Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

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Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by P.P.A. »

There's something that has bothered me for a while. The director of both NiGHTS into Dreams and Sonic CD is Naoto Ohshima - but how much does a director actually do? And who plays the most important role when making a game? Also I heard Yuji Naka also greatly influenced the former game, but who of the two did the most important part(s)?

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Post by Isuka »

As I get it, the director supervises both the technical and artistical aspects of the game when the dev team is a reduced one (no more than 20 guys), but mostly focuses in one of them if the team gets too huge.
As any other creative activity, the director creates contents and hears suggestions from the rest of the staff in order to turn gameplay aspects and ideas into objects (both visual and aural), and it also works the other way around; finding the best way to use a character/ background/ any other kind of design in the game.

The director basically impregnates the game with his/ her/ its essence when in charge of everything, or just settle the general look and feel and coordinate all the work while letting the other guys get the job done.
Naka made NiGHTS' programming, which is damn important and made it possible for the art team to pack as many textures and polygons to make the thing look acceptably well, but he probably also aided in the brainstorming with ways of doing things with the gameplay and even the art, the same goes for Iizuka.

I don't know what may have happened without Ohshima's input in the project, at least I'm sure NiGHTS (the character) would have looked totally different, but without Naka the game may have looked terrible, played really bad and generally been a lot less polished for the incredibly difficult to program system that the Saturn was.
Last edited by Isuka on Sun Feb 03, 2008 8:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by P.P.A. »

I see, thank you very much. I guess I should try out Ohshima's other games then, since I liked both the surreal and unique styles of Sonic CD and NiGHTS as well as the focus on time/score attacking...

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Dasher »

Oshima was key to Sonic's success in the past, as he created the darn thing.

so you can say he was Sonic's dad, and Naka was Sonic's gameplay dad, now both are gone.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Cuckooguy »

I assume Naoto Oshima was responsible for the look of Sonic and his world. Judging on his work on Sonic CD and NiGHTs, he's responsible for the series' more abstract/colorful/fantastical designs. I think his departure might've been what caused the Sonic series to go into the more realistic background approach instead of the surrealistic aesthetics of yore. You could say he might've been responsible for the charm of the games he's touched. I haven't played Pinobee or Blinx, but Pinobee seems charming but I hear it doesn't run on much else, which may have killed the game's charm.

On the other hand, the character of Blinx doesn't look charming at all.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Dasher »

Once you create a good character, creating another one that is completely different but just as cool as the previous one is a hard thing.

Sonic was a team effort, too bad its team members were all desperate, and Sonic's gameplay father and design creator left.

Mean while Mario is still in his prime because his creator stayed, Which makes my blood boil because you know how many think they are better than the creator? Sony movie guys thought they were better than Stan lee, and the ones creating the live DBZ movie which WILL be shit didnt want Akira Toriyama involved.

Now we have Iizuka a powerhungry moron who thinks he is god and has a fetish with darkness, guns , guitars and Eggpawns.

and reusing models, hes so cheap. And yes, Iizuka is a moron and a Japanese friend who lives in Japan confirmed he was, Im not telling names but some of you know him.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Shadow Hog »

K, you are aware it's the EXECUTIVES of Sega that are ruining the franchise, and not Iizuka? They're just flat-out incompetent, see. I'm pretty sure I went over this elsewhere, however.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Dasher »

Y..yeah, youre right... :mad: I better get all my facts straight, its just that its so strange ya know? and I dont trust Iizuka.

And is it true that Naka hired 4kids and not SEGA of America? I know its old, but Ive never understood whose fault was it, speaking of Naka isnt him the cause why STH flopped? the Night-Day feature even vanished the scene and the final product felt like a demo.

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Post by Isuka »

Personally, I'm of the mindset that there aren't many reasons for the executives to care anymore about what happens with Sonic.
Gibb explained it already, since SEGA left the console business they are no longer in need of developing masterpieces of gameplay and originality just to keep breathing.

They also, as far as I know, never made a buck out of the consoles, unlike Nintendo and its NOT-A-GAMECUBE Wii that allows them to fund the entire company out of the sheer number of consoles sold, so just churning out stinkers with mass-market appeal in mind and no creative freedom whatsoever is a much better option for them ("them" meaning SEGA), even if the Sonic games themselves sell less than what they used to; there's a legion of Nintendo kiddies that'll still buy them, and that's the reason why the 2006 blunder flopped (adult gamers aren't interested in pathetic, half-baked bids at nostalgia, moreso if they can spend those sixty squids in whore-punching, weapon-carrying, mother-swearing, tactical-oriented action and fun).

