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TGC's Sonic Retrospectives

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Josh, Dec 9, 2018.

  1. Sid Starkiller

    Sid Starkiller

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    Sonic 06 episode is up (I'm sure Josh will put it up here later today), and I had a weird thought near the end: The absolute disaster that was Sonic 06 kicked off a series of events that eventually led to...Sonic Mania. So my question is: If you had a time machine, would you stop Sonic 06 from happening, knowing that Mania might never be made? I...don't know what I would do.
     
  2. Sonic Warrior TJ

    Sonic Warrior TJ

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    Oh, I wouldn't keep it from being made, but if I had the ability to, I'd ensure that the once planned PC version eventually saw a release. It's a terrible game, but a good example of how not to make an action platformer. It's one of those games everyone should be able to take a lesson from.
     
  3. Josh

    Josh

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    [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfZTY1Cjt20[/youtube]

    The goal here was to present as unique a take as I possibly could on a game that's been discussed to death, and I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Hope you enjoy!
     
  4. Uh, absolutely yes. 06 is as negatively impactful as S2 or S3K are positively impactful. Mania is great, one of the best games in the franchise, but as a 2017 retro style release was not of the kind of magnitude that could erase the stain of 06 from the franchise's history. It will take a major effort from a big title to undo that harm.

    If 06 had not happened, there are all sort of directions the series may have gone in. I think the adventure games are very flawed but I can at least acknowledge that a concept like the sonic stages from SA1 coupd be a lot better with more focus and dev time. Would I rather have that than Mania? As much as I love Mania, yeah probably. Because then Sonic's reputation never gets as low and the series remains a AAA series with lots of support and potential for great games, building off of successful iterations.
     
  5. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    Man, that sure was quite a melancholic take on Sonic06. At the end, I was feeling moved by your speech...until you ended with "and all we were left with was...bullshit" :v:/>/>/>/>
    At first, I wasn't much intent on watching any of your videos simply due to their length, but in the end I've seen all of the latest ones, and may go back to S2&3K's, to say the least.

    While 06 may have killed the Adventure Series, it was more of a "final nail in the coffin", with Heroes and Shadow having started the downfall. At least, it was so to me.
    When I saw the first trailers and demo videos of 06, I was elated by how it seemed to be turning out. An even cooler-looking Sonic, amazing HD 3D sceneries, a realistic-looking Eggman (I so wish ST could bring him back), all of that seemed like the bright future Yuji Naka made us believe before the game's release.

    I finally got to play it properly a few years later, when I and my brother bought a PS3. I've never been much of a player, but I did decently with SA1&2, Generations, and even MK9.
    But 06...oh, man, I had to open that can of worms. It was such a chore, such a pain to go through all of it. My brother didn't even feel like touching it, so I had to do it myself. Painstakingly. I managed to complete all of the story and got only one mission left to complete, but I got bored of it's crazy difficulty and left it to oblivion. And now my PS3 is apparently dead, so all of my efforts on those games when down the drain.

    All of this to say that 06 turned out as a tremendous disappointment of a Sonic game, more so than Heroes or Shadow, and led the franchise towards the current, childish, inconsequential, disappointing iteration. At least to me. Werehog, Wisps, White Space, Edgelord, any of those things could have been made in a much different way had ST managed to get 06 properly completed. It's quite saddening.

    @Josh, keep them coming. I've been enjoying your reviews (SA2's could have benefited from @Windii's intel, but oh well) and may be up to see more of them.
    Keep up the good work.
     
  6. E-122-Psi

    E-122-Psi

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    I have to admit looking at Next Gen I still feel tragically urged to enjoy it. I mean the plot is an abomination, and some of the gameplay styles were awful, but the levels and mechanics, like Josh mentions, still kinda feel like they SHOULD work, I actually feel more comfortable with them than the boost setup that was introduced afterwards.

    Some things actually do almost work as a refinement of what SA1 played with. I mean Wave Ocean is a HD Emerald Coast but with more developed intertwining character paths for example, then we have larger scale Adventure Fields that at least have some more developed degree of accessible terrain and missions. It basically expands on what I wanted out of SA1, I should have enjoyed this. But alas the whole thing is a chore to play through due to bugs, imbalanced physics, and enforced gimmick changes now happening in the middle of levels (while SA2 and Heroes already made this a momentum breaker, Next Gen takes the worst of it and spams it in a completely un-fluid manner).
     
  7. Glaber

    Glaber

    Has Beaten Sonic Genesis for GBA Oldbie
    I'm still surprised that out of all the issues, the issue of the BASIC JUMP ATTACK DOING NOTHING, is never addressed by anyone reviewing this game. And that because of that, Sonic is FORCED to use the Homing attack to attack at all.
     
