn't help but notice that there weren't many stages I could look at and say is "Knuckles' Stage," "Silver's Stage," "Zavok's Stage," or even "Dodonpa's Stage," shockingly enough.

I mean, I never expected the stages to be character based anyway.

I kind of expect them to be a lot more diverse when it comes to the games they pull from though. 

[DabigRG]

9 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I mean, I never expected the stages to be character based anyway.

I kind of expect them to be a lot more diverse when it comes to the games they pull from though. 

That too.

Still, with Dodonpa being mysterious and sketchy and whatnot, one would've thought there'd be a stage themed around him snuck in there somewhere going in.

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

That too.

Still, with Dodonpa being mysterious and sketchy and whatnot, one would've thought there'd be a stage themed around him snuck in there somewhere going in.

One completely new area would have been appropriate, yeah. Transformed did that. 

I would have liked to have seen Donpa Motors. He's probably got a ton of wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men hovering over his endless rows of cars. 

[DabigRG]

Btw, wasn't Chao such a key player in the story?

1 minute ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

One completely new area would have been appropriate, yeah. Transformed did that. 

I would have liked to have seen Donpa Motors. He's probably got a ton of wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men hovering over his endless rows of cars. 

Yeah. Plus, he supposedly has his own kingdom as well, so they probably could've gone there at some point.

Which is what I thought was happening with the rocketship.

[Multikaris]

On 5/27/2019 at 9:27 AM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

For the record (despite the fact that I've said this plenty of times so its on the record already) I don't hate Zavok.

Its just incredibly frustrating how someone with a foundation that is a bit interesting when you give it an iota of thought is continuously having all his positive traits ignored for the sake of a lazy appearance done to satisfy a higher up or two. 

Yes, its the exact same thing they do with Knuckles and the interesting stuff about him so it shouldn't be surprising but that doesn't make it any less annoying.

At least Knuckles and Shadow USED to have the interesting traits utilized (and still do on very rare occasions). Zavok never got that chance.

[DabigRG]

4 hours ago, Miragnarok said:

At least Knuckles and Shadow USED to have the interesting traits utilized (and still do on very rare occasions). Zavok never got that chance.

I thought about that at one point myself, actually.

Like, there was bits of them in Lost World, but yeah.

[DabigRG]

On 5/27/2019 at 1:42 AM, GentlemanX said:

It would have been more neat if Egg Pawns could have been saddled with Eggman and Metal Sonic and we had him, Chaos, and Infinite as a non-story other villain team, but the roster was limited to 15 so here we are.

You know, that might've been a neat way to go. 

Honestly, I was under the impression that he, and possibly Metal & Eggman himself, would initially show up as a boss type race before eventually teaming up near the end, if even that. 

On 5/27/2019 at 6:12 AM, Psycho_Jack said:

They needed a team made up of villains and they needed a power character, they like Zavok so they added him. I expect him to be in the Tokyo Olympics as well.

As if there was any doubt. 

[TheOcelot]

Another Making of the Music video:

Haunted Castle's music

[RedDevilDazzy]

I hate rocks, but I love them too? The hate / love relationship of them.....

 

[Milo]

Team Sonic Racing debuted at #7 in the UK game sales charts for all of May. For comparison's sake, Mania Plus' monthly debut was at #13 and Forces' monthly debut was #17. Shows a definitive upswing so far with regards to monthly Sonic sale debuts in the country.

Report also notes the Switch version sold "particularly well"--39% of sales came from that version, putting it at a dead heat against the PS4 version, which comprised of 40% of sales. The Xbox One version made up the remaining 20% difference of sales. 

[Milo]

NPD May charts are in. TSR barely made the general Top 20 at #19. Nowhere to be seen on any of the top ten platform-specific charts, not even on Switch.

For perspective, Sonic usually fails to make the general Top 10 / Top 20 for monthly NPD charts--this just shows how quiet May was if a Sonic game could even manage to tunnel into the bottom. (For further perspective--TSR was bested by the five-years-and-still-karting Mario Kart 8, which took #11 in the Top 20 and #2 on the Switch charts.)

One can only imagine how June's NPD is going to look with Crash Team Racing...will TSR even appear to begin with? (Spoiler: don't count on it.)

By the by, it kinda seems as if making Sonic games that are even cheaper in budget / content / presentation and less advertised than before isn't helping sales. Time to give the game series a honest break on the shelf for the next several years? Total War: Three Kingdoms, another Sega game, had a better debut (#3 in general Top 10) than any Sonic game, probably to date; so it's not like you don't have other franchises (active or dormant) to lie back on. You're not rushing out two/three/four Sonic games a year like what was going on in, say, 2009 either.