Modern game scene hardly allows for creative games (both in gameplay and artistically) aimed at a consumer target other than toddlers to garner any amount of success.
Dasher wrote:And is it true that Naka hired 4kids and not SEGA of America?
I'm not sure why I'm trying to answer this since most of your posts are made of 30% launching a hyperbolic every time Sakurai farts something related to Brawl, and the remaining 70% whining at the wrong end of the problem in an English even poorer than mine, but oh well...
I don't think Naka really cared about the Japanese voice actors, I just can't picture him giving 1/16th of a fuck about who dubbed the games stateside. The most probable thing's that they could arrange a contract with 4Kids so the combined dubbing of games and the Sonic X series would be (guess what?) more economically convenient than hiring two separate parties. That's all, and both casts suck... and even then I think those 4Kids guys aren't worse than the former group of losers...
Last edited by Isuka on Mon Feb 04, 2008 4:58 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Dr. SEGA Monkey »

Dasher wrote:And yes, Iizuka is a moron and a Japanese friend who lives in Japan confirmed he was, Im not telling names but some of you know him.
What? Confirmed he was a moron?? Anybody from anywhere can claim anything about anybody. What makes you think that this "friend" knows what he's talking about?

Personally I'd rather have Iizuka in charge instead of Nakamura. And no, not because the gameplay of Sonic 06 was awful, but from a stylistic point of view. As "dark" as some of Iizuka's games were, at least the stories still had a "fun" atmosphere to them. Like a "YEAH! I'M GONNA SAVE THE WORLD AND HAVE FUN DOING IT!!! WAHOO!!" kind of vibe to them.

As opposed to Sonic 06, where it was a bit TOO serious.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by RocketPunch »

Gibb explained it already, since SEGA left the console business they are no longer in need of developing masterpieces of gameplay and originality just to keep breathing.
I'm pretty sure what you're saying here is true, but I don't understand the reasoning behind it. One would assume that if a games and console company switched to only producing games, they'd need all of their games to be top notch in quality to stay in business, right? If you don't mind elaborating for someone who's a little behind as to how the game industry works, could you please explain this?
Modern game scene hardly allows for creative games (both in gameplay and artistically) aimed at a consumer target other than toddlers to garner any amount of success.
You know, I really dislike this mentality. I LOVED the art directions of Halo 3 and Bioshock, just to name two modern games off the top of my head. It's not the checkered hills/Casino Night Zone creative style, but the art in both games still had the same awe-inspiring effect, for me anyway. Perhaps we'd be better off saying the game scene isn't as imaginative as it was in the past?

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Post by Isuka »

Yeah, I also liked the atmosphere of those (judging by the gameplay vids), but they were also kind of committed to be really successful given that not only the press, but also many people were waiting for them (desperately in the case of Halo). That's what I tried to get at.

About the games, it goes more or less like this: SEGA didn't do anything but lose money with every console they sold, as Sony and Microsoft do with their respective machines. Unlike them, SEGA didn't have any means of earning money other than make games, and they were successful all the way on the arcades side, but they were losing on the console one with their first attempts. This ended when they finally got their act together with the Genesis, a powerful machine at a reasonable price, that not only had arcade ports of SEGA games but also third-party ones and original, exclusive contents developed by a number of new creative teams eager to set foot on new ground.

Once SEGA established itself as a third-party, they could enter that game of developing for multiple platforms in order to cut costs, appeal at different targets (sometimes with the same title), buying other developers like The Creative Assembly and such, so the company's only focus would be to keep away from the red numbers and not risk big budgets on unproved formulas (whether they succedeed at this or not is an altogether different topic).
This kind of decisions also hindered the Saturn, back when SoJ didn't allow the American studios to use their technology (Sega Technical Institute and Sonic X-treme come to mind) and eventually blasted the console's chances.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by BlazeHedgehog »

I'm glad somebody else likes the art direction in Halo 3. Everybody's so quick to jump out and call it a generic whatever that they miss the finer details. Yeah it's a space marine against invading aliens and we've seen that a hundred times, but the art direction used in conjuction with that concept, I thought, was great.

Though to be honest, Halo 3 kind of felt like it was skipping stones across an ocean. It felt like for the first time there was some honest depth to the Halo universe but everything moves too quickly and you're scuttled off to the ultimate encounter before anything has a chance to sink in. It's like a decent movie adaptation to a really complicated book - they're trying to boil down what could be a 15 hour feature film to just the essentials. By the time the credits are rolling you're like, "I don't know what just happened, but it was a hell of a ride."

