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

This discussion was already had a few months ago and I still think it's absolutely insane that people can like Superstars to S4 the way that they do.

Superstars is far from perfect. It's got some awful S4-tier music and unbearable E2 style boss fights. But that's really where the similarities end. The general gameplay that comes from the level design and physics is leagues above both episodes of S4. They play as differently as you could expect from two typical Sonic games. Superstars is a solid Classic Sonic clone, S4 is anything but.

 

Put it this way. If Superstars had come out a year or two after S4 E2, I'd be a lot less harsh on it and probably appreciate what a big improvement it was (even though E2 is arguably a better looking game than Superstars).
Thing is though, Superstars is supposed to be the big Classic Sonic experience after Mania, and compared to that it's still a bag of auld shite, and a massive, massive step down.

 

I do wish Superstars hadn't just been seemingly dropped from post-launch support. If it had gotten updates like Frontiers to address some of these flaws, we could've had something really great on our hands instead of just alright. Modders will get there eventually, but it's so strange that Final Horizon just got to reverse direction on the unbearably-tedious bits and this game didn't.

Overall still a good time -- the fact that it did fine with critics and didn't blow up the series is always a welcome trait for a Sonic game to have -- but it deserved better. I hope Arzest gets to try again, clearly they still have what it takes, it just needs some tweaking.

 

This is going to sound pretty dismissive but I have a feeling that a lot of Superstars' biggest detractors would be far kinder to it if they'd been told it was by Evening Star, not Arzest

 

I agree, it's a shame Frontiers got to improve significantly post-launch, and Superstars seemingly won't.

I'm still holding a candle for something like a Superstars Plus, because I really don't think it would take that much to get the game in a far better place. It's notable that the soundtrack still hasn't been added to digital storefronts, which makes me hopeful that a patch could be coming to shore up a few of the most troublesome tracks. Combine that with some tweaks to bosses (something as simple as adding checkpoints and/or making the most drawn-out of them take fewer hits) and you've effectively painted over the game's biggest sticking points.

I continue to absolutely adore this game. I'm still playing it regularly. And I wish Sega would do something to make it a little easier for people to appreciate it. But if we don't hear anything by June 23, I'm going to assume that ship has sailed.

 

I still think a big Superstars update is possible (especially when the last two Classic Sonic games, Mania and Origins, got big updates a year after they came out), but even if it's not, I highly doubt it's going to be the last Classic game. It's a pretty firmly established arm of the brand now that's repeatedly proven to be a money-maker for over a decade, and there's now a new and modern Classic engine that Sonic Team/Sega can build on for future games. More Classic stuff may not come in the form of a Superstars update, but it'll come, especially in 2031 when the subsection of the fandom comprising all the kids who grew up with Sonic Generations takes over the internet

 

Yeah, whether Superstars gets more polish or not, I'm definitely not feeling the existential terror for Classic Sonic that I was before Superstars was announced. Especially not with Iizuka praising Ohshima/Arzest, and Evening Star being on such positive terms with both of them.

 

Superstars Plus should be coming sometime this year, right? That's the pattern? LOL

 

Don't hold your breath just yet.

 

Much as I would like a Superstars Plus, I think that any tentative plans SEGA may have had could have been shelved because the game failed to meet expectations. They released the game in a functional albeit untuned state, with some signs that it was rushed towards the end of production. We know that SEGA set some pretty lofty expectations for the game that the game fell short of despite the fact that it seemingly sold decent-ish numbers. I send reasonable to me that they would decide to cut their losses and not continue to build on the game with DLC/an expanded release.

It's a shame that SEGA seemed to be so cocky with this one. They were really trying to push the envelope, probably because they were riding a high after the success of Frontiers. And when Superstars crashed (relatively), they just brushed it aside. It got a few minor patches and some meagre skins that were likely planned many months in advance, but none of the obvious avenues to significantly imprisonment the game were explored.

