New Sonic game for 2015

[Malchik]

Jesus it's Sonic Heroes all over again.

[cjmcray]

So, we're now officially one week away from the series premiere of Sonic Boom on Cartoon Network. And not a single ad for the series, the toys, nor the videogames, has yet to air. Perplexing.

I remember at this time last year, the Lost World commercials were all over CN and Nick, several weeks before the game's release. What's the going on here?

I watched the Boom Press Event on YouTube back in February, and the Sega Rep went on and on about their partnership with Tomy, the new cartoon series, and how SEGA has over 30 business partners, ranging from fast-food, clothing and other outlets, all lined up to promote Boom. So, where's the Sonic Boom Happy Meals? Commercials for Sonic Boom action figures? (I see commercials for Pokemon Tomy toys all the time on TV, but not any of the Sonic Boom Tomy toys)

To make matters worse, the Sonic Boom cartoon apparently has been death-slotted to 7am Saturday mornings, with repeats the next day at 6am. What kid wakes up that early on a Saturday?

I'm not thrilled with the Boom redesigns, and imo, the games look like shit, but come on. Sonic deserves better than this. He's one of the most popular videogame characters of all-time, second only to Mario. Fox promoted the hell out of Sonic X's english dub. They even had ads or it during new episodes of The Simpsons.

[Esrever]

Considering it's the result of a massive three-year creative effort to build a cross-media Sonic brand, Boom is a pretty tragic story:

- The flagpole game has had a primarily negative preview reception, is clearly being rushed, and is an exclusive to a struggling console few people own.

- The television series has been placed in a horrible timeslot and is barely being promoted, which is how TV networks treat shows they are eager to murder off.

- And without the support of the game and television show, retailers are going to be reluctant to carry the merch at all.

At this rate, it's just looking like a lot of time, effort and money has been spent on a game that few will ever play, a TV show that few will ever see, and a merchandise line that almost no one will ever spot in the wild.

[cjmcray]

Damn. Considering how much Sega has invested in Boom, and their current financial state (Lost World was a bomb) I worry it's possible the failure of this new initiative could actually kill Sega.

Though Sonic would likely live on at another company like Nintendo (I shudder at the thought)

[Wombatwarlord777]

In all seriousness, having a Nintendo dev team take a crack at Sonic might be the best thing. Even though the company is having troubles with the Wii U, their general philosophy still seems to be to focus on quality over quantity, and I think they have the patience and talent to look at a gaming IP, identify what makes it fun and unique, and develop a game based around those qualities.

SEGA's special brand of corporate talent seems to be less oriented towards making a good game (though I contend they did well from Unleashed though Generations), and more oriented towards creating a lot of awareness of their cash-cow through the games, the show, the movie, etc. The problem with that approach is that 1) it's a terribly expensive gamble, and 2) it puts tremendous pressure to get the game itself released to roughly coincide with the release of the show and to start recouping expenses, even if the game isn't ready for release.

Ultimately, though, I think the continued financial success of an established game franchise depends on the games being consistently fun and good. I hope that the trend that started with Unleashed will continue, but after the hiccup of Lost World and the way things are turning out with Boom, I'm becoming increasingly doubtful that will happen.

[Neo]

Damn. Considering how much Sega has invested in Boom, and their current financial state (Lost World was a bomb) I worry it's possible the failure of this new initiative could actually kill

sonic

Though Sonic would likely live on at another company like Nintendo

wishful thinking

the hiccup of Lost World

I don't get it. Lost World looks like the best game the series has had in a while.

[Wombatwarlord777]

The biggest issue I've heard Sonic fans complain about is the controls. In particular, Sonic's controls are way too tight at higher speeds and the parkour system is highly unintuitive. In the 2D sections, precise controls are difficult due to Sonic unintentionally running up walls at times and, again, an awkward double jump.

[Jingles]

Lost World looks like the best game the series has had in a while.

In all seriousness, Lost World felt like a blatant Mario Galaxy ripoff (almost certainly Sega's intent) mixed in with a bunch of weird minigame-levels that didn't feel like they should be in any sort of platforming game at all. Wombatwarlord is right about the parkour system. It's hard to traverse levels with any sort of precision or acceleration at all when approaching a tree or wall or blade of grass could mean sprinting off it directly into a bottomless pit.

Being on the Wii U is a huge hindrance to the series right now, especially considering the success and power of the console's competitors. I can't imagine what benefits that 3-game contract had for Sega.

