Sonic 4 Playtested By Community Member

[Dreadknux]

Just caught up with the last ten pages. Man, that was depressing.

Yeah, Endri's likely in the shit for leaking stuff. But that's Endri. Not us. Not Retro. Not anyone who decides they want to talk about it.

You can't blame a bunch of Sonic the Hedgehog fans for putting up - whether true or false - images and info pertaining to a not-yet-released game on their website. The worst Retro would get, if Sega decided to go after them, would be a request to remove it and (possibly) information on the person who supplied the information. Things that I don't believe the dudes at Retro are incapable of, they're cool cats. But as has been said, whatever they decide is their own business - far be it for anyone to tell them how to run their site unless its the copyright holder involved taking issue with something.

The idea that talking about something is a crime is so funny I won't even start.

And leaks happen all the time, not just to Sega. Yeah, it's a bummer for the company that stuff got leaked early, but again the business in that regard is only between those specific parties involved (i.e. Sega and Endri and Browny/whatever his name is). It won't make a blind bit of difference to PR and budget, because in an instance such as this companies are taught to 'No Comment' and act as if nothing happened. It certainly won't make any promotion Sega plan null and void - do you think the world and his dog sit at the Internet, on Sonic fansites every five seconds to glean the latest leak and information? Not really. A lot of promotion dollars will go towards TV marketing, print and other awareness schemes to attract the general gamer.

I'd like to throw a curveball to prove my point. Sonic Heroes. No a lot of you may have forgotten this, but it got the absolute shit leaked leaked out it, a whole month or two before general release. E3 demos were published online, assets were (again) bungled by Sega, almost the entire soundtrack was leaked... did it stop Sonic Heroes from being one of the biggest selling Sonic the Hedgehog titles of all time? I'll have a soda to go with my big fat 'NO' there, cheers.

The act of the leak may have been a breach of contract, and thus illegal. But it's not illegal for us. None of us are guilty of any crime. And it's certainly not illegal for anyone to get a little bit excited about an unreleased game. If anything, it's helping Sega's case by throwing it into the spotlight!

Sega will truck on regardless, as it always has done, and everyone will have forgotten about the leak in a week - unless of course, people start arguing over legalities, censorship and throwing communist insults at one another for ten whole fucking pages.

[Tornado]

I'd like to throw a curveball to prove my point. Sonic Heroes. No a lot of you may have forgotten this, but it got the absolute shit leaked leaked out it, a whole month or two before general release. E3 demos were published online, assets were (again) bungled by Sega, almost the entire soundtrack was leaked... did it stop Sonic Heroes from being one of the biggest selling Sonic the Hedgehog titles of all time? I'll have a soda to go with my big fat 'NO' there, cheers.

As I recall, the full beta of Sonic Advance 3 was leaked a few months ahead of the final game that same year and had about as much effect.

[Dreadknux]

Sonic Advance 3 too, good point.

[Swiss]

Just caught up with the last ten pages. Man, that was depressing.

I'm not even going to attempt to read them all then.

Seriously though, you think this is bad? Sega's official forums are wrecked, no...FUCKED.

Sega will truck on regardless, as it always has done, and everyone will have forgotten about the leak in a week - unless of course, people start arguing over legalities, censorship and throwing communist insults at one another for ten whole fucking pages.

And that's the best decision for Sega (or any company in that postion), just truck on like nothing's happened.

I didn't bother listening to Endri's stuff and don't consider it a leak of any kind. Even if he did play it it's still his opinion, so what effect should it have on any one of us? NONE.

[Phos]

No.

Because they planned this stuff in advance, and because promotion is good sense.

Hey, let's never invest in movie trailers! Just wait for it to leak to the internet. THAT'S THE TICKET.

When Sonic Unleashed footage leaked, it made the biggest buzz I've ever seen associated with the franchise, save for back when Sega could make a game worth a damn and host a world wide tournament for it (Sonic & Knuckles launch). But let's be realistic here: the only difference between leaked footage and a gameplay trailer is that one comes with a press release that no one reads. people are going to have the same opinion of a game regardless.

Edited March 4, 2010 by Phos

[vgmaster]

If this stuff is true then they really have killed the nostalgic feel of the classic series, meaning it won't be anything like Sonic 3 & Knuckles, but more like Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Rush. And from the looks from it, they seems to be more interested in the protable games and not the Genesis series. They're probably gonna make Super Sonic only playable in the last stage as well.

[crush40rocks]

*facepalm*

Okay, after reading this guy's supposed "review" of the supposed "finished" product (which I don't believe, by the way), I have this to say:

If it is real, then all I really can say is, ( A ) I'm not surprised in the least, and ( B ) There is no way in hell I believe that it's the product is completely finished at this point..

That being said, I would give anything to be able to just walk in on a Sonic Team focus meeting one day and speak my mind. You see, I am HIGHLY allergic to stupid and I worry that another allergic reaction is on the horizon. I mean really, these people had a hard enough time trying to emulate classic Sonic on the Gameboy Advance (which was supposedly a 32-bit system I might add) and they FINALLY managed to scrape by with the recent release of a certain new DS title. Now there are hints that they are having trouble with the physics when building a game for modern/advanced game consoles. Does anyone else see the ridiculous inconsistency here? Is Sonic Team really trying to say that the in the Sega Genesis days it was easier to produced sleek, polished physics, and now that there are countless more tools at their disposal than there were in the 90's, it's suddenly HARDER?! I mean, I've been giving Sonic a mulligan year after disappointing year because the root of the problem has been pretty obvious in most games in the past decade, and I figure that Sonic Team, being the group of intelligent (and I use that term lightly) sentient beings that they are, would pick up on their mistakes, correct or remove them, and move on. I hoped that, if they made enough mistakes, they would eventually have to refine their techniques to the point where they actually come out with a good game. Seriously, if you can't do it yourselves, get help from the past. How hard is it to recycle the physics from the 90's? Just reach deep into the code of the genesis titles and pull out that winning formula we've been waiting for the past 16 years to see again. Sega's problem in the past decade was that they wanted to keep trying new things. Every time, there was some new gimmick. This time however, I am deeply saddened by the fact that we can't pin problems on gimmicks. The fact of the matter is, this time, they are really trying, and that fills me with happiness and anxiety all at once. If this game doesn't live up to snuff, that's it. No gimmicks to pin the blame on this time.

They didn't have to "build it from the ground up" in the first place. That's where they may (or may not) have went wrong. All they had to do was recycle the physics engine from the old games. That's it. Except for the need for good level design to compliment said physics, most everything else would fall in place.

Gimmie a baseball bat... no, the steel one... there we go... now, excuse me while I go beat some sense into Sonic Team's collective mind. God I hate stupid!

Disclaimer: Sorry if this rant seemed a bit one-sided. While it sounded like I was doing nothing but bashing Sonic Team and calling them incompetent (which I was, don't get me wrong), I also tried to add little hints in there stating that there isn't enough evidence to say that the game is screwed at this point. It may very well still turn out to be great, we can't know for sure yet. The point I was trying to make in my above statement was that the risk was unnecessary to take in the first place. "Going back to classic?" "Sonic the Hedgehog 4?" Sounds to me like they're going for broke, guys. It's all or nothing now...

To elaborate on my rant, I have included a little skit. Enjoy.

Edited March 4, 2010 by crush40rocks