"Multiple" new Sonic games planned for 2021

The classic ones are also based on existing art. Like, the last two rows of Classic Sonic art are either ones I've seen...somewhere (the one looking forward and crouching may or may not be taken from a pose in the Sonic CD intro?), while others are absolutely based on the old original black and white sketches, like that one where he's looking with his hand above his eyes. You can tell because they're significantly more noodly. Also, the one in row four right in the middle is based on an Ohshima drawing but they gave him straight teeth instead of the pointy ones.

 

This image has Sonic 3 / Sonic & Knuckles, Blue Sphere and Sonic Mania in it:



There's Sonic Mania in another image too:



All images can be found here.

 

I am a lunatic, so

Row four, column three:

Listed in the wiki as being intended for tokyo toy show 1990 and from Sonic Gems Collection respectively. Contrary to what I said, he has straight teeth here, unlike the triangular ones he has everywhere else

Row five, column three:

Taken from Ohshima's twitter.

Row one, column four:

The bottom row second one specifically.

 

duuuude that is straight up one of the leaked promo Sonic Adventure screencaps before the game was revealed!!



now I want, against my better judgement, to try to cross-reference everything in that image against promo stuff and magazine scans...

 

Honestly? I’m not a fan of these posters. The contrasting art styles, the bland and boring classic artstyle, the generic formats...it just feels to me like they just threw a bunch of stock assets into a .psd and called it a day. And normally that’d be fine, but given this is 30th anniversary promo material I would’ve liked to see something a little more carefully authored. Why not have Uekawa or Karasuno draw a whole posted in this style? Classic Sonic, sketches of moments from all the main games, etc.

Anyway, regarding the Boost formula, I don’t think it’s being dropped out of nowhere. They went with something different for Lost World and seemed to have gone back to it by Forces for the sake of the fans, but it’s creatively limiting, hugely resource intensive format. The sheer size of a single boost level in Generations and especially Unleashed could account for several levels in a slower paced platformer. And the devs have consistently filled those levels with intricate and quite frankly stunning graphics (even Forces, as divisive as its artstyle is, contains some beautiful scenery and intricate backgrounds) that are blown through by the play in about five minutes tops.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Generations, and while I think the level design of Unleashed is a bit demanding for a first time player, it’s clearly the vision of the formula in its purest essence and I can see why so many people love it. The trouble is it’s just not resource effective.

I do very much believe that whatever comes next should carry forward some of its innovations, however. The drift and quickstep as tertiary control options are good complements to Sonic’s speed and while the slide should, in my opinion, be retired in favour of a more organic rolling spin attack, I don’t recall the Adventure era utilising Sonic’s ability to curl up on the go all that often. Finally, the stomp can work as a risk-reward mechanic, allowing you to instantly stop wherever you at the cost of your forward momentum, and could be chained into the spindash for quick reaction gameplay.

Beyond that, I’d really love to see the extended cast brought back into gameplay, and it doesn’t even need to be as playable characters. I can’t remember if I’ve pitched this idea on this site before, but I’d like to see a game try a formula of having a different friend join Sonic for each Zone, assisting in combat and level traversal with their unique abilities (also it facilitates my super indulgent idea of Sonic fighting Rocket Metal as a boss alongside Gemerl, the latter interfacing with him after Sonic damages him in order to try and revert him back to his normal form in a gradual process that sees Metal utilise more offensive manoeuvres as he reverts back to normal, as opposed to evasive ones, changing the fight from “catch the bugger” to “meet his attacks head on when you see an opening”). Would also allow Sonic to have chatter with different characters on a regular basis, allowing the game to showcase a whole range of interactions, similar to Kid Icarus Uprising.

 

...So is nobody going to comment on those images putting emphasis on the word "generations"?

Spoiler

That, combined with the representation of multiple Sonic eras, makes me surprised that nobody here has suggested they're hinting at the coming of a Generations 2, this time with Dreamcast Sonic joining Classic and Modern Sonics.

It would be like them to do something like that if you ask me. After Lost World's failure, they went back to the boost. So now they may be going back to the Generations concept as a response to Forces' poor reception.

I know the supposed leak from a few days ago didn't say anything about a Generations 2, but I'm pretty sure that leak is still unconfirmed.

