For some reason I'm really into Sonic the Fighters at the moment. I learned it has a small competitive scene and that's so endearing to me. I always liked the game, even if I was never the best at it. I would by no means call it a bad game, it's just nowhere near meaty.
There aren't many arcade games you could call "meaty", I'd think, just by virtue of how they're meant to be consumed. 98% of the people playing won't see past the first level/round. I'd say I'm surprised they've never given fighting genre again, but considering how braindead Battle (albeit with a badass character creator) was and the fact that really only the big players make fighting games anymore, I guess it isn't too far-fetched. That's one of the best ways Sonic's giant cast could be put to use, with all their skills, quirks, and callbacks on display.
Fighters is full of personality but just doesn't have a ton of content. Battle has some nice sprites and music but the same basic gameplay is sustained for eight goddamn story campaigns and the amount of monotonous repetition pisses away any and all goodwill the game built up. I'll take a game that doesn't overstay its welcome over that. Also, I love Honey. Put her in another game damn it
Fighters has a very loose story campaign, if you can even call it that. It's just a standard tournament with a perfect-bonus at the end. Battle is neither from the nineties nor for the arcade. - Fighters does absolutely nothing for me because I couldn't be less interested in the finesse of fighting games if I even tried. It feels like the the no. 1 most requested Sonic spin-off is some sort of fighting or Smash-clone and that's probably the least appealing idea to me next to a Sonic farm sim. Battle, even with its excessive lack of depth, absence of balance inane repetition, manages to be infinitely more enjoyable in my eyes than Fighters could ever hope to be. I slowly play through it every couple of years or so. It's good for a bit of casual fun.
Oh wait, I misread and thought Fighters was still being talked about. My bad. Continue with your day.
Yeah the "problem" with Fighters is that there's nothing particularly Sonic-y about its gameplay, not to mention it's pretty imbalanced as a fighting game too. The artstyle, animations and game-feel are all so fantastic that I still don't really care though lol. Great game! So you can find appeal in a Sonic fighting game. I've always thought Sonic Battle served as a great template for what a bigger spinoff series could be. That Power Stone 3D fighter gameplay hasn't even been attempted in any modern fighting game I've seen and I think something like that could look very distinguished amongst all the Street Fighter and Smash clones. Not to say Sega would necessarily approve with how much more predictably profitable a Smash clone would be. It'd just be real neat if the Sonic brand had its own distinct fighting game series especially considering Sega already produced one and still owns the rights to what could be a series.
I understand if a bunch of Sonic fans don't like the game much, I don't think there's much of an overlap between Sonic fans and fighting game fans. I wonder how you could make a fighting game more "Sonic-y"
Fighting games have largely gotten more mechanically complicated as a genre while Sonic is meant to be a game a child could pick up and play. I don't think there's a ton of crossover in the face of it. A smash style middle ground seems like the best bet since you can throw in a lot of the series platforming mechanics too.
Was there a big overlap between Sonic fans and fighting game fans in 2003? By "more Sonic-y" I mean something more mechanically distinct than Virtua Fighter with Sonic characters. Battle's more platform-oriented gameplay already encapsulates what I mean. Making it more Sonic-y within that framework would be simple. Just speed up the characters, add some slopes and loops to the maps etc. I don't see why Smash has exclusive rights to a universally-appealing fighting game formula. My normie friends had lots of fun with Power Stone 2 back in the day!
The appeal of a Sonic fighting game is one where Sonic characters can kick the shit out of each other. Sonic can do that, not be insanely complicated and be fun all at once. Sonic Battle wasn't mechanically incompetent, it just had absolutely no variety whatsoever.
Is it bad that this sounds kind of neat to me, just for the fact that you would get to relax with fun dialogue and interactions between the cast in a low-stakes environment. It will never ever happen but that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world
C'mon, there's room in the franchise for the Team Chaotix Cozy Farm game. Get Mighty to dig the fields, Espio to sew the seeds, Charmy to pollinate; all whilst Vector's preparing a lovely lunch for the gang when they return home at the end of the day. Knuckles is, well, out brooding somewhere. Keeps mumbling to himself something about the Master Emerald. Whatever. We're all sure that whatever it is, he'll work it out in his own time. But the teapot's still warm and there's always a brew for him here.
Chao Gardens already had you able to plant trees. Let's go another step farther. Let us plant a variety of crops. Give us some landscaping tools as well. Let us shape different environments with different assortments of vegetation that in turn attract different sorts of small animals for the Chao to gain stats from.
^ this, I have not played a single frame of Fighters and don't plan on it but that game's aesthetic is just so peak late 90s. I still have Super Sonic ~ Everything in rotation and that song manages to capture that vibe harder than basically all of Sonic R's OST. re: chao garden ideas, I always thought something like Neko Atsume would be pretty great, maybe instead of the "cats" giving you currency, they give you items to raise your Chao with to change their appearance or something. Chao Resort Island is decent but tbh I always fall off of it hard because constantly chao racing is just not compelling to me...I've always found the sim aspects - raising the chao, watching them do things - more interesting.
You couldn't possibly understate how unironically I agree with this. A Sonic farming sim allowing you to explore the very different biomes across Sonic eras would extremely kick ass.
Probably cuz having Mario and Pikachu in the same game sells itself and its mainly sold as a party game first, fighter second. Casts a wide net, and the traditional fighters that have strong sales are legacy series that built an audience over time. Sonic characters really aren't popular enough to push a successful FG on branding alone, might get to a million sales just cuz Sonic is on the cover but unless the game gets effort put into it to be fun, it's gonna have 0 legs. I'm not into FGs anyways so I'd be kinda mad if one existed when those resources could've gone to a traditional Sonic title (or a more fitting spin-off genre).
Yea, the art in the game is awesome. I don't love how Penny looks, but frankly I don't really care considering how damn good the rest of the game looks. Excellent use of color, and the way everything is shaded makes it almost look like a Genesis game in 3d, imo.
