Unpopular Sonic Opinions

The obvious choice for Final Horizon would be to let you play as the other characters in NG+, but obviously the scope of the project just wasn't there, so it literally is just the regular game but you get to be maxed out from the start.

A shame, too, since a lot of Frontiers's tech in the cyberspace department went to lighting and coloring, which would have meant crafting an "encore mode" aesthetic for NG+ (or frankly, the regular game given how samey some of those stages get) would've been super-easy, there's a lot of mods that already do it.

 

yeah I would kill to see the partner mode in later 2D games, or see it ported to older ones with extra characters added (to balance the concept that the characters are lives in games that have fewer of them). I like having to switch how I play up on the fly.

 

Discovering that I could do it was also fun. It took a very particular sort of execution, pressing the A button at the right time, staying close enough to the stage, etc. People talk a lot about balance and brokenness and "skipping the level", but not enough is said about the joy of figuring broken shit out and exploiting it for the first time, feeling clever as hell, etc.

To that end, Unpopular Opinion: I've come to love Mission Street in SA2. Tons of little skips you can do if you figure out when and where to hover. They felt satisfying to discover, and they feel satisfying to pull off.

 

Sonic is a fundamentally American series, period.

Every aspect of the character was designed to appeal to Americans. Almost all Japanese advertisements for the Mega Drive classics pointed out how popular the character was in America. Hell, Japanese audiences largely didn't give a rat's ass about the character from 2000 to 2021, and even the entirely Japanese Sonic X anime series only got a third season because the first two were successful in the west.

Even Sonic Adventure 2 - the Sonic game that kids these days are very quick to call "goated peak shonen anime with sauce" or whatever, has a lot more in common with Mission: Impossible than Dragon Ball. And while we're on that topic, I'd argue that the only reason why so many (younger) Sonic fans consider this series to be "fundamentally Japanese" is because of their severe lack of knowledge and curiosity when it comes to any media not made in Japan.

 

So I've been torturing myself with the tedium that is 100%ing Forces. And I've come to realize just how well designed (most) of the levels are. Despite most people's criticisms of it being boost to win, if you make the effort to do more than hold forward, you'll come to find that a lot of levels actually have a lot of branching paths. Network Terminal in particular has some super well hidden paths that hide themselves in tight spaces that require you to slide that surprised me even 7 years after the game's release, because not even the number rings or moon medals require you to go to those areas. Now if only the levels were longer than 30 seconds, and the physics weren't so stiff, we may have had something genuinely special.

 

If Sonic & Tails had to die, I'd be completely fine with Surge & Kit replacing them as protagonists. Not wholly taking on the mantle though, because It's Complicated™, and the duo has plenty of tantalizingly rich narrative potential... with the trade-off being that Ian Flynn doesn't seem keen on approaching it meaningfully. They're tough cookies, so growth would certainly be the name of the game.

 

The idea that a franchise made in Japan that makes overt anime references in pretty much in every title isnt at all influenced by Japanese media is so funny to me. Like even the writer of SA2, the game you directly mentioned, has said multiple times in interviews that the game was primarily inspired by the anime and manga he loves most. Not mission impossible of all things.

I agree that sonic wouldnt be the same without american media, he is not a fundamentally japanese character either, but to fully deny either his japanese or his american influences is to deny the very core of Sonic as a character and as a franchise.

 

Sonic is fundamentally a Japanese-American who occasionally takes flights over to Japan to see his family.

 

Hey man, Sonic just wants to make sure Tania is doing alright back in Hedgehog Village - and who knows what Brenda and Paulie has been up to... If they happen to know Nicky is Sonic at all. God, imagine some random hero visiting your house often enough to be weird, and not making the connection that it's probably the same child who disappeared a whiiile ago.

Edit: It just occurred to me that this probably sounds like insane rambling... There's a thought-process to this, I swear ;;;

 

Nah, that's just the standard Clark Kent/Superman comic book logic. Nothing wrong with that.

A hot take from my dad of all people: He saw one of the movies on tv and wasn't crazy about it.
His reason? It didn't feel right without Jaleel White's voice.

 

Jaleel is a darn good Sonic.

 

Not sure if I'd call him my favorite, but I easily prefer him over Ryan and somewhat over Jason.

But my hot take is that I genuinely think that he's the one voice actor who could do justice to all versions of the character. Even as Sonic got his Japanese design in Archie issue #13 and eventually his modern design in issue #71, I never stopped reading his dialogue in Jaleel's voice.

 

Sonic literally turns into a Super Saiyan bro.

 

And he literally destroys the Death Star too.

 

Yea, and which one of those has been in almost every game for the last 30 years?

 

Hrm...

Y'know I think they had a certain audience and direction in mind when designing Sonic.

And before you hit me with the "Well this isn't the design they went with", Sonic's final design was still in line with the design principles of this character. Being based on American cartoons and has the US flag as a palette.

 

This is kind of a circular conversation since, like I said, Sonic has pretty much equal parts american and japanese inspirations.

 

80s anime porcupine boy doesn't get enough respect as far as design influence goes. He could even jump/roll into a ball.

 

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