Am I the only one who hates how Sonic Team embraces their Memes?

[Marco9966]

Quote

Mania happened because the Genesis Sonics were, overall, polished, well designed, and incredibly fun games and their gameplay style is still solid enough to be valuable. The Adventures, while a good number of people have fond memories of them (myself included), are incredibly dated games. Their gameplay simply isn't up to modern standards, and for reasons deeper than their bugs and lack of polish. And this series needs to do better than just trying to polish dated gameplay because Adventure fans feel like they're owed something.

Sonic Adventure had a better gameplay and a more controllable Sonic, the boost games have Sonic that is uncontrollable and feels more on ice skating 10 times as much as Sonic Heroes ( but in slow and slippery version! only way to save ourselves from this slow slippey ice skating torture is to boost ).

No 3D Sonic game was able to have physics as good Sonic Adventure, NONE! Sonic Adventure was the closest to the 2D games in terms of physics.

Quote

The way the characters move as if they're on ice, careening around wildly, often almost uncontrollably.

Again, boost is worse on that

Quote

What in the hell does this even mean? How are you any more in control of the homing attack in Heroes than in the boost games (or any other)? You jump near an enemy, you press the button, and you attack whatever the game decides you're trying to attack. If anything Heroes' homing attack is one of the worst in the series, considering how slow and inaccurate it is, how it was made incredibly weak so the leveling system and the power characters would have a purpose, and how inconsistent your teammates are in matching your attacks.

In Heroes I can homing attack whenever I want even if there's no ennemy, in Boost, they forbid you from homing attack unless they specifically allow you to homing attack after they put a pointer on an ennemy! Plus, let me say that Sonic Heroes's homing attack are the most accurate of all games (even more accurate than SA1 and SA2) because I can do a homing attack from father, play this game again and tell me about the homing attack!

Quote

Buddy, going fast simply because you can press forward on the control stick is not much better.

It is, Sonic doesnt need a constant button "run faster" to run fast, it is horrendous that in 2018 we need to press a supplemental button to run faster! Sonic in older 3D games didnt need that, we build momentum, we avoid obstacles, we jump and land precisley enough on platforms... All this is skipped by the blasted boost unless they force us to go into 2.5D section!

Quote

"Perfect"? The team system pidgeonholes characters so tightly into their roles that none of them are actually any fun to play with and even just trying to switch characters often has them flail wildly around the screen until they can find where they're supposed to be. Even one of the game's most basic "hey you're controlling 3 characters" gimmicks, the 3 parallel loops, barely even work.

Still better than having the limitations of playing only Sonic in one gameplay, add to that the abscence of good stories...

[Diogenes]

Just now, Marco9966 said:

Sonic Adventure had a better gameplay and a more controllable Sonic, the boost games have Sonic that is uncontrollable and fells more on ice skating 10 times as much as Sonic Heroes ( but in slow and slippery version! only way to save ourselves from this slow slippey ice skating torture is to boost )

Again, boost is worse on that

So what? Both are shit. They need to do better than both.

Just now, Marco9966 said:

In Heroes I can homing attack whenever I want even if there's no ennemy, in Boost, they forbid you from homing attack unless they specifically allow you to homing attack after they put a pointer on an ennemy!

It's not the homing attack if you're not homing in on anything. And you can still do the air dash in the boost games (most of them at least, IDK if it's still in Forces), even if it's shittier.

Just now, Marco9966 said:

It is, Sonic doesnt need a constant button "run faster" to run fast, it is horrendous that in 2018 we need to press a supplemental button to run faster!

What sense does that make? The boost is shit because of its actual effects on the gameplay, not because it's a "supplemental button".

Just now, Marco9966 said:

Still better than having the limitations of playing only Sonic in one gameplay, add to that the abscence of good stories...

I'd rather play as one character in a good game than 12 in a shitty one. And Heroes' story was shit anyway.

[Marco9966]

14 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

So what? Both are shit. They need to do better than both.

It's not the homing attack if you're not homing in on anything. And you can still do the air dash in the boost games (most of them at least, IDK if it's still in Forces), even if it's shittier.

