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

So... There's South Island, Westside Island, and now Northstar Islands.
Hmm, OK... What about an eastern island? xD

Also, I agree that they could've chosen a better title for the game.
"Orion" seemed like a good starting point for a cool title, with the setting being on Northstar Islands.

 

Making Sonic 5 legitimises the inert, spent wank of a game that was Sonic 4. We need a proper Sonic 4 first before we even think about 5 - the Sonic 4 they did make can be referred to as Sonic 4 Beta.

 

Or simply deem any of the latest released games as THE now-official Sonic4 and leave the prior one on limbo...as usual... ^^"

 

https://twitter.com/LapperDev/status/1667452762412515328
Saw various posts/tweets/reactions assuming that the trailer intro might be part of the game (also I just thought it was so interesting) so I thought I'd point out the editing.

It's so seamless, I love the effort put into this trailer.

 

That is by far the best and most apt description of S4 I've ever seen.

As far as I'm concerned, Mania is the "true" Sonic 4 and Superstars is looking to be a competent Sonic 5 too. The name of Sonic 4 was squandered back in 2010, so that sequential naming sequence no longer means anything. It was already a bit odd anyway because SCD could really have been called S2 and S&K was like... A standalone DLC sequel in the early 90s.

 

since this game is 4 person co-op they could have done the funniest thing and given it a name with the number 4 in the title like "Power of 4" or something like that

I'm fine with the name Sonic Superstars though, I think it rolls off the tongue nicely

 

IMO Sonic 4 (ep 1) could have been fine if it stayed what was upposed to be: a cheap mobile game based on motion sensors.
The error was to turn it into Sonic 4. It should have remained just a random smartphone app.

I still have Ep1 installed on my phone and occasionally I replay a couple of random levels to kill some time. When you play it with motion sensors, the weird physics and the automated level design make more sense. A simple game where you just tilt the phone left and right, and you don't have to be precise because there are boosters and HA chains everywhere, to automate your movements; no momentum makes the tilt movements a bit easier to control. It's unoriginal, uninspired, whatever you want to call it, but if it stayed "Sonic the Portable", it would have been totally acceptable. Nobody would complain too much about Sonic Jump, for example; that's what Sonic 4 should have been.

Episode 2 is worse because it was designed as a part of "Sonic 4" since the beginnng... it was annoying to play with motions because it was not designed with motion in mind unlike Ep 1, and there's the additional input for Tails. It's an hybrid that fails at being both a mobile game and a console game, while still trying to be both.

Anyway I wouldn't be against a complete reboot of "Sonic 4" as a new game in a similar way as how Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 have an 8 bit counterpart. I would even keep the same overall "story", Metal Sonic, Little Planet and all, just turn it into a completely different game.

 

If Arzest are involved then I'm especially interested - fuck the haters, I loved Balan Wonderworld, Blinx is one of my favourite games of all time and they made the only Yoshi's Island game I actually liked. Bring it on.

 

I wouldn't even go that far, a lot of S4's level design is worth salvaging. It's all down to making it look, sound and feel correct. The thing about stage themes, for instance, is that you can keep "tropical island" without making it "green hill", as Superstars is proving right now. Make it more sandy, change what kind of plants, tinker with the hues of grass and terrain, all of this can keep it from feeling like a repeat even if it technically *is* one, especially since the stage gimmicks aren't really that tied to GHZ anyway.

But obviously this is more a candidate for a fan remake than SEGA, I think. If you did a "Sonic Origins Volume 2" for the 32-bit games, it'd make a good stocking stuffer with Mania and Retro Engine Chaotix, but I know that's not happening, sadly.

 

At this point it'd be better to forget Sonic 4 existed beyond as a testament to Sega being idiots for its existence. Like, Generations referenced it in a leitmotif hijacking from Live & Learn, but beyond that Sega themselves firmly abandoned it after it failed so miserably. Mania usurped it and this seems to be everything people wanted from it.

 

This is a post-Mania world, hell, maybe they thought no one actually cared that much until they saw Mania's review scores trouncing everything they had done for two decades.

 

Been waiting to collect my thoughts before commenting.

The game looks good but there's something about it which just doesn't excite me that much. I'm not really sure. The game looks very good visually and they are doing new things. But for some reason I'm just not that exited. Maybe I would have felt similarly if I saw a Mania sequel. I think I just have higher standards now for new Sonic games because of how good games are at the moment. Been playing Street Fighter 6 lately for example, which is so creative and unique.