  8. Laughingcow

    Laughingcow

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    Sonic 06....Yeah, there's nothing about it that nobody else hasn't already said. So instead, I'd rather post what the devs have said about it.

    http://info.sonicretro.org/Game_Development:Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(2006_game)
    "The reason why we probably ended up with what we see today, involves a lot of reasons. One is that we did want to launch the title around Christmas, and we had the PS3 launch coming up, but we had to develop for Microsoft's 360 at the same time and the team had an awful lot of pressure on them. It was very hard for the team to try and see how we were going to come out with both versions together with just the one team. It was a big challenge."
    Yojiro Ogawa

    http://sonic.sega.jp/sonic/soleanna/index.html
    “Development on a next-generation machine was very difficult, with us with a lot of difficult aspects of things we didn't understand. Understanding the variety of new technology, understanding the new hardware, handling the enormous amount of information and handling the new technology, these were all aspects that far surpassed both my expectations and experience.”
    Shun Nakamura

    https://web.archive.org/web/20170808033442/http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2016/11/09/where-sonic-went-wrong.aspx?PageIndex=2&PostPageIndex=3
    "It was the first iteration of the engine and we didn't have any time to polish and we were just churning out content as quick as we could,"
    "We missed out on that really important time to polish and tune and manipulate the map and make sure that the world really felt good and the gameplay felt good," he says. "Because it didn't have that, it didn't turn out as good as the development team wanted."
    Takashi Iizuka

    Hard times for the Blue Blur.
     
  9. I absolutely positively hate almost everything single about this game with a burning passion. And have since I first played it and thusly refused to touch it ever again. I was not an internet poster back then but somehow I knew that this game would be a tragedy for Sonic. Nothing fit. It was Sonic trying to be final fantasy instead of trying to be Sonic. Everything that started in some way with adventure 2 in terms of the series losing its identity reared its ugly head like a cystic blackhead. One of the worst unintended consequences of the game is that there are legions of Adventure era fans who believe in the hypothetical potential this game had if done right in their eyes. To me that is reprehensible. This game was a turd buried underneath a shit pile. I cannot express enough words about how angry and depressed (in the context of video games only) this game made me as a lifelong fan, who witnessed S3K and waited for the series to achieve its 3D equivalent of that. It breaks me to know that SoJ was totally okay with pushing this out the door, since I've supported them almost my entire life.

    This is why I said what I said earlier. Mania in 2017 could not possibly counter the legacy this game left, since it was a smaller scale retro release. 3D sonic needs a Mania quality equivalent in order for the ship to be truly righted. Not a 7/10 or 8/10 type game like colors or generations, but a 9/10 or 10/10. It needs a truly outstanding game to establish a new foundation to be iterated upon. Until then we will not escape from underneath the shadow this game created.

    I cannot empathize with people who have attachment to this game. I generally have a flexible attitude but I literally could not care less about positive nostalgia with respect to this title. This game almost killed sonic. Sonic Team should forever stay far away this direction forever. Having the title Sonic the hedgehog stamped on the front of this game is like an ironic, enduring curse, because it is arguably the most popular and infamous example of the franchise in the modern era of gaming. It and everything it represents needs to be buried underneath the grave of Yuji Naka's final contract with SEGA.
     
  10. RDNexus

    RDNexus

    Member
    You mentioned SA2 starting the series' downfall, in your opinion, but what about SA1? Wasn't it a nice transition of the Classics into 3D at the time?
     
  11. Laughingcow

    Laughingcow

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    Not to put words in UpC's mouth but I'm guessing it's the following:

    1) Realistic human environments and the death of the Classic aesthetic.
    2) "Serious" stories that eventually led to the shark jumping of the death & rebirth of Jesus "Sonic" the hedgehog.
    3) The introduction of other characters in the overall plot who are more important than Sonic (Shadow, Silver, and to a lesser extent Blaze).

    Sonic Adventure 1 only introduced the Monster of the week to the series. In the end, it was still mostly Sonic punching Robotnik in the face.
     
  12. RDNexus

    RDNexus

    Member
    If that was his opinion on the matter, I do understand him, despite not thinking the same.
    To me, SA1 was a revolutionary and interesting way to expand Sonic's World, despite the severe lack of anthros in comparison to humans. It felt close to the feel of the Classics, but still taking a step forward.
    Due to ST never digging into Sonic's personal backstory, all other characters end up getting some spotlight one time or another. Maybe ST is to blame on that?
    While there may be people who disliked 06's realistic tone and welcomed Unleashed's cartoonish tone, I almost immediately came to dislike it. 06 was going a way, character design wise, I had been wishing for since SA2, and to me, Unleashed was a tremendous step back on that front. But it's a matter of tastes, and we know the community is so fractured because of that. And the fact 06 had such development hell, leading to such a crappy experience, sure didn't help.
    Seriousness in a Sonic Game's plot could do without Jesus Sonics, it simply needed to have good writing. And to me, in a sense, it needs as much seriousness as it needs comedy, a nice balance is the best.
     
  13. Laughingcow

    Laughingcow

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    And that is something pretty much everyone believes if this old thread is any evidence.
    https://forums.sonic...showtopic=36727

    To not beat around the bush, even if Sonic 06 wasn't a steaming pile with "good writing", it is still a vast departure from the Classics which is the same point of contention that SA2 has. My solution: Make a separate sub-series starring Shadow and place all the realistic junk there. This issue is that the realism isn't Sonic because it goes against the Classics ergo give all that to a character who by all means was made for that kind of environment.
     
