Sonic Colo(u)rs Ultimate released for Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Epic Games Store

No, that’s just a rumor. It’s never been conclusively proven.

 

Full disclosure that I lack the technical knowledge to comment much on this myself, but I'm fairly certain that Colours at least uses a fair amount of the same groundwork as Generations. Some of the file types are the same or very similar, for example. I don't think that that proves that Colours was a "cancelled Wii port of Generations", but it does seem to indicate that the two projects started off as one. And that's kind of typical for development. SEGA and Sonic Team started working on the "next" Sonic game, and that eventually became two distinct titles as it started to take shape, quite possibly because of system differences. To my understanding, that's quite often the case with game development; development starts with R&D where the end goals are fairly loose and nebulous.

 

The two projects did start off as one.

It's called Sonic Unleashed.

 

It sharing file types isn't evidence of it starting off as the same project. If the developers already had groundwork, that's what they'd build off.

 

Iizuka said in a 2013 interview that a small team of core members was set up to start experimenting for what would become Lost World's gameplay after Colors finished production; while the rest of the team was focused on Generations. After Generations was completed, both teams regrouped into one to start full production on Lost World. Colors and Generations meanwhile seemed to have both started production after development for Unleashed wrapped.

 

Guess that's more my point, they kinda had their minds set, seemingly.

 

Regarding Sonic games selling best on Nintendo consoles, it is because of this that I firmly believe that Sonic should be made for Nintendo consoles *first*, meaning that these games should be running 60fps at all times, with 1080p docked resolution and 720p handheld resolution on the Switch. Sonic hasn't been the kind of game by which a console's capabilities have been assessed since the turn of the century, so it's not a series that should be aiming to push polygons, and Generations is arguably the best looking 3D game in the series as of right now, and should be capable of running at maximum performance on the Switch.

Anything further can be added for beefier machines, because ultimately Sonic's visuals are carried by art style choices rather than the power to render polys. Of course, some things aren't currently doable on Nintendo hardware, like ray-tracing, and anti-aliasing is bound to scale according to specs, but these are not core to the volume of a level, and are increasingly become things that can be toggled in mainstream commercially available game engines. Performance should always be Sonic's #1 priority, not prettiness.

 

And even then Sonic Team fail cos Forces didn't hit 60 on switch. Makes you wonder if there was even a point compromising with bland visuals, considering there was basically zilch in terms of a graphical upgrade for the other platforms. It's like I said: at this rate the next time we're gonna get a Sonic game that looks as good as Unleashed is gonna be on the Playstation 8/Xbox Series Omicron

 

Sonic Team actually did a bang-up job with Forces on the Switch, considering the circumstances. According to an interview with the team, they didn't have actual Switch hardware for the majority of development, and the final specs were weaker than they expected. It could only run the game at 30fps, but they worried this would make such a fast game feel too laggy, so they still made it so the game would poll inputs 60 times per second.

Actually, re-reading the article, I wonder how much of those crucial final months of development went toward polishing the Switch version? It's pure speculation, but could we have ended up with a more robust version of Forces if Nintendo had gone with a higher spec?

And speaking of pure speculation...

Generations wasn't a "filler title," any more than Sonic 2 and 3 were "filler titles" by virtue of being built off of Sonic 1's engine. That's the part of your post I'd really take issue with.

In fact, and this is pertinent to the discussion that was going on a few days back, I've often wondered if underwhelming sales of Generations HD (especially in comparison to the assuredly less-costly Colors) weren't part of the *reason* Sonic titles ever since ALWAYS have to hit Nintendo hardware, why the budgets for 'em have seemed comparatively lower to compensate for that, and why they inked that disastrous exclusivity deal with Nintendo in the early-mid 10s. Given recent financial reports, it's definitely had a long tail, but I remember early indications that Generations was struggling to make a dent on PS3 and 360 (it came out on the same day as Uncharted 3, and about a week before Skyrim, so it launched amid heavy competition).

 

Something that completely slipped my attention: How are the dubs for Sonic Colours Ultimate?

I'm asking for a friend.

 

...the dubs as in the English vocals? Pretty sure they're literally just the same voice files from the originals, no new lines or anything.

 

Nah, I mean the other language options for cutscenes. Any opinions so far?

 

Having viewed a few cutscenes in french, the translation and voice acting are of the same calibre as previous Sonic games, so not amazing but not awful either.

 

Hm, might be worth checking out.

 

I'm not using the phrase to mean litterally "Oh yeah they just threw it together in a couple of months without care", I'm more saying it was more like "Sonic's next stop" than it was "This is what Sonic Team wants to do next", similarly to Secret Rings or Black Knight, or maybe even Sonic Runners. It just seems that they were making stuff up as they went along there, more than usual (still not to mean that they didn't care)

 

Sorry, forgot they added more languages.

On a related note, something that pissed me off: the original Colors was the very first Sonic game since Adventure 1 to let you turn off the subtitles. I hate having subtitles in a game with English vocals because I end up reading the dialogue instead of listening to it. So why the fuck did they take that option away?

That and skippable cutscenes/tutorials are on my really petty "if I were president" list.

 

Skippable text and dialogue in tutorials would be a heaven sent, I 100% agree. Same with the subtitles.

 

Considering Forces on the switch, and also rumors of a probably 4K Switch, I wonder if we're going to see history repeating: they developed for the better model but that's not gonna release anytime soon so they have to compromise for the base model?

That could change, we're still a year out from Holiday 2022, but i'm just wondering how are people outside our bubble gonna react seeing a game look exactly the same on next gen hardware as it does on a souped-up tablet that came out in 2017? Sega's marketing division are gonna have their work cut out for them.

 

I did notice something regarding languages. The Xbox One version of Sonic Colors Ultimate has a Korean text option, even though it has not been officially released in Korea for Xbox One.

 

September NPD results came out today. Colors Ultimate debuted at #13 in the General Top 20, and rounded out the Top 10 for Nintendo platforms at the bottom of the list. It's actually among the better performances/debuts for Sonic games when you look at the (now updated!) list of Sonic games that did chart on the NPD lists over the past twenty years.

In addition, Colors Ultimate also rounded out the PlayStation Store's list of the Top 20 Most Downloaded PS4 Games in the US at #20 for last month (it didn't appear in the EU-adjacent chart); and landed 13th on a list of Europe's Top 15 most downloaded games on the Switch in September as well.