It's worth noting that Hataya handled half of the music for the Classic Sonic levels; specifically Ghost Town, Death Egg, and Iron Fortress. Green Hill, Casino Forest, and Chemical Plant were done by Ohtani. I think there's a gradient of quality to both their sets of Classic music in Forces, but Hataya's tends to make better use of whatever sounds they were using or restricted to using for those tracks.
I really do think Hataya's tracks for Forces were good, but they would've been great if the direction for the music was more "CD" inspired instead of going for a "Genesis" sound. Battle with Egg Dragoon sounds to me like an unused track from Sonic CD that was altered to fit Classic Sonic's sound direction in Forces.
The fact that they haven't asked Hataya to go for a more CD/NiGHTS-esque house sound in any recent game is a mystery to me.
Ironically Fumie Kumatari probably should have composed more "Sonic CD-ish" songs than Hataya himself for the Modern games. The last time he actually did a funky track like that was in Sonic Generations, on Stardust Speedway remix. But even when he composes on a different style, it usually sounds amazing, just like Richard Jacques. This one is a great example: I think that's why SEGA should give Hataya more chances to compose for Sonic games.
I think the term vocal minority is extremely misleading. People use it without ever defining the data they have used to claim why the people who are complaining are a minority. A really recent example has been Halo. When Halo 5 came out, people criticised the advanced movement and they were called an extremely vocal minority. After all, Halo 5 was relatively popular in player count. Then Halo Infinite comes out and...is extremely popular for ditching Halo 5s design goals and implementing the feedback of the 'silent minority'. It's now easily more popular than Halo 5. So I think it was pretty dumb to say the Halo 5 criticism was a 'vocal minority'. That's not the only reason for Halo Infinites success (its free to play) but it's a widely cited one by the playerbase). I think 'vocal minority' and 'silent majority' are facile terms which are usually just used because they are popular and rarely have thought put into them. The term 'vocal minority' for a start is misleading because there are most probably players who agree with the criticisms and are themselves silent online. The player critics of Halo 5 were not a vocal minority and I'd say that criticisms of Modern Sonic are also not a vocal minority. I can't quantify it because we don't have any data, but the criticisms are so widely attested across the Internet that they can't be shrugged off. And the lack of data goes both ways, it also means we can't say critics of Modern Sonic are a tiny minority. Wait, I meant to put this into the Sonic 4 thread. My bad!
IMO, the people from Sonic Official JP should do the boxart covers for the next games. It's so DAMN good.
Yeah I'd love to see 2D cover-art illustration return for Sonic, hell I'd even accept it as a reversible cover sleeve
I have to say, as nice as this art looks, I much prefer what Japan got. The throwback to the trippy, geometric 90s style of the Mega Drive covers looks great. I have been putting it off for years at this point, but I really need to get the JP Switch release to complement my US PS4 one. I also just want to be able to play Sonic Mania on the Switch without signing into my little brother's account lol.
Oh yes, the 2D covers were great. We haven't had a decent Sonic 2D cover since SA2 battle, right (not counting portables) ? Well, if the game is inspired by BotW so much, I hope for a decent 2D cover. As for the music, I really hope Jun is more involved in the soundtrack. Not that I don't like Ohtani, I just prefer Jun & others personally.
It's a real shame they don't utilize the 2D art more. Sonic Channel has had some amazing designs/styles over the years, if half that style was injected into a Sonic game it'd be beautiful. Instead we get Forces "everybody hold in your dump" renders
Honestly it’s not just Sonic, I wish Mario would do this too, especially after we saw all that concept art for Mario Odyssey covers. I hate that CGI renders have basically become a shorthand for something being better or of a bigger budget. I’d much rather see stylish, imaginative and fluid art, especially since Sonic’s current design was inspired by graffiti art of the 90s. EDIT: That said, I’d gladly take official CG rendered cover art created by Reckoman12 and ask for more.
The boxart for Frontiers will be Sonic with his back to the camera, stood on a cliff and gazing at a mountain in the distance. Calling it right now.
BotW did it. Pokémon Legends did it. Other open world games riffing on the same vibe as BotW (or outright copying BotW) did it . This is the Sonic equivalent of those games. We already got the money shot in the trailer, as you pointed out.
