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

I need more Japanese developed games made to appeal to their fictional idea of Americans.

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we need these guys back

 

It's because of this:

Sonic fans have been actively trying to throw classic under the bus for a while, because they would rather have a new Sonic Advance instead and that classic is hogging up resources for that.. Doesn't matter that the 3D games are already modern Sonic, the whole series should be dedicated to pumping out more content that moves that story forward or else it's wasted time.

And yes I'm emphasizing story here because no one who cares about gameplay would want another Sonic Advance game.

 

That's a weird thing to assert. The new best-received game in the series is a navel-gazing retread of a retread without any particular plot threads to speak of, unless you consider the letter T to be that big a deal, if that's even what it is. It's not like the Advance games were full of cutscenes and voice acting anyway. They basically are just more classic Sonic games, I'm not even sure what specific traits would necessarily distinguish them other than length and 2/3 cranking the speed up.

More than that, I want them to ditch classic as a brand because I want modern Sonic to be more like classic Sonic. I want it to keep everything it's trying to do to have stakes and interesting character writing, and I want it to have surreal colorful worlds and a fun atmosphere. The more they treat these as separate brands, the more excuses they have to not do that. I want Classic Sonic to be obsolete, which it basically was in the 2000s 2D games anyway. Plus, I think even with all the problems people have with the current models or whatever, modern Sonic's design is clearly still better-suited to 3D graphics than Classic Sonic's. If it can't look like the 2D art, it can at least not feel really weird like it does in Generations.

Also, I don't think it's really fair to criticize people for wanting story content from the series, nor would I characterize their vision as "dedicated to pumping out more content that moves that story forward". People want interesting stories, and even if you think that Sonic 3 is a masterpiece of minimalist writing or whatever, clearly that's not what people are getting from games with no dialogue and cutscenes that mostly just connect stages without slowing down much. Sonic hasn't stopped being episodic and the stories people like these days aren't liked for "progressing" anything in particular, they're just a lot less embarrassing than they were in 2017.

 

Any series that goes on for decades needs to stratify or its fanbase will never be satisfied. TMNT reinvents itself every 6 or 7 years but it always goes back to the 80s TV show. Power Rangers can use newer Sentai footage every season but it always comes back to the 90s incarnation. Transformers always goes back to Gen 1 style eventually. Sonic is no different. SAGE and SHC exist around Classic Sonic being a huge inspiration, both in game design and aesthetic. Just because Superstars wasn't everything it needed to be to follow up Mania doesn't mean people don't like Classic Sonic anymore. In an age where Sega is pulling out all of its neglected IPs out of the basement, Classic Sonic won't be forgotten. It just needs a stronger direction and larger budget than Superstars and Origins received.

I get that 2000s kids want Advance revivals and I'm right there with them. It's their turn to be pandered to, if this Year of Shadow was anything to go by. But Classic is timeless.

 

Both Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic should die. The segmentation of modern and classic into binary branches is one of the dumbest choices imho. I said it before but "Classic" and "Modern" should be treated as artstyles, plain and simple. More than anything I wish they would experiment with Sonic's artstyle more often, his original design is so intentionally simplistic that it lends itself to a variety of different styles and yet they never do anything interesting with it.

They could make a new game with these exact designs and there should be absoloutely zero reason why it can't canonically take place after Frontiers.

like, these are two different takes on the exact same character except one of them canonically exists later in the timeline.

Long running franchises reach a point of stagnation and zombification because they refuse to experiment with their styles.

Sonic's design lends itself so well to experimentation. Modern Sonic will continue to be the default Sonic but he's so divorced from his stylistic origins which were late 90's graffiti art.

 

This is sort of how I feel about Sonic Colors. The DS version is very obviously a successor to Rush and Rush Adventure with some new features (i.e., wisps) as it is very boost-focused and 2D with a sparing amount of 3D segments / segments with different perspective. But the Wii version is as well, almost exclusively 2D (especially in the challenge acts, where I don't think a single one of them is 3D) combined with 3D segments that tend to be more basic than in Unleashed and certainly occupy much less of any given level. I don't know if it's true but Lost World WiiU also felt like it had far more 2D segments than 3D (though level length and pacing was incredibly inconsistent in that one) and the vast majority of people would agree, I think, that Forces' 3D segments are even more trivial than Colors.

