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

The dragon thing is reason 101 why there was no need to bring back Classic for this game. If you're picking the Classic lane, you have to stick with it, and let Modern take on all the weird shit. What next? Is Sonic going to be fighting a mutant 50 foot kebab?

 

A dragon final boss was originally planned for 3&K, with a mural depicting it planned to be visible in Mushroom Hill. The Japanese manual for the released Sonic 3 still has bits of this story, with Knuckles believing the Death Egg to be a "Dragon's Egg" from legend. I thought the Superstars dragon was supposed to be referring to all that.

 

Yeah, I don't want Classic Sonic to be solely referential to games from the 90s. He'll always be more rooted there than Modern is, that's fine, but I still want that side of the brand to be able to have its own character origins, stories, and gameplay mechanics, and while it doesn't always stick the landing (I love this game and even I think the Black Dragon is trash), I'm still very happy to see Sega trying new things with the old Sonic.

 

This is irrelevant. The dragon final boss ostensibly is not in the game and isn't a part of the recurrimg themes and elements those games brought, much less so haphazardly. Like if it was a mechanical dragon it would still be weird but you'd be able to think "well Eggman built this at some point for some reason I guess". Likewise you don't see many people justifying, say, Elise because Madonna was sketched at some point.

 

I don't really see anything wrong with the dragon final boss? I mean it's a fairly standard trope for a final fight, and it's not like Sonic hasn't fought weirder things before, Perfect dark gaia is an eldritch horror lol. I guess it doesn't have much foreshadowing throughout the earlier bits of the game, but I think that's more a failing of Superstars' poor conveyance of the lore and plot it tried to build up, than a failing of the boss itself.

 

The Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald are already mystical macguffins that Eggman takes advantage of which eventually get used against him. Not sure why it suddenly becomes such a big deal when you make said macguffin a living thing instead. Eggman's an exploitative piece of shit, I'd probably betray him too! It's just yet another natural evolution in SA1 that fans treat like this big problem because it was a thing in SA1. Maybe the 2000s games used the plotpoint a bit too much but the 2000s games were ripping off everything else from SA1 anyway.

Also I think Knuckles himself counts as this trope so 3&K is "guilty" anyway.

 

Of course it's a matter of conveyance. But you can't separate a story or world element from how it's conveyed. All these games have entire stories about their respective eldritch horrors that explain what they are all about while introducing other elements. Pre-established elements in the series don't need foreshadowing, that's the point. Nobody questions Chaos, much less in Sonic Battle when it had already appeared before-- and even then! They do throw a line about Chaos popping out of the ME when it senses disturbances in the world.

It is a failing of its poor conveyance, but that conveyance is always sorely, sorely needed for introducing things that were never seen before in any way. You won't see too many people questioning Frozen Base Act 2 even though it's a complete departure of Sonic's traditional gameplay. It's a deadass shmup boss! But there's a whole story behind it, it's properly placed in the game progression as the stage that separates The Rest of the Game from The Final Zone (time to get serious!) and even mechanically you had lots of shmup-like moments before it (Sky Temple boss, for example).

Conversely, the whole dragon thing is presented so unevenly throughout the whole game that you end up wondering what is it, even. You first see it as a childlike drawing by Eggman (???) and a teaser. Then it's not immediately coherent with Trip (is she much too young to be as big as the final boss? Does it have a sungazer lizard form too?) and it doesn't build up from any other element in the series (like Chaos). Yes, dragons are a standard final fight -- for universes that deal with medieval fantasy. It isn't so weird for Shining Force. Another standard final fight trope is an Evil Pope, but I suppose you'd need some explanation to have Sonic fighting one.

(And like @Blue Blood said, it's not beyond Superstars to reuse structures and elements even where they don't make sense (Eggrobo, S3&K's act structure, Genesis sounds, space stations))

What are you on about

 

The Chaos Emerald and ME are mysterious on purpose but they're plot elements to be used and misused, not characters. A dragon isn't a plot element, it's a character.

Like Palas said, all the games from SA1 took the time to establish who their final bosses were and why they were fighting you. Those were much more story heavy games than the classics so of course a story like Chaos' with themes like the cycle of revenge in SA1 is a more natural fit than for a game where nobody even talks but that doesn't mean Superstars can just throw out a random dragon and expect people to roll with it. What is it? Why does it fight Sonic? Those are very basic questions to ask and almost any competent 2D platformer can answer at least that much, even a Mario game. We understand who Metal Sonic or Knuckles are and why they'd race and fight Sonic even if you didn't read the manual cause it's obvious enough from what you're shown in-game.