[Wraith]

18 hours ago, Milo said:

 

By the by, it kinda seems as if making Sonic games that are even cheaper in budget / content / presentation and less advertised than before isn't helping sales. Time to give the game series a honest break on the shelf for the next several years? Total War: Three Kingdoms, another Sega game, had a better debut (#3 in general Top 10) than any Sonic game, probably to date; so it's not like you don't have other franchises (active or dormant) to lie back on. You're not rushing out two/three/four Sonic games a year like what was going on in, say, 2009 either.

The last thing they want to lose is more mindshare, especially with Sonic's target audience being so young. Aggressive action is where their heads should be at. Sonic should be looking to get a shot in the arm. 

[DabigRG]

19 minutes ago, Wraith said:

The last thing they want to lose is more mindshare, especially with Sonic's target audience being so young. Aggressive action is where their heads should be at. Sonic should be looking to get a shot in the arm. 

Meaning... 

[Wraith]

4 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Meaning... 

Sega should be more willing to throw money at the IP if they want a better return.

[DabigRG]

55 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Sega should be more willing to throw money at the IP if they want a better return.

Ah. That makes sense.

You gettin medical mechanica there.

[shdowhunt60]

6 hours ago, Wraith said:

The last thing they want to lose is more mindshare, especially with Sonic's target audience being so young. Aggressive action is where their heads should be at. Sonic should be looking to get a shot in the arm. 

This is one of my chief concerns going forward. SEGA isn't going to win people over by making Sonic cheap. Team Sonic Racing could've been a much bigger game if they invested far more into it. This isn't the same case as Sonic Forces where the game was both cheap AND fundamentally flawed.

[Sega DogTagz]

2 hours ago, shdowhunt60 said:

This is one of my chief concerns going forward. SEGA isn't going to win people over by making Sonic cheap. Team Sonic Racing could've been a much bigger game if they invested far more into it. This isn't the same case as Sonic Forces where the game was both cheap AND fundamentally flawed.

The Atlus model of targeting the niche markets for their games, and crafting dedicated, great experiences for those niche markets has been more and more of Sega's M.O. as of late. Parts of the company seem to be very well suited to flipping these games into critical and financial successes, without having to sell a billion copies to do it, do to the lower costs of production and distribution. 

It would be weird to see that model applied to Sonic games moving forward, but I'd take that over whoring out to the DL or mobile market that we feared about a few years back.

[Milo]

9 hours ago, Wraith said:

The last thing they want to lose is more mindshare, especially with Sonic's target audience being so young. Aggressive action is where their heads should be at. Sonic should be looking to get a shot in the arm. 

Aggressive action is arguably what Sonic needs, but given the current landscape of Sega I doubt it's something they want to do anytime soon. As @Sega DogTagz said, catering to cult audiences seems to be where Sega's current priorities lie. A more expensive project for their flagship franchise unambiguously flies in the face of such a strategy.

I also suspect Sega's given Sonic enough shots in the arm (whatever that may entail) to the point that people are numb to the concept today. Another rejuvenation attempt would likely be side-eyed by the market as yet another dubious reinvention or throwback attempt to just quietly pass on, even if it did turn out to be good.

For Sega going big with Sonic again, the context with the publisher and the customers would have to be different from what it is now in order for it to actually be effective.

[Sega DogTagz]

Its also worth noting that we are only a few years removed from the massive "shot in the arm" that was to be the Boom sub-franchise, which backfired spectacularly.

I doubt Sega will muster up the courage for another mega-initiative like that while those wounds are still so fresh.

[Wraith]

7 hours ago, Milo said:

 

I also suspect Sega's given Sonic enough shots in the arm (whatever that may entail) to the point that people are numb to the concept today. Another rejuvenation attempt would likely be side-eyed by the market as yet another dubious reinvention or throwback attempt to just quietly pass on, even if it did turn out to be good.

For Sega going big with Sonic again, the context with the publisher and the customers would have to be different from what it is now in order for it to actually be effective.

The context can't change if they continue to sit around and release download and mobile games. There would be turnout for a great Sonic game. It's better to do it as soon as possible while the IP still has any pull rather than dig in more to appealing to enthusiasts. Enough people have left this fandom already out of sheer boredom to let me know that well is gonna get smaller and smaller without any hook for young or casual players.