What sense does that make? The boost is shit because of its actual effects on the gameplay, not because it's a "supplemental button".

I'd rather play as one character in a good game than 12 in a shitty one. And Heroes' story was shit anyway.

And no! Not both are shit! You can't compare the two, absolutely not. Adventure gameplay is excellent for Sonic! It really feels like a classic Sonic game, but in 3D, that's how good the physics are.

Not everything needs to be "Gotta go fast!" in Sonic. I enjoy other types of gameplays like Knuckles and Amy (even Big!), even the 2D games don't have 100% focus on full speed, it had a lot of platforming!

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

And no! Not both are shit! Adventure gameplay is excellent for Sonic! It really feels like a classic Sonic game, but in 3D, that's how good the physics are.

SA Sonic feels like a dated, rough attempt to translate the Genesis gameplay into 3D, which ended up mostly being a failure and needed to be patched together with dash pads and scripted sequences...because that's what it is. It is not "excellent", and it's not where the series should be setting its sights.

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

Not everything needs to be "Gotta go fast!" in Sonic. I enjoy other types of gameplays like Knuckles and Amy (even Big!), even the 2D games don't have 100% focus on full speed, it had a lot of platforming!

The platforming in the Genesis games is based on the same mechanics as the speedy sections. That's a big part of why those games work so much better than the fragmented clusterfucks that the Adventure games are; it's one unified set of mechanics that's flexible enough to accomplish multiple things, compared to a bunch of separate, shallow games that just happen to be on the same disk.

And posting a bunch of lame memes doesn't constitute an argument.

[Marco9966]

7 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

SA Sonic feels like a dated, rough attempt to translate the Genesis gameplay into 3D, which ended up mostly being a failure and needed to be patched together with dash pads and scripted sequences...because that's what it is. It is not "excellent", and it's not where the series should be setting its sights.
 

So where should it set it sights? Sonic Generations 3? No thanks.

Open your mind, really, you seem to only like the 2D games! If Sonic spent the last 20 years only making 2D games like Sonic 1, be sure that the series would die down like many platforming games, and we wouldn't be arguing in this forum.

Quote

And posting a bunch of lame memes doesn't constitute an argument.

It does actually, when you say that Adventure is "a failure", "dated", how do you explain how SA2 had the top rankings in steam and more than 3000 good reviews? Is it nostalgia? Who knows, but I know damn right that the hype for Mania is pure nostalgia!

[Tracker_TD]

Just now, Marco9966 said:

It does actually, if you say that Adventure is "a failure", "dated", then how do you explain how SA2 had the top rankings in steam and more than 3000 good reviews? Is it nostalgia? Who knows, but I know damn right that the hype for Mania is pure nostalgia!

I know damn right the hype for Adventure is pure nostalgia.

I'm not going to give you any evidence - but neither did you beyond some daft memes, so that's fine. Right? 

[Marco9966]

3 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

I know damn right the hype for Adventure is pure nostalgia.

I'm not going to give you any evidence - but neither did you beyond some daft memes, so that's fine. Right? 

Yes, I say that both are nostalgia, without the least of shame! The thing is why wouldn't Adventure fans get the rewards as much as Classic Fans?

Classic fans have Sonic Mania.

We still don't have a new proper 3D Sonic game with good stories and multiple playable characters.

 

[Tracker_TD]

Just now, Marco9966 said:

Yes, I say that both are nostalgia, without shame! But why wouldn't Adventure fans get the rewards as much as Classic Fans?

Classic fans have Sonic Mania.

We still don't have a new proper 3D Sonic game with good stories and multiple playable characters.

 

You aren't owed jack. Classic fans got Mania because folks like Tax and Stealth worked insanely hard towards it over the course of years, not because of entitlement from Classic fans. 

[Marco9966]

We have many 3D fan-projects that emulate the Adventure style, with help and investment from Sonic Team, they can improve their graphics and gameplay, and deliver a good passion project like Mania! 

Quote

not because of entitlement from Classic fans. 

Who complained about Sonic's green eyes? Who complained about Sonic's "shitty friends"??

