The GHZ Forum

UK website Game Radar conducted a brief interview with Takashi Iizuka. Although the majority of his comments related to NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, Iizuka mentioned that he “hear[s] there is a lot of demand [...] to bring out Burning Rangers on Wii so... we'll see."

Several gaming publications have taken this to be a hint that a Burning Rangers sequel is in development. This may be a somewhat premature conclusion to make, as Sonic Team spent eleven years acknowledging fan demand for a NiGHTS follow up.

You can read the full interview here.

When will they stop. When will they stop.

More particularly: why weren't they doing this when they were good?

Uh-oh.

I think alot of people don't understand that Sega is dead. Like, literally, it's past tense. The "Sega" that exists today is just a brand name. The company proper ended when Isao Okawa died five or six years ago because Sega was, like, his millionaire hobby. The parent company CSK wanted nothing to do with it after that so it went on the auction block and has since been spliced, merged, unmerged, remerged, and generally eradicated like alot of formerly great 80's-90's game companies. All the important people have long since left. Now it's pretty much just an excuse for Simon Jeffrey to dole out IP's of all levels of popularity and obscurity from Sega's history to third-rate American contract developers. I wager we'll be seeing Alex Kidd 3D from StormCheese Studios within the next couple of years.

So basically, it isn't really going to "end" in the way a disease might. It's already ended and this is kind of the afterlife.

That's another kind of <i>sequel</i> altogether.

And... maybe I should learn to shut my trap about reviving old franchises from now on.

Popcorn wrote:More particularly: why weren't they doing this when they were good?

If by "when they were good" you mean the Dreamcast times, I think those severe financial problems forced them to decide whether they developed new and fresh IP's, or sequels of old games that have been associated with the Saturn's demise. I bet they didn't have to think about it twice.

Ugh. GG! is right.

The worst thing is that I'd easily play a 3d Alex Kidd. Even if it sucks. I'm a consumer whore.

Silly GG, Alex Kidd 3D would be done by Traveler's Tales.

So if they make a sequel to Burning Rangers, even though it's the same guy who worked on it, we should all commit mass suicide. Because no one else can ever do something else anyone else ever did.

Also since when does "all" mean "some"? Unless the only imporant people were in Sonic Team; which isn't the entirety SEGA.

Kogen wrote:no one else can ever do something else anyone else ever did.

Try to say it 5 times really fast.

And Yu Suzuki's supposedly out of it as well, isn't he? I remember the guy responsible of Altered Beast and Golden Axe showed up in an interview for PS2's SEGA Genesis Collection, though.

Kogen wrote:So if they make a sequel to Burning Rangers, even though it's the same guy who worked on it, we should all commit mass suicide. Because no one else can ever do something else anyone else ever did.

Nobody said this. Express your own argument instead of exaggerating someone else's and making snarky, hollow comments about it.

I don't like how everyone is answering to Takashi Iizuka. Is he supposed to be the head of Sonic Team now, or what?

I think so... is there anyone else left?
Yasuhara is gone, Ohshima too, Naka just escaped... I don't see anyone else to head the thing. Besides him there're only the designers and sound guys.

Yu isn't out, he has his own studio which is making a spin-off type game of Outrun2. As for those videos; a few other people were shown like the one who worked on PS and now does brain training games. I think the ugly tanned guy who makes Yakuza games has been there for awhile, as well.

And yes Locit, I'm aware he didn't actually mean any of what I said there. All I did was over exaggerate a reply to something over exaggerated. What it really says is "Not everyone important quit from SEGA, you're wrong.".

Yojiro Ogawa's definitely still there. You know those interview scans I said i'd withhold? They (gamesâ„¢) asked him about Sonic Team without Naka.

"It is very hard, even for me, to see how Sonic Team will be in the future," he says. "When Naka-san left, it was a very difficult era for us. Sonic Team equals Naka-san and Naka-san equals Sonic Team so it was very challenging without him. We enjoyed last year because the 360 and PS3 brought new challenges to Sonic Team but we don't even know if we will be called 'Sonic Team' in the future. That will depend on whether someone can take over from Naka-san and work in his style with future Sonic titles. We don't even know who that will be at this stage; it could be me but we don't yet know.

That bold part is slightly creepy, though, it hints that him leaving might indeed have had a nasty impact on 06's development in some way.

Anyway, think about this quote and that we haven't heard anything to indicate Iizuka's unhappy with where he is at SSUSA.

Iizuka actually wasn't involved with Burning Rangers.

What is Suzuki doing these days, anyway? I don't remember hearing anything from him since that Shenmue Online nonsense. I rather get the impression he doesn't give much of a poot anymore and I can't say as I blame him.

This, apparently: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=22C491W4PDU

From what I've read, he's the head of a new studio called "AM+" for making new franchises.

FlashTHD wrote:That bold part is slightly creepy, though, it hints that him leaving might indeed have had a nasty impact on 06's development in some way.