 

I kind of wish that the series had embraced non-Eggman enemies sooner, just so that people wouldn't immediately think it was unfitting when Sonic fought something other than Eggman's and him robots. Sonic fighting aliens, dragons, water monsters, genies and various demon-type-things is all a-okay in my book. Eggman is the main antagonist, but he's not the only force that Sonic has to deal with.

The Black Dragon is perfectly fine as an entity to exist in a Sonic game regardless of era. The only issue with it stems from the fact that it almost entirely lacks any context. You only get to see it as a childish sketch form Eggman in the intro animation, and that's it. The Dragon's egg on the map screen is so easy to miss that it might as well be invisible, and the only other time you see it is as part of a tapestry during the cutscene following Golden Capital Act Knuckles (an optional level, mind you). You'd be forgiven for not even realising it was an egg. If Superstars had bothered to properly establish that there was some kind of connection between North Star Island and dragons (and giant animals cause what are they doing there), then it would be a great change of pace from every other Classic Sonic game. Trip herself is a dragon, so tbh I thought the big reveal when she takes the Emeralds from Fang is that she was the legendary dragon that was seeking all along. The egg? It's a non-entity. Suddenly in the post-game Sonic is just fighting a totally random, space flea from nowhere. And after the fight Trip is shown randomly holding the Egg as the Black Dragon gets sealed inside.

How?

When?

Why?

Superstars fails at basic conveyance. It establishes a few "whats" but never tells us how, when or why.

Following the big and easily misunderstood reveal at the end of Golden Capital 2, the game continues not to bother adhering to any kind of storytelling. The Team goes from Golden Capital to Cyber Station with no fanfare, and then to Frozen Base still with no clear reason to do so. Apparently Eggman's latest space station is in Frozen Base, wedged in a crater. Did it crash land there, or did he just build it like that? If you play Tails' optional level, it looks like the base is pretty dilapidated with damaged Egg Mobiles and such. So Eggman launches the Egg Fortress into space and the team follows in some Egg Mobiles that Tails fixes up. But why does Eggman even launch the Egg Fortress? It's not like in S3K where he's trying to salvage his ultimate creation from the previous game. The Egg Fortress just exists for no reason. Why would Eggman want to go to space when the North Star Island is his main target? And where does that time reversal ability come into the fray? Oh and there's the robot avatar things too. Eggman seems keen to take them to SKy Temple for some reason and then uses them to figght you in Cyber Station. Fuck knows why though.

In fact, in the previous paragraph I talk about "the team". They couldn't even be arsed to establish a premise for the game that shows all the heroes together at any point before the Golden Capital 2 boss. Sonic and Tails give chase in the Tornado when they see Fang kidnapping giant animals. That's fine. Knuckles decides to join in when he sees them fly by and leaps off Angel Island only to land on Bridge Island Zone when gameplay starts. And Amy also sees the Tornado fly past from Green Hill and then also teleports to the Bridge Island Zone. It's like, not plot-hole ridden or anything. It's clearly just a minimal effort affair that doesn't make much sense.

The story for this game just gets an F for effort. Nothing makes a lick of sense.

 

With the black egg and the dragon face showing up the way they did in the Trio of Trouble animation, I wasn't remotely surprised to hear that a big evil black dragon is the final boss. Granted, I don't think the animation is in the game itself, which if not is a huge mistake; it should be the game's opening cutscene or something.

But people also seem to be taking it into consideration anyway, and I don't understand how big black egg and dragon come out of nowhere then. They were established before the game's launch. One of the cutscenes shows Fang walking away with the drawing of the dragon, which worries Trip. We find out Trip is a dragon. In the last story we see the dragon rise from what's possibly a portal, and after it's defeated we see it being sealed (back?) into the egg. While there's a lot of questions we can ask, I don't think this is some incoherent mess like it's being made out to be.

There are dragons on this island. One of them is bad and it's been sealed away. One of them is good, knows about the bad one, doesn't want the bad one out, and seems to assist in sealing it away again. It feels like the only thing actually missing here is an answer to the question "how was the dragon actually unsealed?" I don't think we need to know Trip's backstory, her relationship with the black dragon, the black dragon's backstory, or the black dragon's motivation, as cool and interesting and enriching for the story as those might be.

 

There's a big argument about having to consume supplemental media in order to understand the plot which applies here. For someone that has no idea about the animated shorts, they would have no context for where this Black Dragon came from. Even then, the short doesn't really explain what it is other than Eggman looked at an unexplained mural and drew a crude version of it while Fang dealt with a giant snake.