I don't say it's entirely that, but partly because of that. (I'm fine with Mania, I played it for hours! My beef is with Classic Sonic because he is forced uselessly in Sonic Forces to pander to the Classic fans, and thus denying us an opportunity to have a 3D Sonic with a darker story.)

[Tracker_TD]

4 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

We have many 3D fangames that emulate the Adventure style, with help and investment from Sonic Team, they can improve their graphics and gameplay, and deliver a good passion project like Mania!

Who complained about Sonic's green eyes! Who complained about Sonic's "shitty friends"??

I don't say it's entirely that, but partly because of that. (I'm fine with Mania, I played it for hours! My beef is with Classic Sonic because he is forced uselessly in Sonic Forces to pander to the Classic fans!)

We don't have any good fangames that emulate the Adventure style, though. As I've already said, Sonic World is a fucking trashfire. I've seen some promising 3D engines, but as of yet there's no solid proof of concepts along the lines of what Taxman offered. I'm also not aware of anyone actively pitching anything towards SEGA like Tax did with CD.

And while Classic fans certainly complained before the Classic Sonic return, that doesn't change the fact Taxman and Stealth (and many others) worked like hell to bring him back with active developments such as the Retro Engine and the SCD Remaster pitch. 

[JezMM]

Remember that the way Taxman got his foot in the door was to perfectly recreate Sonic CD from the ground up on a mobile device simply as a passion project because he personally wanted to.  He then directly pitched his work to SEGA and they were impressed enough to let him finish the project under their wing (or such is my understanding).  Everything that lead to Sonic Mania grew from there.

Maybe one of the many Sonic Adventure style fangame developers should try a similar thing before we cry foul of SEGA showing favouritism to classic fans somehow.

[Marco9966]

Heck, if Sonic Team is still able to do spin dashes and physics stuff with Classic Sonic in 3D, why wouldn't they be able to do so in full 3D with modern Sonic?

[JezMM]

3 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

Heck, if Sonic Team is still able to do spin dashes and physics stuff with Classic Sonic in 3D, why wouldn't they be able to do so in full 3D with modern Sonic?

They can't.  Classic Sonic in Generations/Forces is entirely 2D and all of the physics behaviour is heavily scripted.  If you plonked him in a new made-up level without any scripting he can't do half the classic-looking stuff he does in the intended stages.  Spin-dashing in 3D areas via mods/glitches causes him to either rocket in the last direction he travelled in 2D or causes the game to crash.  He just becomes a generic platforming character who can run around and jump in the most basic of manners when you put him in 3D.

[Marco9966]

How did Sonic Team sink that low

But they were able to do spin dashes in Sonic Lost world, so they can do it in Hedgehog Engine 2 with some efforts for Modern Sonic!

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

So where should it set it sights? Sonic Generations 3? No thanks.

You keep doing this, acting like it's either Adventure or Boost. It's not. There are more possibilities out there than Sonic Team has tried. Getting stuck in this mindset that it has to be either Generations 3 or SA3 is poison for the series, dooming it to repeat the same mistakes forever.

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

Open your mind, really, you seem to only like the 2D games!

Because the 3D games are all kinda shit. I am 100% in favor of 3D Sonic games being made, but they need to step back and figure out how to do the series justice in 3D. And that's going to take actual hard work, good judgement, and passion, not simply copying existing games.

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

If Sonic spent the last 20 years only making 2D games like Sonic 1, be sure that the series would die down like many platforming games, and we wouldn't be arguing in this forum.

Do you really, honestly think the series is better off thanks to the series' disastrous attempts at 3D? I would, without hesitation, trade everything from SA onward if it meant we got nearly a dozen great 2D games instead.

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

It does actually, if you say that Adventure is "a failure", "dated", then how do you explain how SA2 had the top rankings in steam and more than 3000 good reviews?

Nostalgia and a lack of alternatives. The Adventures aren't anything special, but they're about the least bad that 3D Sonic has been. And since nothing else out there is trying to be 3D Sonic, dated, stunted games are all people have to scratch that itch.

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

Is it nostalgia? Who knows, but I know damn right that the hype for Mania is pure nostalgia!