But that's kind of off topic.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Frieza2000 »

While we're playing the blame game again, since the revelation of the management issues I've been of the mind that Naka just stopped caring after the merger. It happened about halfway through Heroes; that's where his famed quality control clearly ceased and is also the last game he's given the credit for. He probably saw the present situation coming and knew that it wasn't an environment he wanted to work in, so he spent the remainder of this tenure on the race track.

But before you romanticize him, consider this. His departure also marked the immediate end of the kiddy Sonic that had just appeared in Heroes and X. Was it a rare case of Sonic Team actually listening to their fans rather than their bank accounts, or was Naka the one responsible for targeting the younger audience? I recall an interview where he said he wanted Sonic to be as popular as Pokemon, and this may have been his strategy. So while we ended up with Shadow from Iizuka, we might've ended up with Heroes 2 if Naka had stuck around.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by BlazeHedgehog »

Both extremes are dumb and Naka's Quality Control failing doesn't explain why 2/3rds of Sonic Adventure 2 isn't very good.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by P.P.A. »

As much as this is opposed to S1/SCD/Chaotix's art direction (which I also adore), I must admit I actually liked SA2's and S06's serious and realistic style. It somehow fits 3D Sonic - or at least it has been that well executed that it's convinced me it would.
I'm not even sure if the SCD/Chaotix art direction would work in 3D - all the colours, patterns and crazy objects might give players a seizure when literally surrounded by them! Also the effort to bring this amount of detail into a 3D world might be too much for the developers, and the final product would totally confuse the player. Imagine NiGHTS with an unlimited draw distance and on a next-gen console: that would be a total overload, I doubt you could concentrate on the gameplay anymore. Yet this is all speculation - it has never been attempted before so I have no clue how it'd come out.

I may rewrite parts of this post tomorrow, I'm tired now and some of this could be bullshit but whatever. Good night for now.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by BlazeHedgehog »

I am the exact opposite. SA2, Shadow, and Sonic 2k6 all take themselves way, way, way too seriously. They are games that try and create serious and epic dramas - but it's all overshadowed, to me, by the fact I'm looking at a 3ft tall talking hedgehog who's head is bigger than most toddlers. Oh no an evil science experiment created in the pursuit of immortality! The princess is going to die! Post apocalyptic futures! A... blue hedgehog, a red echidna, and a really smart 8 year old two-tailed fox? Those don't mix even remotely.

That's not to say I want Sonic to be a goofy cartoon character - I've grown to appreciate a Sonic where things are light hearted, surrealistic, and just serious enough to where the enemy feels threatening; but nothing as melodramatic as Sonicteam's recent efforts.

Sonic's never been about maturity or being serious. His entire character is based on the fact that he's immature, impatient and rude - but in a pinch, he pulls together and defends his friends at all costs. Sonic was always described in most early japanese media as having a devil-may-care attitude but a very strong sense of justice. So far, Sonic X and the Sonic OVA have captured this personality the best.

Most of the 3D Sonic games seem to be content at ignoring this aspect of his character - instead reshaping Sonic in to some sort of generic superhero who also happens to run really fast and "loves adventure". Only very rarely do the 3D games dare to actually display Sonic's once-trademarked attitude.

And I miss that. A lot.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by FlashTHD »

BlazeHedgehog wrote:I am the exact opposite. SA2, Shadow, and Sonic 2k6 all take themselves way, way, way too seriously. They are games that try and create serious and epic dramas - but it's all overshadowed, to me, by the fact I'm looking at a 3ft tall talking hedgehog who's head is bigger than most toddlers. Oh no an evil science experiment created in the pursuit of immortality! The princess is going to die! Post apocalyptic futures! A... blue hedgehog, a red echidna, and a really smart 8 year old two-tailed fox? Those don't mix even remotely.
baaaaaaaaww
So far, Sonic X and the Sonic OVA have captured this personality the best.
The OVA, yes. Sonic X, bloody hell no. Too many times in the lesser eps his role was to "mysteriously" be a lazy indifferent asshole until he's needed. (In the first 52 anyway, I never paid attention to series 2.)
Frieza2000 wrote:that's where his famed quality control clearly ceased and is also the last game he's given the credit for
Not so literally, he was listed under Producer for everything up to Riders. I can't say for sure if he did simply stop paying attention, none of us really can - though he did let Iizuka get away with going somewhere with those retarded fan letters asking for Sonic w/ gunz, and then kept dead quiet. But becoming disillusioned with the new state of Sega, most definitely. Miziguchi fled for that reason, Suzuki almost escaped (how did they lure him back?)...who else took off?