  14. RDNexus

    RDNexus

    Member
    Yes, SA2 & 06 were quite the departure from the Classics, in all senses. That was one of the things that started dividing the community.
    But the Classics were very self-contained in their plot and setting, usually islands far removed from any signs of civilization.
    SA1 bringing up humans and civilization was, to me, said revolution and expansion. And even the plot was related to S3K, from what the japanese synopsis mentioned. In that sense, SA1 ended up becoming the end of the first arc of the overall series.
    SA2 began the second arc, Shadow's, which ended in Shadow the Hedgehog. To me, Heroes' attempt to being the series back to the Classics' feel felt shallow and sloppy, and ShTH didn't help a bit, ending said arc in a bad note.
    Then ST had the amazing idea of trying to reboot the series with 06, but only in gameplay. They tried to make a next gen SA1&2 in one package, but it all fell through and caused the series to follow the current iteration, which I can hardly like a bit. It isn't the SA1/2 I enjoyed nor the Classics that filled my childhood, it's as shallow as Heroes and ShTH. Gameplay-wise, it's only better than those and 06 because it became Sola Sonica and Boost-to-Win.
     
  15. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    Play it on the Dreamcast and it's anything but realistic. DX is the real offender here.
     
  16. Laughingcow

    Laughingcow

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    I was only talking about SA2 on that comment. The humans and civilization didn't seem out of place back then because things weren't bashed over the head with a photorealistic filter. To state the obvious: Robotnik is a human ergo other humans showing up wasn't anything special. The Sonic Jam Man of the Year short for instance has humans and nobody batted an eye about it. Essentially, they were a minor detail in the grand scheme even in Sonic Adventure 1 where they are just NPCs and background elements. It wasn't until Sonic Adventure 2 which made so many realistic human elements (GUN and the President) story important that we had to start asking world building questions which inevitably got us Sonic X.
     
  17. SF94

    SF94

    Tech Member
    My bad, I assumed it was a response to the question there.
     
  18. MainMemory

    MainMemory

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    As someone who basically completely missed Sonic 06 when it was happening (I guess by that point I was firmly in Nintendo's camp and completely disregarded anything happening outside of that sphere), it was really interesting to hear about what it was like to be there, and it really made me think about the effect it had on the franchise for the first time. Not gonna lie, I got a bit sad by the end of it.

    On the plus side, Sonic and the Secret Rings is a great game, and I will not hear anyone say otherwise.
     
  19. Laughingcow pretty much said it but yes, that is the important distinction I make between SA1 and SA2. Many people have felt for a long time that SA1 was something of a (rough) swan song for the classic era. It not only kept in line with its predecessors but attempted to expand the lore more to emphasize a bit more world building. Absolutely nothing wrong with that at all and as a kid I instantly loved what they were after. Of course SA1 came up short in many of the key gameplay areas but I knew what Sonic Team wanted to do, and all around it is the same dream I still share to this very day.

    SA2 on the other hand was for all intents and purposes the beginning of modern sonic. I have never viewed SA2 as a disaster quality game or anything of that sort, but it was the progenitor of just about every bad trend introduced in the modern era. Even while SA1 introduced the alternative gameplay styles, SA2 did it in a way that, instead of having them be mini game like distractions from the main course of Sonic's gameplay (by the way which had the greatest number of levels and length) scaled them up into their own thing which then almost doubled Sonic's gameplay in proportionality and focus! And they were unbelievably dull, particularly Tails stages which are some of the most boring I've ever played in a sonic game.

    I could go on about this but the point is that what SA2 started, 06 finished in a far more spectacular, disastrous climax. Some of the modern sensibilities still exist of course, but the greatest damage to the series had already been done even while SEGA tried hard to run away from the legacy created by that game.
     
  20. E-122-Psi

    E-122-Psi

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    Yeah I noticed a similar feel with SA1, though I feel like that might have been so even if all of the characters had gotten equal focus as Sonic in that game. It's not just Sonic's game being the larger portion of the game, it feels like a lot of the standard physics and mechanics seeped a lot more into the others in that game. Tails and Knuckles still play very akin to Sonic for example, just with a couple different abilities and different objectives. Gamma also keeps a much faster more momentum based gameplay style than the mechs in SA2. Even Big and Amy who were larger deviations, still had a touch of that same feel to them.

    It also still kept a bit of the same candy store structure as the old games. I still loved how in SA1 you could choose through going through these separate gameplay styles and characters rather than them being forced onto you like in SA2 and ESPECIALLY Next Gen. Sure some like Big weren't spectacular, but so long as it was an extra option, having it was kinda cool to try out.

    I believe Josh already touched on this in greater depth in his analysis, but it felt like SA2 discarded on those lingering elements of classic physics that SA1 had at least tried to do but not quite accomplished. It's really a shame no other game really took the parts SA1 really came close and refined them (though I could argue Lost World TRIED to play on it in a different way).