I like Sonic 4.

Sonic Mania was a low/mid priced, digital only game, released months before the "big" Sonic game. Within the game itself, the Phantom Ruby served as a tie-in to the upcoming Sonic Forces. Mania was definitely positioned as a side project, an appetiser. It was in a very similar position to Sonic 4.

The American marketing team definitely didn't sell it as the next "main" Sonic game either. However, it was clearly a game that they were very confident in and had a lot of enthusiasm for. The "Sega Proudly Presents" at the start of the trailer spoke volumes.

The fact that Sonic Mania is now regarded as a key title and one of the best in the series is a testament to the quality of the game.

This is a weird take. Sonic Mania was the side game of 2017. Sonic Forces was the main game of 2017. Sonic Mania wasn't something we got *instead of* Sonic Team's latest installment and new idea for the series, it was additional.

It's an even weirder take here in 2022, when there's no word on a new 2D Sonic game, Evening Star are working on a new IP and Sonic Team are making a new 3D Sonic game with new ideas for the series.

The 2D level design in Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations take completely different approaches to the classic Sonic games, but are good in their own right. But there's no denying that Sonic simply doesn't control as well as he should in either game. Modern Sonic doesn't feel as good to control as he did in the similar Sonic Rush, and Classic Sonic feels significantly less fun to control than he did in the classic and Advance games.

The 2D sections of Sonic Lost World and Sonic Forces were just outright bad. I think it's more than fair to say that Sonic Team struggle with the fundamentals of 2D platformers as much as they do 3D platformers.

Circling back to Sonic 4, there are a lot of problems with both episodes, but the way Sonic controls and responds to the environment around him is at the top of the list. And it was baffling, since Dimps got it right in Sonic Advance.

 

I still find that weird given this attitude sure wasn't levied towards past games with issues that were also things you could describe as "aren't going to seriously impact the vast majority of players". I'm not talking about things like the weird rainbow visual stuff. Things like the game loading Sonic in improperly during level intros and tons of other very hard to miss visual and gameplay things like the movement lock on the 2D place not being properly turned on, audio issues, etc. are more along the lines of what I'm referring to.

I mean, we are the same fanbase that still goes on about 06. Not sure why this would be weird to anyone. I was under the impression it was to be expected the fandom would be less than tolerant to poor quality control.

 

I would say Sonic Team should stop using 2D in their games so much given they seem to struggle when trying to focus on both at once.

 

I agree with this completely.

....Ehh, I think this is more of a case of extrapolating the attitudes of certain groups online within the fandom and projecting that onto the game, devs, SEGA, etc or what have you.. Mania from a marketing and production standpoint seemed very clearly meant to be a companion game to Forces as opposed to some spearhead in redefining the brand. Yea there was quite a bit of "fellating" it afterwards, but that seemed more like a post-hoc thing given the reception of the game versus Forces and the lack of...well, anything for us as fans to look forward to at the time instead.

Its an issue again, I regularly see when it comes to the attitude of the fandom. But that shouldn't always be misconstrued as necessarily the consequence of intent on behalf of the developers , SEGA, brand managers, etc.

Well yea. I attribute that to the fact Sonic 4 started as a mobile game and was thus likely never intended or designed to play like the Classics or Advance to begin with. A lot of the things people pose issue with in terms of Sonic's 4s' controls and physics could be argued to be features as opposed to bugs from this perspective. I don't get the impression Dimps ever made it with the idea it was meant to be held to all that high a bar to begin with.

 

... Those efforts being Forces and TSR? Efforts that universally get trounced by their seniors from a little less than a decade prior? They would be dunked just the same, Mania or no Mania.

So very cheap and easy, and yet never done successfully until 2017 rolled up (discounting Advance, which is 90% of the way there but does it's own very weird tweaks). Some examples on "proving the brand in other ways" would be welcomed, because my mind is immediately jumping to 2005-2009.

This is a headache of a sentence to try and interpret. Are you trying to lump Advance, Rush and Colors as "reminding you that the past is the past"? That wouldn't make sense with Rush and Colors. The other side, "indulging on return to form", ALSO wouldn't make sense with Rush and Colors. Either way, 4 does indeed remind us of the past, but doesn't understand it enough to make it resonate like Advance and Mania do.

 

Sonic Mania couldn't be more of a side game. It was one release singular that gracefully bowed out of existence while a fully fledged, AAA marketed follow-up to Forces gets Sega's full attention instead. Mania 2 is the game we should at least be getting alongside the next main game by all metrics but they're betting on 3D Sonic instead. That should be enough to say Mania hasn't altered the trajectory of the brand in any significant way but it's not enough. Now it's a problem because it's causing people to be too mean to sub-par entries that don't even have redeeming qualities on their own merits?

3D Sonic fans have all the attention of the parent company and they're still insecure about people liking Mania more.

 

...Can we not turn this into this weird 3D vs 2D thing please? I don't think that's even at the heart of the discourse here however you observe this.