Ultimately I would agree, and even if Sonic Rush hadn't been the first game to give us the boost (I maintain that it's more like a streamlining of Adventure's spin dash spamming) that basically every game since Unleashed borrows its sensibilities from the handheld games between Advance 2 and Colors DS due to how their 2D and 3D sections relate to each other. Given that Forces and Generations explicitly made their second gameplay style exclusively 2D (even if it is 'classic' Sonic) I think I have to agree with the idea that especially since the 3DS there's just no place to put nor particular need for an exclusively 2D modern title because the modern series relies so heavily on 2D segments to give their levels more depth than a Sonic 2 special stage

 

People complain so much about the 2D sections in modern Sonic as it is; I think it does make sense to have an entirely-3D series and an entirely-2D one. I wouldn't completely mind if the 2D entries used whichever art style they chose for those, the problem is that I think that aside from character designs (which, yes, could stand to be more similar to each other anyway, there's a reason snubnoze is pulling out that 3D Blast art that already looks like SA1 art), there's almost nothing that modern Sonic does that classic hasn't, and it usually does it better. Classic Sonic still has more-representational stuff, cities like Star Light, it's only the pinball architecture that makes it feel more surreal than City Escape. This is why I'm saying there's not really a distinction, since the Advance games aren't out-of-place at all in terms of looking like classic Sonic, aside from their specific rendering I suppose.

I just feel like the clear distinctions the series has drawn since 2010 are exacerbating problems that didn't used to be there, at least for 2D games.

 

*sigh* This didn't come from nowhere...

I'm sorry, but classic fans in the 2000s, especially late 2000s, were absolute dicks to people who enjoyed newer content. A lot of it was backed by the modern press, mixed criticial reception, and the general fallout of SEGA no longer being a hardware developer, but from 1998-2010 or so, the internet, and forums like this one in particular, were filled with a lot of stupid attitudes that made it seem like it was impossible for anyone to enjoy newer content.

Obviously, the long term success of characters like Shadow prove that despite some of the very serious issues with 2000s era sonic games, the ideas and characters behind them were still broadly popular. Sonic is 'more' than just a video game character, he's been a media brand icon ever since around 1993 or so. I've known people who are hardcore fans of sonic the character despite rarely ever playing the classic games, or even the game in general at all.

As someone who's been following this brand since the early days, and the internet culture itself regularly since 1998... and who keeps coming back as the potential I saw in it only 'now' gets realized decades later, I have to say that the tension between older and younger fans is one I don't enjoy, but it has a basis and I think people here need to look in the mirror and reflect on where it all started. To give one very specific example (Sorry SSN), well known early content creators like SSNTails built their very early reputation off of mocking and sticking it to the adventure era brand, because Sonic Adventure was "wrong". His early website was built around mocking the adventure series bit by bit before he went off to do his own art and game design (leading to SRB2 as we know it, a brilliant product in its own right). He wasn't too mean about it, but it's one of the more common examples I saw of that early movement where the brand split in the eyes of the fandom long before SEGA itself did it.

I remember the countless critiques just in the 3 Dreamcast years alone, despite the game being made by several of the OG team members and it very much being the next type of game they wanted to make. "Stupid buttrock sountrack", "ow the edge", "forward to win", "shitty friends", "sonic should never talk", "Big is the worst thing ever made", ect. ect. There was a lot of toxicity that made it hard to even speak up and say you liked the 2000s games as well as the 90s titles, even if you knew they were very different.

There were countless examples of this. Lots of weird arguments in Sonic Cult, Area51, and other early classic spaces that led to all this. Now, this board here today is much more chill than it used to be, and most of you now treat 2000s era Sonic as a "classic" era in its own right due to its age and the more fond nostalgia most have for it, but it's taken us a very long time to get there. I think it's fair to acknowledge that the Classic fans have to own up to some of those attitudes and recognize that the version of Sonic they didn't care for has gained a passionate set of fans who love it just as much as we do the 90s era titles. No matter which style of gameplay you prefer, we need to recognize that each style has brought their own unique fans to the brand.

Again, it is what it is. This board is way better now and I'm not pointing fingers at any one person, just reminding people to not throw Gen Z fans under the bus too quickly lest we forget our own long 30 years of history.

 

It's true that 2000-2013 or so did have a large number of people who were classic fans and hated modern Sonic. They mocked the concept of liking those games as not being a true fan. I think it is very important to note that point. It was very strong in those times and even people like myself would pretend not to like games like Adventure because it wasn't considered a respectable opinion. Especially because it was an encouraged and lazy sentiment spread by journalists in those times.

