Sonic Superstars: A New 2D Sonic Game (Fall 2023)

Oh, I didn't noticed Falk were tweeting about this game as well. It would be really awesome if we'd have both on the project. Actually, having multiple composers would be very welcoming as well.

 

I'm loving these huge birds.

Shield stacking is a really cool idea! I've long wanted something like this, but specifically for the standard shield to give it some sort of oomph and purpose alongside the elemental shields. I wouldn't have thought to make it stackable with them, but that's an interesting route if so. Sorta reminds me of the way Mario's powerups can stack and you lose one at a time.

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That said, the physics still seem off to me. At least, off compared to what I expect in a post-Mania world.


0:13 - the way he just stops on that quarter pipe
0:57 - the way he gains 0 speed coming out of those loops as a ball


0:18 the way he just slows down after landing on the ground
0:30 the way he does the same slow down after he uncurls (?)

Is this how the physics were in the classics and Mania? Am I just tripping? I'd love to be just tripping. I hope I'm just tripping.

Yeah, this wouldn't surprise me. Something about the gimmicks in the stages -- the vines that launch you into the sky, the darkness with only a small circle of light for visibility -- are giving me big "Sonic 4" vibes. Maybe that's colored a bit by the slightly-off physics and the literal Sonic 4 music blaring in the background, who knows.

The physics oddities and gimmicks aren't a huge deal-breaker for me, but they do leave me feeling sorta just whelmed, from a gameplay perspective. "Sonic 5 as I truly imagined it" this ain't, for all the nothing that actually means. And that's fine. Honestly, getting "Sonic 4 as I truly imagined it" with Mania was already more than I ever dreamed of getting. Definitely hoping for some physics mods on PC, though.

If we had to get a "Sonic 4: Episode III/Sonic 5" made in-house rather than by someone like Evening Star, or even M2, this feels like a best-case-scenario, and a huge step forward from Sonic 4: Episode I/Generations/Episode II/Forces, with a lot of the content at least that we'd expect to see in a game post-3K (Tails and Knuckles playable, Bonus and Special Stages, elemental shields, etc.) and more (Amy playable, shield stacking, 4 player co-op). So, I'm still excited to play it!

 

This happens in the classics, especially when you jump on a slope.

They had little speed going into a loop, which led into a straight path. In this case, they simply didn't have the space to get faster.

The big bushes in the level actively slow Sonic down and force him out of a roll. Those are actually obstacles. In a playthrough with Tails, they hide things like bombs you have to get rid of.

 

I like this, conceptually. Slowdown instead of stoppage as a variation of obstacle. Tar, bushes, tall-grass, wind, and other such mechanisms might make for interesting wrinkles in a mechanical middle-ground that isn't as frustrating for new players but just as important to avoid for those going for better times.

 

That and the frog badnik are two small but great ideas.

 

Looks like his name is Fang for the US.
https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/1667216242154037249

 

It’s funny before Generations everyone on YouTube wanted a 2d Sonic game. Now people are actually speaking negatively about a classic 2d sonic before it comes out. I guess it’s because as years go by the younger Sonic fans are increasing. That’s the only explanation. You have a lot of guys that grew up playing Adventure / Unleashed which are great games but why do they have to hate on people who like the classics? Just like the Adventure era was a special time for them, the classics were a special time for us born in the 80s/90s. Sonic Team is appealing to both fan bases and some people are still mad because they want everything all classic or all modern. Those are the type of opinions that will ruin a series.

 

At 1:16 in that video, the jump over the red ground rocket and onto the upward slope looks a bit odd to me. It's like as he hits the ground he stops moving momentarily (watched at 0.25x speed you can see a puff of dust), but then after a few frames the game instantly puts him back at top speed.

Then at 1:40 there's another jump over red ground rockets and he loses all speed upon landing at an awkward angle. OK, that looks pretty normal, something that could plausibly happen in one of the MD games.

Then a few seconds later there's a similar situation at 1:43. He jumps over two red ground rockets, misses the booster, and hits the upward curve of the slope in such a way that, if it had happened in one of the classics, might have brought him to an instant stop. But instead he gets enough speed to go up the slope, almost as much as if he'd hit the booster. As if the game's given the player a helping hand up the slope, despite missing the booster!

 

I think once the honeymoon was over we all collectively realized that only a few people can actually deliver on classic Sonic. Mania was very well received for example.

 

I think it's pretty amusing that some people here thought that them going with the name Fang instead of Nack was even worth bringing up. My girlfriend didn't even know he was renamed to Nack in the west (or should I say that he was renamed to Fang in japan?), and I assume that this is the case for most people, it's very rare for me to see people calling him Nack outside of discussions about Archie and Fleetway

 

Actually isn't the frog badnik near identical to the scrapped one for Sonic 2?

 

We're well past the era where words like "sniper" or "death" are not allowed in children's media

 

I wouldn't say identical



How it behaved was also different, it would just hop around and shoot at you

 

This looks fun, it definitely seems more playable than Sonic 4 Episode 2. I just hope they don't go extremely overboard with dash panels and Bubbles this time. I also hope there's a lot more replayability this time.

 

I'm genuinely very excited about this! One of things I've wanted to see for a long time (and something I actively experimented with in my own projects) was obstacles/hazards that don't completely stop you but instead slow your momentum or throw you off course, similar to the kinds of obstacles you might find in racing games. It would be such a good way to make high speed platform games flow more nicely, so the fact that they're adding obstacles like that to Superstars bodes well.

 

I tried replicating this in Sonic 1 just now, holding right as I landed on a quarter pipe the same way the player here appears to, and I did not come to a complete stop.

I was thinking that this wouldn't matter as he's both in a ball and also the exit half of a loop is itself a downward slope (so he should still be going faster while exiting), but spindashing at a loop in Sonic 1 with a single rev just now didn't result in going faster on the exit, so fair enough.

After the second loop there seems to be some more downhill sloping and it's really hard to tell if he's gaining too little speed or what, and I couldn't find a good place in Sonic 1 or 2 on short notice for comparison. Either way, this bit is a little less concerning now! Really hope we get (or already have) footage of someone not jumping right before that first loop, so we can see how fast you are exiting them after rolling down that hill. Then it'll be more than 'a little' less concerning.

Ah, that's a good catch. Interesting mechanic.

 

It's actually funny to see people saying the music "seems" like a placeholder or outright claiming they "know" it's real. People who have played the demo reported hearing actual new music, not the placeholders you hear in the press footage. We've reached a whole new level of crazy as a community if anyone thinks Sonic Team re-created classic physics, made an all-new classic 2D game, recruited the creator of Sonic, all historical firsts for the series, and then just flippantly decided this would be the first game where we just reuse old music for the entire soundtrack.

 

I mean, "one step forward, two steps back" is not only a common feature of Sonic games, it's also a line in the main theme to one of the games!

 

Sonic Frontiers reused entire level assets and level design beat for beat and still had original music for each Cyberspace level.

 

yeah the line "Up, down, all around, Don't know quite what to do" also is pretty descriptive of this franchise lol.

Anyways I'm gonna go into this expecting a new sonic game, not sonic 3k 2. I'm actually glad they're doing new things this time around. Not being exactly 1 to 1 with the megadrive games doesn't mean it's gonna suck and if it was accurate that doesn't mean it's definitely going to be good either.