Have you ever heard about the Russian Sonic fanbase?

[mrtwommr]

I mean, their tastes in Sonic games? I do. And by the way, I hope I shouldn't explain, that I talk about the majority, and not about ALL of them, right?

As much as English community, especially Classic Sonic one, values the gameplay in Sonic, the Russian one values plot: for them, it should be Archie-like: no matter how stupid it is, if it's epic and massive - it's good. A lot of games are defended with the words: "Well, the gameplay is OK, but the plot is just crazy!" Therefore, one of their favourite game in the franchise - and I kid you not - is SONIC '06!!! You might compare them with SA3 movement, but even they are not saying that '06 is one of the best. Strangely enough, Russian community loves SADX and Heroes, but is pretty cold towards SA2 and ShtH. They liked Storybook series, but the last game praised besides spin-offs is Unleashed (just as in English fanbase, when it came out it was received badly, but then loads of people changed their mind), and then it was pretty negative towards all the games that came out. The only two exceptions are Generations (half are hating on it's nostalgia pandering, half are saying that it is a great anniversary game) and Forces (half are saying that it's a cheaply made game, half feel about it like English fanbase felt about Colors in 2010). And by the way, they are absolutely furious at nostalgia pandering! Sonic Mania was trashed there - they were saying that it has nothing new and it is just a paid fan game people like because of nostalgia.

You might ask me - why are they so different? Well, the reason starts in 90s, where russians didn't even have a licensed Mega Drive - they had it's chinese clones. There were no S&K cartridge with lock on technology and no SEGA consoles past CD - there was just no SEGA's part in market there. On practice, it means that there was a very small possibility to build a fanbase on classic games. Moreover, in addition to logical absence of Dreamcast, there were almost no GameCube consoles around, and PC gaming started to become popular, which easilly explains, why SADX and Heroes were so popular, while SA2 and ShtH weren't. Later, PS3 and XBOX360 has arrived. The last one became really popular there, because it was cracked really fast. And here people found their love for '06 and Unleashed - because XBOX360 was cracked pretty early. The same story with Wii and its Storybook series.

So, what do you guys think about them?

P.S. If you have more questions about their perspective - ask me anything, I'm pretty long in this fanbase.

[Adamis]

1 hour ago, mrtwommr said:

So what do you guys think about them?

Nothing ?

I mean, if they like what you said, all power to them.

I like Sonic 2006's story (and I'm not Russian :P) despite its flaws and I don't think anyone (should) care about that x)

[Bobnik]

Oh man, I'm gonna have a field day with this

As someone who has been in a part of that community more or less for over 10 years, it was a bit weird, but also somewhat fun time. I can't really say much about the whole Russian fanbase, but the part I was in had pretty interesting opinions - a lot of people thought that SA2 was the pinnacle of this franchise, somehow 06 coming in close (even though it was trashed back when it came out). I'm not sure about the fandom hating on ShTH, I've seen quite an amount of people saying that it was one of their favourites (which is weird, sure, but it's their opinion, so w/e). Fun fact about SA3 fanpage - it was actually established by some people that were in the part of the community I was in, though I never joined that movement cuz I thought it was a bit dumb at that time (still better than whatever hellhole it became tho).

Also quite an amount of people were (and some of them still are) hating on Unleashed pretty much because it went for Pixar-esque art-style for NPCs instead of more "realistic" ones. I'll admit that when I first saw the NPCs, I hated them with a burning passion as well (nowadays I'm more indifferent to that). After Unleashed what I've heard the most was "Pontaff are trash" (to which I somewhat agree) and "Fire Iizuka for what he did!" (to which I agreed at first, but now don't think is valid when there are other more problematic spots on Sonic Team, but I ain't gonna talk about it here). And yeah, they really valued plot, lore and art-style over anything else when it came to Sonic, even saying that 06 has one of the best stories in the franchise. And yes, they do not like Classic nostalgia pandering at all - though I've seen an amount of people being positive about the game, there's also a part of the community that think the game's not good purely because of reused levels and graphics being too close to the 16-32-bit era (which was the point of the game).

