Also we're on Sonic Retro here - a whole deck of nostalgia cards, as inferred by the name. Real question; are we sick of Green Hill Zone remakes and rehashes? Spoiler Yes, we are.
In SA2 it was a nice, unexpected throwback. Generations gets a free pass because, again, it's an anniversary celebration. But Green Hill is by the most boring starting stage out of all three of the genesis titles. Where's my Emerald Hill, with it's lush meadows? Where's my Angel Island, a tropical paradise (fuck you Adabat)? Absent, in lieu of Green Hill wanking. Enough! Atleast the Sonic Advance titles had the decency to put a nice twist on the trope. Splash Hill is just shameful.
I like how Splash Hill doesn't even have any place to splash, atleast Green Hill is just saying what it is, a bunch of green hills. And I don't think it's a issue of SEGA playing the nostalgia card, it's about whether they can pull it off right or not. It worked in Generations, not so much with Sonic 4, with nostalgia being the only thing hyping it up really.
Adabat always seemed more like an Aquatic Ruin zone trope if anything at all; it's honestly based on Siamese/Thai architecture/culture than pigeonholed into a trope- none of the other Unleashed levels really are, except maybe Holoska
True. I only mentioned Adabat because it's the only other Jungle level I could think of when I was writing that. But I did just think of another. Green Forest. Yea, fuck Green Forest.
No. No it doesn't. It only makes a good Angel Island for portions of the level. Then you're reminded of some of the batshit insane level design choices and how fucking up will cost you 5 or 6 minutes more of your time. That and it's not grassy enough
Dammit, Aerosol. You just had to remind me of the major plot holes regarding Knuckles' absence in Unleashed when, should the Emeralds just simply be sucked dry, there should be a disturbance in his Master Emerald force didn't you? Which also goes to say that Angel Island should have been a level in major part of the game in place of Adabat and City Zone #39. But I guess that we wanted a bland tropical level and yet another city and cared more for the meaningful Pickle eater and an ancient little shit. That is, if anyone who likes the Unleashed Daytime (I.e. not me) formula cared! But it's just one of those points where the guys at Sega H.Q. forget their own continuity.
The problem isn't so much Sega pulling the nostalgia card, because really, whenever someone thinks of Sonic, they do think of Green Hill. It's kind of an expectation at this point, sort of how every Mario game now starts out with a throwback to 1-1 (or close to it). It might get boring, but whatever, it's here to stay. And not every game does it (Unleashed and Colors didn't anyway). My problem is how every game is sold as "THIS is the game that will bring back Sonic!" I think it's generally agreed upon that Sega has hit a decent formula with Unleashed-Colors-Generations, so why do they keep doing this? It's bad enough that half-assed journalists try to keep the Sonic Cycle alive with each game, but when Sega is acknowledging it by being like "Yeah, those last games SUCKED, but this one's going to be the bee's knees!" it kind of depletes their credibility. It's getting better, though that's mainly because the games are also getting better. Sonic Team's next big project just needs to be a 2D Sonic sidescroller based on Generations' classic segments, with playable Tails and Knuckles and possibly co-op. Release it on Wii U/360/PS3/PC so everyone gets a crack at it, and watch the money pile in. Wii U would be a particularly good platform for it if Nintendo doesn't release 2D Mario right away, leaving a gap for Sonic to fill.
I'd much rather they figure out how to work playable Tails and Knuckles into a modern 3D Sonic game instead. I'm more interested in 3D Sonic games being taken to their full potential than a regression to 2D.
Same, I've always liked 3D platformers far more then 2D ones, in fact, the only 2D platformers I like are metroidvania style like Tomba (Or the other games that give the genre its namesake ) 2D "arcade" platformers bore the FUCK out of me, and even though I like Sonic 3, I've never liked it as much as Spyro, a 3D game, or Rayman, a 2D game with a focus on exploring.