Supplemental media should compliment and flesh out existing plot points, not tell the story for the media it's supposed to compliment. Take the Knuckles' short for Frontiers, it explains how Knuckles got to the Starfall Islands, but it isn't required to understand the plot since he explains briefly to Sonic how he got there in the game itself.

Superstars needed to flesh out it's story more and I have a feeling that someone involved was trying to minimize it. They wanted a "show don't tell" approach that 3&K did but didn't understand fully how that game did it, resulting in an incoherent set of cutscenes and level transitions (the Trip reveal cutscene was wwll done though, I'll give them that).

 

I went and watched Trio of Trouble again to make sure I wasn't just stupid the first time I watched, and I really have to say I don't think that's really the information you get. But even if you are able to get it, it's still incoherent and strange. What you can see there is:

• Eggman and Fang are being guided by Trip, who uses a helmet so we know nothing about her yet
• Eggman finds a mural that depicts some dudes in helmets like Trip doing a bunch of stuff, Chaos Emeralds, a giant snake (which we do see) and an egg in the center (?) with menacing purple eyes
  • You may infer here the dudes in helmets are performing the Emerald powers. Cool!
• Eggman is interested in the egg and scribbles a dragon

But that's still pretty vague because all we get to know is that Eggman wants a dragon. Since the scribbling is pretty vague too, we have no idea what that means. Then Sonic and gang arrive, Trip befriends Amy like halfway into the normal campaign, but you only learn that Trip is a dragon much later. Maybe she's what Eggman is after! But even then, she's not really a dragon. She's a lizard. Her super form is a dragon. Then the game completely forgets about it for the remainder of Sonic's story, and the earliest you'll see anything even remotely related to dragons again is in Trip's Press Factory (because that's when you can get her super form). Then you'll spend like 16 hours in her final boss fight, and only then for some reason the giant black dragon (which never appeared before) pops out of that portal.

So even if you're smart like I'm not and can connect the dots correctly by Golden Capital, which still seems like a long shot to me, you still won't use that information for anything ever, and you'll see any kind of dragon like three times throughout the two main campaigns, and none of them indicate you'll fight a giant black dragon in the future.

(not to mention yeah Trio of Trouble isn't even in the game iirc lol)

 

I like when Sonic has a chili dog for one frame.

 

Saying that, I do wonder why they don't include the animations in the games.

Even in Frontiers you need to see the Prologue animation to get the context on how Knuckles ended up trapped and how he was already feeling up to that point.

With Superstars, it would've been cool to include the animation, comic and manga with the game.

Is it a legal issue? Do they not want to add more stuff to keep the game's size to a certain point? Or do they feel it would be cannibalize the views on their channels/accounts?

 

My first guess would have been something about a degree of separation between the development teams and marketing teams, with the latter being more responsible for the the animations. That almost sounds like it makes sense, especially because said animations are usually outsourced to other studios in North America. But I don't think that actually checks out. For one, the script for Frontiers was changed during development to remove Knuckles from the intro and therefore accommodate his animation. It can't have been a totally last minute decision or a decision made without much involved from the game development team.

And for two, the in-game cinematics for Superstars were created by Telecom Animation Film in Japan, which I think may be another SEGA subsidiary? And then the Trio of Trouble animation was produced by Powerhouse Studios, ala The Origins, Frontiers and even Super Monkey Ball animations.

So yeah I really don't know why these animations aren't included somewhere in the package. I can understand not wanting to clash styles with something like Frontiers, but that's what the extras menu is for. And as due Superstars, ToT would make the perfect optional intro.

 

The simple answer is that HQ videos take up a lot of space, I imagine SEGA just doesn't want to bother with buying more expensive cartridges on the switch just to include something that most people have easy access to anyway.

 

But the Switch isn't the only platform this game was released for.

"Remove the intro for the Switch version and include it in the other versions? But they can't do that!"

Yes, they can. Team Sonic Racing's intro was removed from the Switch version. They didn't even bother adding it back through a patch.

 

I mean, I agree, which is why I said the short should have been in the game. But I'm talking about members of the community here on Sonic Retro, who presumably had seen the short, expressing the idea that the egg and dragon came out of nowhere to them. And, again, people seemed to be taking it into consideration anyway, which is partly why I brought it up in the first place.

Regardless of whether or not one should have needed to see the short, the dragon's appearance at the end of the game shouldn't be some completely unexpected rug-pull moment for those of us who did see the short (which, if anybody taking part in this conversation didn't see the short beforehand, raise your hand). Because the short clearly shows that Eggman is interested in the dragon. And judging by his eyes (and the fact that he's Eggman), it's probably not for anything good.