It sounds pretty accurate, though. For years, it seemed that all you needed for a Sonic Team game was to have Naka involved in some way. Plus, I think 06's biggest problems were there from the beginning (story and concept, for example). I think the game was far enough along by the time Naka left that it wouldn't have made much of a difference if he'd stayed, except maybe some tweaking in the control department (but as we all know, Naka's presence never made much of a difference there anyway).

Yeah, Naka wasn't Midas, but was his name ever on anything universally panned as "unplayable" before? I'd like to think that his presence would have at least made the game pass as mediocre and "for fans".

(On a separate rant, "for fans" is the most bullshit cliché in all of critiquing, gaming and otherwise, since it's basically a way of saying "it's terrible" while still attempting to rim the die-hards that probably comprise a good deal of their readership. Grow a pair, will you? If it's really terrible, true fans will be appalled half the time. There's a time and place for it like all clichés, but also like all clichés, 90% of the time, I don't hear it in the right time nor place.)

That's not to say "I wish Naka-san had stayed put and worked his magic!" I like having such a juicy skid mark on the undergarments of this series. I like that after being marginally passable because being bland and clunky, while certainly crimes, are not punishable by death, Sonic Team finally committed murder one.

There are serious, self-respecting, level-headed gamers who will look me in the eye and tell me Sonic Heroes was a good game.
There are casual, self-mutilating, but ultimately fun-minded gamers who will look me in the eye and tell me Shadow was worth the money.
But the people who like S06 are a rare breed, and most have just accepted the fact that their preference probably unveils a sort of deep-seated set of sadomasochistic tendencies.

It's really not sounding like much of a benefit yet and truthfully—Burning Rangers, Nights... probably all screwed. But Sonic's still an icon of platform gaming, as his status in Brawl will reinforce. If Sega keeps this reputation up, they're going to find themselves in a sink or swim situation that no Dreamcast & Genesis nostalgia can dissolve. And if they can't keep afloat, some other bearer may end up purchase that torch, and rekindle the flame (or pry it out of Sega's cold, stiff fingers, from of a puddle of its own brain matter).

DackAttac wrote:There are casual, self-mutilating, but ultimately fun-minded gamers who will look me in the eye and tell me Shadow was worth the money.

I'm willing to defend it insofar as it's a suprisingly good time when you're done with story mode forever, but it ain't any sizable leg up over Heroes (read: decent, no more). And after a while of playing it, I realized I was getting pretty tired of "oh well, this'll do"s from them, especially not after the level Iizuka stooped to make a game like that happen.

Still, in a sense, it's underrated. I have a friend who was more easily pleased by it, because...well, the way he explained it to me was, it married his two great loves of video gaming: Sonic games and blowing shit up. I see exactly where he's coming from and I won't fault him for it. Much.

But... you <b>do</b> get to blow shit up in both Sonic Adventure games. With arguably less control and camera glitches.

Also, while he wasn't part of SonicTeam itself, I wonder what was of Irimajiri.

DackAttac wrote:But the people who like S06 are a rare breed, and most have just accepted the fact that their preference probably unveils a sort of deep-seated set of sadomasochistic tendencies.

Hey, I like parts of it. Namely the killer music, The fact that Shadow's move set is more or less as I always imagined it should be (and as it should have been is ShTH), that when Sonic wasn't dying in a mach speed area that it was pretty cool, and Mephiles. Mephiles was pretty cool.

And has Prope done anything yet? Naka abandoned Sonic Team and then hasn't done anything as far as I have heard.

FlashTHD wrote:it married his two great loves of video gaming: Sonic games and blowing shit up.

I think that's why that, at its peak, it was a few islands of good times in a sea of murky mediocrity. I'd agree that in retrospect, Shadow's quality was probably equal to Heroes, but the lack of level variety and story mode's frustrating structure kept it from seeming as such at the time.

But, on a slow week, one where I had just moved into my apartment in Boston a week before classes started, and the internet wasn't yet installed, I dusted it off and finished it. I hated myself so hard on principle, but there are a lot of games I could have gone back in and replayed, and I picked Shadow every morning until the Concast guy came.

Green Gibbon! wrote:I think alot of people don't understand that Sega is dead. Like, literally, it's past tense.

That’s what I tried to say for years here, but my english sucks.

Sonic Rush adventure wasn’t bad, but it was like, too damn short….

It was like the fun of playing one episode of Sam&Max, but paying the money for the whole first season. Of course I don’t care. Blaze is cool in Rush Adventure… but still...

Yeah, that was definitely exclusively your viewpoint.

And SRA was co-helmed by Dimps. The thesis here is that Sega is dead. You can stick a living person's hand up a corpse's ass and put on a puppet show, but it doesn't make the corpse alive when it's over.

It's just too bad the idea is entirely flawed. AM2 is alive, therefore so is SEGA. To be short and blunt about it.

Sonic Team is what's dead.