Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: Rockman Zero - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

With the lackluster Sonic games that Sega has created over the past decade, they had to rely on other companies to create good Sonic games, with Dimps being the most notorious. Whoever it may be, we all can agree on one thing: Sega's management of recent Sonic games is terrible, ranging from mediocre to downright awful. Backbone even attempted to create a somewhat decent engine that could mimic the classic gameplay, but they were forced to turn it into a bad racing game.

At least that's true of 3D titles.

2D Sonic games are another story. In general, they are very successful at presenting a decent Sonic game. Let's start from Pocket Adventure.

What is Sonic Pocket Adventure? It was a portable Sonic game released for the ill-fated Neo Geo Pocket. Aside from reusing art from Sonic 1 and 2, music Sonic 3&K, and rearranging level layouts, the game is very good at presenting classic-styled gameplay. The key to the game's greatness lies in the fact that it's bosses are not stolen rehashed from past games. This gem of a game slowly faded into obscurity with the NGP's death.

With the death of the Dreamcast, the Advance series revived portable Sonic games on the Gameboy Advance. The Advance series started with classic-style gameplay, but it slowly deteriorated into speed, speed, speed. They're good alright, but not great, especially after seeing this crap (I even sold my copy after seeing this!).

Then there is Sonic Genesis, a portable version of Sonic 1 for the GBA. One could say that this game is Sega giving the middle finger to classic fans and not be incorrect. Heck, they might as well say, "We don't care about Sonic anymore!"

Sonic Genesis and Sonic 06 ruined Sonic's 15th anniversary, damaged confidence and trust in Sega's competence in developing decent Sonic games, and further divided the fanbase. At least some good came out of Sonic Genesis' failure, showing that what Sega can do, fans can do 10 times better. (It almost makes me wish that fans could submit their projects to Sega so they could be ported to consoles and handhelds, but Sega is too stuck up to do that.)

With Sonic 4 being leaked, and consequentially delayed, Sega has once again continued to display their incompetence with Jun Senoue unwilling to go the extra mile to use the S3&K sound development kit, Sega creating gimmicks for two levels, their refusal to create new content from day one, and absolute unwillingness to use a 20-year-old game engine for a classic sequel. Once again, Sega is attempting to further divide the fanbase. The Retro fans (to whom this game is supposedly being pitched to) has called for Sega to either start over, delay the game and revamp it (physics, artwork and all), or the often mentioned "give Sonic to someone else."

Who would you want to develop new Sonic games?

I have some ideas to start:

Nintendo: They have a good track record with their respective franchises, namely Mario. They keep change to a minimum, and have consistency between the differing games. I believe an employee (was it Miyamoto or Sakurai? I can't remember...) said that they would love to make a Sonic game and save the franchise. Their newly opened studio, Retro Studios, is even reviving the beloved Donkey Kong Country franchise. So why not? I even wish that Nintendo would buy out Sega, thus completing their ownage of their once-competent rival developer.

Capcom: This was actually Chimpo's suggestion a while back. Capcom has proved that they could create multiple Megaman series and still be successful. A parallel was also drawn between Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic: Why can't Sega keep two different continuities? Megaman 9 was every fan's WETDREAM, thinking that it would bridge the gap between the Original and X series. Instead, fans were given a real treat, a return to NES platforming: same physics, same graphics, and same classic sounds. I was actually hoping that Sonic 4's development would take the Megaman 9 route instead of what Sega currently has on the table: proving that good graphics don't make a good game.

I'm really disappointed in myself now, because I just learned that the JVC X'Eye MIDI port...right after I sold my JVC X'Eye.

I now regret it because after reading information about it, you could use the MIDI port with another keyboard to make music if you had the Wonder CD peripheral.

Does anyone have a picture of the MIDI port on the X'Eye? How about a video of the Wonder CD in use?

I can't access the Sonic Art Archive. Someone is making a wallpaper for me, but most of the new art at www.sonicresearch.org/art can't be accessed.

^^^ Pictures put up for reference and comparison.

Yes yes we all know how much Sega sucks nowadays with the release of Sonic 360/PS3, Shadow, Riders, and Genesis; which show us how even the old classic games are much better than the new ones.

I think that the new Sonic art looks scary in a way. The facial expression makes him send the message that he's a pedophile and/or will rape you or something.

Hey I'm thinking of getting into hacking, and I want to replace the Sonic 1 jump SFX with the Sonic CD jump SFX. How do I do that?