Sonic Superstars: A New 2D Sonic Game (Fall 2023)

This is not really true. I mean it is true about Classic Sonic in how it is played today, but it's not true of how they were played in the past. There really needs to be a topic on how the view of Classic Sonic has radically transformed after the passage of time and emulation.

 

I wouldn't say that's where the difficulty comes from but I agree being reckless is mostly a virtue in Classic Sonic. There was that healthy discussion in this very thread pages ago about that, when we discussed the merits of a life system. There should definitely be a thread about it though.

 

When i played the classic games as a kid, i think the only parts i consistently died on where marble zone, and the final bosses of Sonic 2 and 3. 2 for the obvious reasons of no rings, and 3's for the bottomless pits in the back half of Death Egg Zone bosses. Everything else is very easy to power through thanks to how plentiful rings are and how forgiving getting hit is, I very rarely ever game overed unless i was playing to get secrets or reckless to experiment on purpose. Those games are not hard

 

And my opinion is that he should get new instruments for his FL Studio, or, never be hired by SEGA again. And the facts are I'm sick of his samey shit, and I'm sick of him getting work over proven arrangers and composers who actually work at SEGA and never get the recognition they deserve in the first place. I'm frustrated by this, so I'm going to express how frustrated I am with it.

And for whoever it concerns: The first part is no different from what people suggest of Jun or anyone else's Genesis style tracks, and the second very different from "being fired" because Tee doesn't work at the company and can only be "fired" if they remove him and his work from Superstars and can only not hire him again in the future, which is the only thing I'm suggesting. If that's toxic, hide away all the other "toxic" comments too and don't give special treatment to any one composer just because I was a little mean and you know Tee Lopes' name. If the dude's as good an artist as everyone says he is, I promise you he can get over the one scathing, "toxic" review from some guy on a forum dedicated to the work of Sonic the Hedgehog who starts his post with a quote of 12 Oatmeal, when everyone else on the planet is telling him he can do no wrong, and understand where it's coming from and make the proper changes because he's such a talented soul, if he were to even see it in the first place.
Context: My quoted message was trashed because it was a "toxic way to share your opinion" and I shouldn't "ask for firing", which I honestly probably shouldn't acknowledge, but it's quite the useful tool to explain the nuances of my words and highlight how ridiculous all of this is, so I did.

 

This post is also a toxic way to share your opinion.

So, I haven’t seen anyone post it here but Oshima actually posted some Superstars concept work on his Bluesky account a while ago.



He didn’t outright say it was from SS but you can see gimmicks from Speed Jungle in there and 4 figures in some of the sketches, not to mention there’s a small modern Sonic image near the top of each page.
His name is on each of these concept sheets, so it looks like he’s been pretty hands on with Superstars’ design!

 

Is there a way to view it without registering?

 

Oh, I didn’t know it was hidden to non members! I edited the image into my first post.

 

If you don't like it, great. There are a lot more people that agree with you than you think. I don't even think he's the second coming of Sonic music. But your statement isn't a critique, it's just rude. He is by definition a professional, "proven" musician.

It should also be noted that it's not *just* Tee and Senoue on this soundtrack. Senoue said he has a "team" of musicians helping him, which includes internal SEGA staff.

This is not acceptable either. One does not cancel out the other.

Again, you were completely uncritical and just flat-out rude. You weren't "a little mean".

I also don't see the point in adding this bit here either way, because... it's not really accurate. People in this thread have not been toxic to Senoue or anyone else involved in the game. They've been critical, but there's a difference between airing your criticisms in a constructive way and just being a jerk.

No. That's not how it works. You can't say "this person's work fucking sucks and he should never work for SEGA again" and expect people to not take issue with it. It also doesn't MATTER if Tee will see it or not, it's not something that should be said in the first place. It's basic respect. You can word your critiques and dislikes of Tee's music without wording it the way you did - completely UN-critically.

This is just utterly inaccurate. There are a lot of people who don't like him or his work, and they are becoming more vocal as Superstars gets closer to release. Tee showed his entire ass on Twitter not even a few weeks ago, and almost the entire community called him out on it.

