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

I keep having thoughts about the game's difficulty. Which I didn't dislike, in fact, especially in the main story!

Spoiler: words and spoilers

I may be far off, but besides being less forgiving, I think there's a subtle change in what the game is asking of you (relative to the classics): rapid reflexes in a moment becomes more important than feeling and mimicking a certain rhythm in the level. You know how there are a lot of times in the 16-bit games in which the game seems to have gained a consciousness of its own, even though it could never be the case? You know when either everything you do will suddenly go surprisingly right (you'll bounce off a badnik that you didn't know was there, or land a second hit on Eggman that you think you weren't supposed to) or terribly wrong (you'll be hit two times in a row for no reason by badniks that are just doing their thing, or you fumble a jump between two moving platforms and suddenly no jump ever goes right again)? This doesn't happen in Superstars at all. Didn't happen to me at least, because it looked like the game was more actively reacting to my presence, and this kind of timing challenge happened mostly up until Press Factory and then in Frozen Base Act Tails (and even in the latter case, only with platforms that move between foreground and background).

Notice how some badniks that were brought back had their attacks improved (buzz bomber) or started reacting to your presence (like Mecha-bu). Even Sand Sanctuary felt different from Sandopolis Act 1 even where they looked exactly alike: while, in Sandopolis, a Skorp would eventually hit me no matter what if I landed the wrong platform, at the wrong time and on the wrong foot, Sand Sanctuary's Skorps consistently felt a lot more like a reflex challenge because I could see them coming. This doesn't make the game harder, necessarily, but it does make the nature of the difficulty different. That was my impression, at least. As a side note, I loved both acts of Press Factory because they retain that sense of rhythm, and it really is stages 8 through 11 that mostly let go of that in favor of more controlled or self-contained series of challenges.

So when you take away the player's wider margin of error, Sonic feels weird to play. When succeeding at one jump doesn't make the next jump easier, that feels weird, and we basically never relax. That's why we tend not to like crushing deaths: we're used to feeling like dying was the result of a series of mistakes, of us being out of sync with the stage's or boss' internal beat. This is what I felt from Golden Capital on, even with rehashed elements. In Metropolis, Slicers feel like elements of rhythm due to their placement after corkscrews or in tight tunnels that demand you to not hesitate. Them being on open spaces in Golden Capital made them a lot more like a one-on-one combat.

That'd be my point: the difficulty in Superstars, beyond being higher or lower, often feels different in its later stages, more reminiscent of a traditional platformer at heart. The precision of one move is more important than a sense of timing across various moves. And they wouldn't have it so that you cheese it all, so they made sure you'll go through all challenges. Each individual challenge Superstars proposes in a vacuum may not be harder than your average Sonic game, but the way they're stringed together, resulting in constant endurance battles (especially in the bosses) is unusual. It's not like Sonic 1, 2, CD or 3&K never did what Sueprstars does. It's just that Superstars seems committed to it.

 

Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) says hi. Granted it was free DLC.

 

Gonna have to help me out here, what was that?

 

Been moving back and forth between Sonic Superstars and Mario Wonder so just got round to completing Superstars in full there. The longer the game went on the more I started to dislike it:

• The main story was fine. I enjoyed it for the most part but I feel like the stages are forgettable compared to most Sonic games. There's nothing iconic here which is unusual for a Sonic game, especially 2d ones.
• The music... wasn't digging it at all I have to say. I enjoy listening to Sonic music in general but there's nothing in this game that I'd listen to in my own time and enjoy. It's just generic game music. It feels harsh to complain about it but the series set such a high bar for music and Superstars is way below that bar unfortunately.
• Some of the boss fights were inventive in ways but none of them enjoyable to fight. It was too hard to say when it was okay to go in for a hit and sometimes you'd get punished for trying to damage the boss. You have to just keep hitting the boss until the game decides it's gonna take damage and there's almost no telling when that is. Kinda annoying.
• More than any other 2d Sonic game I felt like this was more 'memory' based, as in you got punished hard for trying things out, going fast, blind jumping into areas... Most platformers display this behaviour but it's not how 2d Sonic games normally work. I died way more in this game than any other 2d Sonic game by quite a distance. I felt like I was punished for not playing the game exactly how the game wanted me to play it and it got more obvious in the later game.
• New game+ doubled down on this. I didn't mind Trip as a character and can see why Sega have added her into the roster but her story was infuriating and punishing for the most part and I say that as a guy that can complete Sonic 1, 2, 3k & Mania with almost no deaths. More spikes, bottomless pits and doubling down on enemies felt like a cheap rise in difficulty for me. I also think the series has way too many characters as it is so bringing another one into the fold for me cheapens the series even further.
• The characters controlled well and I enjoyed each of their movesets.
• I came across some minor glitches but the game ran pretty smooth for me overall with no complaints in that department. The load screens were slow and crawled through it's 'animation' but I felt like I was playing a solid game, bug wise. This is on the Nintendo Switch.
• I really hated the wisps in Colours so was dreading the chaos emeralds and their abilities in this game but I was pleasantly surprised and actually enjoyed using most of them.

