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Is it safe to say that the franchise as a whole is picking itself up?

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Solid SOAP, Dec 19, 2011.

  1. Rosie

    Rosie

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    Out of interest, does SEGA own the DIMPS Sonic engine, or is it merely licensed? I'm intrigued to know if the Non-Physics of Shame™ will impair future 2D(ish) Sonic products.
     
  2. Overlord

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    I would imagine Dimps are working under license, so I'd also imagine Sega has the rights to anything that they make with the IP. They're just being paid for doing all the grunt work.
     
  3. LockOnRommy11

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    Apart from Sonic 4, which wasn't bad anyway, DIMPS have had a brilliant record for Sonic games. The three Advance games were a shining example of natural evolution of 2D Sonic games, and were fantastic- great graphics, great music, great level design, and no silly gimmicks. On top of that, they had decent mutliplayers, lots of replay value, and the physics were absolutely fine, apart from 3, which didn't let you bounce high off enemies.

    Sonic Rush drastically changed the physics engines, but was much better than Sonic 4's, and wasn't noticeable anyway due to the constant use of the boost button and the layouts of the levels.

    Lastly, we have no real idea of DIMPS direct contributions. Sonic Team seem to have quite a large hand in the DIMPS games too, DIMPS seem to just be the workforce, and it pisses me off to high hell to see all this stereotypical BS about DIMPS all the time. It's as bad as the Sonic Cycle. Fair enough if you don't like aspects of the games that DIMPS had a hand in, but don't blindly assume that it's all DIMPS fault, as Sonic Team had their names, their guys and information plastered all over the credits too.
     
  4. steveswede

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    This is a prime example of my point. I think what the Sonic Team/Dimps do is half arsed while you think they are fantastic. Yet if it wasn't for people that have the same feelings like me bitching about their half arsed work then there wouldn't be this thread saying that the series is finally picking up after a series of lack luster of games. Arrogant it may sound but everyone would have ended up with the iphone version of Sonic 4 on the consoles if it wasn't for the fact that people complained about it. That shows how inferior their games can be if they ain't criticised.
     
  5. Clutch

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    Sonic Advance's soundtrack is largely forgettable barring a few like Egg Rocket Zone.

    Sonic Advance 2 is Sonic Rush without the boost and even more "can't see the absurdly deep pit right in front of me".


    [​IMG]

    Keep in mind this is coming from someone that likes Advance 1 and 3. I just think pretending they didn't have any flaws whatsoever is silly.
     
  6. Felik

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    Get out of town!
     
  7. Clutch

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    Admittedly I say that mostly because for the life of me I really can't remember how the BGM for most zones goes past Neo Green Hill Act 2.
     
  8. Felik

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    Well it's all about opinions and all that but I really like most of Advance 1-3 music and some arena tracks from battle
     
  9. Overlord

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    To be honest music is one thing that the Advance series did consistently right, as opposed to the level design (which got progressively worse, ESPECIALLY fucking Sky Canyon in SAdv2) or the physics (which got worse in each incarnation). In fact, looking back on them, the one thing that actually IMPROVED as they went along were the special stages - the ones in the third title were fantastic.
     
  10. LockOnRommy11

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    Sonic Advance 2 is more like a classic Sonic game, but slightly faster. Yeah, there's a few more pits in the game, but ones which you'll avoid quite easily with any sort of skill. To get the emeralds, you also have to search the levels and do quite a fair amount of exploration, so it's not all "hold right".

    Personally, I think Sonic Advance's music is brilliant. There's rarely a track there which doesn't stick in my mind, or one which I don't end up humming or "Doo-ing" to. The Same goes for Advance 2. Sonic Advance 3's tracks are often more rocky, but nonetheless have the same brilliance and upbeat style that the other games hold, as well as also intentionally sounding a bit retro. Sky Canyon's is great.


    Also, I don't think that the differing teams thing was silly. Quite the opposite. It was loads of fun, and quite interesting, considering it was entirely optional. Even better with two players.

