Liam Robertson: "if you want a Sonic Mania 2, you're going to have to be as vocal as possible"

If there is no new 2D Sonic in the works I will throw an almost-middle-aged-man temper tantrum

 

The fact that there hasn't already been a Sonic Mania 2 is telling about the kinds of bad decision-making Sega does.

 

1. We probably need Origins to sell well as another signal boost for the classics. It's one of the few concrete fiscal impacts we can make. If these 'are' the Taxman ports, their quality needs to be pushed to the general public 'hard' so people think this collection is actually worth owning.

2. I fear part of the problem simply comes down to Sega's willingness to work with a new team long term. Cross country development like this was a nightmare for them back during Sonic 2, was an outright disaster for Xtreme, seems to have been smoother for Mania at least, but is still difficult to maintain in the long term. Only Tee Lopes has been consistently working with Sega since Mania for reasons we simply don't know. As much as I like Tax, Stealth, Evening Star and the like, I also wish the core Sega employees could use the retro engine and better understood it. Iizuka was at least offering a helping hand of some kind (how effective or ineffective he was is hard to gague, but I actually have a feeling his suggestions were at least insightful), and he genuinely sounds excited about Origins, so it's always hard to gague what he actually wants.

Remember, the JP Sega executives also were quite resentful of the western devs in the 90s. Sadly, that attitude might still be there in small enough doses to say "we did the thing those western fans asked for, now let's never do it again". Classic Sonic is well regarded in Japan, but ultimately not even that big there anyway.

 

I intend to do exactly what I did for Mania: buy a copy for every compatible system I own and as gifts for some friends/relatives.

 

We know that Sega employees were fired in their hundreds around the time of the late 90s/early 2000s, and there was another tangible exodus of their old workforce with the Sammy merger in 2004. I would be very surprised if there is a meaningful number of people left at Sega in the east who contribute to a feeling of resentment that can have the influence on actual creative decisions as large as "no Mania 2" - realistically that just isn't possible imo.

 

Now, just to be safe I did QRT the thing, but honestly, the chances of this guy having info is pretty slim. If the Origins collection is Taxman/Evening Star like I am almost certain it is at this point, I am pretty sure Mr. Whitehead would have said something BY NOW, then I totally understand not having a Mania 2 just yet. Most of us want the 2013 versions on console, and Sonic 3K being remade is amazing too. But, just because this is Sega, I still made my voice heard. Only bought the game damn near 10 times at this point.

 

People citing the feelings of animosity between SoJ and SoA don’t seem to realize that they were practically two separate companies at the time. It was an entirely different setup from today where SoA and SoE are smaller branches controlled by the main company in Japan. It’s been over two decades since all that bullshit went down, and even then it wasn’t just as simple as “Japanese devs were jealous of the US devs’ success”.

 

As I've said before I don't think it's that they feel threatened, they feel motivated to make a better Soic experience after being shown up so badly. SEGA doesn't want Sonic to be a primarily 2D Platformer franchise. They want the modern brand and format to flourish as much as possible and they probably are committed to making the next game as good as possible to acknowledge this.

I still think it's internal politics keeping us from a Mania sequel. I fully expect one some day but no time soon.

 

Sorry, but the idea that they feel like they were “shown up” is completely asinine, especially when the head of Sonic Team himself had more to do directly with the development of Mania than Forces.

 

I've always just thought that SEGA decided to give Sonic a break after 2017. Mania did well among young fans, which they weren't expecting, and Forces reviewed as mediocre at best by pretty much everybody both in and out of the fandom (except maybe kids, but they're not doing too many reviews of games, as far as I know). I thought it made sense for Sonic Team to take a step back and evaluate where they wanted the series to go next. That would 1) give Sonic Team the time to decide what 3D Sonic should be going forward and 2) Evening Star could work on something else for a few years so they don't get burnt out on Sonic (since Taxman had been doing work on Sonic since the CD remaster, so I'm sure he would've appreciated a break at least).

