Can't wait for the Switch 3 to release with DSi backcompat. & Sonic Rush w/ online Battle Play to coincide with 'Useless: Year of Silver'.
I played the whole thing in Japanese (roughly, the retranslated mod is a bit unfinished) for DDZ, which is why I didn't bring up any of those lines. The original-language scripts for Sonic are in general more consistent and less-embarrassing, but this is importantly distinct from being good. Shadow, 06, Forces et al. are laughable in English, but the broad strokes of their failures don't go away no matter what language you experience them in, and the very best stories don't feel like a joke even when the translation screws a lot of things up (SA2).
https://imgur.com/a/7v9TKKo Posting in both threads because it's relevant to both but John Campea is saying Shadow is going to be played by Keanu Reeves.
Personally, I'm glad Sega have stopped beating around the bush and are now starting to push Shadow as a major pillar of this franchise again along with the other core four cast members. Whether anyone likes it or not, the character has maintained his popularity in spite of how mishandled he has been, to the point where it's always treated as a big deal whenever he does show up, no matter how miniscule it is. You may as well as just embrace it at that point. Now what they actually do with his character is another matter entirely and I don't think they've quite figured that part out yet; if we take recent media into consideration though (The comics and Prime), it feels like they're leaning more towards him being a reluctant yet effective ally for Sonic and Co, but who knows. We'll see.
I heard that the Prime staff took a full year to figure out Shadow's character and do him well, and if so I find that hilarious given the show's portrayal of Sonic himself.
I would enjoy a GBA compilation, but to me those games need a real HD remaster or something to modernize them a bit, at least widescreen. The fandom has made some good remasters of the GG games as of now, but the GBA games are in very bad need of being enhanced to modern standards. Throw in some bonuses like an unlockable super mode and we'd really be taking off... They can keep the same sprites/style, but we need better quality music and better screen real estate.
I mean... if you're talking about the same remakes I'm thinking of that's kind of debatable because those throw out any sense of preservation by adding motorcycles and surf boards, so while I see the value in those, I could never call them proper remakes. There's quality of life improvements and then there's making stuff up. But that's mostly unrelated. That aside, GBA remakes would be nice because those definitely do suffer from screen crunch.
Sure, and something more faithful might be nice, but it's very unlikely SEGA will ever tackle those games themselves, and at least the various fan projects are pretty fun to play. I agree that a GBA game remaster should be more of a real port than those, but it doesn't matter. I just want a better way to replay those games with very minor bonuses and QoL improvements. The games have potential, but are held back by little problems. Fix those, and they could suddenly become a lot more fun. Just fixing screen crunch and audio quality alone would already go a long way. The Rush games (including Colors DS) are a bit harder to fix, though they too have their fans and should still be more accessible.
What's there to "fix" in the DS games? You can't just "fix" Sonic Rush's level design. As for Sonic Rush Adventure, I don't think that game needs any fixing, but people have complained about having to collect materials and needing to do mini-games.
Seeing how much attention the movie VA reveal is getting, It's kind of insane to me how Sega decided to listen to a bunch of people who hated this franchise and benched their literal most popular and marketable character outside of Sonic himself, their own Wolverine. They sat on so much potential money with Shadow for two entire decades and only now are they like "oh he's actually really popular huh?" Like no fucking shit.
Lowering the material counts in Rush Adventure is an obvious change (as well as extending the general range and shortening the overall time for the vehicles). But I dunno, I think it's pretty obvious how to improve the stage design in Rush 1: add floors. The worst part of that game is how it throws Sonic into do-or-die situations with bottomless pits as a punishment. Replacing most of those with actual level design is a very simple step to make it less frustrating. Tracker already did it for Advance 2, I don't see why something similar couldn't happen for rereleases.
Rush Adventure's material collecting is really only a downside when you're not playing it sporadically in between your day to day life and actually replaying levels when you're done with the "main" story, otherwise when you're trying to slam the whole story in one or two goes, including the "real" ending, it becomes a grind that you actively notice. Well-designed for portable gaming, very awkward in modern contexts. I wouldn't really want the Advance games to be changed at all by a rerelease, or otherwise we'd have another dumb Sonic 1/2/CD mobile remakes scenario where we're playing the "superior" versions of the games when they all have things really, really wrong with them that make them unacceptable for people who just want easily accessible versions of the original games mostly as they were, that then completely replace those versions... For the Advance games, it's reasonable to just attach them together with emulation, but for Rush and Rush Adventure, it seems so impossible. Oh right marketing campaign thread.
I don't know how accurate this is but I've heard that after THQ went defunct, the western publishing rights to the Advance games ended up in a weird state of limbo where technically SEGA doesn't actually own them. Advance was able to be re-released on Wii U in Japan and the Advance games are acknowledged by Sonic Team but they aren't able to be released in the west. Or so I've heard! I don't know how true any of that is, but would explain why we haven't seen a re-release on NSO.
THQ Nordic has confirmed during AMAs that the publishing rights to Advance are back with Sega. I think it's more likely Sega simply hasn't seen any financial incentive in porting them to modern platforms.
This would be solved if the original mode in Sonic Origins was a Genesis emulation by m2 instead of just the Retro Engine versions in 4:3 but alas.
Advance 2's levels and bosses already count as "things really, really wrong with it" so I don't see much harm, personally.