Meh.. 6 out of 10 I'd rate Superstars. I played most of it in single player so maybe it's a better experience with friends? The few levels I played with a mate we struggled to stay on screen with each other so maybe not.

 

Nintendo being the exception rather than the rule, every other publisher have deadlines and fiscal years expectations that they need to meet to even survive in some cases, even Sony - a first party- still finish their games close to release, even when they delay games -sometimes even SEGA does that!- ,they never set on a complete game for months

"having no deadlines" like Mario Wonder is rather a luxury that they can only afford cause they are Nintendo, they have lot of big games that are selling to cover them, and also having a console that sells like crazy, only other publisher that are in the same position is Valve, they have a super successful platform that basically cover the whole PC market , that they have the time to develop AND cancel any games they want simply cause it's not up to their standards and cause they have no obligation to release any game to make profit, so while they seem to be not developing any game for a loooong time, they do in fact have a lot of cancelled projects that were at advanced stages, other publishers would be like " we need to release this game to recuperate costs, it may not be truly finished and there is a lot of bugs, but any more development will mean more costs draining and waiting longer to sell and make any kind of profits for this project"

 

People think of the statements that Sega made about quality and measurements that have taken in place, but it's all just to guarantee that another 06 and Rise of Lyric won't happen. And they kept that promise. Its still insane that they needed another disaster of 06 for that to manifest company wide, but it is what it is.

 

This game has steadily been growing more sour for myself. I still haven't finished the main story but, whew, after Sand Sanctuary the game takes a nosedive.

I found the music in both Press Factory and Golden Capital to both be just plain bad. I'd attribute it mostly to the awful flaccid production. The Emerald Powers are really cumbersome and I dislike using them a lot. Feels like pulling teeth to use them properly.

The levels themselves are fine but lack set pieces, or just something to make a level stick put beyond its gimmicks and aesthetic. I think the games gimmicks are fine, even if they kill your speed, but the levels themselves just look and play incredibly unimpressively. Not terribly, but there's no pizzazz.

The goes double for the story presentation which, atleast to where I am in the main story, feels needlessly sidelined. Like Mania had a better told story in the game then here. I've seen Fang and Trip fall down holes a few times, and Eggman running away a few times. Amy even runs into Trip at one point. But I can't tell you what is actually going on besides that.

I gave the game the benefit of the doubt during its first half but now nearing the end of the main story it just isn't working.

This feels like one of those mid 2000s Handheld titles. Fine for it's intended hardware but it isn't up to par (I'd argue the actual DS games are better, heck I love Rush Adventure.) I'll finish the main story but I'm incredibly unimpressed. I'm feeling close to a 5 or 6 outta 10 on this game now.

Edit: I have had the Special Stage theme stuck in my head all day so it's not all bad.

 

I would argue that DLC is generally made either very close to the game's release or legitimately made after it, and it's the stuff like pre-order bonuses and other nonsense that gets "cut out" to be sold later, usually in some stupid in-game shop. DLC does tend to be planned to some extent but I wouldn't argue that stuff like Frontiers or this was stuff they just excised because it'd be funny or something.

The "final" build of the game needs to be pressed to disc, and before that also needs to pass certification for consoles, and going "lol" and cutting things out a month before release makes both of those pretty untenable. I'm a broken record but large tech projects like this are all about triage, which features are the most important to make it in, which bugs are the most crippling. No game project ever has all ideas implemented for it, and before DLC was a thing, all of that would be cool behind-the-scenes stuff that may or may not spawn intense rumors, like Hidden Palace.