My guess is that a Mania 2/Discovery/Sonic 5 wouldn't happen until after the 2021 2022 game (especially now that we're getting Origins next year), so 2023-2024 would be when I would expect something like that to happen. But it never hurts to do a social media campaign so SEGA definitely knows that we want more Classic Sonic games. I just assume that they already know that (like, the 30th anniversary comic is about Classic Sonic, so I can't imagine they'd just kick him to the curb all of a sudden).

 

Okay so everything Iiizuka says bleeds with PR precision and nothing that comes out his mouth ever sounds genuine so I wouldn't expect him to own up to anything that means him acknowledging Forces having bad reception. I know of his involvement in Mania, to the point of choosing the name, but it still changes nothing of what I said.

 

The mere existence, promotional exposure, and resounding success of the movie kind of undermines that point. Also, this Izuka quote again:

 

Can you read? I don't know what the movie has to do with what I said and I said they don't want it to be a PRIMARILY 2D franchise. That means 2D and 3D coexisting like his PR quote implies.

Wasting my time like this.

 

The movie has literally nothing to do with the future of the games...

 

Ya I’ve said it before I think the notion that Sega/Sonic Team resents Mania because they felt “shown up” or “out developed” is just stupid.

People are trying to make it out that only fans, in this case Taxman, know how to make a good Sonic game and now want the narrative to be that Sega feels threatened by that.

Sega hired him on purpose. To say they look back and think...“oh man this makes us look really bad”...is so dumb. The fact they hired someone else to make such a game shows they were not threatened by outside sources.

Not because they’re incapable of making a 2D game but because they were open to the idea.

 

Speaking of the 30th anniversary comic, here's an artist who worked on it making another case for the, "If you want more Classic Sonic, let 'em know!" file:

https://twitter.com/Ziggyfin/status/1408147605150834688?s=20

 

Leaving aside this "Liam" bloke's reputation, why are we assuming he was even leaking inside information rather than just giving an opinion? If there's more context that OP can provide then perhaps it would have more weight, but right now this thread seems to be based on "man expresses opinion", in which case I don't think there's any reason to assume that making more noise as a fanbase will achieve anything. It's just some guy guessing, and the replies and discussion in this thread seem far more well-informed than him. There's probably nothing we can do.

 

This is why I feel like we don't have a productive premise for this thread here. I went into the thread expecting that some SEGA social media rep had whispered something on Twitter, and everybody was going wild over the idea that a Mania 2 *could* happen, but-

It's that guy I followed on Twitter once and kept forgetting to look at his tweets

We can do better than chasing windmills like good ol' Don Quixote, people

 

I guess I just find something insulting about being told to more vociferously demand something that fans have already made absolutely, positively, 100% abundantly clear that they want. They're wanting us to pray our hearts out like we're at the end of Earthbound and all for what? Theyre just gonna turn around and say "Looks like you didn't want it hard enough" when they inevitably shoot the idea down. It's corporate manipulation to make their shitty business decisions appear the fault of the fans.

A whole decade of Adventure 3 begging only resulted in some weaksauce lip service in Forces. Similarly, I am expecting three things to result from this: Jack, Diddly and Squat.

 

It and the forthcoming sequel really do in terms of future mainstream exposure of the franchise and games. It's common sense that more people have either discovered or rediscovered Sonic through the film - it and its own version of the character essentially have acted as an important gateway into playing the games for many, thus making it currently coexist as its own equal thing alongside the 2D/3D sides of the franchise.

There's clear reasons why Sega recently claimed the likes of Mania and even Generations continued to do well last year, and without the movie effect I doubt those years old games would've done as well to the extent they did

Could've worded it better to be fair - what I mean is that at the moment, I believe Sega are at least attempting to treat every area of the franchise as equal. Though Sonic Team probably are indeed motivated with the 3D end of things, they and other people in the company don't regard it as the be all and end all of Sonic like some people seem to believe it is. Like I said above, they now have other crap to fall back on for a bit if it flounders again.

Or Robertson's just messing with people and farming interactions from more inane "insider" babble for the hell of it, which, knowing his character, is not outside the realms of possibility at all.