As many others have already said, SEGA hasn't been OVER-playing the nostalgia card. Sonic 4-1 / 2 are the only games guilty of this. (and all Dimps special stages). Between Generations and the Mario port, I'll take Generations. The only thing re-used in Generations is the art, and a few memorable seconds of gameplay from other games. Colours was very original, Unleashed was realistic, so it didn't rehash anything. And guys, forget about the 2D side-scroller for a bit. They're about to release Sonic 4-2. The next game should continue with the Unleashed / Colours / Generations forumula, except this time... COMPLETELY cut out the 2D segments. They were redundant in Generations, since the levels weren't as long as Unleashed, so there weren't as many switches between 2D / 3D. They were just there. Making a successor to S3&K (I mean, a competent one) would be accused of being a rehash by many people. And I don't want more Generations classic physics. The next 3D game can have Tails, if they dare.
I don't know if it's quite the same thing, but it's always bugged me on how every single Special Stage is always a remake of the ones from Sonic 2. I would love to see them revisit their other ideas like Blue Sphere, or even something new to try doing instead of the same half-pipe or tube while collecting Rings.
Wait for Episode 3 there's a high guarantee that they will reuse that special stage as well. We will never get a new experience while the current team members work on these games they will just rehash alot of the old stuff because they have very little in the ideas department.
The way I see it, the problem with trying to come up with a new type of special stage is that the originals were all basically attempts at faking 3D visuals and gameplay back before the technology really existed to do true 3D. Now that the main gameplay is 3D (generally speaking), the special stages wouldn't be so special. And considering how inventive the current generation of indie games are, it'd be hard to compete in coming up with a new mechanic for the special stages. A lot of potential mini-game concepts have already been done as indie stand-alone downloadable games. I'd much rather they focus on continuing to refine and expand on the current 3D gameplay and level design rather than worrying about the special stages anyway.
They could always take the Sonic Chaos special stage concept of being the same basic gameplay but having a time limit in order to get to the Emerald, but with the difficulty of the Tricky Treasure levels in Rayman Origins. I'd be all over it. It would force them to refine their gameplay and sense for level design while bringing back the necessity to actually collect the Emeralds instead of being handed them one by one by simply fighting a boss.
They could just stop with the special stage bullshit alltogether. Sorry, but I hated Sonic 1's special stages, and Sonic 2's weren't much better considering how abruptly you had to slam on the breaks to not miss the starpost. Sonic 3's were the only ones I even mildly liked and that was because you had to actually look for them instead of your chance of entering one being based on some bogus statistic about how many rings you had at a checkpoint or at the end of a stage. Don't even get me started on Sonic CD. Sonic Advance's idea was similar to Sonic 3's, but I always felt the stages were broken because I could never figure out where the collision box of my character was and seemed to miss rings I was sure I grabbed. SA3's, as much as I love collectibles, was just painful. Having to find ten chao was far too much, maybe having to find 3 or 5 would have been more acceptable, and the stages still felt glitched in some way. I never got far enough in Advance 2 to know how its stages played. Sonic Heroes' stages just sucked, end of story. Having to keep a key and NOT GET HIT was a pain in the ass. Another really annoying thing about stages is that in Sonic Advance, you had to replay a level if you failed, which turned into a huge grind for me. This was also annoying in S3K, but the game pretty much threw rings at me so by Carnival Night I was super anyway. Just throw an emerald in a secret place in a well-designed level and be done with it like Sonic R or Tails Adventures or the original Sonic on SMS. I saw nothing wrong with that and I see no reason to contrive some painfully obvious 80s-style arcade game to hide a collectible item in. It seems like a cheap way to give a game variety instead of coming up with more interesting and less tedious ways of doing it.
You would like Sonic 2 Game Gear as well then. The Emeralds in it were even more difficult to find than Sonic 1 GG. I prefer a special stage, but I think basing it off of a modern "App" game might actually be a good idea. The Sonic 1 Special Stages were based off an obscure marble game. A Classic Sonic game isn't complete without the surreal Special Stage dimensions that the Chaos Emeralds lie in.
Honestly, I saw someone playing Temple Run the other day and my first thought was "Sonic". Something like that might be cool for a special stage.