But if anything I feel like the modern Sonic fan generation who grew up in that era have become very bitter back. i think they do tend to be fairer in actually giving games like Superstars a chance. So that really does deseve credit. But I have seen clear expressions of paranoia in the perceived encroachment of the classic aesthetic and gameplay style, coupled with a laser focus on the quirks of the modern games. The bemoaning of the lack of serious dark stories, large cast of playable characters, strictly 3D gameplay. The mass promotion of Unleashed as the last true Sonic game. Which is fine if a bit melodramatic. But I also think it often manifests in criticising elements of Sonic associated with the 'other side', such as 2D gameplay, lighter storylines, only Sonic as a playable character. As if that side getting any ground is an existential threat to what they consider Sonic. I think that's what really drives the hatred of Colors. It is clearly a good game (if unremarkable) but it symbolises the death of their Sonic.

I don't think franchise loyalty should be some sacred thing mind. That everyone loves every incarnation of a brand or your arent a true fan. But I do think often the Sonic fandom has a fairly uncommon problem with people really valuing the tastes of what they consider Sonic and not approaching the games fairly on their own terms.

 

They are such a significant downgrade gameplay wise that it's hard to consider them part of the same series. The reason people do enjoy them anyway is the stylish sprite work, settings, increased story focus and larger cast of characters. These additions are all well liked because of the higher engagement with characters. Story might not be the goal, but getting every morsel you can of the characters in any way possible is.

That's not how it will work out though. Modern Sonic, with the focus on characters gimmicks and spectacle is the game Sonic team wants to make. Classic is a formality. They engage with it for brand reasons, but the modern Sonic team has never been very suited for the type of game it is and never cared for it in the same way. Eliminating classic Sonic also eliminates any obligation for anything like classic Sonic to exist, as Modern hasn't cared to be like Classic in a very long time and won't start now that it's finally started to make a dent doing it's thing.

I'm not criticizing anyone for wanting more story out of the series. I don't care if they do. I'm just making an observation. It's not hard to see the way the winds are blowing. I do think it's a shame that the series's unique gameplay stopped being the focus in favor of characters that aren't all that unique, but that's no one fan's fault.

 

Technically, that Rush-derived 2D modern Sonic still exists, but only in the 3D games that have released starting with Unleashed. Which I think is the weird thing with the whole 2D/3D gameplay management. Sonic Team to this day hasn't produced in-house a pure 2D Sonic game in general, let alone produced in-house a pure MD Sonic game. But when you have games with high volumes of 2D gameplay in them like Forces, Colors, and even Shadow Generations (pretty sure Radical Highway is the only zone with two primarily --if not entirely-- 3D stages), there's no real reason as to why they haven't or couldn't. Likewise, Sonic 2006 I'm pretty sure still remains the last mainline Sonic game that is designed with primarily (if not entirely) 3D gameplay in mind.

Personally I just chalk it up to their design philosophy to building their games (once again) being on a different wavelength from virtually everyone else.

 

I'm not trying to excuse toxic younger fans when I point all this out, just reminding people where the attitude came from and why it's ended up this way. Sadly, it's a bit cyclical and I hope we can break it with time. Bad attitudes should be called out wherever they exist, whether from younger or older fans on either end of the aisle.

I consider myself a classic fan first, but I loved SA1/SA2 deeply when they came out and put a ton of time into them. It was not an either/or thing, I just enjoyed them for what they were even if they didn't quite live up to my "ideal". In fact, the dreamcast years were probably the happiest gamer years of my younger days. It wasn't really until Shadow 05/Sonic 06 that I felt the team's efforts really began to fall apart, and even then I've come to realize that those games, silly and flawed as they may be, very much have their own fans too who enjoy them for their weird quirks. I genuinely like the Shadow storyline in 06, but hated the concept of the retconned Black Doom in Shadow 05, yet I'll admit both elements were handled in a very clever way in x Shadow Generations this year and I found the level of hype generated refreshing after all those years of strong negativity around the character. I'm genuinely happy that such a silly/weird part of the brand can bring people joy now, so I just ask modern fans in return to give us some grace for still enjoying classic style gameplay.

In my ideal world, we get a new mania style classic game every so often while new more experimental modern games continue to be made. I'm sure Frontiers will get a direct followup and I hope it ends up being genuinely good. I hope Sonic 3 is a massive box office success and helps keep the brand's hype going so that money could help fund more high quality games one way or another, and I hope the fandom continues to flex its own incredibly creative muscle and fixes a few of the titles SEGA leaves behind, including Superstars if some improved Plus version is never made. I'm still mad about the state of this game, but I want to play a better version of it someday, somehow.

 

I'm not sure personal opinions are a good way to judge what does and doesn't count among the ranks of old-school style 2D Sonic. Chaotix and Blast (most of the Game Gear games, really) are total dogshit but I would never deny their place alongside the other classic games. With Advance and 4 you have the argument about designs, sure, but I doubt most people would hesitate with where to put Mania if it starred the modern cast.

