The younger fandom, and how they learned from exactly none of our mistakes.

Not you specifically, but I've seen a couple of people say it.

And that's true, but the point is whatever they're doing, whatever people Sega is throwing at the franchise, something isn't working.

 

Not even true, it sold above 1 million , that site is known to be a bad source for sales information btw

That and MM11 actually sold great , in fact its the second best selling mainline game btw right after 2, people REALLY overestimating how MM games were selling or should sell.

And are we gonna forget how Mighty No 9 kickstarter was successful ? regardless of the final product and its reception, people REALLY wanted a new mega man game after all.

 

To add on to this, VGChartz is a terrible source for sales stats because they pretty much guesstimate. They don't provide sources for their sales numbers and somehow can calculate the number of sales to a single digit, something even major companies like Microsoft can't do. It's old, but here's a good analysis of why VGChartz should be ignored.

 

also i want to know what make a thing "evolves" and innovate , cause as far as i am concerned, classic sonic always kept evolving, spin dash is such an essential improvement now, 3 added elemental shields and insta shield, Mania added drop dash, those are all improvements and evolutions, not the same old game every time, and honestly if you want something drastically different, why even bother with classic sonic for example? just find a different game or something.

Same can be said for Mega Man, MM 11 actually improved a lot with the additions of Time gear and power gear, that a potential future MM12 should have them and it would be downgrade without them

 

That doesn't change the fact that MegaMan Games were doing poorly when they cancelled the franchise. I'm going to have to do more research into finding exact sales data at the time but I'm very sure it wasn't great.

Why would they put it on hiatus for 8 years if they were doing great? Don't say because the Creator left because we both know that doesn't matter to these companies. And where is MegaMan 12 if 11 did so great? Capcom likes getting sequels out ASAP so I'm wondering where it's at.

None of my other points are changed by this, franchises that remain stagnant and don't evolve still eventually die brother.

 

Evolving = expanding or improving on the formula in meaningful ways. It doesn't get more complicated than that. Would you say that Mania was as big a leap over S3K as S2 and S3K were over their respective predecessors? Gameplay-wise, Mania was pretty much S3K with a different special attack for Sonic and a couple of field effects added to the shields. If we count Mania Plus, it also added Mighty and Ray, and Encore Mode, but it still can't compete with most Sonic sequels in terms of improvements and innovations.

Most Mega Man sequels play like ROM hacks of their predecessor. Same formula with different levels and weapons. What innovations MM sequels had were added at a snail's pace. Just compare MM with other long-running series like Mario, Zelda, etc. and the difference is day and night. Even series often accused of being stagnant like Pokémon evolved more than MM and in less time.

 

Inafune wasn't the creator of Megaman, but he was a key game designer/producer for several Megaman games, and the producer and director for Megman 11 have gone on record to state that after Inafune left, they didn't have any figureheads to step up to the plate to lead the series for that period of time.

Inafune's departure may not be the main or sole reason why Capcom stopped development on Megaman games for most of the 2010s, but having some sort of leadership on board that wants to make new products is pretty important for any series; and that sometimes trumps whatever the sales figures for those properties might be depending on how important the producer is to the business. Metroid, for example, likely would had been buried for good under any other publisher after the sales numbers for Other M and/or Federation Force came in.

 

Alright cool. My points still remain ignoring the Megaman example. I don't want to even argue about this one anymore because it's going to veer off topic but I'm 10000% percent sure Megaman wasn't selling hot in the late 00's. Why the third ZX sequel never happened and Starforce got cancelled.

 

Not to mention the new moves for Ray and Mighty, the Flame and Lightning shields affecting the environment, and the plethora of new stage gimmicks. Mania was hardly "more of the same", and I could imagine plenty more exciting additions in a followup.

 

Okay so now I'm mad because you posted paragraphs defending a failed franchise only for me to do research and get the same damn results. Who does that?

I could only find the Japanese numbers but they paint the same picture I said already.

Megaman Starforce 1 - 593,675 units sold in Japan http://geimin.net/da/db/2006_ne_fa/index.php https://web.archive.org/web/20151017183611/http://geimin.net/da/db/2007_ne_fa/index.php https://web.archive.org/web/20151017183611/http://geimin.net/da/db/2007_ne_fa/index.php
Megaman Starforce 2 - 291,962 units sold in Japan https://web.archive.org/web/20151017183611/http://geimin.net/da/db/2007_ne_fa/index.php
Megaman Starforce 3 - 174,426 units sold in Japan https://archive.rpgamer.com/news/japan/mb021309.html third is from Famitsu

My other example

Megaman ZX - 94,341 units sold in Japan http://geimin.net/da/db/2006_ne_fa/index.php
Megaman ZX Advent - 63, 977 units sold in Japan https://web.archive.org/web/20151017183611/http://geimin.net/da/db/2007_ne_fa/index.php

Each game, that came out yearly, had a steady decline in sales in Japan. Japan is also where it had the anime adaptation that didn't get far in America so I'm going to assume Starforce did the best there. I'm sure I could find the US ones as well if I searched the NPD data but I just looked to see if any of these games charted at all in the months they came out but they didn't.

The franchise was beginning to sell less and less with each game. Because they weren't evolving. I even researched forum posts at the time and Megaman's stagnation and failure to evolve was brought up as part of why people weren't excited to buy each of the new games. Why did I have to do research to prove something I had already said, and is obvious?

Your move buddy.

 

Mana I’m not even sure what your complaint against me is. My response wasn’t in contention about gameplay evolution and I didn’t even say you were wrong as to why Megaman as a series stopped getting games. The only point I was making in my reply was that having a showrunner in charge was important to getting new games made for a franchise.

