Sonic Colo(u)rs: Ten Years Later.

Must be the extremely stubborn, conservative (not in the political sense, but "averse to change or innovation and holding traditional values.") management. I was looking up this reddit thread, and I found one (well, two) comments that seem to highlight the series woes.

"New blood working on Sonic is honestly exactly what the franchise needs. Same with Pokemon IMO. Let people who grew up as fans of the series and can see ways to improve it have a go at making one."

"Those series need new management, not just "new blood." Sonic Forces had a bunch of first-time level designers and was arguably worse off for it. The mainline Pokémon series has been subtly handing the reins to younger developers for years now - but the same old people are overseeing production from the top down. Sonic Team and GAMEFREAK have been allowed to stagnate in mediocrity because they work on lucrative IPs regardless of quality."

 

I think it's nuts. Sonic has been changing things up for 22 years, with almost every installment, frequently to its detriment, at the expense of the fundamentals. Infamously so.

Mania proved that there is a very receptive audience for a well made, back to basics, bread and butter Sonic, like the ones that made the series popular in the first place. It would be foolish not to do another one like that.

2D is not a liability. There are always new ideas. 2 Player Versus in Sonic 2 was a new idea. The element shields and Knuckles' gliding and climbing in S3&K were new ideas. The time travel in Sonic CD was a new idea that never met its full potential, and could be expanded upon in a new game. The approach to level design itself drastically changed between Sonic 1 and Sonic 3.

It's the fundamentals that need to remain consistent. Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World are vastly different experiences with the same fundamental rules. Super Mario Maker 2's in-built levels are some of the most creative the series has ever seen.

Every other major legacy series has learned to embrace the strength of its roots after suffering through a mid-life crisis. Sonic is the big exception, and it doesn't make any sense.

I think the people making the games care, even when they end up releasing a bad game. Nobody gets into the profession of making video games for a high salary and an easy life. Iizuka is probably one of the ones who cares the most, since he's shepherded the series for so long, and as head of Sonic Team he's the one who'd have to fight battles with upper management.

I think upper management at Sega has undervalued and taken the series for granted for too long, using it to generate a quick buck while diminishing its worth in the long term.

3+ years without a new Sonic game is a promising sign. It's already been confirmed that they've made the conscious decision to allow Sonic games the necessary development time going forward. That's something the Sonic series has always needed, but never really had.

 

I guess that's true. It just seem so odd to me, how Sega can still do what they do with the series all these years. At times it does make me question if they are listening to the fans. I hope they are if they have another Sonic game planned after 3+ years.

 

They shouldn't disregard Sonic Mania. But otherwise, yes. Sonic 1, 2, CD, 3&K and Mania should be considered the source material for Sonic games going forward. It's what Crash Bandicoot did, it's what Donkey Kong did, it's what Mega Man did, all to great success. They didn't stagnate. They rolled the clock back to when the series was in its prime and moved forward from there, with none of the accumulated barnacles. The next 2D Sonic game shouldn't be treated as a side project, it should be treated as a core entry in the series. 2D platformers aren't side projects relegated to handheld systems anymore.

I strongly believe it's the best way to course-correct the series.

They can experiment with 3D Sonic behind the scenes and proceed only once they've absolutely nailed the movement, controls, camera and gameplay. Not just "it'll do", or "it's better than the last one". It needs to be on point. It needs to be the fundamentals of a prestige game, not the disposable sloppiness you'd expect from a cartoon movie tie-in.

It's drastic, but consider that Sonic Team have made 12 3D Sonic games and they still haven't figured out Sonic's controls.

 

Whitehead & Co pitched Sonic Mania (as Sonic Discovery), it was not some fleeting idea that Sonic Team pawned off on some tiny hungry developers lmao. And also by that time the pitch was made, they had made three official ports of classic Sonic titles across multiple platforms, so they weren't "aw shucks just fans" either.

