Sonic and the Quest for Phallic Compensation

[Kogen]

I said you can still do other stuff.

Like for example, you could play with the arrows:







As you can see, I made a http://www.Monsquaz.com/ (E10+).

[Baba O'Riley]

You can still do other stuff while you wait. Waiting does not really cost anything.

Waiting makes you bitter.

Good thing nobody here got bitter before I told them how to live their lives.

[Wombatwarlord777]

Kogen wrote:
As you can see, I made a http://www.Monsquaz.com/ (E10+).

Did you hear that? That was the sound of my mind snapping in two.

Actually, I was surprised how nicely the music went along with... everything else. Quite catchy.

[j-man]

Sorry to state the obvious and all, but that was the worst thing I've ever seen.

[Neo]

I'm just surprised you hadn't seen Monsquaz yet. Are you sure this is a Sonic forum?

[Arcade]

Sonic Adventure 2 was everything you could wait about a sequel, including the fact of not being as good as the first game.

Sonic Unleashed is not a good game,having to endure levels that play like from a older Generation of videogame consoles dont make a good game.

The only Rush game I liked was the second one...

So far my favorite is Sonic and the secret rings, but is a RACING game, not a true Sonic game.

[Wombatwarlord777]

Dasher wrote:
Sonic Adventure 2 was everything you could wait about a sequel, including the fact of not being as good as the first game.

That's just the thing. Sonic Adventure 2 was a decent, technically solid, and somewhat fun game. However, unlike its predecesor and the classic 2D's, it wasn't a stellar Sonic game, where everything just felt right. I contend that this is because the aforemented games still had major exploration elements that the games since SA2 just haven't been able to match, as speed has become the overriding priority in the series. However, there's surely a great amount of debate on the topic and my explanation is somewhat simplified.

Sonic Unleashed is not a good game,having to endure levels that play like from a older Generation of videogame consoles dont make a good game.

I'll grant you this. The best elements of Sonic Unleashed and its worst elements seem to neutralize each other. At least as far as Sonic's daytime stages go, I still maintain that portion of the game is spot on.

[Kogen]

At least this game slowed down the gameplay a bit. Unleashed went too far with it, making it too fast. Combine that with holes everywhere and...

[Shadow Hog]

At least this game slowed down the gameplay a bit. Unleashed went too far with it, making it too fast. Combine that with holes everywhere and...

This. I don't understand why people lap up running into pits at 600MPH so goddamn much. The loose controls didn't help, either, to the extend that the Werehog's gameplay felt better. (And the Werehog's gameplay isn't even all that fun!)

[Kogen]

Sonic fans must just like having things that are 'wrong' on their tongue.

Also play Eggman Land and compare Sonic to Werehog. For some reason, Werehog is worse with holes.

[Dasher]

Why don't they use the SA1-SA2 formula? it was perfect! i prefer shorter levels but well done than fancy big ones that suck.

(NVM, I think they "tried" on Sonic2006...man Sonic Team is dead)

[Kogen]

Sonic Team is a brand name, not an actual team now.

[FlashTHD]

Sonic Team is a brand name, not an actual team now.

It's both, but yeah. Since about the time STUSA came into being, they've been stamping that logo around on so many things. In addition to obvious reputation dilution, makes it a pain in the ass to pinpoint everything they're accountable for, good or bad. (Odd twist, that. Their name's in the toilet but the confusion has made it easy for them to throw/shed blame around in a lot of different directions. In effect I guess that has people chasing shadows instead of them.) But, it's not quite as difficult as it used to be...

For a while now i've been assembling a little master list of every (known) studio to have worked on a Sonic game in a major capacity, based off of a handful of sources I trust. It's up to about 17 known teams now. (18 or 17 and a half if we count what used to be UGA.) On the subject of who's moonlighting under the Sonic Team label, there's -currently- Dimps, NowPro, UGA with an obvious asterisk, and...did the logo show up in the Rivals and Olympics games?

[Kogen]

Which is NewPro? Sonic Genesis?

And I thought they absorbed Sonic Team back into the 'normal staff' in 2004? They even made an album due to it.

Plus with stuff like Dimps, SEGA employees work with them and so on. Still not enough to class them as a SEGA developer, though.

[FlashTHD]

Which is NewPro? Sonic Genesis?