 

I'm choosing to be petty because I bought Battle Leauge and was never the same after:

People use Mario as the gold standard, while also ignoring how everything aside from the mainline platformers has been suffering hard lately from flaws people say are exclusive to Sonic, and then if you bring them up, they don't count or "they're just bland, but they're good"

Look at Super Mario Party & Mario Party Superstars, each game has 4 & 5 boards respectively with all of Super's boards shaped like squares. To put that into context, Mario Party 3 had six quality-designed boards whereas Mario Party DS has five boards. So basically, the handheld Mario Party has just as many boards, sometimes EVEN MORE (alongside more content) than the mainline modern Mario Parties. Am I here to say all Mario Switch games are bad? no, not all of them there's some good and some bad, but I am saying it's a lie to claim Sonic isn't going anywhere / stuck in mid-hell, while Mario is *perfectly* outdoing him right now.

Compare Mario Party pre-9 to Mario Party post-9, compare Mario Strikers Charged to Mario Strikers Battle Leauge, compare Mario Power Tennis to Mario Tennis Aces, and especially compare Mario Golf Toadstool Tour to Mario Golf Super Rush. You probably forget half of those games, and out of all of those the only one really giving a damn is Aces, even if it HAD to be updated to include a retry button and reused voice clips for the CGI Cutscenes in the single-player.

Origami King is the most subjective out of all of these since it has fans, but I can say that for anything Sonic too. Not to mention I hear "step in the right direction" in regards to Origami King yet no one bats an eye. The Paper Mario series is going through a step in the right direction currently, that's what it is. Can you really call going from "Super -> Sticker Star -> Colour Splash -> Origami King -> TTYD Remake" anything but a decade-long "step in the right direction"

Out of the entire Switch-Era, I'd say Mario Maker 2, Luigi's Mansion 3, and Mario & Rabbids have been the only games to live up to their expectations. Even then, Luigi's Mansion 3 suffers from having a shorter, barebones level design for the last couple of floors. Possibly due to a lack of development time near the end. I would say Mario as a brand suffers from similar flaws to Sonic, but just has the ability to cover them up easier

Because even if Superstars isn't better than Wonder, it still rivals the last decade 2D Mario. NSMBWii - NSMBU, with the only one worth debating being NSMBDS.

What I'm trying to get here is that 3D Mario is the only part of the Mario series to consistently improve. 2D Mario just got back on track after 14 years, which I know damn well if Sonic did you'd never hear the end of it. The Mario Spin-Offs have fallen off with some exceptions, and those overwhelming shortcomings are still going to charge you $60 for actual overpriced experiences.

...

"But how does this make Sonic seem like a better series" That's not the point, the point is that using Mario as an example is semi-cap

"But the Frontiers Updates" Sonic Frontiers' Updates were never planned from the start, they happened due to the positive reception of the game. Whereas via the information gathered from the Tennis Aces Demo Datamine, Update Characters if not Update Content itself is already planned prior to the game's release. This means there's a chance these games are released BEFORE all of the characters/content are completely intentionally towards us as an audience.

“Oh, but those are just the spin-off games”, Nintendo releases full-price, never-on-sale spin-off games for $60 that are released intentionally unfinished before being completed with year-based updates, falling short of past spin-off experiences on prior consoles, with huge dedicated fanbases of their own. All under the same umbrella as "Good Mario". No one is giving Team Sonic Racing any slack, are they?

This isn't even about Sonic anymore, I just really wanted to say how much I hated Mario Strikers Battle League.

 

Okay that's nice and all but I did specifically say the platformers and Kart, which I think are the two pedigree strands of Mario (and apparently I'm wrong on one of them but I don't know the details of that so...). Granted, how the sports games handle their post release content model isn't great (though I don't play those games so I'm not personally affected), but I can begrudgingly accept it for spinoff dreck. Like if TSR had that kind of model then people might still be playing it, but I digress. Core games where the lion's share of content is single player or local co-op only really shouldn't be doing this stuff, and if SEGA tries to sell me Superstars Plus a year from now, they can take it and shove it up their arse, just like with Origins Plus (and given how Origins Plus handled things, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if boss checkpoints were exclusive to such a package by some "oversight").

 

I'll also say Nintendo infamously rushed Wind Waker out of the door, to the point where it shipped with only like 3 real dungeons. Of more recent games, Pokemon Sword and Shield were very, very obviously rushed with cut content.