I'm also under the impression that Sonic Team isn't split up anymore, so they work on one project at a time - and at the time they were ostensibly working on Forces. And despite that, there were mentions here and there in the makings of where Iizuka is cited as giving them ideas or direction on certain things.

it is way too early for me to start drinking man hahahahaha

 

Crash 4 gets a pass on it because every game after CTR was very pointedly not made by the same devs even nominally, and all of them were mediocre at absolute best (not even an a "this hasn't aged well" way, I mean at the time) while janky incomplete garbage at worst. Sonic has more of a claim of continuity going into the 3D games and beyond, especially given as one of the names most well-known in the series only left as late as during Sonic 06's development.

 

I think 2D Sonic should be the focus for the near future. I don't think there's much from 1995-2016 that 2D Sonic can draw from. Sonic Rush Adventure was great, but it's a very different type of game from the classic series. 2D Sonic needs to treat 1, 2, CD, 3&K and Mania as the core and move forward from there.

There's never been an A+, 10/10, Game of the Year, five star, gold medal 3D Sonic game. Mario has had half a dozen.

Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Colours, Sonic Generations, Sonic Lost World, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, Sonic Forces.

Out of these 13 home console 3D Sonic games, only Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations were met with a positive critical reception at launch. The first two of those have not fared well retrospectively. The latter two were great B+ games that arguably relied upon 2D gameplay more so than 3D. Of the remaining 9 games, two have had the honour of making it onto the "List of video games notable for negative reception" Wikipedia article.

It's a godawful batting average for a series that, at its height, rivaled Mario critically, commercially and in public opinion.

3D Sonic absolutely needs to go to its room and think about what it's done. The pressure to perpetually have one in development needs to go away. It needs to go into hibernation until Sega figure out a strong direction for it, and when they do it needs the time, resources and scrutiny a prestige game would get. "Good enough" isn't good enough anymore.

 

If they don't even attempt to make something on par with Mario, they won't succeed in making something on par with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. They should be aiming for the stars. Despite everything, Sega is still capable of making prestige games (Yakuza, Persona) and Sonic is still a massively lucrative IP.

A few years ago you could have said that Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat and Crash Bandicoot would never become top sellers again, would never become respected series again. They all had successful revivals. And they're all smaller IP than Sonic.

It benefits the brand, therefore it benefits Sega and ultimately benefits the audience.

Every other major video game IP that's had this downward spiral and/or faded into irrelevancy has taken this course of action. They take a pause, evaluate where things went off-rails, what made the IP successful in the first place, then go back to basics, with a renewed focus on quality.

After the reception Sonic Mania got and the reception Sonic Forces got, it should be clear what is working and what isn't working. The thing that is working should continue, while there's still momentum. The thing that isn't working needs to come to a halt and be thoroughly reassessed until a solution is found.

 

Reassess, yes, but you make it sound like the modern boost games don't work period, and that's sonic5993's point. The boost games work 100%, gens and colors attest to that, but every game has it's flaws, even Sonic Mania. Saying that they should only continue with what works in the moment is literally supporting sonic team's "throw the baby out with the bath water" philosophy. Keep what people like, throw out what they don't. People thought the wisps in colors were fun, so now they've returned for literally every single sonic game since. And that gets stale fast. So suppose we start getting only 2d sonic games from here on out. That's gonna get boring really fast, cause sonic team only keeps what "works" (i.e., sonic, tails, knuckles, 2d stage design) and throws out everything people claim to be bad (i.e., sonic's s***ty friends, new enemies besides eggman, 3d period, etc.)

I do NOT want Sonic to stagnate on the same tired old formula. If sonic's going down, I'd like him to go out with a fight, not being scared of failing and playing it safe every time. However, don't get me wrong, I really want another 2d classic game. I just also want other new ventures (la la, la laaaaa) for Sonic to bring us to experience as well. If we only got 2d classic games for the rest of the franchises run, I'd honestly leave sonic. Mario doesn't 100% do the same thing over and over again each game either, so I don't think it's completely fair to say that being like mario means only making 2d classic games over and over again. Otherwise we would've had super mario bros. 27 by this point.