    I wouldn't say at all like I'm pretending they don't have flaws. Personally, I fucking love the games, I think they're the best Sonic games since the Mega Drive originals, and only Sonic Heroes, Colours and Generations have ever come that close since. However, I can see that people do get frustrated with certain aspects- the pits in Advance 2, for example, got me many a time before I honed my skillz at Sonic games in general, and I felt that Super Sonic should have been playable too, considering you have to collect all the chaos emeralds for every character.

    I also disliked the physics changes made in Advance 3- I felt they were unnecessary and a step backward. The multiplayer was also quite buggy sometimes.

    Edit; I also criticized the hell out of Sonic 4.
     
  11. Clutch

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    It's mostly just Advance 1 that I can barely remember zone-specifc music from (the menus, bosses, and such I retained). Advance 2 has a soundtrack I really like despite not caring much for the actual game, and I remember enjoying most of Advance 3 aside from the overly-tinny Green Hill Remix.
     
  12. Zephyr

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    Advance 2 evolved into the Rush series though, which require no effort at all for speed. Hardly a "natural" evolution from a collection of games that pride themselves on momentum based speed as a key feature.

    That said, I enjoyed the fuck out of Advance 1. That's basically Sonic 4 to me.

    3 was alright. Didn't think of the team mechanics as a gimmick, but as a more fleshed out take on the whole "Tails following Sonic" mechanic. Other than that though, was pretty unmemorable to me.
     
  13. Falk

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    Another interesting facet to the discussion is the communities (and by extension the fangaming scenes) that develop around the post-2000 and pre-2000 games. I mean, if you were to just simply divide that into modern vs classic based fangames, as bad as some of the stuff using classic sprites are, none come close to how god-awful this barf is. It's like there's a completely new generation (if you forgive the pun) of fans that have zero concept of spatial awareness (lol physics!) and don't care that the imagery used is awful jpg-compressed duck urine.

    Granted, there are some genuinely good fangames using the Advance sprite sheets, but the majority of the really good ones are retro, while the majority of the bottom of the barrel ones that essentially look like flash use the modern sprites. As someone who didn't play the Advance series till recently, I really can't shake that stigma of mediocrity and tolerance of... Baddy McHorridness that arises whenever I see Advance sprites.

    I don't mean to make it sound like I'm wailing on you folks who genuinely like the Advance series. I do too. It just seems that whatever presentation or conceptualization changes made to the franchise over the years have also started catering to a lower common denominator, like it attracts a crowd with a much lower average IQ for some reason compared to the classics. Or maybe it's just a sign of human civilization degenerating in general. That's an equally reasonable explanation.
     
  14. LockOnRommy11

    LockOnRommy11

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    I just think that Sonic came about the right time as the evolution of personal computers and mass social capabilities. Back in 1994, you didn't have things to make fangames, and if you did, they were by older people with computer skills, and around that time, not many 13 year olds had that ability.

    Nowadays everybody but me can ceate a game. Anyone releases any old shit, it gets put on facebook/Youtube/Twitter/Forum and people spread it.

    I don't think any releases of Sonic had anything to do with it. The problem is that the youngest people nowadays play games like Sonic or Mario, and wreck the fandom.
     
  15. Falk

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    Yeh, good point. pretty much this then :v:

     
  16. Felik

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    Yeah, humans just suddenly degenerated within a 10-years span.
     
  17. Clutch

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    There were plenty of low-quality fangames with classic Sonic on SFGHQ back in the day and even more that were considered good then and wouldn't be now. They may've not been juxtaposed with .jpeg rips from 3D games (closest thing that comes to mind personally was that rebuild of Hidden Palace using magazine clippings, that was actually pretty nifty for the time), but it doesn't mean they weren't also mis-colored, badly tiled, badly animated, or paired with mspaint drawings. There were very few games with Advance sprites, but at the time there were also fewer resources from which to get them.

    The people making good retro games now have probably been in the community long enough to tell you how it used to be.
     