 

Saying that Mania was worse for the Sonic brand than Sonic 4 is straight up delusion. Sonic 4 was a piece of garbage game that apes aspects of the classic aesthetic and gameplay style while understanding nothing about what made the original games good. Sonic 4 was also marketed entirely as a "return to form" for the franchise, and didn't deliver on that marketing in the slightest. It didn't "remind us that the past is the past," it reminded us that the past was better.

Mania on the other hand actually delivered, and despite my problems with the game, it certainly does understand what people like about the classics.

 

As much as I would love to continue dunking on Sonic fan opinions, I'm gonna dial it back a bit.

I'm fairly certain @shilz didn't come into this thread to try and rile people up, at least I hope not. But man, you really need to sit down for a second and reevaluate your stance a bit, because everything your saying is coming off as super bad lol.

Yes both Sonic 4 and Sonic Mania were attempts at calling back to the Classic games, but everyone in the fanbase rightfully called it out on the shameless cashgrab that it was and how Sega deliberately marketed it as a follow up despite the fact that the game was never intended to be that in the first place. They took a mobile game and rebranded it, thinking it was going to shut up the portion of the fanbase that wanted a new 2D game and then canned the whole project when the they realized it fans were buying it. It did not "push forward" in any way, it was as soulless as you can get.

Sonic Mania was made by a team who actually gave a damn and wanted to make an actual good game, rather than just shamefully exploiting consumers. You only need to look at some of the Interviews with the team to see how much passion they put into the game, and see just how well-crafted it is. Its the complete antithesis to Sonic 4 in terms of Classic followups. But it was never treated as anything more than a companion piece to Forces, despite being the better game between the two. Sega decided to use Mania as a means to entice consumers to play Forces, which tells you where their priorities were.


It just baffles and confuses me how 3D Sonic fans can look at all of that, and somehow come to the conclusion "Mania was bad because it did too good".

 

I feel like the 2D and 3D conflict is fairly complex. It's true that ST have pushed classic aesthetic and 2D gameplay in most of their post Colors titles, but they also haven't made many entirely 2D games in the history of the franchise. Never mind 2D games which feel and play like the classic games. And even in recent titles they've had a focus on cutscenes, voice acting, meta-humour tone, and modern character designs which are very much unlike the Classic games.

I think its because of the insecure and indecisive design decisions which is why there is a 2D and 3D conflict in the fandom. Neither camp feels genuinely catered to.

 

After Sonic Adventure came out, it was pretty clear that Sega were moving the series towards a more cinematic direction and more of a focus storytelling and spectacle, Sonic Heroes notwithstanding but that was clearly a title meant to entice newer players given it was the it was the first multiplatform title. The cinematic approach to the series culminated in Sonic 06, being the most cinematic game to date by far.

But they still had 2D projects on the side; the Advance and Rush series were present as well the DS and 3DS versions of Colors and Generations. But after the first Sonic Advance, these games would evolve in a way far removed from their Classic cousins. And of course Sonic 4 fits here too.

After Sonic 06 however, the series more or less doubled back on the more cinematic approach and the original handheld titles, and focused more on invoking Classic styled imagery, as well as a more simplistic and comedic direction for the 3D games, as well as incorporating 2D elements into them. However, the 2D games themselves had more or less dried up at this point, as they would mostly just be handheld ports of the console games.

Ever since Sonic Unleashed, Sega have been trying (and often failing) at appeasing to the fandom demands for the more cinematic and dramatic 3D games of the early 2000's, as well as the demand for a more traditionally styled Sonic game in the style of the Classics. So the uncertain nature of these games have more or less led to them cannibalizing each other; Sonic Unleashed is mostly 3D between the day stages and Werehog, and while its nowhere near as dramatic as the early 3D games, the game does have an extremely cinematic and "epic" feel to itself, Sonic Colors is marketed as a 3D title, but 80% of the game is 2D, as well as more or less spearheading the era of downplaying and simplifying the narrative from the early 3D games. Sonic Generations is an Anniversary title, so the split is slightly more even, but I remember a lot of people realizing how redundant the 2D sections of Modern Sonic were when Classic was already in the game his gameplay was entirely 2D; I think this mostly went overlooked since Sonic 4 had came out a few years prior, so anything looked better by comparison. Lost World is kind of an outlier here, but it once again has an abundance of 2D sections in what is marketed as a 3D game. And then we get to Forces, which has the same problem I pointed out for Generations, but even worse as not only does Classic Sonic feel like a complete afterthought in the narrative, Sonic Mania had came out a couple months prior and showed what real Classic gameplay was, which ended up making the game worse.

So we have Classic fans who have been getting a half-assed version of the games they prefer until recently, and we have Modern fans who have had to watch the narratives and characters they grew attached to slowly become bastardized versions of themselves in a misguided attempt at pleasing the masses, in addition to the supposed "3D games" have way less in terms of 3D gameplay. I suppose it makes a bit of sense for Classic and Modern fans to be so at odds with each other when the games themselves have no idea what they want to be in that regard.

 

I don't see this as a "2D vs 3D" conflict to begin with and don't understand why it is being turned into one.

