This was clearly a very personal video for King K. It was entertaining as I certainly gained insight into King K’s relationship with 06. That said I think the past, present, future format prevented the video from providing any deep or insightful analysis of the actual game. I get what King K is trying to do in this video (which is to contrast the joy 06 gave him as a kid with the harsh reality he sees as an adult) but I don’t think this contradiction is explored in much detail. The video’s basically: I liked this as a kid, now I’m a more attentive adult…. so thank god for this fan game. As the mechanic pointed out, it’s all broad strokes. That said given the nostalgia so many have for 06, the video does seem representative of many 2000s kids view of the game. The future segment really demonstrates how subjective this whole “at least *insert game here* hAd Ambition” argument is. King K’s allowed to not feel passion for Sonic now. I get it, as I’m at best lukewarm towards Frontiers. But the way he dismisses all the reasons people have for being excited about frontiers seems hypocritical given his complaints earlier in the vid about the 2D Sonic “elites” (his words) here on Sonic Retro. I understand the larger point he’s making, that 06 was not inherently flawed and could’ve been good if given more dev time. it’s just disappointing for that argument to be jumbled together with his, completely valid, disinterest and close mindedness towards modern sonic… because many other folks argue that the current sonic team has “ambition” they just haven’t been given the dev time needed to deliver. The word “Ambition” is constantly thrown around, and it’s metric seems to be whatever a certain fan’s preference is.
Most of these video essays by Sonic fans are almost entirely rooted in the feelings they had for the series in their formative years or so. So the "analysis" kind of falls apart since its mostly just waxing philosophically a out the emotions they had when they played "X game" and how it made them feel. And that's fine as I get some of these games are very personal to the people who play them and I would never deny those feelings. But they're terrible point for an analysis. Because if you're gonna analyze something, what do your personal feelings have to do with it? A person can tell me how they felt but I'll never be able experience what they felt unless I had a similar experience. So videos like King K's are only useful to the same demographic as him who had similar feelings about these games. Which is fine, but its also not very different from any other Sonictuber who goes on and on about how much better things used to be versus how much they hate Sonic now.
Kinda funny to see people howling "How DARE KingK not be a fan of the games Colours onward?", as if those people weren't saying exactly what he said about them, but towards the games of the 2000s instead.
So your solution to that is to continue to add to the fire and punch right back, thereby adding to the discourse?
I don't have much of a stake in this since I haven't watched the 06 video, and based on the Shadow one I'm probably not gonna, but this feels pretty reductive towards the criticisms I'm seeing in this thread. Not only are people critical of the Adventure and Dark Age era games usually ALSO quite critical of the modern games, the praise given to both of these games is significantly different. A ton of it totally comes from nostalgia, and yes, projection. People who like the modern games may like them for reasons you disagree with or even don't understand, but it's usually not for something like being able to simply imagine a better version of a game and judging that instead.
All you guys who think the classic, adventure, and boost games are any good are simply ridiculous. Real fans like me know Sonic hasn’t been truly great since Rad Mobile and you all just have rose tinted glasses for whatever you played as kids. Edit: I may as well say something about the video since I watched it last night. I liked it. I don’t need someone online to tear things down/praise them to validate my thoughts on it. And given the choice, I prefer people blindly liking something to blindly hating it. I may have missed some stuff and didn’t really pay attention to the visuals as I was mainly listening while playing Rush to S-rank Blaze’s stages (Not sure why but it seems weird to mention that I played a Sonic game while posting on a Sonic board - it’s like I expect people to be like, “Pshh don’t you do anything else?” or something lol). The only thing that irked me is how he acted like people must not know about P-06 if they’re criticizing 06. I like P-06 since I enjoy the level design of 06 and think it can shine there, but I’m not silly enough to give P-06 someone who hates the whole concept of the game and expect them to change their mind. These YouTubers aren’t academics and there isn’t really a guideline they have to follow for their video to be valid or good. I don’t care if they didn’t explain themselves satisfactorily, make a totally convincing argument, or take every point to its logical conclusion, etc. It’s just fun to listen to someone talk about what they enjoy. Though if we ever reach a point where people are doing these vids for Boom, I’ll come back and delete all of this.
What timestamp in the video does he talk about this? I realized years ago that his videos aren't for me (and the way you describe this one really seals that for me), so I'm not inclined to watch the whole thing. But I've been growing increasingly interested in how people resort to crying "elitism" when something they like gets criticized (see it a lot in Dragon Ball fandom from dub fans), and I'm wondering if he engages that criticism in a substantive way, or if he at least provides some good food for thought on the matter.
As someone who is probably an "Adventure fan", I do go out of my way to understand the criticism towards them and that era of Sonic specifically. But it does often feel like the Modern games aren't scrutinized as much in some cases. But overall, I don't see much distinction between in all of Sonic's 3D games, a lot of this division is manufactured, mostly from people who liked the stupid Shonen action shit and those who didn't, but that's pretty dumb imo.