Nobody knows who made Sonic Genesis, presumably some farts-for-brains hired by Sega of America. NowPro is this. You're looking for SADX, Riders, and Secret Rings on there. Riders in particular is crawling with NowPro names. (I presumed they helped with Riders ZG too but they haven't added it, which may mean they didn't, but I haven't had a chance to check myself.)

And I thought they absorbed Sonic Team back into the 'normal staff' in 2004? They even made an album due to it.

If by this you mean there's no seperate dev studios within the building anymore, this is not true, otherwise they (and AM2) wouldn't have gotten to keep using those logos.

Plus with stuff like Dimps, SEGA employees work with them and so on. Still not enough to class them as a SEGA developer, though.

Actually that's funny. Someone on Wikipedia's erected a list containing all of Sega-Sammy Holdings' corporate affiliates, and Dimps is in there. Don't know the whys or hows and if true, it prolly doesn't mean too much, but it's there. (So is Wavemaster as a seperate listing and TMS Entertainment...)

[Kogen]

SEGA owns shares or whatever in DIMPS.

[K2J]

The Honorable Mentions from the fanart contest are up. Some are good, some are bad, and some have a fanged Sonic and retarded Tails running away from the whale in Emerald Coast.

No, seriously.

It's interesting; there seems to be a lot of stuff that depicts the end of S3&K and SA2, of course, but then we also have some relatively obscure stuff like Chaotix. I wonder if the criteria was just breadth instead of actual quality...

[Kogen]

I wish they would sort these into: Good, Decent, Shite Not Worth Looking At, So Retarded it is Funny.

[Wombatwarlord777]

I love that Sonic 2 Special Stage one. Reminds me why I never play a Sonic and Tails game.

[Baba O'Riley]

I think, from a gameplay standpoint, SA2 is the threshold for the speed at which a Sonic game should move. All other bitching about that game aside, it tested reflexes, almost to a prescient degree for A-rankings, so it becomes a matter of muscle memory versus some subconscious decision-making ability.

[Shadow Hog]

Well, for another thing, the stages in SA2 had actual bona fide platforming in it more often than not, which was often quite easy to handle considering the lax pace it took the stages at (compared to Advance 2 onward). I mean, I remember going fast a lot, and I do remember it being very linear and on-rails (literally) at points, but there were quite a few alternate paths spread out here and there... not "blink and miss it" alternate paths like Unleashed offers, but ones you could uncover by just taking a little look around here and there.

Another thing is that the game was still fun even if you couldn't be the best player ever. It had the bottomless pits we all loathe, but the platforms were typically quite generous, the controls very tight (and not too tight like 2K6, where changing the direction your stick is going causes instantaneous change in direction in-game with no momentum loss, nor too loose like Unleashed where moving in any direction that isn't "forward" is an exercise in tedium)... and, well, it didn't even really have too many of them until later stages. In general, the game itself was quite forgiving, far more than any recent Sonic game has been. It's an aspect I kind of miss, actually. These new games put all the emphasis on mastering the levels to a tee, which was only an alternate goal in SA2 (y'know, "all As" and stuff)... so much focus that slightly messing up, more often than not, results in instantaneous death. Messing up in SA2 COULD result in instantaneous death, but as I recall, situations like that were typically saved for the last stages.

I mean, I won't deny that SA2 is where the series started to go downhill - although it sure as hell wasn't noticeable at the time, all the elements that we berate the series for were prevalent in SA2, perhaps moreso than SA1. But man, they sure weren't as blown out-of-proportion as they are now...

[Wombatwarlord777]

Actually, the control of Sonic and Shadow in SA2 were one of this things I liked most about the game. Personally, though, I'd prefer a bit more of a motive for exploration than SA2 offered (though not in the vein of the "Find the Chao" missions). That's one of the aspects that Unleashed got right, although alternative paths should have a better sense of reward than just shaving a few seconds off the clock (entirely evident in the Wii and PS2 versions of Unleashed).

I guess what I'm asking for is a return to the way the Genesis games were structured. Some pipe dream, eh?

[Crowbar]

Oh wow, it's like I'm really on Deviantart! I do like this one though. Knuckles should've stayed like that!

This surprised me as, even though the drawing itself isn't stellar, the composition is actually really nice.

This one just scares me. I feel this deserves a mention, too.

[K2J]

Wow, they even put in the QTE symbols.

[G.Silver]

I am a little sad that this one wasn't selected.