I'll walk through my thought process a little bit more I guess.

Trio of Trouble:
- there is a mural depicting a black and purple egg with a dragon's face (including horns), claws, and wings on it
- Eggman is clearly interested in this, with its eyes reflecting off of his glasses in the closing shot
- Eggman scribbles a drawing of a dragon on a piece of paper

This is enough to glean that Eggman wants this dark looking dragon for presumably nefarious purposes. I do think that is enough for me to have been unsurprised that you fight a dragon at the end of the game.

But then there's Trip's connection to it, which comes from places throughout the game proper. Though, as noted, there are also people on the same mural as the egg/dragon who are possibly dressed like Trip.

Story Mode's opening cutscene:
Eggman is admiring the large animals in capsules, before handing Fang what looks to be a reward. Especially with Sega and Sonic Team moving to calling him "Fang the Hunter", I think we can infer that Fang captured these animals for him. Eggman then hands him the scribble of the dragon from Trio of Trouble. Even with Trio of Trouble there's ambiguity as to what the scribble actually means. Is it just a picture of a dragon and Eggman is saying "get me a big dragon next", or is it a representation of Eggman's plan in a way that can be recognizable and communicated to the viewer in cutscenes with no dialog? It's ambiguous, and I think that's okay!

Either way, Fang walks off with it, seeming to know what is being asked of him by being handed the scribble. Trip then takes a look over Fang's shoulder, who then starts to walk away. Then, with sweat drops flying off of her helmet and with hands raised, she chases after Fang. This doesn't seem important by itself, but I will come back to it.

Golden Capital:
Trip transforms into a dragon. It's possible that Trip is the dragon Eggman was after, but she is gold and not just now hatching from an egg, while the one from the mural is inside of an egg and is black and purple. So I think it's reasonable at this point to infer that she is not the dragon Eggman is after. And if we do infer that, I don't think it's a leap to subsequently infer that these two dragons of the Northstar Islands might be related and have some sort of connected history.

Last Story:
The black and purple dragon emerges from what looks like a portal on the water's surface. After it is defeated, it's sealed into a black and purple egg which is being held by Trip.

Putting it all together:
Trip turning into a light colored dragon, and helping to seal the dark colored dragon, has me look at the game's first cutscene in a new light. If the scribble with the dragon is meant to be a utilitarian visual shorthand for the audience's sake, then Trip's flustered reaction that follows from seeing it in Fang's hands has me inferring that Trip understands what Eggman's trying to do and thinks it's bad news.

A lot of what I've written here is me connecting dots, and it doesn't all make as much as sense as I think it does until reaching the end and seeing things from the beginning in a new light. It could be conveyed more clearly and consistently, but I don't think it's a mess.

---

All that said, your point about how much of the game you'll actually be spending not seeing or thinking about dragons is fair, no doubt made worse by the slog that the bosses and Trip's campaign are. So I guess I can't really blame anyone for forgetting some stuff.

The main hole in the dragon plot for me is how it was unleashed in the first place. Who even unleashed it? Was it Fang? Was it Eggman? Both of them? Neither of them? Was the egg found first and the dragon was released from it, or is that just something to seal it in? Was something needed in order to unleash it? I don't think that makes it an incoherent mess, just missing a (pretty important) piece. The mural's implication that the egg/dragon might be connected to the Emerald Powers is also just forgotten.

The truly messy and incoherent part of the whole thing for me is Eggman being in space for some reason at the end, seemingly just because it's a Sonic staple to end the game in space. The egg's presence in the mural would suggest it should be on the Northstar Islands, not off-planet.

Finally, I think while (rightfully) praising Sonic 3 & Knuckles' story and presentation over Superstars', people are also taking for granted just how much of the former game's story we know and understand from hindsight recontextualizations from the later portions of the game, supplementary material (including the manuals), and talking with others about it.

 

The biggest problem with the dragon isn’t that it’s not telegraphed in Trio of Trouble or even the vague hints that it exists in the game itself, it’s that there’s no explanation for how or why it appears. Even a brief in-engine cutscene of Eggman activating the egg or something would establish that, but we don’t even know if he’s the one who summoned it or even if it was summoned at all or just decided to appear on its own, etc. it’s like if Sky Sanctuary and Death Egg didn’t exist in S&K and then had to select Doomsday from the title screen.

 

I've seen the Trio of Trouble short, but that was, what, a year ago? All I remembered was that they investigated some ruins. I forgot about what they saw there.

Speaking purely for myself, I easily miss important details when they're only shown in a hurry without any dialogue. Which is why I barely gleaned anything from the opening cutscene.