Blue Blood was clearly using the term in a farcical manner, since he was directing it at everyone here including himself. Whatever you think the term "man-child" means, nobody here believes liking Sonic says anything about the integrity of your character. Unless you like Lost World 3D, which signals you may be a serial killer.
Justing saying but, despite being an adult, sometimes I like some "goofy stuff" that is made for kids, which is why I did enjoy watching Craig of the Creek.
I don't know about "clearly", but I'll give you "farcical" Here's an opinion: I don't think the homing attack was ever actually necessary. It's really not that difficult to bounce on enemies in 3D.
I don't think it's that easy. One, Sonic's far faster than any of these characters. You kind of have to scale them depending on how fast Sonic moves. If you want Sonic to move only slightly faster than Mario then it wouldn't be too unreasonable, but any faster (like even at SA1's speed) and you're already having to make them bigger and bigger to have the same amount of ease hitting them. Goombas in Mario 64 are somewhat larger in 3D than they used to be, sure; but we know the difference between a normal goomba and one from Tiny-Huge Island. Sonic's motobugs would only skew further in that direction to justify the HA's removal. Another (possibly much more important) thing is how satisfying and reliable the HA is versus not having it. Having a punchy jolt into an enemy with a predictable upward/slight forward trajectory means you know exactly what to expect from contacting an enemy. It has a satisfying connect, and where it takes you makes sense. This same logic applies in Mario and other platformers where you can only jump on an enemy one way (from above), and the result is a solid connect (the stomp) and obvious following trajectory (upward). When jumping onto an enemy in Sonic, though, you have all sorts of angles and speeds that could affect how Sonic reacts to it, because Sonic can damage enemies from all angles. This was never a major problem in 2D where your only directions are up, down, left and right; but now you have 360 degrees of movement for Sonic to ricochet at, at different levels of speed too. This could leave Sonic's ability to attack in the air feeling pretty tricky (see: the skill ceiling in trying to land on / bounce on enemies in SRB2). This trickiness is something a more seasoned player could take advantage of, turning navigation into a very technical and rewarding game (see: pro SRB2 players). But a normal player may find it unruly and inconsistent, and are more likely avoid confronting enemies altogether (see: how most people play SRB2). This is why the Homing Attack exists. It gives people that reliability that they know when they connected, how they connected, and where to go / how to react from that connection. It makes enemy or object contact painless, and with that punchy launch into enemies a bit satisfying too. Have later versions of it removed it's teeth and/or made it way too easy to cheese levels? Absolutely. But I don't think removing it is gonna make anyone happy, especially people who haven't spent 20 years building reflexes on how to make a fast, somewhat heavy character bowl around an environment. EDIT: I guess the above wouldn't be a problem if Sonic reacted to jumping on enemies the same as he does in SA1/2, where he bounces straight up and his speed resets, regardless if you used the HA or not. But I didn't imagine we would want that either..
If you didn't think it was "clearly" farcical and in jest, I don't know what to tell you. We're here cause we like Sonic. And, apart from the morally bankrupt people who also happen to like Lost World 3DS, we're all free to do so without judgement. What even is a man-child and how does it have anything to do with liking Sonic? + - I feel now like I to clarify this: that was a joke, and liking Lost World 3DS does not make you a bad person. Sonic is generally designed for kids, not adults. They are the largest audience. I don't even know how this is an argument. The specific age range could be debated a bit, especially as the franchise is 30+ years old itself now and gaming as a medium has matured. But the crux is that the series is always approachable to and suitable for children. Its narrative and lore is not multi-tiered and deep either. What you see is what you get; mascot characters with super powers doing cool shit. And I've thought that was the coolest shit since I first played S1 on the Mega Drive in the years before I started school. Something being "for children" is not a slight against the that thing or the people that enjoy it.
I remember when I first played SRB2 I was really really confused as to why the HA wasn't working properly because the thok gaslit me into thinking the game had one! It's basically just a really OP SA1 airdash so I kept on trying and trying to thok into springs and enemies and it took me a little bit to realize that it wasn't broken and the game just doesn't have one. I felt like a fucking idiot when I realized. Also RE: 'Sonic is for kids' discussion, i mean duh? I don't really understand why anyone would want to debate otherwise... I mean sure it's definitely an all-ages franchise, Frontiers' lore and story for example tackles some shit the average 6 year old playing the game might not entirely get, but ultimately it is a game designed for kids. Same applies to the entire franchise. I dunno, maybe it's just because I never particularly cared about what people will think of me for being into something 'for kids' but I don't really see why this is a discussion..
When I think about it again, I think I was right in the first place that Sonic is an all ages franchise. I think I also said "not targeted at kids", which is where I got it wrong. The discussion is largely semantic. It's not something that's so simple only babies could enjoy it, and it's not so heady that only adults could make sense of it. EDIT: All ages can also mean, "enjoyable for adults but also safe for kids. i.e. an all ages concert" Again, semantics.
As already mentioned, just because a product reaches outside its target demographic, doesn't mean that target demographic suddenly stops existing. This is something I noticed a lot when many adults engage in their favorite franchises when they deem something "childish" completing forgetting the fact that they aged out of the target demographic. Yes, many legacy franchises will keep their long-standing fans in mind after a certain point, but they never completely abandoned their target demographic either. There are adult and child oriented Batman products, but Sonic in particular has kind of almost always targeted children. Yes, there's obviously a difference between something like "Sonic & Friends" and "Sonic Frontiers", but the latter is still targeted towards children too even if its still enjoyed by many adult Sonic fans. Which is why I get confused when Sonic fans act like something like Prime is "too childish" and use that as a source of mockery.