 

God, I really hope not. The last thing we need is the mainline Sonic being fractured *again*. It makes even less sense because the Sonic that appears in Forces is, for all intents and purposes, the same design as the one that appears in Adventure, just iterated upon over time.

It would also be thoroughly inconsistent and confusing given that classic Sonic is now said to be from another dimension, whereas the Sonic from Adventure to the present continues to be treated as a singular entity, going off of the comics, not to mention the fact that recent games make reference to Adventure within the current continuity.

Finally, I just don’t think we’re going to get another Generations styled game so soon after the first. They’d be drawing from almost all the same games and, classic Sonic’s reappearances besides, that game was clearly intended to be one of a kind.

I think this is just a marketing tag line. Sonic has been a part of the pop culture zeitgeist for millennials and zoomers at this point, so it’s not hyperbole.

Man, it’d be so disappointing if this is what they’re doing after all our speculation about a change of direction, wouldn’t it?

 

I might, from a certain perspective, consider Sonic Generations my favorite video game. It's definitely the one I've put the most time in over the past 10 years. So, it wouldn't necessarily be disappointing to me! :P

I still don't think they should actually do it, though. For the reasons you mentioned, but also: Assuming it follows the exact form of Generations, would we even have enough memorable zones from post-2011 to make up an era? I guess you could do White Park Zone (Sonic 4), Silent Forest (Lost World), and Metropolitan Highway (Forces), with Infinite as a Rival Battle, and an amalgamation of Colors+Lost World+Forces' finales as the main boss?

Still. I have an extremely high tolerance for nostalgia, but at this point even I'd much rather have a slate of fresh, creative, thematically-cohesive zones that set THIS game apart from the others (like S3&K or Colors) than something that leans on past archetypes (Heroes, 4, Lost World) or mixes reimagined old zones with new ones (Mania, Forces).

 

God I hope no more nostalgia pandering. How would Generations 2 work? The last 10 years there was so little "new" content it'd just be stupid.

No I really want them to mix things up.

 

All right, I admit, there's a reason I've been so skeptical of the Zippo leak. I'll probably lose my sources for telling you guys this, but I think I've seen enough. The big 30th anniversary game is called

Spoiler

SONIC GENERATIONS GENERATIONS.

I've managed to piece together the stage list, and to coin a phrase, it truly is as we imagined it...

90s Era:
Green Hill Zone (Sonic 1)
Green Hills Zone (Sonic 2 8-bit)
Mecha Green Hill Zone (Sonic Chaos)
Rival: VS. Knuckles (Sonic & Knuckles)
Boss: Egg Mobile-H (Sonic 1)

2000s Era:
Green Hill Zone (Sonic Adventure 2)
Green Hill Zone (Sonic Battle)
Neo Green Hill Zone (Sonic Advance)
Rival: VS. Knuckles (Sonic Pocket Adventure)
Boss: Egg Mobile-H (Sonic Advance)

2010s Era:
Green Hill Zone (Sonic Generations)
Green Hill Zone (Sonic Generations 3DS)
Lost Valley (Sonic Forces)
Rival: VS. Knuckles (Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games)
Boss: Egg Mobile-H (Sonic 4)

Don't tell 'em you heard it from me.

 

Yea, think you're reading too much into it. While Sega putting out a Gen 2 wouldn't be out of the question, separating what's essentially the same design is a nonsensical idea.

It was arguably nonsensical when they did it with Classic and Modern, but trying to claim that the Dreamcast model is its own character from the current Sonic is literally insane.

 

Colors isn't a good game and proof that gimmicky blocky platforming does not belong in a Sonic game.

I'd rather play Forces over Colors, straight up.

 

But I liked Colors and so did a lot of other people...

 

I did too when I was 14 and was just happy people were praising Sonic again. But the issues with the game like the poor pacing of the acts, the corridor straight line 3D boost sections, and the overall lack of overall memorability to any aspect of the game were things I noticed at the time. I just thought the games would get better from that point and Colors would be the first stepping stone towards Sonic's revival so it wasn't worth mentioning.