 

Mania's drop dash was a meaningful addition that changed the way you approach the game, that's evolution.

MM was actually always improving, it's hard to notice since they released fast and look basically the same, but they always add to the gameplay even if keeping the same formula that make magaman game a ....mega man game, they add slide in 3, then charge shots in 4, they streamlined jet abilities in 6 and you can fly/float for a limited time,7 added shop and purchasing abilities

but when 9 came, it actually devolved hard, both graphically from 8, to even gameplay mechanics, it went back straight to 2 gameplay! no slide no charge moves etc. , imagine if Mania returned to sonic 1 style of graphics and no spin dash ane all those "unnecessary additions" in favor of "true retro experience"

and if anything zelda was "criticized for using the same formula from OOT to SS without much evolving, only drastically changed in BotW after near 20 years of using the same formula, but also the games were coming at the pace of 1-2 game a generation. they weren't frequent enough for people to get tired of fast.

That's not a competition bruh, First, i only said that the site you used is bad, which is true.
So the numbers for ZX and star force games were bad as vgchartz said? ok great, doesn't change the fact that MM11 number was straight up false, when capcom came out and said otherwise with a number way waaaay bigger than what you posted, your main argument was "MM11 returned after hiatus and still sold bad cause people were fed up" when not only that was false, but its the second best Main MM selling after 2, so that means people were really wanting to play another Mega Man game after it's absence for so long.

Notice how i said from the beginning that it's the second best selling after 2? that alone prove anyway that the series did indeed sell less after 2 due to saturation and fast release schedule etc. so i was not entirely against you even, but i am in the mind of that saturation doesn't equal that something doesn't evolve or change, Sonic 3 & Knuckles were improvement over 2 in everyway, yet they sold less.

 

I’d say that can be partially forgiven if you remember that Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, when they were first released, were bundled with the Sega Genesis console, which helped boost sales. Neither Sonic 3 or Sonic & Knuckles had that benefit until much later (which by that point, Sega had entirely shifted focus towards the Saturn). Sonic & Knuckles’ October release also gave it the disadvantage of being released shortly before Rare’s first Donkey Kong Country and the Japanese launch of the Sega Saturn.

Really makes me wonder how things could had gone if Sega was allowed to develop, market, and release what we have as S3&K as the one titular Sonic 3. Not only in sales, but in reviews too—the gap between S2 and S3&K is much less evident with the latter game split in two, and reviews definitely took notice of that for both S3 and S&K.

 

I'm honestly confused as to why the Boost games are praised so much when only 2 of them are actually really good (Unleashed and Generations).
It makes so little sense that Sega abandoned the formula that worked after SA2 to appeal to a different audience.

There's a reason Heroes is never talked about. It did nothing for Sonic as a franchise.
Honestly, I think Sega needs to allow classic sonic characters in the modern games and to back to the Adventure formula.
it feels like Sega takes one step forward and then two steps back.

 

Colors is super bland and has incredibly short stages, way too much emphasis on wisp gimmicks when Sonic was never a series about powerups that completely change the gameplay, and it's just...bleh. It's basically a b-tier Mario game with some slight nods to Sonic so its get overrated by people who don't like Sonic but I find it absolutely mediocre. I don't want Sonic to be a bunch of tiny levels with blocky platforming, I want it to be a bunch of zones and Color's levels are just way too tiny to feel like a zone.

Also people make fun of boost Sonic for its over-reliance on 2D sections but Colors is the absolute nadir of that trend. The music is amazing but the wisps constantly interrupt it so

Basically every problem that plagued Lost World and Forces, from over-reliance on gimmicks to tiny stages to wisps to extreme linearity started from Colors.

 

The only thing I didn't like about Colors was the boss fights. Other than that, I think it's the best boost game. It's by far the longest of the boost games (excluding Sonic Unleashed, and even then the boost was only like half the game) and I think it's arguably the most consistent. The difficulty is just right, the controls are great, the music is sublime, and I still think it's the best looking Wii game. I do concede that it has a bit too much 2D and it's not as fast, but that's not really a dealbreaker (and Sonic was never just about speed).

You realize you can beat the entire game without using a single Wisp, right?

 

I think most of the gameplay-related shortcomings in Colors and Lost World stem from the fact that Sega tried too hard to cater to the Nintendo crowd. It was probably a sensible idea on paper -- these games were Nintendo exclusives, after all. The problem lies in Sega having decided that this meant aping Mario, to the point of diluting some of the series' core elements. So instead of long and intricate levels designed around speed, we got overabundant short levels with a greater focus on platforming, powerups and puzzles. Mario always did those things better than Sonic, so for many of us, nothing about Colors stood out as particularly engrossing or noteworthy. There were still speedy parts, but for the most part, these felt like tacked on scripted sections that were there only because Sonic games are expected to have some speed.

Lost World was particularly guilty of this, being basically a poor man's Mario Galaxy (with some 3D Land elements thrown in).

 

Well....you seem to be under the impression that the adventure formula actually worked. I mean.....No.
Things are not going to get better just by revisiting the style of those games, there is a very good reason we went away from them. Many fans of that era feel this way as well, so it's not just you, but clearly SEGA didnt just stop making that style of game just because. They were loaded with more problems than the boost games by far, despite being purer platformers.

I think its widely known that there are aspects of those games that "worked" but the games as a whole did not. Part of the reason the games in that era were so inconsistent between releases. The boost games could actually claim to be a more solid gameplay formula than adventure, despite the differences in playstyle.