I also remember when the "How to play SA2 on PC?" question became sort of a meme for quite some time because there were so many people that asked that before the game actually came out on Steam. It was funny.

I can't really speak about what happened in 90s, cuz 1) I'm not actually from Russia, and 2) I didn't really go in-depth when it comes to that. But I do feel like that the lack of official support is what made that part of the fanbase what it is - one that has preference to story/lore over gameplay, and one that has preference to Adventure art-style over Classic or even Modern (with a few exceptions here and there). I'd say the opinions were pretty much contrary to the western community for the most part, though after Generations the "majority" of opinions have been quite similar - people don't like Lost World, they think RoL is trash, and Forces was a very disappointing game.

Anyway, yeah, Russian community is weird and have priorities in other places when it comes to Sonic, but they can still be a fun bunch I guess.

 

[Osmium]

So they all hated Mania and like '06 and want plot? The 100% of the Sonic fans in Russia think like that? I doubt it. I've never liked these topics about the collective fanbases in certain countries. Like, you never hear about "The American Sonic Fanbase" or "The British Sonic Fanbase" since there are probably millions in both countries and everyone thinks differently. 

I mean, I don't know squat about Sonic Fans in Russia, but the fact we have a Russian member here who tends to dismiss really serious plots should already say a bit of something. Its a bit strange to place a whole country of people into a very specific box or mindset to me. 

[Your Vest Friend]

All I know about the Russian fanbase is that they're really good at ripping assets from websites. Seriously, Woun and a few other Russian fans were great with that stuff back in the day.

[Marco9966]

55 minutes ago, A crocodile said:

So they all hated Mania and like '06 and want plot?

I love the russian fanbase (tears of joy).

(Although I did not hate Mania, but hate the excessive nostalgia pandering).

[Badnik Mechanic]

If nobody has made a topic on Russian SSMB saying "hey what about those English fans!" 

We as a global community have failed.

 

Also something about the points here seems bit cherry picked.

[Wraith]

I remember a small group of russian fans that used to post here about Sonic 06 a long time ago. I don't like the idea of putting all Russian Sonic fans in a box, but it wouldn't surprise me to hear that it's more popular there. I also remember hearing that characters like Silver are more popular in Japan, but I don't know how true that all is. 

I don't think it's surprising. I remember being confused about the Star Wars prequels being more popular in Japan, but it turns out the Japanese dub has a lot more emotion put into it's acting, and that's not even getting into whatever changes they made to the script to make the story come off better. I wonder if there's a similar thing going on with Sonic games sometimes. 

Even if there was no "dub" per se and they just had subtitles that can change how you perceive certain things a bit. 

[WakanoBaka]

Holy shit, I feel weird just reading this!

 

Man now I wanna know about the Japanese, Korean, European,and Mexican fanbases. lol

[Badnik Mechanic]

30 minutes ago, WakanoBaka said:

Mexican fanbases. lol

The Mexican Sega Community manager is the stuff of legend.

Day 1 into his job he announced 3 new Sonic games which were not in production. One was Sonic Adventure 3.

Then for Sonic Generations release date he announced that anyone who turned up to the Sega Mexico office would be given a free pizza!

 

[The Tenth Doctor]

Didn't the Russians have a Sonic Convention too? Seem to remember that floating around a couple of years ago.

[Badnik Mechanic]

1 hour ago, The Tenth Doctor said:

Didn't the Russians have a Sonic Convention too? Seem to remember that floating around a couple of years ago.

They do indeed. I don't remember what it's called, but from what I remember it was a 2 or 3 day event and they all camped out.

They're also very good at finding really obscure leaks.

[mrtwommr]

6 hours ago, A crocodile said:

The 100% of the Sonic fans in Russia think like that? I doubt it.

And your doubts are correct. If you read the first paragraph closely, you'd see that there I said I was talking about the majority, not about all of them.

[A person, that exists]

Eh, not really.

Sonic 06 is praised only by little kids who don't have an Xbox and by people who have clearly never played the game more than once. 