Then we only got Generations and Mania being worth much of anything. I am fond of Lost World but I know that game is hit or miss to most people. Forces at least has cool ideas and some memorable moments like running up a pyramid or Sonic escaping from Eggman's fleet IN SPACE but Colors didn't have anything like that for me.

You should go and look at people talking about Colors on Reddit or FB groups. Public opinion towards the game has flipped HARD and not for the better.

 

I'm confused how reading it as "Adventure era Sonic" is a stretch, but reading it as 3 new games with those specific styles isn't a stretch.... we already know that's Adventure era Sonic. It's Uekawa era artwork; it's Sonic literally drawn in his advance style. I get that it can also be "2D modern Sonic", but the thing is we havene't seen 2D modern Sonic since that era (new "2d" games are generally 3.5D), and the image is clearly trying to depict 3 generations of Sonic (1990s, 2000s, 2010s) for his 30th anniversary. I think the generational theme of the image (it literally says "unstoppable for generations") is a good indicator that they were trying to depict 3 separate eras, not just 3 artstyles.

IMO we need to remember modern Sonic and adventure Sonic are just modern Sonic from 2 different eras. They are both modern Sonic, just drawn and depicted in different styles, and their games have their own distinct mechanics. Obviously that is 2D modern Sonic because they are BOTH modern Sonic. But there's literally no reason for sega to make one era in the image classic sonic, and then make the other 2 boost era Sonic. I'm pretty sure they are trying to depict the 3 distinct generations of Sonic, almost by decade.

As I said before, regardless of what you think the artwork represents, it probably wouldn't be wise to think things like "woah this means new 2d modern game" or "omg sonic adventure 3". It's a lot less likely that this is some obscure allusion to an upcoming game, and a lot more likely that they're just doing the same thing they did for Sonic Generations - but now with 3 decades instead of 2.

 

You don't say?

My thoughts on Colors have pretty much surged in exactly the opposite direction over the years. I never DISliked it, but I wasn't enthralled with it, either. I thought the story and the new voices were a lot of fun, LOVED most of the zones visually... but thought it was a significant step down from Unleashed in pretty much every other way, and I was at least a little miffed about it getting so much praise, especially when I thought that Unleashed did most of those things BETTER.

But with hindsight, I can see that I was judging Unleashed based only on the things I liked BEST (replaying day stages ad nauseum), and judging Colors primarily through the lens of what I wished it was (more like those day stages).

These days, I understand why Colors earned so much praise, and I appreciate it WAY more on its own merits. (Learning how to bypass the filler stages admittedly helped a lot, haha.) While I still don't like it AS much as Unleashed's day stages, I think it's a much, much, MUCH more approachable game, and I finally get where those who preferred Colors over the other boost games were coming from

I remember people saying it "felt like the classics," and I _never_ understood HOW until recently. Like, it doesn't actually play anything like them, of course, but the level design strangely appeals to me in a similar way. The other boost games always make me feel like I'm being pushed to blitz through each stage as fast and stylish as I can, but with Colors, you don't have that tension.

One of the reasons the 16-bit Sonic games had a wider appeal than most of the 3D entries was because they were more open to different playstyles and player skill levels. I think Colors is similar: Levels are designed with more focus on variety, and they're adaptable to different approaches; You can speed through if you want, but if you'd rather take your time, look for Red Star Rings, look for different routes and secrets, experiment with different Wisp powers, and rack up a high score, these stages are designed to accommodate that, too.

I'm with @TheJoebro64. I think it shows that boost CAN work (and judging by its reception, DID work) in more exploratory, platformer-y contexts. It's the "Sonic CD" of the boost formula, in my view.

 

By this logic, the Adventure games aren't worth going back to either because of how the opinion on those games flipped

I kind of hate this retroactive flip flopping this fanbase does, it reminds me how Zelda fans treat their games; the game that everyone used to like is now the game that everyone hates until it goes back to being the one that everyone likes again and so on.


I liked Colors, other people liked Colors. No the game is not perfect, but that goes without saying because there's literally no such thing as a perfect game, especially when it comes to Sonic. Sonic Adventure isn't perfect either, but you got droves of people advocating for it nowadays.


Just like how Diehard Adventure fans hated how the public opinion flipped on those games, I'm going to bat for Colors too. I'm not entertaining this flip flopping in the fanbase.