[FlashTHD]

Damn. Considering how much Sega has invested in Boom, and their current financial state (Lost World was a bomb) I worry it's possible the failure of this new initiative could actually kill Sega.

The mother ship is sitting on enough pachinko money that they'll probably be fine (relatively speaking, compared to the amount of money they usually hemmhorage). I'm more curious to know why they're even bothering to localize the games in Japan.

What it will do is cast what's left of Sega's western divisions in an even worse light. They showed up at E3 with nothing but Boom and a few licensed tie-ins, so suffice it to say they went all-in on this and it's going to cost them. But then, what do you expect when corporate reduces their western staff to a skeleton crew that's focused largely on mobile releases? They either don't have the personnel or the give-a-damn to publish much of anything, besides a few designated "safe" properties (Sonic, Football Manager, film licenses, ect.) or occaisonal PC ports (Valkriya Chronicles of all things).

See also: why we don't have Phantasy Star Online 2, which had the potential to be a consistent bread maker for the western arm, but I guess they're allergic to letting the gaijins generate profit with japanese properties or something, and that ship has sailed. Prolly the same degree of short-sightedness/lack of common sense that signed that Sonic exclusitivity contract with Nintendo.

Why no, I don't seem terribly sympathetic. Not after Sega's last decade or so. It's called "karma".

[Wombatwarlord777]

Were the details of what SEGA got out of that exclusive contract ever made clear? I imagine some cash, right? And some sort of assistance from Nintendo in developing Lost World, of course.

[FlashTHD]

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/11/01/ ... ed-titles/

Did I mention, "karma"?

[Radrappy]

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/11/01/ ... ed-titles/

Did I mention, "karma"?

the demand for low quality packaged titles has been and will always be low. I wish they would stop trying to pin their failures on the medium and focus on making good software for once.

[cjmcray]

Two new episode titles revealed: “My Fair Sticksy” and “Circus Of Plunder”

http://www.tssznews.com/2014/11/02/2-mo ... -revealed/

Other episodes titles previously announced at Sonic Boom convention: "Translate This" "Can an Evil Genius Crash on Your Couch for a few Weeks?" "Don't Judge Me" and "The Sidekick"

The mother ship is sitting on enough pachinko money that they'll probably be fine (relatively speaking, compared to the amount of money they usually hemmhorage).

Well that's good to hear.

In all seriousness, having a Nintendo dev team take a crack at Sonic might be the best thing. Even though the company is having troubles with the Wii U, their general philosophy still seems to be to focus on quality over quantity,

I guess I'm alone in saying this, but Nintendo seems a bit.. overrated to me. The Mario games (platformers anyway) are fine, but Metroid? Pikmin? Pokemon? Animal Crossing? Meh. I really don't care for those franchises. Starfox isn't that great, either. Luigi's mansion was horrible. I have no idea why Nintendo ever bothered to make a sequel to that.

(Kirby and Donkey Kong are good though. I liked Wind Waker so I guess Zelda's pretty good, but I'm not that familiar with the franchise) But Smash Bros? I really don't get the appeal to that series other than Nintendo fanboys wanking over the idea of Link and Pikachu in a game together. Smash Bros is far from the quality of a Soul Calibur game or even Dead or Alive.

I don't know about you guys, but I think Nintendo owning Sonic would be the worst thing to happen to the franchise. They'd probably just demote Sonic to appearances in Mario Golf, Kart, Smash Bros or Tennis, strip his name off the Olympic titles (those games suck anyway, so I guess that's not really a big loss) and would kill any attempts to make a new Sonic cartoon or movie. (And say goodbye to any future appearances at the Macy's parade or Happy Meal tie-ins) and not to compete with their main moneymaker Mario, they wouldn't extend too much effort into producing a top-notch Sonic game.

The tone of the series would also suffer, and forever be the same childish garbage Lost World was where Eggman is a total idiot, and the world itself seems full of sugary-sweet, rainbow-sunshine happiness go team sonic we can do it together cause we are sonic heroes yeahhhhhh

If Sega ever went under, I'd want Sony to buy them out. (They've shown interest in the Sonic series in the past. They basically threatened Sega and demanded a Ps2 port of Heroes, had a Sonic themed DLC pack for Little Big Planet, and now they're doing the live-action movie) I would prefer Sony to just keep Sega as a first-party development team, like Rareware was back in the N64 days.

