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

Super Trip makes a great case for why Super Sonic has never had flight in regular stages

 

From my understanding trademarks really only cover spaces for advertisement, things like signs, book covers, and movie posters, and only in spaces that have been pre-defiened in the trademark. It's why "Sonic" the multimedia franchise can exist alongside "Sonic" the fast food chain. They exist in different markets and their trademarks are specifically filled for those markets.

I don't think it would be easy to do outward promotion of the skin, because even though you can still call the character "Mickey Mouse" in a work itself, you can't do that in any material that's going to lead someone to a potential purchase. So you can't release a separate DLC pack and call it the "Mickey Mouse Skin".

We'll end up seeing similar scenarios in a few years when the original Superman is public domain.

 

Well there have been plenty of mods showing flying could work. It’s just handled poorly in this game. Arzest could take a page out of Kishimoto’s book and look at more mods. There should’ve been something in the controls to cancel the flight. This is why I don’t go super with Trip.

 

I personally don't really understand the reason that people strongly disliked the Egg Fortress Act 2 boss. Every time I died it was my fault and after trying for a little bit and realizing I could use my emerald powers I beat it. Online I am seeing a lot of consensus that it's awful and way too difficult but a lot of the attacks are really easy if you just observe them once or twice at least for me. It's one of my favorite bosses in the series since it's actually difficult and takes after the kyodai eggrobo which I love. Is there something I'm missing? Was there some sort of patch to make it less difficult because I genuinely do not understand the hate it got on YouTube and Reddit at all. Admittedly I haven't dug too deep into looking for positive opinions since I got the game for Christmas and am currently playing through trips story and don't want to spoil myself, but whenever I google it I only see negative comments. Some superstars reviews that are negative even have it in the thumbnail.

 

It takes forever and you do nothing for 90% of the fight. It's fucking awful.
The bosses wouldn't suck if you could just pulp them in seconds once you understand them like in the classic games.

 

This is my real point of contention with the bosses. There's really nothing you can do to speed them up once you get better. In the classics, yes you could melt the bosses in seconds, but that's only if you damage-boosted or actually learned the boss's patterns and took risky shots. In Superstars, you have the Emerald Powers to get a few extra hits in, and... that's it. You are otherwise beholden to the boss's pattern to deal damage.

There are exceptions to this, mainly the Press Factory Zone boss, but for the most part the boss strategy remains "dodge attacks for 20 seconds and then hit the boss once", regardless of your skill level.

 

it was literally not until this very post that I realized that Dulcy wasn't from DragonTales LMAO

 

I don't agree that not being able to hit the boss is "doing nothing" but to each their own I see your point. I enjoy dodging and dealing with the attacks so personally I do not want to shred the boss in seconds once I figure it out I want to have a challenging fight. I also don't mind the length since it's short enough to where I can get back to where I was easy.

 

That's a very good point that I hadn't thought about and I understand how that can be frustrating. I personally don't really mind fights that you can't speed up but in a sonic game it makes sense that it'd bother people. I do really enjoy stuff like taking risky shots during the Sa2 bosses to speed up the fight or using skill to cheese them in 3. I liked all the bosses except for Golden Capital act 1's but I really felt what you're talking about with fangs in Golden Capital act 2 since it was so on rails. I did like it but the length plus the gimmick did feel a bit slow and too controlled. I like stages like sky chase and MSZ act 1 but if I didn't I'm sure I would've disliked that boss a lot. I enjoy dodging all the different attacks and waiting for my chance to hit the bosses so they don't bother me, but I do see your point definitely and it's very fair criticism.

 

To me, Sonic and Tails themselves were the ones who looked the most out of place in SatAM.

 

Now consider this: how long are you actually spending actually dodging attacks versus dodging, then waiting for the next one?

There are many games where there are long wait times before opportunities to attack that are focused on dodging, but they are designed to keep you alert and engaged at all times.
Sonic Superstars just doesn't require very much input from the player on bosses.

 

super fucked up to talk about a victim of domestic abuse like that.

 

I don’t favor the boss fights over the other classics because of the waiting but people definitely over exaggerate how bad it is because ever since Sonic Adventure, every boss on a main console has been a waiting game besides Frontiers. I never saw people complain before. It’ll be nice to not have to wait for the bosses through their transitions but it’s not a game breaking experience for me.

 

1. People definitely did complain about the boss fights in Rush, S2's HPZ, Mania and especially S4E2. On the subject of Rush, its sequel drastically changed up the design of boss fights to provide a more engaging experience. It's not just stinkers like SA1's Egg Hornet and Chaos 4 fights that got a bad rep in the past.
2. Superstars has bosses in every single act. Few other games have that many boss fights, so they aren't nearly as unwelcome when they aren't so frequent.
3. Superstars' bosses typically have 6 to 8 hit points, a single attack cycle (plus a pinch mode) that can't be interrupted and include excessive animations (basically mini cutscenes) within fights. You also have to contend with several moments where you still have full control but the boss isn't attacking you and you can't attack it. It's all down time, and it lasts for several cycles. There are even prolonged periods in several fights where it looks like you should be able to damage the boss, but you just bounce off them because the game deems that your previous attack was too recent. Examples include BI2, PC1 and PF2.
4. Spoiler: Surprise fourth point

   Nobody wants to listen to that shitty Superstars boss music at the end of every level.

I just can't abide the bosses in Superstars. The Mania bosses already bothered me a great deal, but Superstars is a real "hold my beer" moment when it comes to boss design. They're single handedly putting me off returning to the game. I just wish that there was a way to disable them from the game. They're that bad. I think that upwards of one third of regular play time can be attributed to the awful boss fights (and no, time Attack mode isn't a viable alternative).

 

If I were to replay Superstars, it would be solely for the levels themselves. I would just quit the level if I approached a boss.

 

Time attack mode!

 

This is a good point but I enjoyed the attack patterns themselves and didn't really feel much downtime during the bosses. Have a nice day though thanks for the insight into what people don't like about them.

 

You're right. Hershey St. John sucks too!

 

The problem with that is that Time Attack has:
-No Checkpoints
-No Super Sonic

Spoiler: This game has been out for a while, but just incase...

/Dragon Trip

-No Emerald Powers

So it's a neutered version of the experience just to remove the most annoying part of the game.

 

- No way to go from level-to-level without getting booted to the menu.
- No bonus/special stages, both of which I enjoy so I choose to enter fairly often.

I said that Time Attack wasn't a viable alternative for good reason. That's a mode entirely curated for speed running and consistency in individual levels.