Nope, sorry. Nostalgia no doubt plays into it but Mania would not be the success that it is if it couldn't back up the hype with solid gameplay.

[Marco9966]

Quote

Do you really, honestly think the series is better off thanks to the series' disastrous attempts at 3D? I would, without hesitation, trade everything from SA onward if it meant we got nearly a dozen great 2D games instead.

Do you think it's the classic fans who do all these (good) fanarts and fanfics and fancharacters? (thousands of fancharacters in MODERN STYLE). Sonic got a rise in popularity from the products with story too! SaTAM, Sonic Adventure, Sonic X, Sonic Archie...

Classic is part of our history, but it's no doubt that it's Modern that has all the LORE and passions, and deviantart tributes...

Take JAZZ JACKRABBIT for example, one of my favorite 2D platforming games along with Classic Sonic. Sure, its 3D attempt was bad and the franchise did not survive, but he didn't have all these awesome comics and TV shows like Sonic. Sonic Adventure was good, and here we are!

BTW, I found something new on Sonic's page...

Guys this is not meme, nor an april's fool... http://bit.ly/itstotallyreal

[Wraith]

I have my own problems with classic purists, but there isn't an ounce of spite behind Sonic Mania as a project. It's all effort and passion. There's not an ounce of malice toward the future iterations of Sonic coming from it or it's developers either.

I sympathize with the lack of quality content that's like the Adventure era, but not only are Adventure fans way behind just due to being generally a bit younger and having less experience working with the games in question, it's a much larger task to ask of fans to go beyond the realm of 2D. 

The good news is that fans are making strides  There's more than a few 3D Sonic engines coming together i terms of physics and game feel you can check out like Sonic Islands. It's not going to happen over night though. 

I don't think we should have to wait on them to be honest. The fact that Sonic Mania had to happen the way it did reflects pretty badly on Sonic Team's part on it's own, frankly. 

[Tornado]

Not that I'm not usually up for a good "collectively beat the optimism out of someone who still likes Sonic" session as much as the next guy, but could we get back to the topic about...

 

 

Oh...

 

Well, Sega's PR team.

 

 

 

Plzthx.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

Sonic World is the last fan game I would EVER use as a example for how a 3D Sonic game should be made... It's terrible all around... In the fan game community It has become the poster child of HOW NOT to do a 3D Sonic game.

Next I say pretty much no official Sonic 3D game has ever gotten physics correct. Sonic Adventure was a ok start but is super flawed, and each game afterwards only got worse from there. The best I've seen so far when it comes to good physics in a 3D Sonic game is the prototype fan game Sonic Utopia, it got REALLY close to having great physics! We just need a engine like it as a base for a official 3D Sonic game, then add onto it other stuff such as levels with actual interesting content, boss battles and some multiple playable characters + story and we would be nearly set to go!

Back on topic. Yeah the memes are getting a bit lame and tiresome to me, especially when the company hasn't been trying to improve on much of anything. Most folk know jokes are not funny when you repeat them a lot. I don't mind them having humor but I feel the social media accounts focus to much on jokes to the point I notice they'll skip over having proper news sometimes about their products.

[GentlemanX]

I don't find the social media jokes funny. I don't know what effects it might be having on the Sonic series' reputation, though I feel people more like the account than they like the franchise. At least on a casual level.

[Almar]

I said it once and I'll say it again: The-Powers-That-Be at Sega don't care about Sonic. And really, how can they? They have other franchises like Persona that not only sell about as well as Modern Sonic does at worst (compare Sonic Forces sales with Persona 5's and account for how the former had 4 systems going for it) without the toxic reputation (compare Sonic Forces' reviews with Persona 5's) but are also actually Japanese. They don't see him as their representative of Sega's image. Sonic isn't like Mario in that he's meant to represent his company's image and so has stricter limits on what can be done with him when it comes to tone, visuals, etc. (though this has helped Mario to retain more of an identity as he went through 3D). Throw in some bitterness and stubbornness too.

The self-deprecating humor is just a manifestation of this lack of regard.