[Neo]

Smash Bros is far from the quality of a Soul Calibur game or even Dead or Alive.

holy shit ignored

[cjmcray]

I didn't expect anyone to agree with my opinion, but you're seriously going to ignore me over it? lol

[G.Silver]

For starters, nobody said Nintendo should own Sonic, he said Nintendo should take a crack at Sonic, just like Sega took an extremely effective crack at F-Zero so long ago.

The reason I like Nintendo for Sonic isn't because I like every franchise, it's because Nintendo products have an extremely high bar for quality, even the ones I don't like, I can at least recognize as being well-made products. I can see the appeal. That isn't the case for any Sonic game in a long time. Generations is well-liked and has a lot of nice qualities (mostly just really good backgrounds) but feels like garbage to me, and Lost World, for all its obvious Mario inspiration, feels like a cobbled together mess by comparison. (Even Nintendo had the sense to throw out the "mini games" in Mario Galaxy that weren't working when they did Galaxy 2, the Lost World staff obviously didn't notice.) Whenever I play a Sonic game anymore I'm struck by how much shit is in it, and when I think of a company that has an extremely low tolerance for shit, it's Nintendo. Not everything they make is a perfect title, and it isn't even that I would want Nintendo to make the game, it's more like I want Miyamoto or someone similar overseeing it and "flipping the table" as necessary. It's about getting a fresh injection from what seems like a safe bet. I bet Big Red Button seemed like a safe bet but you know that was before they needed to be explicitly told not to put pants on Sonic. There's no way to know.

Aside: Supposedly Sonic Boom already suffered from a table flipping that resulted in the game we have now (or will have, shortly). I really hope the story behind that comes out at some point, but the obvious thing is that they were already committed to making the thing, already committed to the characters, the toys, and the TV show. The thing had too much momentum and they had to scramble to finish whatever they're stuck with. That would never happen with Nintendo--they'd give it the time it needed or scrap it entirely. They don't operate the way other game companies do.

Also on tone, Nintendo has a conservative image but they're not stupid: http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/24/bayon ... k-costume/

As for Sony "buying out" Sega, I'm not sure what that would accomplish. Is there anyone at Sega who is worth preserving as "Sega" in some form? I'm not trashing on the current staff, but it's not as if the staff that made all the games we loved is still there, and those that are aren't in positions where they can do what we'd want. It's not like Sega's got all that talent held hostage or something. So much of their talent is outsourced, for better or for worse. Consider Golden Axe Beast Rider, 3DS Shinobi, or any of the Sonic & Co Tennis and Racing games; or consider how 3rd parties keep getting in the "news" by leaking Streets of Rage pitches. Sega's 3D remakes don't come from Sega, they come from M2. Sega's mobile titles come from 3rd parties, and it took an unprecedented relationship with MORE third parties to make their Sonic mobile ports what they should have been in the first place. Good or bad (I love Shinobi 3DS, for instance) if Sega had the internal development and internal drive to make those games, they would be doing it themselves. If Sony bought them, they could just keep the brands, fire the staff, and commission those titles themselves. I'm not convinced it would make much difference.

[Rob-Bert]

but come on. Sonic deserves better than this. He's one of the most popular videogame characters of all-time, second only to Mario.

Though Sonic would likely live on at another company like Nintendo (I shudder at the thought)

You are secretly 14.

I guess I'm alone in saying this, but Nintendo seems a bit.. overrated to me. ...but Metroid? Pikmin? ... Meh. I really don't care for those franchises. Starfox isn't that great, either. Luigi's mansion was horrible. I have no idea why Nintendo ever bothered to make a sequel to that.

But Smash Bros? I really don't get the appeal to that series other than Nintendo fanboys wanking over the idea of Link and Pikachu in a game together. Smash Bros is far from the quality of a Soul Calibur game or even Dead or Alive.

Confirmed for Sega fanboy. With impeccably bad taste in games to boot.

They'd probably just demote Sonic to appearances in Mario Golf, Kart, Smash Bros or Tennis, strip his name off the Olympic titles (those games suck anyway, so I guess that's not really a big loss)

Yes, they'd demote a freshly-purchased third-party character to appearances in Mario Kart when their own dormant series like Earthbound and F-Zero are relegated entirely to one appearance every 6 or so years. Makes perfect sense to me.

and would kill any attempts to make a new Sonic cartoon or movie.

Because this is necessary for the continued survival of a long-running game series, right?

The tone of the series would also suffer, and forever be the same childish garbage Lost World was where Eggman is a total idiot, and the world itself seems full of sugary-sweet, rainbow-sunshine happiness go team sonic we can do it together cause we are sonic heroes yeahhhhhh

Once again, you are secretly 14.