Your post comes across as resentful of Tee's success because 1.) you don't like his work, and 2.) it's caused other noteworthy and talented SEGA composers to be thrown to the wayside. Other SEGA composers not getting the recognition (or work) they deserve is NOT Tee's fault. That is 100% entirely SEGA's fault, and you should be directing your frustration at SEGA, not Tee.

 

You okay?

 

@shilz Why do you think Tee Lopes' music is samey? Because he composes a lot of upbeat and cheery music? I do like it when he goes outside of his comfort zone with tracks like Titanic Monarch.

Also, who would you want to have more opportunity to shine as composer?

 

Are these Superstars' OSTs official yet?

 

"Are these Superstars' official soundtracks official yet?“

I don't know what you're asking here... These are the official tracks.

The music used in the Gamescom trailer is Bridge Island Act 2, as confirmed by Tee Lopes via Twitter. The music used in the Nintendo Direct trailer appears to be Speed Jungle Act 1, as the same teach can supposedly be heard in the background of some off-screen usage. I couldn't hear it myself in any footage but it seems reasonable enough to my.

Some other tracks can be heard in a Lego browser game. They appear to be Bridge Island 1, Title Screen and a menu theme (according to people who have played the demo at Gamescom). Because of the nature of the source of these tracks, they're fairly compressed and only play in mono, so the quality isn't great. There's also a chance that they might not be the finalised versions of the table too, but if not then they are still very close to final.

The only other tracks of note would be the boss music in the extended footage of Speed Jungle Zone. The Act 1 boss music is brand new, whilst Act 2 is an arrangement of the S4E2 boss music (or its literally just that same track with one channel muted for some season). For whatever reason, it seems like the music in this video was entirely added in post and is incomplete.

 

Just to confirm that the gameplay footage was captured without any music, just sound effects, the Sonic 4-esque music was added in post.

 

Actually, I just now realized that he's doing his Sonic Jam pose, that's so cool!

 

Just been watching a playthrough of Bridge Island, specifically the bonus stage where you can earn medals which is similar to Sonic 1's special stage (time stamp 3:12 & 7:59):



Something I find interesting is that the bonus stage has layers. If you get through the maze and reach the medal then you drop down to the next maze and try and earn the next medal, and then if successful you drop down to a third maze. I wonder when designing this whether Ohshima & Arzest took inspiration from the scrapped Sonic CD bonus stage which also appeared to be layered & rotate (it looks like you could drop down to lower levels):



I'm not saying the bonus stage in Superstars is the exact same concept as CD's, but it does seem like they've drawn some inspiration from it.


In this Speed Jungle gameplay from two months ago; in the cutscene transition at the end (9:49) Sonic is blown upwards by a horizontal wind-turbine. I think this might also be taking inspiration from CD because the early CD map concept art (see below) shows a similar facing wind-turbine next to "2R".






Eggman's vertical fire-wall attack in the Gamescom trailer (0:46) looks like it draws inspiration from his vertical lazer insta-kill attack in Stardust Speedway act3:



I think Superstars could have a lot of references to CD and if they're using scrapped concepts for inspiration then this is very cool.

 

Some might call it fanservice. I'm in for it!

 

Ha, I had no idea about the SCD bonus stage one! We're probably going to see more of these when the full game rolls around.

 

Because his instrumentation almost never changes, and honestly when he applies it to existing music it almost never elevates a track, which is the whole point of arrangements. The one time he did anything substantially different in that way was with Frontiers Prologue, and that's because he had to (But I'm also not sure how much he was involved in the arranging, final mixing and application of instruments?) Otherwise, you can pretty much expect the same brass and synth as always. I guess the apt way to describe it with the Superstars stuff we've had so far is, it feels like autopilot kicked in, like he wasn't even trying to make anything that fit the mood or the environment or anything, and just did what was expected of him, which is worse to me than just being something I'm not into and what makes it feel like a total waste.

 

idk i like tees music and im a sound designer

 

In a perfect world I would've had Naofumi Hataya lead the way while Tee and Jun be junior composers for the project, but Tee is great and Jun is... sometimes great, so I'm fine with this. Hope Hataya gets at least gets one or two bangers on here, he's always the brightest spot on every Sonic soundtrack he graces.