Preface: No, this is not me complaining about Adventure fans not being catered to. Just wanted to get that off my chest just in case people start making assumptions. In any case... So in light of yesterday's announcements and what we're getting, it started making me conscious of something that I wasn't aware of before. Has anybody noticed at all that the more experimental and obscure titles are all but ignored by Sega? When was the last time Sonic Chaos or Triple Trouble were released in a collection? Sonic R? Riders? Rivals? Not even the 2D platforming titles of the 2000's like the Advance or Rush games have ever been released outside of their consoles. To say nothing of the likes of Heroes, Shadow or Unleashed. Even the most well known games from that period, the Adventure titles, were only made available 10 years ago on Steam, and it's the poorly designed ports of them that need dozens of mods to be up to par. On the flipside, I think you can play every game that has been released since 2010 on current hardware, at least if you have a PC. With the exception of something like, the Mario & Sonic titles. Even something like Lost World is available on Steam, and Colors as we know is getting a remaster this year. I say that because, to me at least, it feels like Sega have only ever acknowledged either the main platformers from the 90's or their most recent output from 2010 onwards. As somebody who is fond of the more experimental titles, yes it does bother me a lot to come to this realization. But how does everyone else feel about it? Personally, I think Sega should at least re-release some of these games because there's simply a lot of history of the series that's going under the radar. It's mind boggling how we have never had a collection with the Advance or Rush titles at all...
Feels like every entry is experiments. SEGA seems to be milking nostalgia to the max. That’s only going to get them so far. Unless the next major entry is going to be something polished and fresh, the franchise is going to continue to be less and less relevant.
If I had to guess I would say it has something to do with their promise to focus on quality, appealing to new and old fans alike. But by taking into account only those three criteria (quality, new and old fans), you run the risk of ignoring a great deal of the more experimental stuff. Not every title qualifies for a re-release.
Sonic Gems Collection's release was an unprecedented and unexpected treat at the time. I can't imagine how much of a risk they thought it was to release lesser titles into a compilation like that. I believe this is a case of risk assessment on Sega's part, and a lot of older games that were, essentially, spin-offs don't even apply to today's "canon" and wouldn't mesh well with the modern fanbase, especially with all the success the mobile and movie market has brought to the franchise.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2010-10-07-average-sonic-games-removed-from-shops Back in 2010, Sega said they wanted to stop selling games that were too low quality. That's probably why Heroes never made it to Steam despite having a PC port. However, Sega is big on having multiple Sonic lines. That way, they can have a new game ever year without having to rush Sonic Team on their main Sonic games. So if Origins does well, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a portable collection, a 3D collection, a story book collection and so on.
You'd have to package the storybook games with something else, they're too short and not good enough to stand on their own, and there's only two of them.
Honestly I’d rather just see a full on reimagining of Riders with an update modern roster (including some of the IDW characters such as Tangle, Whisper and Starline). The original riders has such a distinct identity and sense of frenetic momentum not only amongst other Sonic racers, but other racing games in general.
I think it just budget/logistic things at this point, not them actively ignoring it, it make sense to preserve main games more than side games that some of them can be tricky to make ports of "notably Rush games" , Sonic history and worth of games is huge at this point.
I really just wish I could get one more Ecco game. Maybe something like Sonic mania would be nice. Truth is their older properties like this one just wont sell and sega knows it.
At the very least, a remaster of Riders seems appropriate. Its not like that game did all that bad, and it could serve as a good alternative to Mario Kart.
They'll re-release the games that are the most commercially viable and least troublesome to port. Something like Sonic and the Black Knight would be too much trouble to port over to current systems, and wouldn't have much commercial appeal. The best way to get another collection is to buy Sonic Origins and politely let Sega know that you'd like more Sonic compilations.
This 100%. They're going to port the games that are most popular and take the least effort to port. A lot of Sonic fans may want a new Sonic R port, but let's be real - the game isn't that popular with the general public, and Sega likely still doesn't have Saturn emulation figured out yet, so it's likely not going to happen for a while, if ever.
Not disputing that something like Black Knight would have limited mass appeal, but I'm not sure it'd be all that much trouble to port over to the Switch. As Pengi said, if you want more compilations or tuned up re-releases, then you had best support Origins. Tweet at them too. Tweet hard about an Arcade collection. Please.
I think people have been tweeting about wanting other collections for years; they've just kind of ignored them. I completely understand not wanting to port the more niche titles, it just sucks that Sega aren't even willing to test the waters. At least port those games with something that's guaranteed to sell.
The truth of the matter is that while these more obscure titles matter to us (since we are literally a Sonic research community, so video game historians if you will), they have very little impact on the general gaming public and it may even help Sega's brand if a lot of titles are just plain forgotten. I do think Heroes is worthy of a re-release, and has been majorly overlooked. Shadow and 06 are obviously something they'd like to forget. SA1-2 may need updates, but they 'are' covered and fully playable on most PC hardware now. A handful of game gear games were solid (namely the big 5 platformers, with Sonic Blast being of questionable quality), but the low native resolution of those games makes them very unappealing to modern gamers, and I'd love to see Saturn 3D Blast finally ported over since it was the best of the versions and shouldn't be forgotten as hard as it has been (though the updated developer modded Genesis version is quite an improvement over the original). The Advanced titles should be preserved in some way, and the Rush titles were good, but are hampered by their 2 screen format. Everything else falls too far into the experimental/obscure/questionable quality category that I can understand why they'd want to forget about it. Unleashed still is supported via Backwards Compatibility on consoles at least. Emulation isn't hard to do, and SEGA doesn't go after it like Nintendo does. I figured out how to use an emulator on my own when I was 13 back in 1998 or so. It's not that hard to learn if you are a PC gamer. I mean, if I were to tell an open minded new fan what games to play today, I'd still with: Sonic 1-K+CD (Origins) Sonic 1-2 MS, Chaos MS, Triple Trouble 3D Blast Saturn SADX SA2 Advanced 1-3 Heroes (Maybe) Rush 1-2 (Maybe) Unleashed (Maybe) Colors Ultimate Sonic Generations Lost World (Maybe) Mania And that's pretty much it. Maybe a few fangames like SRB2 if I wanted to get them some extra material and they were open too it. If they want to really deep dive, we can talk about R, Chaotix, Arcade, Shadow and some of the more obscure titles, but that's really about it. Out of all of those, only a handful are not currently on modern PCs. Playing all of the above would give new fans a good variety of experiences that cover the base that made Sonic's gaming history what it is. Also, don't forget that Unleashed Emulation is in very good shape these days, though you do need solid hardware to run it and it takes a good bit of work:
I think a collection for the 30th with all the games, even the bad ones, would have been more for hardcore fans than it would have been for the typical mainstream person. It would have given us a nice chance to reflect on how much Sonic has changed and evolved over the years, and maybe even help us gain some appreciation for some of the more obscure games in the franchise. If SEGA wanted to just focus on the classics because they want to do a release like that for the movie, they could have given us 4:3 ROM's of the OG games in the giant "everything" collection then had Widescreen Remasters on the Origins collection next year. Would have given people a chance to double dip. And more importantly satisficed many people. Oh well.