[cjmcray]

Confirmed for Sega fanboy. With impeccably bad taste in games to boot.

I don't know how I could be labeled as Sega fanboy, when I've plunked down a ton of money towards Nintendo consoles and handhelds throughout the years. I don't get your logic. I hate Smash Bros, so that must mean I am a Sega fanboy? I'm not allowed to legitimately not like the game?

I just don't get it and never will. The original on N64 looked like garbage, even for that time period. (Mario's model looked remarkably derpy, compared to how he looked in Mario 64, and Donkey Kong looked hilariously bad)

There is no premise to that game, (And to my knowledge, Melee) and not much in the way of unlockables other than a few trophies. The camera is put at a far away distance, and the gameplay consists of just knocking each other off of a ledge. Healthbars are replaced with some weird percentage, the whole package just feels dull and boring. Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive on the other hand, always strive for gorgeous graphics, allow for a variety of special moves, have tons of unlockable content, character customization, CG movies, minigames and hidden characters.

But that's just my dumb 'ol 14-year old opinion on the subject. Shockingly, You don't have to agree with it.

As for Sony "buying out" Sega, I'm not sure what that would accomplish. Is there anyone at Sega who is worth preserving as "Sega" in some form? I'm not trashing on the current staff, but it's not as if the staff that made all the games we loved is still there, and those that are aren't in positions where they can do what we'd want. It's not like Sega's got all that talent held hostage or something. So much of their talent is outsourced, for better or for worse. Consider Golden Axe Beast Rider, 3DS Shinobi, or any of the Sonic & Co Tennis and Racing games; or consider how 3rd parties keep getting in the "news" by leaking Streets of Rage pitches. Sega's 3D remakes don't come from Sega, they come from M2. Sega's mobile titles come from 3rd parties, and it took an unprecedented relationship with MORE third parties to make their Sonic mobile ports what they should have been in the first place. Good or bad (I love Shinobi 3DS, for instance) if Sega had the internal development and internal drive to make those games, they would be doing it themselves. If Sony bought them, they could just keep the brands, fire the staff, and commission those titles themselves. I'm not convinced it would make much difference.

I'm thinking with a more financially-stable company like Sony holding Sega together, they can take more risks and produce more original titles, and sequels to abandoned franchises, like Shenmue, Crazy Taxi, Panzer Dragoon or Jet Set Radio. (But I forgot about the whole restructuring Sega did years back.. Hm.) Any partnership with Microsoft likely wouldn't turn out well. Look at what happened to Rare, and I know my Nintendo opinion is very unpopular, but that's just how I feel about the situation.

I like some of Nintendo's franchises, but I don't revere Miyamoto as god like so many other people in the gaming community do. I just worry in a hypothetical scenario where Nintendo did produce a Sonic game, or outright own the franchise, they wouldn't quite "get" the character (but I guess in their defense, Sega doesn't either..)

[big_smile]

The reason I like Nintendo for Sonic isn't because I like every franchise, it's because Nintendo products have an extremely high bar for quality, even the ones I don't like, I can at least recognize as being well-made products. I can see the appeal. That isn't the case for any Sonic game in a long time. Generations is well-liked and has a lot of nice qualities (mostly just really good backgrounds) but feels like garbage to me, and Lost World, for all its obvious Mario inspiration, feels like a cobbled together mess by comparison. (Even Nintendo had the sense to throw out the "mini games" in Mario Galaxy that weren't working when they did Galaxy 2, the Lost World staff obviously didn't notice.) Whenever I play a Sonic game anymore I'm struck by how much shit is in it, and when I think of a company that has an extremely low tolerance for shit, it's Nintendo. Not everything they make is a perfect title, and it isn't even that I would want Nintendo to make the game, it's more like I want Miyamoto or someone similar overseeing it and "flipping the table" as necessary. It's about getting a fresh injection from what seems like a safe bet. I bet Big Red Button seemed like a safe bet but you know that was before they needed to be explicitly told not to put pants on Sonic. There's no way to know.

Sonic games seem to prioritise big feature list, so they stuff their games with lots of ideas, but then don't have the time needed to implement them properly. Even with Sonic 4, which was supposed to be a back-to-basics nostalgic trip, they felt compelled to have "motion control special stages" and "tag gameplay". It's almost as if Sonic Team is bored with Sonic and so are using him as a vehicle for other ideas.

