SEGA launches the Sonic 2020 project, promises to release Sonic news on the 20th of every month

Unfortunately now that more details emerged for that event, it seems like sega will not announce anything new, rather it will provide more information about upcoming games that are already announced like yakuza 7 for west etc

 

O-oh.

I mean, I hope I'm mistaken, but I know I'm personally feeling kinda salty seeing, like, fans of the Crash, THPS, Skate, even freaking X-Wing/TIE Fighter series (to mention only a few) getting excited about new games.

 

Great more news of fucking Yakuza.

Being a Sonic fan is really boring right now.

 

I dunno, this fan-gaming renaissance we're in right now is pretty sweet.

 

The optimist within me says they’re hiding something... ? I mean, it makes no sense they’d ignore Sonic at an event scheduled for the franchise’s anniversary.

 

My optimism says that Sega will announce a new Sonic game. My pessimism says that this game will not be good.

 

I mean that's great, but in the past decade we had maybe 3 good Sonic games (Colors, Generations, Mania), some nice remakes that are still locked on the worst platform options (Sonic 1, 2, and CD to a lesser extent) and then a bunch of mediocre forgettable games (TSR, Sonic 4 episode 2, Sonic Lost World, Sonic Forces, the various hardlight mobile games).

Here's hoping for a better 2020.

 

I honestly have no idea what to expect. After Forces, I truly have no idea what the hell Sonic Team is gonna do. Change the gameplay style again? Keep at the boost one? Adventure remake? Are they going back to saturday morning cartoon nothing-stories or some weird attempt at edginess like Forces? Got no clue; I'm somehow morbidly curious about and anticipating the reveal and also have zero expectations for it.

Before Forces came out, it was obvious what the next game would be: a boost game. But Sonic Team has burnt all the goodwill they got from Colors and Generations, while a slew of fan projects and even an indie game (Spark 2) have shown that tactically regressing to an earlier paradigm is probably the way forward. With Lost World, they've shown that they can't even create a new paradigm that actually feels good (whereas with boost, Unleashed was at least fun to play and had some promise), so really...what the hell are they going to do?

...but does Sonic Team even exist anymore? Aaron specifically mentions a Sonic Studio (oh dear, that fangame is in trouble), not Sonic Team. Probably just a rebrand, but...who knows?

 

Apparently Sonic Studio just refers to what they used to call the Sonic Pillar, just the group that deals with all things Sonic.

But also they have this great opportunity to get on the wagon with all the great remakes that have come out since the N. Sane trilogy. Crash, Spyro, Tony Hawk, all the franchises with troubles from 2000 to 2015, are now getting rebooted and Sonic's just busy doing fuck all. But I guess that sums up Sonic's problem. It always had a few good games scattered about so the circumstances never seemed as dire as with those other franchises, but Sonic's not good enough consistently to be like Mario.

That and good ol Japanese stubbornness lol.

Also Spark 2 is a fantastic game. If ever a Sonic Adventure 3 comes out I hope Sonic plays like Fark did in that game.

 

I have doubts that Sonic Team is going to make another boost game. After all the vitriolic hate Forces got and all the worship the Adventure games have been receiving, I'm confident they're going to be revisiting the Adventure formula in the near future. I'd have absolutely no problem with that; I think there's still tons of untapped potential in the Adventure formula, as evidenced by fangames and hacks.

 

What sucks is all these gameplay types could be good, just their execution often sucks. It's like Generations compared to Forces or Sonic 4 compared to Mania. In both cases, one got the style and level designs down, and the other didn't.

 

That’s actually a very good point. I think everyone would love another boost game if it had long, interesting level design, original locations, and good controls like Generations did, and no 2D. I know that a lot of people think that the boost is the epitome of “Sonic is all about speed” but I really don’t think that’s true; Seaside Hill and the Kingdom Valley mod show that decent platforming can be incorporated with into it. (I think the REAL offender for “Sonic is all about speed” is the ranking system, fwiw)

I still would rather see the Adventure formula though, it’s just more interesting IMO

 

i used to think the same and was looking forward to the event -and still do in fact but for other reasons now- , but the wording was really suspect and basically killed my optimism, this is an instant where i hope i am wrong


anyway here what they said:

• Upcoming Releases from GungHo Online Entertainment America, Idea Factory International, Koei Tecmo America, and Sega / Atlus.
• Exciting Announcements from Inti Creates, Aksys Games, Natsume, NIS America, and Playism.
• Plenty of Surprises from Acttil, Arc System Works America, SNK Corporation, Spike Chunsoft, and WayForward.

but anyway we should hear something sonic related in sonic birthday....shouldn't we? weather it's in this event or somewhere else

 

Speak for yourself, not everyone. Even at its best, I don't particularly like the boost gameplay and don't want to see it return anytime soon. Generations still doesn't have particularly great controls either btw. But it rarely asks you to do something that the controls don't accommodate.

Also just realised that this is the 2020 news thread. How did we send up back on this discussion again?

 

Yall are talking about "well other series get remakes and have new iterations, where's ours?!" like anything Sonic Team would put out would be good, and it's weirding me the hell out hahahaahahah

likewise, I'm not even super excited about Crash 4 because the Crash remakes played like worse versions of the originals - I'm not stoked about the idea of getting yet another game where I slip off of platforms to my death because they couldn't be bothered to get the collision down

 

With respect, if you doubt that Sonic Team are capable of making a decent Sonic game based on their past performance, did you just come in here to shit on other peoples' optimism?

 

For the most part I would say the lack of Sonic game news is a good thing, assuming that Sonic Team's responsible for production of the next main game (or severe oversight of the next spinoff/smaller game like TSR). I'll go a step further that the lack of information whatsoever is an absolute improvement over the Sonic social media team doing those stupid cryptic teasers that largely amount to nothing every now and then. But even I gotta cop that with other platforming series getting news (or even rumors) of new games or remakes on the horizon during what would normally be the E3 season, the dry spell with this series is even harder to ignore.

There's a part of me that wants to note the series' 29th anniversary is in a few days, so maybe it's a case like the 25th anniversary where they've done a very good job keeping major announcements under wraps. But then again, neither the Japan or Western half of Sega has really made any big publicity for a scheduled anniversary-related event for people to look forward to like they did in 2016. The way the series is going, it wouldn't surprise me if Sega, as of now, truly have nothing new to announce for Sonic until next year. Granted, the coronavirus pandemic has thrown stuff like the Sonic 2020 campaign and the planned SXSW panel into array, so it's not really Sega's fault; but the lack of reschedule or replacement news really make it look like Sega either had/have no backup plans at all for Sonic news or they don't have much to show at all.

 

Usually no one is optimistic, and also I don't consider jealous postings about silence in the face of other series getting things as "optimism" either. That kind of thing tends to sour into angry postings about Sonic Team not giving them what they want, which is something I feel we don't need either.

I agree with the "no postings = good", if not just because of this but because Mania was out of complete nowhere, so I'd hope that a similar nowhere thing would lead to something good...

 

I like to assume nothing so that I'm not disappointed if it does in fact turn out to be nothing. And there's always the chance of being pleasantly surprised.

 

But the main problem is that we can't be confident about Sonic Team's work. It doesn't matter if a new game will be a boost-style, adventure-style, or even a new style like Lost World was. It is very hard to think that they will provide a good game because the story, the gameplay or the level design are always troubled to some extent. Maybe not all at once, but still.

You see, I love Generations. But Sega managed to write a plot so simplistic and yet with several plotholes. And Forces is a downgrade in every aspect.

I will be confident only if this turns out to be a "Mania 3D", made by fans who know how a Sonic game should be.