[Tracker_TD]

7 minutes ago, Almar said:

I said it once and I'll say it again: The-Powers-That-Be at Sega don't care about Sonic. And really, how can they? They have other franchises like Persona that not only sell about as well as Modern Sonic does at worst (compare Sonic Forces sales with Persona 5's and account for how the former had 4 systems going for it) without the toxic reputation (compare Sonic Forces' reviews with Persona 5's) but are also actually Japanese. They don't see him as their representative of Sega's image. Sonic isn't like Mario in that he's meant to represent his company's image and so has stricter limits on what can be done with him when it comes to tone, visuals, etc. (though this has helped Mario to retain more of an identity as he went through 3D). Throw in some bitterness and stubbornness too.

The self-deprecating humor is just a manifestation of this lack of regard.

And our award for "Looking too deeply at this" goes to...

The work of the Western social media department for a Western audience, who're totally separate from SEGA Japan, has nothing to do with SEGA's brand image in Japan or whatever. And the fact that Sonic's still the poster boy for stuff like SEGAFes, several app crossover pushes in SEGA's JP mobile division, and most of their arcades says otherwise anyway. 

[Nuggets]

the sonic social media embracing memes and the failures of the series through said memes works for me. If memes aren’t your thing I get it, but this is how PR works when it comes to social media, and the Sonic franchise is a lot less cringe when it comes to that end than a lot of other brands on Twitter*, if you can believe that. 

Someone in here earlier mentioned that the PR team using memes was akin to Family Guy making jokes about how terrible it is while still continuing to be shit - that’d be apt if Sonic and Tails were making jokes about automation, boost pads and scripted events during the plot of Sonic Forces, but the snideness of recognizing that there’s some bad shit in your past while continuing to make bad shit only really exists when it’s occuring in the subject itself. 

Sonic Boom making jokes about its own writing while delivering subpar episodes? I personally think Boom is very well done, but I see the issue with that. But this is a PR arm that has no control over the games - they make content based on what’s there. I don’t think that it’s bad that they roast the series - it’s got a checkered past. What would be worse to me would be a soulless PR account that just retweets fanart, positive shit, and announcements about the games, ignoring the negative aspects of the past altogether. This way, even though we’re in the midst of a mediocre era right now, it feels like the series can laugh at itself, and that’s comforting. It’s something, and in my opinion being able to laugh at yourself me your past failure instead of ignoring it altogether and pretending everything is and always has been ok is a much better alternative.   

Plus I think the Sonic Twitter and the memes and shit they post is funny so. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

*Wendy’s just dropped a fuckin trap mixtape the other day and I don’t think I’ve ever cringed harder at a brand trying to relate to an audience harder in my goddamn life 

[Almar]

17 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

And our award for "Looking too deeply at this" goes to...

The work of the Western social media department for a Western audience, who're totally separate from SEGA Japan, has nothing to do with SEGA's brand image in Japan or whatever. And the fact that Sonic's still the poster boy for stuff like SEGAFes, several app crossover pushes in SEGA's JP mobile division, and most of their arcades says otherwise anyway. 

1. Sonic has long been more respected in the West than in the East. With the elements Eastern audiences respond to the most going from fanworks being from the polarizing 3D era instead of Classic.

2. Much of Sega's arcade cash comes from pachinko. Not Sonic. The rest of what you posted is just taking advantage of what goodwill the Sonic brand has by this point instead of Sonic being depended on to sell Sega's image.

[Tracker_TD]

12 minutes ago, Almar said:

1. Sonic has long been more respected in the West than in the East. With the elements Eastern audiences respond to the most going from fanworks being from the polarizing 3D era instead of Classic.

2. Much of Sega's arcade cash comes from pachinko. Not Sonic. The rest of what you posted is just taking advantage of what goodwill the Sonic brand has by this point instead of Sonic being depended on to sell Sega's image.

My point is more you're somehow attributing decisions made by the Western PR team for Western fans to the Japanese branch of SEGA, who it's been established are practically, completely separate from SEGA America. 

Also... taking advantage of what goodwill the Sonic brand has and using his image as such... is basically Sonic being used to sell SEGA's image. Like, that's marketing innit.