It's cool to like what you like, but saying the games others like that you don't are objectively the wrong games isn't. Yes, I agree, sonic team needs to take a step back and get their s*** together, but we really shouldn't support them tossing out an idea over one bad take.

 

And even then, Toys for Bob made the point of saying that the stories of those old games didn't not happen, they just happened in another universe, tying into the game's themes of interdimensional travel.

If Sonic tried something like that, half the fanbase would be rioting that the canon they like is being thrown out, and the other half would be rioting that the old stuff isn't being thrown in the trash where they think it belongs, that Sega are pulling another Rise of Lyric "it's not replacing the franchise" copout.

Even then, if Sega were to announce that no more 3D sonic games would be made for the next decade or so while they fix it, what'd stop the fans who only stick around for those 3D outings from tapping out other than the kinda sorta maybe promise of the games getting good in the time it takes for a president to serve 2 full terms?

 

Sonic Mania isn't just what works at the moment, it's what worked from the beginning. It's the foundation of the series, a foundation that was abandoned for years, even as the originals kept selling. If Sega's goal is to re-build the Sonic video game brand, then the kind of Sonic games that are best known and most popular should be at the forefront of that.

The most recent Sonic game was based upon a game formula introduced in 2008. How are we defining stagnation?

What I'm calling for is to get the series out of its rut.

Sonic started out as a 2D platformer series. 22 years ago the series shifted with the trends of the time to put 3D platformers at the forefront and relegate the 2D platformers to side projects. That trend shifted again a decade ago, and we're now in a time where 2D platformers and 3D platformers are equally as viable and popular. The Sonic series did not adjust to that shift. It continued to treat the pure 2D installments as side projects. But it also abandoned its pure 3D games, making them a hybrid of 3D and 2D gameplay - where the 2D gameplay doesn't much resemble the original series, and where the 3D is increasingly race track based and Sonic still doesn't control very naturally.

In 2017, the traditional 2D platformer side project Sonic game, in the spirit of the original series, completely overshadowed that year's 2D/3D hybrid Sonic game.

So where does that leave the series? It demonstrates that the original 1991-1994 style of Sonic game still works and excites, that it's what people want from a 2D Sonic game. It also turned out that Sega misjudged by making it a digital download only game and that there was a big enough audience and demand to justify a physical release. Which shows that a 2D Sonic game doesn't have to be a "lesser" project, off to the side.

In its success, Sonic Mania more or less makes the 2D sections of the 3D/2D hybrid Sonic games redundant. There's too much overlap, and they look and feel bad in comparison. But strip away the 2D sections from the Unleashed-Forces style games and what you're left with is 90% race-track style gameplay that can't sustain a full game. And there's no other style of 3D Sonic game to fall back on. Sonic Lost World was poorly received in part because of how fussy and overly complicated its control system was, and how the parkour system didn't work as well in reality as it sounded on paper. Then you have to go all the way back to Sonic Adventure - Sonic 2006, which are relics at this point.

Every existing direction is a dead end. 3D Sonic needs to go back to the drawing board. They spent 22 years throwing so many disparate ideas against the wall, but didn't land on a solid foundation for how Sonic should control and play in 3D.

With Mania, 2D Sonic has a clear path in front of it. After 22 years with 3D Sonic games at the forefront, I think it's okay for 2D Sonic games to take the spotlight and continue to rebuild trust in the series, while 3D Sonic gets the overhaul it requires. But this time it needs to be one that's built to last.

Never said any of that. You're making assumptions. I want a Sonic Adventure remake. I want a Sonic Colours 2. I want a Sonic Generations 2. I want a Sonic Rush 3. None of these are what would most benefit the series right now. They need to keep it simple and get back to the core of the series.

