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

I think it's difficult to group the Advance games together. The first one, at least, isn't really "a completely different experience than the classics". Especially when, unlike Superstars, it actually got the 'badnik bouncing' right. This is one area that very much "counts" for me.

Might seem like a small thing, especially since I seem to be the only person in this thread ever complaining about it. But that's been part of the Classic Sonic toolkit since Sonic 1, and it forms an essential piece of my playstyle across all of the classic games. Thus its proper presence (or absence) helps distinguish the real ones from the imitators in my eyes. And the more vertical space there is to play in, the more the move's botching is felt. So, this is especially egregious with the amount of verticality that Superstars' stages have. Incredible missed opportunity that is honestly a bigger blight on the game to me than the weak excuse for "co-op", sloggy bosses, bland visual presentation, and lopsided soundtrack put together.

If they didn't fuck that up, then yeah, I'd hold it in the same general family that I put 1, 2, CD, 3K, Advance 1, and Mania in, even with the bosses and the music being what they are. Add whatever experimental or dumb bullshit you want on top of the core template, but don't fuck with the template, is all I ask. To Superstars' credit, it fucked with the template much less than Sonic 4, Generations, or Forces did, so I am happy about that at least. It reached the gate, but I can't let it in.

 

Please explain to me how.

As I posted previously in this thread, most of the levels don't feel like Sonic levels at all. In particular, they don't flow well, and there's a lack of slopes. It also took the wrong lessons from Sonic Mania, like propelling Sonic forward a lot instead of allowing the player to make use of momentum.

 

...Lack of slopes? I don't agree with anything you said at all (like any other good Sonic game once you start learning the levels its easy to get into a comfortable flow state) but this one comment just stuck out as particularly wild. What do you mean by that

 

I felt that the majority of the terrain was filled by blocks, platforms, and other gimmicks.

 

It's something we can kind of count, and I might at some point, but the memory I have is of a game with more gimmicks that give you a fixed speed than normal (the zip lines in Sand Sanctuary and Cyber Station, the vine rails and the tubes in Speed Jungle, those carts in Pinball Carnival Act 2) and, most importantly, a little less path switching due to verticality than I'd like. Bridge Island actually has a lot of slopes that let you access areas you otherwise wouln't be able to, but past that I don't recall it happening that much. But then again it doesn't make it not on point to me. Looks well within a "margin of error" if we can call it that.

Speaking of Sand Sanctuary, doesn't it seem to you like it would have made a lot of sense for Sand Sanctuary to have an Act 2? It strikes me as weird that it has only one act whereas the place in Trio of Trouble with the murals and, well, most of the story bits that would have made it make sense are in fact located there (or at least the big snake makes me believe that).

 

Found the best selling price for this game.

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I'm shocked they never released a patch for the music.

 

Can’t say I’m shocked about that, but the fact that the game has song absolute bangers right next to dogshit is in and of itself surprising

 

It will be so funny if one of Superstars "MD" songs be remixed in Sonic Rumble with good arrangement.

 

Yeah, it's the sheer level of inconsistency in the soundtrack that gets me too. As soon as we learned that Senoue was producing for a classic themed game I was concerned, but then we learned that Tee was on-board along with a host of other artists and it seemed like things could be alright. In the end we got a smattering of tracks across the spectrum from Splash Hill to Studiopolis so to speak (and grossly over-simplify).

I find it saddening that Senoue would listen to tracks that created he such as like Golden Capital 1 or the horrendous Act 2 boss theme and think "yes this is good and just what we need" following a game like Mania and alongside tracks such as Lagoon City 2 and Pinball Carnival 2. Did he seriously not hear any negative feedback back S4 and Origins, or learn a damn thing from all the praise of Mania?

 

Well... At least I like the Final Boss fight theme.

Spoiler

By Final Boss fight, I mean the Black Dragon.

 

Not to be rude, but are we in the wrong thread? This thread was used for leaked Switch release of the game.

 

I... genuily didn't noticed until you told so.

 

I'm playing Sonic Superstars again after a few months and it got me wondering why the game was made with the Unity engine. I understand Unity is used for other 2D platform games and can be a great fit, but why didn't they use Hedgehog Engine 2?
I think the graphics could have been so much better with the better lighting in HE 2. Not that the graphics for Sonic Superstars are bad or anything, I think the game looks great and runs at a stable 60 fps on PS5.
Or has the engine choice something to do with the Nintendo Switch in order to get the game running at 60 fps?

What I really like about Sonic Superstars is that the physics are the same as Sonic Mania and even the animations match the way classic Sonic moves, accelerates and jumps/rolls.

 

I can only speculate, but it might come down to a cost-benefit analysis of getting outside devs to grips with HE2. It wasn't used for Colours and it isn't being used for Generations (though the latter seems to be more of a resources issue with the focus on Shadow Generations). It's a real shame really, Shadow Generations is a brilliant showpiece for this tech and even if the only change it'd hypothetical make to Superstars is the lighting, I think it'd do a lot for that game.

 

Hedgehog Engine is a proprietary engine, so it's very likely Arzest would've had no experience in using it and would've needed to spend way more of the dev time actually learning how it works. Meanwhile, they're likely more experienced with Unity, and Unity has more support and documentation out there too. It makes sense to use an engine you've used before.

 

The Hedgehog Engine isn't being used for Generations? What? Source?

But anyway, yeah. The Hedgehog Engine is proprietary. Back in the early days of development in 2007/8, SEGA toyed with the idea of licensing the engine to other studios, but those plans never came to fruition. Nobody else would know how to use it effectively. It wouldn't make any sense for Arzest to try to create Superstars using it when they're already familiar with Unity and it's better documented for other studios to use. It's the same reason that Blind Squirrel used their own proprietary Godot-based engine for Colours Ultimate too.

If Superstars was an in-house project by Sonic Team, it almost certainly would have been built on the Hedgehog Engine. But it's more than likely that it was never on the cards to begin with.

 

@Blue Blood I'm talking specifically about HE2.

 

Oh right. In that case, yeah. SEGA were never going to bother. Generations doesn't look bad. I'd hazard it would be more effort than it's worth to port it to a newer version of the Hedgehog Engine, even if Shadow Generations wasn't a factor.

I think the real issue with Superstars on the Unity Engine is the same as everything else wrong with the game; Arzest are a pretty mid studio who put out mid products. Superstars is probably one of their best titles, and we all know it's far from anything special. In the hands of another developer, Unity games can look much better than Superstars does.

 

Their a mid as hell studio but I give them credit for actually making the effort in replicating how the classic games control as much as possible. That's more effort than Sonic Team has ever done with their own 2D efforts. It's like someone there remembered they were making a Sonic game and not a generic 2D platformer.