Oh, puh-lease. A true fan like me knows that the blue blur was never the same ever since he went by "sOnIc ThE hEdGeHoG" instead of the infinitely more badass Mr. Needlemouse.
I'm reading KingK's script (don't have time to watch it right now) and it's funny the way he describes P-06 as redeeming Sonic '06, because I feel like P-06, if anything, demonstrates that '06 was flawed to the core. It's fascinating seeing such a different perspective. Though, I do think some of the things he says are pretty disingenuous, like that Unleashed was only criticized for the Werehog, Colors was the result of people telling Sonic Team to "stop trying", and that people wanting more Mania is automatically "fuck the Adventure era". I get being upset that something you love is moving away from what made you love it in the first place, but at the same time it's astoundingly dismissive and misleading.
The elite comment is at 37:10. The rant leading up to it begins at 35:20 Wow, I didn’t know that you could get the script for a youtube video. Is that a feature on youtube you can do for every video?
*raises hand* Well actually... Lol nah, whilst I do have a degree in the literary and dramatic arts and another seperate one in computer science. Typically when I do my vids, aside from the usual "literary argument" style of working. I try to follow a scientific type approach, so plenty of references, supporting medium. Lol in my SA1 vid I even brought in a paper from the Royal Society of Biological Sciences to help explain a point about why speed highway feels fast! I don't think many other Sonic opinion vids do that lol. Welcome to my analytical hell! It's a proper job father! I swear!
Agreed with the notion that P-06 just proves the game is flawed to the core. It's a much better game than it was prior, but those improvements often magnify the remaining blemishes. Sonic finally controls decent and has a smidgeon of proper momentum physics, but still is nowhere near as smooth or reliable to control as he is in the Adventure games. The better lit, shinier visuals for the environment just make it all the harder to ignore how down-right awful the character models look. The less broken mechanics and presentation make it all the harder to ignore that the level design is still severely stunted by excess automation and nonsense death pits (looking directly at Wave Ocean and how the 3-foot-deep water still kills you). And then you have the things that haven't been touched at all. The story is still apparently the same, the game is still shoving dialogue in non-stop, invasive character-swapping still plagues the stages, and the mach-speed areas are still just.. dreadful. 06 at it's greatest is P-06, but the end result is imo still a 5/10. I feel like there'd need to be even more work to make it something worthy of standing up to titles before it, let alone ones after. I appreciate the work gone into it either way, it's maybe one of the most impressive things anyone in this fanbase has ever achieved. But it just can't shake it off, imo.
All of the different reactions here mostly just tell me that the concept of 06 depends entirely on how much does "Sonic in the real world" appeals to you. Sonic as a series tends to be at its best conceptually when it can balance its "realistic" and cartoony sides. When it leans more into either side is when people start getting upset. And its a very difficult tight rope act to maintain that.
I've not done a deep look at 06 yet but... For me, that's not the case at all. 06 follows the precise same development mindset of SA1. Make a Sonic game as realistic as possible. With 1999 Dreamcast graphics, I can remember multiple games on that system where people said 'It looks like real life!" And they're talking about the Resident Evil Code Veronica cutscenes. But even I can remember people marvelling at how 'Life Like' SA1s graphics seemed. It's ludicrous and totally wrong, even for mindsets in 1999. I always look at that game as Sonic being in the real world and I'm totally fine with it. For 06, I'm really not that bothered about Sonic being in a real world, over how dull and broken that world is. That's by far my main problem with it.
It kind of tainted the concept unfortunately. Sonic's always kind of straddled the line between being a fantastical or surreal interpretation of "the real world" and which game leans more into it varies a lot. But being dull and lacking distinction is certainly a problem, and its one I've seen people level at Frontiers too.
But this is due to 06 being unfinished as hell. You simply cannot tell how the levels would be exactly if they had 1 or 2 more years of development. I mean, you could argue the levels were already the way the devs intended them to be, since the game had hard mode and coop mode implemented (which is absurd to me). But I doubt things weren't going to change. Then you have to choose: assume the levels of an unfinished game were already finished and keep them unchanged; or assume only the paths were finished - because this is probably the first thing they thought of - and change everything possible around those paths, since even changes in physics might require changes in the levels.
I don't really think p-06 ever strives to control exactly like Adventure and I don't think it would feel right if it did. It's certainly the closest that any one fangame comes to it, but it also never claims to be aiming for it. You have to consider what you're actually doing with the controls, which is crashing into and interacting with physics objects and repeatedly attacking enemies. It's all more technical and direct. I'll be honest, I don't think it's that much of a dilemma. I think P-06 pretty much gets it on the nose. Yeah the gameplay is different, but not enough to require a restructuring of the levels. I also don't understand where people are pulling the "1 or 2 years" hypothetical dev time extension from. That time would likely be used to expand the town mission portions to what they were intended to be after the gameplay was fully taken care of, but people act like it would be an entirely different game, which I don't think is the case at all.