That's all-time cumulative sales. I'm talking recent games. And I'm more talking critical and audience reception. The Sonic video game series isn't where it should be, and hasn't been for a long time. It's taken for granted that a new Sonic game is more likely to be bad than good, let alone great. That is not the batting average a series of this stature should have, at all.

I said the 2D series should continue the trajectory of Sonic 1, 2, CD, 3&K and Mania. The 3D games, Rush games etc. aren't relevant to that style of gameplay.

The 3D games need a complete re-think, that may or may not include various elements from previous 3D Sonic titles. I don't think it should be taken for granted that 3D Sonic needs, for example, the boost attack, or grind rails. A lot of the series' worst ideas nuked themselves from having any further influence on the series - Sonic's sword, Tails' mech, the Werehog, fishing. Staleness was never the issue, it was the lack of a solid foundation.

 

To clarify, if I'm reading this right...

@Pengi is NOT saying, "Let's pretend 1998-2020 never happened from now on and make sprite-based throwback games exactly like Sonic Mania forever."

To bring it back to the analogy he used earlier, DKC Returns didn't retcon DK64. In fact, it liberally used elements FROM DK64, where they made sense.

But Returns figured out the core appeal of the original DKC games and, as Reggie so aptly put it, made it magic again. It wasn't just, "What if DKC4 had come out on the SNES in 1997?" It was, "What might DKC have been if it'd had most of the same fundamentals, but we were making it in a modern context?"

And that sort of approach is what returned legacy series like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Crash, Tomb Raider, Mega Man, and Resident Evil to respectability and prominence.

I don't think the argument is, "We can't ever have another Sonic game where anyone talks and the characters have colorful eyes because those haven't been as successful." I think it's just, "If Sega finally wants to return Sonic to prominence after 22+ years of ups and downs, they would be well-served to use Mania's success as the foundation."

 

Yeah, I agree, I'm just saying why does it have to be another mania? Why does it have to be in the style of 1, 2, 3&K, or CD?

I betcha a 2d sonic game with hand drawn hd graphics (not sprite based) in the advance style or something (advance 1 is already basically a genesis game as it is) would be a perfect middle ground for those who want another genesis style 2d game and those who want something new.

If Sega still wants to do boost, why not capitalize on the Rush formula? Or heck, even pocket adventure (since the guys who claim sonic was never good appraised it as the perfect video game)! Even Mania took cues from these other games (stardust speedway has some stuff from rush), so there's good potential here.

I know mania was a critical hit, but what I just can't understand is why instead of people saying "yeah, 2d games are hot right now and we've got the gameplay down pat, so let's create a cool new modern game with it", they're saying "eh, just give us mania 2 and we'll shut up". Like that example isn't entirely rhetorical. I've seen a creepy sense of apathy towards getting a mania 2, like people assume it's all the franchise has left- just making endless sonic mania clones :/

 

I've said I wanted a Mania 2 countless times now, but that doesn't mean I want it done exactly like the first Mania.
My ideal Mania sequel would have HD hand drawn sprites and all original stages (on top of using the modern designs for the characters but that's beside the point )
I'd still consider it a sequel to Mania because (again, ideally) it would be made by the same guys that made the first one.

"Mania 2" is a grab bag concept in the fanbase right now; everybody wants it but I'm sure a vast majority of people don't want a nostalgia fest like the first one. I know I don't, at least.

 

Hand drawn HD graphics? Sure! In the Advance style? That sounds like a terrible idea. Leave my classic Sonic alone thank you very much. Sega already has nine years of separated branding for classic Sonic, and fully 2D "classic" games is precisely the realm in which that brand can safely exist. It would be best if they use it that way. Now, of course new "classic" games should have "new" stuff and definitely shouldn't reuse old zones again, but keeping the familiar elements and building on the original formula is a must.