  18. Yeah... SpeedStarTMQ, falk, you're talking out of your asses.
    Quit that.

    There were PLENTY of terrible fangames then just as there are now! It's just that, with maybe a handful of exceptions, nobody cares enough about the shitty ones from back then to keep bringing them up.
    This is the worst part of the posts right here!
    EVERYBODY had "totally 100% legally obtained for reals" copies of the Clickteam products (Klik 'N Play, Click 'N Create, The Games Factory, and Multimedia Fusion; there are probably newer ones now) back in the day.
    Shit, 13-year-old me made a terrible 4-players-on-one-keyboard fighting(?) game with shitty recolor characters (Fire/Ice variations of Sonic and Knuckles) back then.

    Where the fuck is this "nowadays" coming from? I played my first Mario game at less than 5 and that was nearly 20 years ago now. Am -I- wrecking the fandom?

    Felik already covered falk's post, and I have nothing to add to his comment.

    Clutch: RE: That Hidden Palace Zone thing: it was noteworthy at the time because SSNTails made it prior to the Wai Sonic 2 prototype being widespread; he reconstructed the level from images in magazines and it was near-identical to the actual level when the proto was found! It's an interesting historical curiosity, but it doesn't really stand out as a full fangame nowadays.
     
  19. Falk

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    Pretty sure you're taking that part of my post way too seriously.

    Pretty sure you're taking his post too seriously.

    But if you're actually interested in holding a discussion about this rather that instantly objectively declaring I'm "talking out my ass" because of my subjective opinion, it's simple fact that social networking has given a medium and means for practically anyone to have an audience. At this point of time we're not talking about cloistered little communities like sonic retro/sfghq/etc where you'd have to search infoseek or yahoo or whatever and have a genuine interest in fan-made games beyond what actually came out commercially. We're talking about, for example typing in "Sonic Generations" in Youtube and eventually getting links/related videos to the aforementioned barf, not to mention posts on e.g. facebook/tweeting very conveniently reaching out to 2nd degree contacts.

    The gist of it was that fangaming may not have gotten worse (although tbqh, in my opinion yes it has), but its ability to reach an audience has.

    I played my first Sonic game when I was 8 and that was 20 years ago. What's your point? Why are you getting so defensive/upset?

    On that note, 10 years ago Youtube, facebook and twitter didn't exist so yes, humans suddenly degenerated in a 10 year period.

    I CAN'T BELIEVE I NEED TO POINT THIS OUT, BUT JUST SO YOU DON'T GET YOUR PANTIES IN A TWIST IN A HURRY ALL OVER AGAIN, THAT LAST PART WAS HUMOR. YOU MAY NOW INSTEAD DISPENSE A ONE-LINE REPLY ABOUT HOW MY HUMOR IS BAD INSTEAD. HURR
     
  20. LockOnRommy11

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    Seriously? So you're telling me that in 1994 there were widespread fangames which everybody knew about? And what you're also saying is that I'm wrong and that people don't talk about them because no one knew of them, but because they're shit? Yeah, alright.

    Exactly. Thirteen year old you. Let me tell you- a large portion of the Sonic fanbase is much younger than you, from around 13 - 17 years old. You're twenty four. You're old enough- and I would hope people of your age are now grown up enough - to not make any old shitty fan game and spread it around the web. Most of these shit fan games I see come from that lower age bracket, whilst the quality ones like Sonic Fan Remix, Nexus, Before The Sequel and the like come from people in the higher bracket. Now even these 13 year olds who like Sonic would have experienced the originals, I don't think I've met a Sonic fan who hasn't. The quality or style of the official games has sod all to do with why there are so many crap fan games, fan characters and stuff all over the internet. They're widespread because they can be, you just didn't notice all this before back in the 90's, when less people used the web and had websites like DeviantArt, Youtube, Facebook etc.

    You even said yourself you did some recolours of characters, when the games were good? No freakin' way. Point proven.

    Draw some shitty pictures, do a flash cartoon you think is hilarious, or make a fan game out of some shitty sprites.