Also not a big fan of this supposition that people just...didn't enjoy the games as games. That certainly didn't hold true for any of the other "pretty to look at, not fun to play" games that the second half of the 2000s gave us. Maybe Unleashed, but people are quick to go for the fucking throat if you suggest that it's version of the boost gameplay is anything but the best possible execution of it.

Personally, other than hating Egg Rocket and the bosses/some levels in 2, I sure liked them because they were mostly just fun to play. I don't like them more than Sonic 2 or 3K, but that hardly seems like a good distinguishing factor on its own.

I'm also still not really seeing this story comment. There really is not that big a difference at all. Yeah they have more characters, but does that make Mania Plus and Superstars more like Advance games? Is the four sentences each of dialogue in 2 and 3 really that big a draw? I don't see it.

Also Sonic Battle has all of that same appeal and I think way more people understand that game is an utter fuckin chore from start to finish

If you're arguing that Advance doesn't belong with the other 2D games, but presumably not that Sonic Advance is more like Sonic Adventure than Sonic 2 (in which case I would bop you with a comically-oversized inflatable cartoon hammer from Chuck E Cheese), then necessarily replacing these "Modern Classic" type games with something more similar to Advance would make the modern series as a whole quite a bit more like Classic Sonic. Saying "well that's not the kind of game Sonic Team makes" doesn't really change that because I was never asking for Sonic Team specifically to be the ones doing this.

Like, they're gonna make side games either way even if they axed the Classic branding. What do you think they'd make if it wasn't more 2D Sonic?

I mean that's kind of a different thing than what you said before, but I still don't think you're right. The Storybook games are the ones being lauded for their writing these days, and despite people wanting more of that writing, there's not really been a huge push in either the fandom or the official side for a return to anything else those games did. I don't think Forces would suddenly have gotten 8s and 9s if it had a great story.

 

Perhaps this belongs in the unpopular opinion thread, but aside from the flaws others have mentioned, I think what really hurt this title is how formulaic it feels and how much it sticks to what came before.

Even with its 3D elements, emerald powers, and multiplayer features, it still struggles to distinguish itself from the earlier Genesis games.

Next time, I hope they push the formula further and explore what 2D can truly be.

I've always felt that City Escape Act 1 from Generations is a fantastic example of a Classic Sonic experience (physics aside) that you just can't replicate by replaying the original trilogy or CD. It's brilliant how they incorporated the GUN truck into the level design.

More creative ideas like that would be amazing, though not every level needs to reinvent the wheel.

The same goes for the story and music. Level transitions don’t have to disappear, but why not add cutscenes like the ones in Secret Rings or Black Knight? The characters don’t need voice acting, but at least we could see their dialogue and the story unfold in ways that weren’t possible in the '90s.

As for the music, ever since Forces, I get the impression that some at Sega believe Classic Sonic needs to sound a certain way because Sonic 2 sold so well back in the day.

Generations and Mania had cool music directions, so I don’t understand why Forces and parts of Superstars reverted to an older style. The next Classic Sonic game should leave that mindset behind. It can take inspiration from '90s music, but it’s clear that not everyone loves the Mega Drive sound direction.

 

VRR has nothing to do with it. VRR is for when the framerate is below the framerate target which in case of Sonic Superstars is 60 fps. Sonic Superstars on PS5 never drops below 60 fps.
I think some people don't notice input lag even when it's there. They just adjust to it. Other people are really sensitive when it comes to input lag.
And it also depends on what TV you're using and the mode you use. Some people don't use game mode which will result in higher input lag.

 

I might be wrong here but if a game is using Triple Buffered VSync it will cause input lag even when the frame rate is locked but VRR will in theory disable it on PS5 when it’s running in the 48-60hz window. No clue if Superstars is triple buffered though.

 

Does Dream Team have any 2D sections?

 

This. I get why people don't want "Classic Sonic" to exist when Sega has a very specific idea of what "Classic Sonic" means that heavily impact both those games and other games. Regardless of how successful Superstars is, I hope it does mean they break out of the self-imposed box and do something new; failing that, bring back sub-series that can do more.

 

Sonic Dream Team is fully 3D and I love it!!!

Edit: Whether Sega decides to keep or do away with Classic Sonic’s character, they should still keep the Classic art style in 2D. I see no harm in using Modern Sonic’s character with the classic look like Sonic Megamix. I mean that would get rid of the complaint of having 2 Sonics. Then maybe you can see a Classic Sprite Styled Shadow, Blaze, or Silver. I’m not ready hang up on something that has worked for years! Classic 2D has always been the best style of 2D. Why would we want to put an end to that because of one game (that’s not even that bad).