 

If Mario Kart is one of the pedigree strands of Mario, then reselling actual mobile-graphic ports of legacy content to their wide audience to make up for selling a-still $60 port of a 2014 game says just as much about Nintendo as Origins Plus says about SEGA. And reusing the same presentation, music, and level tropes for 2D Mario for nearly twenty years while homogenizing 3D Mario / Mario period during the 3D Land - 3D World Era isn't helping either

Hell if I know what Superstars Plus would look like aside from Fang as a playable character, but for all we know a Plus Update could lean towards Mania where it comes with QoL Updates for free alongside the paid additions of new characters/modes.

Honestly, my stance is that Mario vs. Sonic is outdated. Sonic should aim to rival someone worth a damn, like Kirby. Forgotten Land was a gem.

We would be here all day if we discussed the fall-off of the Pokemon series. Whatever you think lowest of Sonic right now, Pokemon is 10 times worse.

 

I will never not be amused at how people will talk as if Pokèmon is a failing franchise as each game sells better than the last well into the 20M range.

Yes, I am aware of the quality issues the series has been having as of late, but it's still pretty funny to me, especially when it's coming from Sonic fans.

 

I'm really not a fan of the visuals for the MK8D booster course but like...come on man, they're selling a whole new game's worth of courses for £20, more or less the price being asked for a quarter that amount when the original DLC tracks released during the Wii era. Also that wasn't something that was cut out of the base game, coming 5 years after the fact. Compare and contrast with base Origins advertising new playable charactes, only for that not to be the case with Knuckles glaringly absent from the collection's version of Sonic CD, only to be sold to us later. It's really not the same thing.

 

What I was referring to was how Mario Kart's treatment by Nintendo doesn't invoke the pedigree standards previously mentioned, Team Sonic Racing made sure the returning tracks looked just as good as the new tracks. I'm not really in this whole rant because Origins, I never bothered with Origins when I had PC Decomps the whole time. Nah I'm saying this in regards to the supposed consistent quality of the Mario series I've heard claimed way too much as someone who likes Mario just as much as Sonic.

My theory on the matter is Switch-Era Mario is a mixture of learning from the failures of the Wii U while also taking advantage of the audience they have now. Of course, these issues have been around for much longer, the Switch-Era has just been the most profitable portion of it all.

 

Superstars sales in Japan for its first week.

Spoiler

Before you guys start doomposting, please keep in mind that Classic Sonic has never been all that popular in Japan to begin with.

 

It's still a model SEGA should be following with their top mascot. Doing so would probably help with sales and reputation, not hurt them. And as I already said in previous posts, Origins Plus and the Frontiers DLC alone could've carried Sonic through Fall/Holiday 2023 with another discounted sale. Cut them both to 30$ a piece and they would've sold like hotcakes while the audience saved up for Superstars in the Spring.

Just becuase it's not a common release strategy doesn't mean SEGA shouldn't do it. They're literally eating into their own market by saturating it with the content too quickly, but also hurting the review scores and their reputation (again) in the process. It's nothing new, but it's so tiring, especially because they're actually pretty close to getting it all right this time.

But then again, I guess Frontiers did very well for them despite being released incomplete, so maybe that's just the problem. They learned the wrong lessons afterall, so what more should I expect?

Ouch. Slightly only over 4k units. I know you said not to doompost, and you are quite correct about the mid performance of classic sonic sales in japan, but they actually put a lot of marketing into this game at TGS, so that's... not a great outcome at all.

If that trend holds, it really should go to show just how disconnected our views are from the average Japanese gamer. They really do seem to know modern Sonic above all else, and that makes sense since his face has been the one plastered all over arcades there for decades now, which is where they're most likely to encounter him.

https://arcadeheroes.com/2013/04/26/the-sonic-athletics-exergame-arcade-machine/

Mind you, I don't think this is a reason why we wouldn't get a Superstars 2, TBH. Global sales will likely do much, much better over time.

 

What's Superstars ranking on Japanese eShop?

 

I remember playing Black Knight a long time ago, it had this fanart gallery section curated from each region. I'd say a good 2/3rds of the pieces from the US and EU were Classic Sonic, and this was well before Generations brought him back officially, but fans were still keeping it alive.

But Japan's fanart? Modern Sonic exclusively. But it makes sense... the only Sega console that was ever really a success over there was the one that Sonic was barely on, so I don't think that connection to the classic gameplay and aesthetics is much of a factor there.

 

Yeah, it has to be remembered that Sonic wasn't popular in Japan even during his Golden Years so a game that is just that isn't going to turn heads.

Sega needs to keep trying, though.