Also shame on any of you who still seriously try responding to one brainless word out of SegaSonic.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by BlazeHedgehog »

FlashTHD wrote:
BlazeHedgehog wrote:I am the exact opposite. SA2, Shadow, and Sonic 2k6 all take themselves way, way, way too seriously. They are games that try and create serious and epic dramas - but it's all overshadowed, to me, by the fact I'm looking at a 3ft tall talking hedgehog who's head is bigger than most toddlers. Oh no an evil science experiment created in the pursuit of immortality! The princess is going to die! Post apocalyptic futures! A... blue hedgehog, a red echidna, and a really smart 8 year old two-tailed fox? Those don't mix even remotely.
baaaaaaaaww
What. Why am I getting baw'd?

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by FlashTHD »

Pick nits much?

If that's all they were doing anymore then it could make for trouble, but it isn't. An occasional walk on that wild side only hurts as much as the quality of the script it's given.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by BlazeHedgehog »

Walking on the wild side is great when it's done properly. However, Sonicteam seems to make it a bad habit of giving people the opposite of what they want ("WE WANT LESS CHARACTERS STEALING THE SPOTLIGHT!" "Okay! Our next Sonic game will have 12 playable characters!").

Most Sonic game scripts - especially recent Sonic game scripts - read like bad saturday morning anime and have the voice actors to go with it. Walking on the wild side is great when you do it on a rare occasion, but constantly doing it, and constantly doing it poorly...

Yeah, no.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Shadow Hog »

Actually, here's a topic about Sonic CD that Neo and I had a lengthy discussion over - the soundtrack. Hataya's soundtrack left Japanese soil for the European Mega CD version, Sonic Screensaver and Sonic Jam... and has promptly not left since. Every release of the game has Spencer Nilsen's soundtrack in the US, and the latter two releases do in Europe (despite them getting the original soundtrack the first time around). Why is that? Are there some licensing issues Sega's not being very open about (not that they would be open about it but still)?

Heck, it bothered me that no tunes from the soundtrack were included in Brawl... then I noticed the file-naming was off:
Brawl Rip Track List wrote:U01 - Green Hill Zone 1 - Sonic the Hedgehog - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U02 - Scrap Brain Zone - Sonic the Hedgehog - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U03 - Emerald Hill Zone 1 - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U04 - Angel Island Zone 1 - Sonic The Hedgehog 3 - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U06 - Sonic Boom - Sonic CD US Version - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U07 - Super Sonic Racing - Sonic R - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U08 - Open Your Heart - Sonic Adventure - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U09 - Live and Learn - Sonic Adventure 2 - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U10 - Sonic Heroes - Sonic Heroes - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U11 - Right There, Ride On - Sonic Rush - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U12 - His World - Next Gen Sonic the Hedgehog - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
U13 - 7 Rings in Hand - Sonic and the Secret Rings - Super Smash Bros Brawl - 2008 - Soundtrack -
Notice that there is no U05. Notice that it's right next to "Sonic Boom" - a Sonic CD track. I think Sakurai WAS trying to get that soundtrack in there, and had a spot set aside for it, but something held him back - legal issues, no doubt.

So what the hell is going on? Is the singer asking for ridiculously large royalties, or is she refusing to let her work touch American soil? This makes no damn sense.

EDIT: of course, it's been pointed out to me that the tracklist for the entire game has holes like this all over the place - more cut music, most likely. I guess that might shoot some holes into this theory, but it's still curious.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by FlashTHD »

For a while I thought it was Spencer Nilsen having some really damn good legal sense/attorney(s), but Keiko Utoku could be holding things up too. She just did the vocal tracks though...right?

Actually hey, the True Blue collection has both TTSW and Sonic Boom on the disc. If somehow it comes to the west, one or the other (or neither) being taken out would explain a lot.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by Dasher »

I think someone in Sonicteam likes 4KIDS version of Sonic X, this will explain why SoA said they didnt had power over the voice overs of Sonic and why the song is in the soundtrack and why its called true blue like the many archie comics that Sonic Team has shown they collect... Ugh.

That explain everything, Sonic Team are starting to think Sonic needs more american influence *Cough* Shadowthehedgehog *cough*
Last edited by Dasher on Tue Feb 05, 2008 6:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Question about Sonic CD/NiGHTS

Post by P.P.A. »

BlazeHedgehog wrote:*stuff*
I can see what you mean (and agree with you on the OVA Sonic being the best in character. Can't say the same for Sonic X though. And Shadow's story was just far too lol to be taken seriously). But I was only referring to the graphical style and the atmosphere of the games and the levels, not the story aspects.

Also Sonic Adventure 2's story wasn't that bad. Neither was Sonic 06's. ...well, Silver's and Shadow's at least (except for the various time paradoxes that wouldn't stand the laws of physics probably). That Sonic x Elise romance really felt like reading a bad, bad fanfic though.

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