 

I think it’s for the best that Superstars doesn’t get a Plus edition, honestly. This doesn’t come from a place of spite, either, I think my posting history prior to release bears out that I was just as excited for Superstars as anyone else. However, I don’t want SEGA to learn the lesson that they can put out something sloppy, fix it later and charge early adopters extra for what the game should’ve been at release. Mania Plus worked because it was a complete, extremely technically solid package at release, and the DLC felt like a genuine extension of what was already there, with the QoL tweaks to the base game such as the new Metal Sonic fight and act transitions being a free update for everyone regardless of whether they purchased Encore DLC.

Meanwhile, Origins came out in a fairly lacking state and clearly could’ve used more time in the oven. As far as I’m aware, there are certain fixes that are only available to Origins Plus owners, but I think the most egregious aspect is that Plus is required to play as Knuckles in Sonic CD, something that by all reasonable expectations should’ve been possible in the base game, which was an incomplete package lacking in cohesion without it.

Superstars is somewhere between the two. As an original game, I think it’s fair to say that the experience is content complete, and there’s no glaring omissions, but there are quite few notable issues with the base game, prime among those being the bosses and the music, which would most certainly be advertising points of a Plus edition, and frankly I don’t have faith that SEGA would do the right think and make those fixes available to all players free of charge.

Frontiers was also pretty clearly lacking on release, but all of its updates came for free. I think SEGA really abused the goodwill built up by Mania and Mania Plus and it’s honestly tarnished the Plus branding for me now. I’d be all for Superstars getting free updates to fix its issues, but I will be appalled if SEGA tries to charge us extra for the game we should’ve gotten in the first place.

 

I will say, having started playing through most sonic games this month on stream, and having replayed SuperStars last Friday, most of my opinions have changed. the biggest that didn't was my hatred of the Nack Fight, and Final Boss (They just DRAG ON AND ON) beyond that I can't say I hate the music, just that it's not really memorable, and the only comparison I will make to Sonic 4 is at least the Title and Splash Hill are rather memorable)

 

Why do folks think that superstars needs to have a “plus” edition to get more dlc? Mania and Origins had “plus” editions because they were originally digital releases and they wanted extra content for a physical release. I think it’s plausible that superstars could get dlc for $5-15 without it getting a new physical “plus edition”.

…Or am I missing the point and being overly literal here (ie that when people talk about the prospect of a “Superstars plus” they are just using that as an offhand term for significant dlc for the game)

 

Yes

 

I played with Knuckles again and Pariah was right. Because Knuckles has the same jump height as everyone else, it allows him to wall jump faster with a lot of height and if there are two walls close to each other, he can wall jump between both walls. It's kind of hard to master but is really cool once you figure it out. If you want to wall jump on one wall, you need to be already stuck to a wall and hit jump + glide while poining the left analog stick whichever direction the wall you're climbing in repeatedly until you reach the top. If you want to do it between two walls, you just jump + glide while pointing the left analog stick up instead of left or right until you get to the top. It makes speed runs with him much better. Idk why there are no videos by Arzest demonstrating this. I guess they figured we would all find out eventually like the Genesis days. It almost took a year for someone to show how to do this.

 

You could argue that some people are being kinder to Superstars 'cos of Oshima's involvement too.

Dogshit visuals, sparse, uninspiring "fuck it, that'll do" environments. A wildly inconsistent soundtrack and tedious boss fights. Shite is shite whoever is making it, and I'd be giving ES stick for it if they were responsible... but it's kind of a moot point really 'cos realistically they wouldn't fuck it up. At least they had the decency to give us an original final level instead of taking us back to space for the millionth time, just because.

 

Counterpoint: Egg Station is cool, actually. The "run it back" gimmick in Act 2 is particularly fantastic, and I'd go so far as to say it's realized better than Titanic Monarch's "unlock this door" system.

 

I agree 100%, it felt like a Metroid Escape sequence taken to another level

 

They could have done the rewind gimmick in any other kind of stage, rather than an out-of-nowhere, boring space station.