Yes. I was wrong when I said "not specifically made for children" In hindsight, I'm not even sure whether "Sonic is made for children", which almost everyone seems to agree with, was supposed to be the unpopular opinion, or "it's not wrong to enjoy it"
Prime starts off with a really good first two episodes and interesting premise. It then spends every moment of every subsequent episode mocking you for giving it the time of day. It's awful. Boom is the best Sonic TV show. Is that unpopular? I dunno. It's the last thing I ever would have wanted from a Sonic cartoon, but it's pretty confident doing what it does and ended up being genuinely, frequently funny.
Boom is not my favorite show, but I really like it. And I still think Boom Amy is one of my favorite. I wills say tho', I would kinda like actually to see game's story into the show? I dunno, I think it would work.
I think Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog, the OVA and Sonic Boom are the ones that were more focused or I liked their direction more. SatAM- I never liked the whole Knothole/Freedom Fighters angle. I also never liked the design they gave for Robotnik. Underground-Same as above but now he has siblings. X-For some reason they're always on vacation and the few times they focused on the games they tried to get them out of the way as fast as possible. The Metarex arc is a little bit better, but feels like the production took a hit. And there are many cool lore stuff that gets introduced but they speed by it to move to the next thing. Prime- It's still structured as a show from the 80s or 90s, so the story is stretched to meet the 26 episode order which makes the viewer get frustrated. I think an example of what I mean is that the grunts are made of crystal sometimes, but when the heroes need a setback to lose and move to the next episode suddenly the grunts are made out of the hardest steel. I hated that as a kid, but at least I had a week to cool down between episodes. This formula doesn't work when you can watch several episodes at once. It starts to feel like endless loop of fighting the same enemies in the same locations. I think the show would've benefited being around 10-13 episodes. That way the story could've been more focused and less repetitive.
Fuck everyone. I don't care what shirts I wear, or how I look, or anything. All my effort is focused on meeting the standard of interaction required of "functional" people. A weird glance I don't even notice because I'm too focused on my goal isn't going to make me lose sleep. Yeah, but... no. https://xcancel.com/BalenaTweet/status/1668366036515831808 I'd say they've tried to make it "kiddier" in the last few years and maybe stuff like this tweet is just leftover from the mess of the lack of cohesive brand identity or potential licensors in the 2000s but you can't really tell me that Sonic shot glasses and energy drinks and even interactive YouTube livestreams aren't evidence of the brand being able to skew different sides of a more general "It's made for everyone" baseline. There's a reason the Sonic YouTube channel hasn't marked itself as Made for Kids and it's not just because advertisements are more easily served on videos that don't get marked as made for kids.
Sonic being primarily for children doesn't mean it's exclusively for kids. Because yes, kids do make up Sonic's largest demographic and yes, SEGA has always targeted said demographic above all others. It is true that they do put out products for the rare enthusiast adult (My Little Pony does the same thing and we all know why) but why do you think Sonic has adult fans to begin with? How many Sonic fans that YOU know got into the series AS an adult, and not as a child having simply grown up with the series over time? The adult fans had to come from somewhere, and it's not because these are amazing games or have compelling storylines. Even SEGA's own investor reports have stated multiple times that Sonic is a character for children. Just look at the cover of their latest annual report. Sonic fans love to say how there's nothing wrong with them liking a franchise meant for children, yet every time someone points that out, they downplay that aspect and throw out "it's not for kids, it's for everyone!" as if they're embarrassed about it.
There is literally no difference between "for everyone" and "for kids" -- or rather, there's no such thing as media "for everyone", strictly speaking. It's impossible for something to be for everyone if it isn't for kids, simply because kids are the demographic that generates the most content restrictions. "It's not for kids, it's for everyone!" is just cloudcuckoolandery.
I didn't even care that much when I originally said that, but it is kind of funny how long of an argument it turned into. I have never actually owned any piece of Sonic apparel until a few days ago. As a kid we were too poor, I was lucky to just have the games. But I did recently pick up these sandals from Wal Mart that I can wear when I have to step outside for something and I love them as a Sonic fan and a Japanese language student of a couple years. It doesn't come up too much in conversation in my day to day that I'm a Sonic fan, but nobody's ever reacted poorly to it. Either they don't care, or find it interesting. That is an impressive noun at the end, I have no idea what it means but it's fun to say
It's for children. They throw older fans the odd bone as I pointed out in my post, but they aren't trying to bring in many new 18-30 year olds with stuff like that. They're banking on nostalgia. Y'know, nostalgia from when you were a child? I don't really consider Sonic Robo Blast 2 a good example to go off of. It's decision to go with tiny enemies and sprites over 3D models creates a lot of problems with depth perception and Sonic's speed is overtuned. At least that's how it was in the last version I've played. A lot of these problems can be solved with a less unruly camera before you even get to modifying Sonic's kit. A lot of unpredictable outcomes when moving around in 3D come from the camera moving in unpredictable ways,, which is why Nintendo basically stapled the camera to the top corner of the screen for 3D Land. Combine that with a slower Sonic and I'd think you'd have movement system you could flesh out without the need for so much automation, but I have no way of proving or testing something like that right now.