Part of the reason Sonic Colours and the classic segments of Sonic Generations were so excellent was because those games didn't have that many features. It's clear that a good chunk of development time went on refining the level design. With Sonic Lost World, they regressed back to their old ways and, while a couple of stages are some of the best in the series, the rest feel half-baked and underdeveloped like the Adventure-Unleashed era titles. In the later stages it's clear they ran out of time and so brought back the bottomless pits.

Sonic Boom is the feature list concept on steroids. It's like the marketing department insisted the developers spend all their time in focus groups with 8-year-olds so not to miss out on any ideas.

I've said this before, but I'd like Nintendo to work on Sonic game simply because it increases the chance of the hog being reunited with Hirokazu Yashura. He seems to have been the only person who truly understood Sonic.

[Neo]

I don't know how I could be labeled as Sega fanboy, when I've plunked down a ton of money towards Nintendo consoles and handhelds throughout the years. I don't get your logic. I hate Smash Bros, so that must mean I am a Sega fanboy? I'm not allowed to legitimately not like the game?

But Smash Bros? I really don't get the appeal to that series other than Nintendo fanboys wanking over the idea of Link and Pikachu in a game together. Smash Bros is far from the quality of a Soul Calibur game or even Dead or Alive.

Hypocrisy alert!

There is no premise to that game, (And to my knowledge, Melee) and not much in the way of unlockables other than a few trophies. The camera is put at a far away distance, and the gameplay consists of just knocking each other off of a ledge. Healthbars are replaced with some weird percentage, the whole package just feels dull and boring. Soul Calibur and Dead or Alive on the other hand, always strive for gorgeous graphics, allow for a variety of special moves, have tons of unlockable content, character customization, CG movies, minigames and hidden characters.

Holy shit.

I didn't actually ignore you before, but from now on I'm going to actively skip over each and every one of your posts. Jesus Christ.

[Rob-Bert]

Seeing how Neo put my reaction to that better than I could, I just move on to this:

I just worry in a hypothetical scenario where Nintendo did produce a Sonic game, or outright own the franchise, they wouldn't quite "get" the character (but I guess in their defense, Sega doesn't either..)

Nobody "gets" Sonic. And nobody ever will. There isn't anything to "get", because Sonic has never been consistent. Ever. From the franchise' inception it was divided into pieces, each a drastically different flavor. This kind of segregation has resulted in a fanbase that has been eating itself from the inside out for over two decades now, and it sure as hell doesn't show any signs of stopping.

[Jingles]

A while back, someone here (I think it was G. Silv) had an idea for a Sonic game made up of a few sub-games, each with a different dev team and assets. I'd like to see that idea somewhere along the line, because chances are everyone would get at least ONE enjoyable game out of it (of course, it'd do nothing to help the ADHD the series already has).

[Dr. BUGMAN]

It's stuff like this commercial that hurt the most -- specifically the part where Tails uses a mecha kitty. It's like there was an appreciation of less known gems like Tails Adventures within the organization. I mean, that thing is Mecha Tails only as a cat. Too bad the whole thing turned into a corporate farce.

At this point I'm only interested is in hearing whatever music Richard Jacques composed for the games. This guy's a consistently better musician than Jun Senoue ever was, at least in regards to Sonic.

[Radrappy]

I never thought I'd see smash brothers compared to soul caliber as if they were remotely similar games. However, as not to beat a dead horse I won't comment on that.

What I would like to comment on is the whole "who should develop sonic if not Sega" business. I used to think the franchise would be better off in Nintendo's hands until I came to realize that Nintendo doesn't even treat most of their 1st party properties that great. Pokemon, Mario, Zelda, and Animal Crossing are the only franchises that see yearly releases come hell or high water. What priority do you think they would give Sonic if acquired? Sonic historically doesn't even come close to selling as much as Donkey kong much less Pokemon or Mario. Why would they waste a cent on Sonic when giant franchises like Star Fox and Metroid are long overdue for modern releases? It would be a giant investment on their part with relatively low payoff.

The same could be said for Sony though. They have plenty of more lucrative franchises that involve lower risk and effort. The very idea that Sony would relaunch dead niche franchises like Jet Set Radio or Panzer Dragoon is goddamn hilarious.

No friends, the best home for Sonic is in the hands of someone who has nothing else better to work with. Even though we get crappy games more than not, at least the franchise hasn't been put to sleep yet. It most certainly would have been by now in different hands.

[Neo]

Even though we get crappy games more than not, at least the franchise hasn't been put to sleep yet.

How is this a good thing? The series' quality peaked out twenty years ago.