Also, I don't quite understand where the "Russians hate SA2 and ShTH" statement came from. Most people here absolutely praise SA2 (Despite never playing it, obvs), while ShTH… Is kinda ignored, or at the very least mentioned in a lukewarm manor. However, Heroes is often considered to be the weakest point in the series here, with most fans criticizing it for "Not having a good story" and "Being too kiddy".
This is kinda the thing with Russian Sonic fans: They'll praise any Sonic game as long as it's semi-serious, like 06 or Shadow, while hating most kiddy Sonic games, like Colors or Unleashed.

As for the character preferences, the community had never really grown out of the 2000-s, so obviously Shadow and Sonic are still praised, while Knuckles, Jet and the Chaotix are considered "Lame, stupid and kiddy". They also seem to love Mephiles, so much in fact, that they consider him to be the pinnacle of the series' villains. 

There's also a bunch of memes centered around the awful pirated translations of SA1, Heroes, Shadow and SA2, mainly around the poorly translated phrases and character names (Knuckles being named "Kostyashka" or "Knicklesc", Eggman being named "Dr.Yaikin" or "Zigman" and Sonic being named "Tsopis")

They also seem to dislike SatAM and AoSTH, while praising X. This is mainly due to SatAM never being broadcasted here, while X got a full Russian re-dub of the 4Kids dub. The main punching bag for the SatAM haters is Sally, whom they often call a "Whore". Needless to say, SonAmy definitely holds the upper hand here.

The SA3 movement here went completely off-rails tho. There is a whole group of fanatics, who want to turn Sonic into a realistic communistic cyberpunk warsploitation, and down-right KILL Takashi Iidluka. It literally became a hell-hole like no other, and it makes the SA3 facebook page look like a bunch of pacifists. 

Also, the romhacking community here is pretty nuts. Newbies are treated like ass, while most professional rom hackers have already left the community or turned into aggressive trolls/critics, who rarely release anything.

Also, the Classics are fondly loved and cherished here. Heck, some people still think that Sonic only had three games, so you argument about the MegaDrive and Chinese clones is kinda off.

[G.U.N. Commander Gogol]

On 6/4/2018 at 7:28 PM, A person, that exists said:

Sonic 06 is praised only by little kids who don't have an Xbox and by people who have clearly never played the game more than once. 

And that's exactly why Russian team of Mefiresu-kun are making now a fucking PC-REMAKE of '06, while getting a lot of genuine praise and support from die-hard sonic fans of ru-community... Right? Sure, only little kids, you can continue convincing yourself of this.

On the topic I want to put it simple: Russian community is far more open minded to any pop culture object than Americans and Co because here, in Russia, there was no time lag between generations of entertainment industry due to... Well, lack of generations AT ALL(Iron Curtain and its consequences, and then poor as shit 90s without legal distribution of movies and games in our country - the situation has improved only in the middle of 2000s, that's when we en masse started to get our hands at ALL of products of global market simultaneously) - that's why Russians also treat Prequels of Star Wars without a grumpy bias which is common for western Hemisphere ("boo-wooo i don't like flashy lightsaber duels and politics and midichlorians, booo, Lucas Man Bad! star wars used to be better wooo!"). Russian fanbases usually don't have that annoying bitching nostalgic attitude about "good old times" and gladly enjoy something new in most cases. We don't see Shadow the Hedgehog as "travesty", we do love "Sonic shitty friends", all of them, we even don't mind Sonic Forces and I can assure you that Russian part of Sonic fanbase reacted relatively nice and easy to that poster with athletic Sonic, lol (Even I've already calmed down and I'm not mad about this at all)

[Scritch the Cat]

On 6/4/2018 at 10:28 AM, A person, that exists said:

As for the character preferences, the community had never really grown out of the 2000-s, so obviously Shadow and Sonic are still praised, while Knuckles, Jet and the Chaotix are considered "Lame, stupid and kiddy". They also seem to love Mephiles, so much in fact, that they consider him to be the pinnacle of the series' villains.

I'll take your word for it about the Russian opinion of characters, but Knuckles was plenty around in the 2000s, so I'm not sure why that would cause people to dislike him.