I didn't want to jump the gun by making a whole thread in case it turns out to be nothing, because the language is extremely vague due to like 3 different language borders, but I happen to see this on Twitter: Necro Felipe, a Nintendo Journalist, Tweets Sonic Heroes' cover with the caption "Longing..." followed by a quote retweet asking "Would you play this remake in Unreal Engine 5?". Geno, being an average user who has every right to be skeptical says "Stop playing cmg" (I think cmg is the Portuguese equivalent of omg? I'm just using Google Translate). Necro then tags Midori, the person who's been leaking info about Sonic X Shadow Generations and Sonic Toys Party, and Midori seems to confirm a Heroes UE5 remake? Although for some reason has to bring up that there are no Adventure 1 or 2 remakes. This is going to be very interesting how they'll handle the voice actor situation.
Kind of strange to me that Sonic Heroes of all games would get a remake before Adventure but this will be very interesting if true. Unreal Engine 5 is also interesting, unless it's outsourced to another studio, why would Sonic Team move away from Hedgehog Engine? Don't get me wrong, I'm not against that at all but it would a pretty big step. If it's true I doubt we'll see this anytime soon, probably not until next year.
Supposedly it's an experiment in familiarizing themselves with UE5. On a side note I do think that Heroes deserves the remaster, in my opinion it's the jankiest of the Adventure era, I often find myself slipping around wildly often resulting in throwing myself off a cliff so a tightening of the controls is definitely in order. As well as it's currently one of the least accessible Sonic games. Adventure 1 and 2 you can at least easily play on PC even the port's broken, and on Xbox via the 360 XBLA ports, and I think Playstation with the PS3 streaming? I'm not sure how that works but I know it's not ideal. Heroes' PC port on the other hand is total abadonware in which you have to go out of your way to find an ISO and then apply patches and all sorts of nonsense, and console versions can only be played either on original hardware or through emulation.
Very interesting. I'm no expert but UE5 is supposedly meant to be pretty good when it comes to rendering large environments so maybe this is them preparing for another attempt at the open-zone concept in the future?
That's the gist of it. "cmg" is an abbreviation of "with me", the whole sentence being "stop playing me/with my feelings"; The specific way the first sentence there, "Would you play this remake in Unreal Engine 5?", was worded implies a humorous tone, but at this point yu can never really know. Post-irony and all that. EDIT: After looking at their profile, that tweet came at the tail of this one, reporting on a supposed leak by Midori, which corroborated a post by Zippo, claiminng that SEGA woul move their franchises to UE5. He's just speculating based on his preferences and a more general leak/rumor. Even as their site posted an article, it was mostly spinning the available information and citing undisclosed sources to back up the claim that Sonic Heroes specifically would be remade with UE5. I don't think there's anything substantial here.
I mean I suppose your thesis is correct, but I played Sonic Heroes for its story about as much as I did Sonic 2
I've seen people here and there saying "no! Don't replace the original voice work! The cheesiness made Heroes what it was!". These people obviously need to have their fingers sawed off, but I do wonder if a full remake on this scale could finally retranslate the awful English script. It's still mind-boggling that Heroes would get the treatment before SA1 and SA2, but maybe they think the JP Steam releases would be enough.
I've said it before but Heroes probably has more potential to sell than even the Adventure games. A lot of casual people still remember playing it, so if you tell them "That Sonic game on PS2? You can play it again on your PS5!" they'll go "OH okay! thanks. I will."
Maybe I'm just too old, but a LOT of people have nostalgia for SA1 and SA2. Like people I actually know in real life. I never knew anyone who cared all that much about Heroes when it came out.
They're doing the same thing that they did with Bananna Blitz HD, and looking at their internal data to see what sold the best and going from there. Sonic Heroes is one of 3 Sonic games to release on the PS2 and the only one of the 3 to not have an alienating gimmick plastered onto the cover. Of course it outsold the Adventure games, and unfortunately they're not looking for any sentiment beyond that.
Absolute copium, but, I could also see it being that if this is truly a way for sonic team to get familiar with UE5, then perhaps they also see remaking heroes as a safer choice thaan remaking one of the adventure games. I feel like there's lower expectations, while also being a game that probably would benefit a lot from a remake, AND it lacks a current gen port unlike the adventure games (though i guess even those are only xbox and pc) Edit: https://fxtwitter.com/mbkksstbhz5/status/1772463880800743818?s=46&t=hz_7Hq6aWEVvkckv9DT6eQ Seems like it is on the table, could be much later or only in early stages from the sound of it
Wasn't Sonic Heroes the best-selling 3D Sonic game ever until like a month ago too? I don't see how remaking it would make so little sense. It's somewhat closer to the Sonic games we see today, too. In a way. (Of course, this is much easier to say now that it's on the table. Prophesizing hindsight is very efficient)
idk I always felt like the Adventure games left a greater cultural impact. They're probably the only 3D Sonic games that ever get routinely talked about in a positive light, even by non-Sonic fans. Heroes just feels like a bit of a random choice to me, it'd be like if Nintendo did a HD remaster of Wind Waker before Ocarina of Time... which... I guess they did do didn't they? (though Ocarina already had a remaster on 3DS) Heroes was the first 3D Sonic game I played so I have a lot more nostalgia for it than the Adventure games. Even though I don't think it's a particularly great game that really deserves a remake, it'll be interesting to see how this goes and I'm not gonna lie, I kind of hope this ends up being true. I want to see how Sonic Team would handle a full remake.
Yes, Heroes was the best-selling 3D Sonic game until Frontiers. I believe it sold somewhere in the ballpark of 3-4 million copies. If you're looking from a purely financial standpoint, it makes more sense to remake that than the first two Adventures. (I'd assume that's the same reason they chose to make Colors Ultimate over Unleashed Ultimate, IIRC Colors outsold Unleashed despite being a Wii exclusive.)
I'm also thinking that if they remaster Heroes in UE5 and it's not to fan's liking (Like Colours Ultimate, though I doubt a Heroes remake would be that much of a disaster) then it's one of the less culturally impactful games having their memory defaced. If an Adventure 1 or 2 remake was done in UE5, an engine they're not familiar with, which is the entire purpose of the Heroes remake, and it turned out to be a buggy trainwreck then the fan outrage, or even outrage from the entire gaming community, would probably do about as much damage as Sonic 06 did to the brand, something Sega's just about dug themselves out of with the success of the movies and Frontiers.
Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 both missed the PS2, so despite being fandom favorites their cultural impact is a tad oversold if we're talking the wider gaming public. Bad remakes would probably go over similar to the slapshod ports they already did, something more like "Oh these games aren't as good as I was told/remember" and not like a huge disaster. The real reason heroes got picked was because of it's sales. I seriously doubt they thought much more about it beyond that.