I don't know why this is being attributed to Sonic Adventure when really that honor goes to Sonic 3&K. Really, I think the devs always had an inclination towards something of that general vibe and direction based on statements they have made even in regards to the first game as well as design decisions made with Sonic 3&K that exist to primarily enhance it in terms of how cinematic it was as well as focus on its story and implemented spectacle.

 

Its more like Classic and Modern....it just so happens one focuses more on 2D and while the other focuses on 3D; there have been Modern 2D titles for instance.

But that kind of goes into what I was saying; the Modern 2D titles after Sonic Advance 1, veer significantly away from their Classic counterparts. So we have Modern 2D and 3D games which vastly drifted away from the Classic styled of gameplay.

And while I agree, the cinematic approach for Sonic 3 is somewhat pretty subtle, compared how obvious it had become by Sonic Adventure. The final boss of Sonic 3 is just a bigger than normal Eggman robot. The final boss of Sonic Adventure is a literal God of Destruction. There's kind of a difference in scale lmao. And things just kept escalating from there.

 

Classic fans were eating good after Mania came out. They could take or leave Forces which wasn't appealing them them (though not through lack of trying). Mania Plus, Mania Adventures, Mania GOT awards being plastered all over the social media. It felt inevitable especially after Forces bitter reception among fans that Mania and all it represented: nostalgic throwbacks and looking to the past, was going to be a core pillar of the franchise going forward.

But now the shoe is on the other foot: the people who like narratives in Sonic are eating good (Movie, Prime, hopefully Frontiers if Flynn writing the story is indication) and now 2D fans are the ones crying foul, the only thing appealing to them releasing around this time will be the collection (which is just gonna be the games with zero extra features, calling it now) and Colours Ultimate. (Zing!)

Yeah they got the absolute perfect sunshine rainbow of a 11/10 flawless uncut gem of a game that gave them literally everything they ever wanted... but ask Sega to make an original 2D game and they just instinctively say "Green Hill Zone?" like Stewie saying "Cool Whip"

 

See that sounds about more right, though I would say that is still too broad.

With all due respect, there is nothing subtle about The light gates in Death Egg Zone or the Bombing section in Angel Island Act 2 before the boss or the Hydro City sections that speed Sonic up with boosters to send him running across water, or the snowboarding section that starts off Ice Cap. etc.
These are things that were put into the game to wow people back in 1994 on an aesthetic and visceral level.

Well, the whole thing about Chaos not actually being a god aside, not really when you get to brass tax given the robot you are chasing in Sonic 3 is powered by the same all powerful mystical artifact said creature was trapped in. But that's neither here nor there. Sonic 3 itself is an escalation it scope from Sonic 2 and 1 in the same regard. I don't really see it as indicative of a shift that happens in attitude purely at the turn of SA1.
Each game is trying to top the last. That's pretty normal and expected for most series.

 

There was literally nothing to suggest that Sonic Mania was ever going to be treated as the pillar of the series. As mentioned, it was literally treated as a side game by Sega themselves, who saw fit to use it as a means to marketing Forces before its own release. It got one DLC pack a year later and they just stopped supporting it outside of marketing stuff like the video shorts and Comic Books.

It feels disingenuous to say Classic were "eating good" when they got those things....except Modern got Shorts too in the from Team Sonic Racing Overdrive, Chao in Space, and more recently Rise of the Wisps, and the entire main comic book series is centered around Modern Sonic.


So....where did this assertion that Classic Sonic was going to "overtake" Modern even come from???? Insecure Modern Sonic fans???

Yea, in 1994. And even then, when people talk about Sonic 3 being the best game, it's narrative isn't really something that comes up a lot in discussions, at least in my experiences. Don't you think if it was as obvious as you say it is, it'd be talked about much more compared to the Modern titles?

 

I'm not sure why suddenly it being by the standards of 1994 would suddenly make my point null and void. Of course later entries in a series would build on aspects of the previous.

Uh....what? In my experience its one of the things that comes up the most when talking about that game.

If there is one thing I've learned with this fandom more and more is to not take things for granted. Dunno what else to tell you.

 

In any case, I do agree that Sonic 3 more or less laid the foundation of what the series would become in the 2000's


Which is more of an indictment of Sonic 4 really. Sonic 4 pretty much nixed the narrative altogether, which was one of the many examples of how misguided they were in making that game.

 

Feels like some of you are attempting to spin drama out of literally nothing.

"Shoe on the other foot?" "2D fans crying foul", uh what? Do you think people that loved Mania are going to resent a truly good 3D Sonic game? It's precisely Sonic Team's penchant for making middling games that is informing such fans' apathy. This framing of people being jealous of those now being served by Frontiers and other pending media doesn't just seem petty, but also absurd in its presumptuousness since none of these upcoming projects are guaranteed to be any good. And in the case of Frontiers I feel like skepticism is the wisest attitude to have for something like this being developed by a studio like Sonic Team. I've also said this before, but they can churn out divisive Sonic games until the end of time and I will still feel like I made out like a bandit for getting Sonic Mania at all.

Anyways this thread has clearly gone to shit, I'm not engaging any more with this.