I think this game is going to need excellent level design and presentation like the Rayman games. I also think that even though the game is trying new things nothing really looks that imaginative. The level design is evoking old games or is pretty generic. The gimmicks are similarly unimaginative and are a lot like the ok gimmicks from Sonic 4. It kind of looks a bit like a knock off spinoff Sonic as mean as that might sound. Perfectly competently made and probably enjoyable but not that memorable. A modern day equivalent of Sonic Advance or Pocket Adventure.

As much as people bash the Classic Sonic in Generations, that game had much more interesting gimmicks and imaginative level set pieces. Probably because it was aping very well designed games. The cyber level looks better and hopefully the creativity applies to the whole game.

That said, I'm pretty confident the game will be good. They clearly understand what makes Classic Sonic enjoyable and are putting effort in. It looks far better than the likes of Frontiers. I just don't really see anything that wows me. The multiplayer option is very interesting though.

Might change as I see more of the game. I will be following it!

I will say that it is an interesting time to be a Sonic fan with Frontiers eventually getting multiple character DLC and now this game. As much as I disliked Frontiers it was good to see Sonic Team taking risks. Hopefully we have left the monotony of the 2010s.

 

Now that i've seen plenty of gameplay footage and ignoring the music since it seems temp, this is sonic 4 episode 3.

 

Maybe this deserves its own thread but there seems to be this strange sense of insecurity among Sonic fans wrt whether the newest game will be good or not. Discussion and critique is fine but some of the defenses go a bit too far and personal. Maybe this is just me, though.

For the record, I had fun with Frontiers and think this game looks good, so don't take this as me trying to shit on "the other side" so to speak.

Spoiler

I even had some fun with Forces, I'm an easily entertained guy I guess :P

 

I think the issue here is, with a show or so you can go blind and with low to no expectations. If you end up not liking it, you only wasted a bit of time.
With games, not so easy. You wanna try the experience yourself, you gotta spend a decent amount of money on it. So you want it to be worth its buck.

More than once have fans felt screwed up by SEGA hyping people and then not delivering (or not doing it properly), hence the defensive stance of many.

 

Mania is a sort of classical celebration and an anniversary title with a few of its own stages. It's not truly a standalone sequel. I think we should just acknowledge Sonic 4 instead of sweeping it under the rug, as it is the intended identity of that game. The nature of development for CD and S&K were a part of why they're designated as they are, but they each have their own distinct places despite one not being a sequential entry and the other being part of Sonic 3. The same applies for Mania, I'd say. Both Superstars and Sonic 4 are primarily new games in their settings and Zones, maintaining individual identity instead of being primarily referential, supplementary, or celebratory tribute. I don't know if Sonic Team technically regards Superstars as Sonic 5 or is holding off from the distinction due to differences in design or some kind of internal metrics, but that's the number I'd be considering, personally.

 

I mean. Sonic 4 is both referential and celebratory. But it's not explicitly made to be an anniversary throwback the way Mania and Generations were, with those games having time/space shenanigans to bring back prior stages and characters and stuff.

 

If you had asked me a week ago what I thought a classic game by Sonic Team would be like, my answer would've been pretty negative. But here we are, and I'm blown away by how much it seems like they got right.

There's still time for them to screw this up, but the visuals look competent and stylistically coherent (and the character models are awesome!); the physics seem to be at least most of the way there; and the level design at least allows for some exploration, even if we've yet to see how rewarding it really is to explore it.

I would've expected this game to be, like, a 6.5 out of 10. Now it feels like that's the floor.

 

Honestly who gives a shit if we ever get a game with "Sonic the Hedgehog 5" printed on the box (metaphorically speaking)? Like yeah we can discuss how catastrophic Sonic 4 was as a game and how its branding almost certainly damned it even further, but that's extrinsic issue and Sonic 4 would still be a mediocre entry regardless of its title. Likewise, Mania is sublime and Superstars looks like it could be a really solid entry. At this point, I don't even know who such a title would be for. If I'm not mistaken, the last time we got a numbered title outside of Sonic 4 was Sonic Advance 3 (no, Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom doesn't count, you pedantic git), which of course made sense because that meant specific thing, being the third Advance game. Meanwhile, "Sonic 5" would be the umpteenth Sonic and I think would unnecessarily suggest a stronger connection to the original trilogy than there really would be. Numbered games just aren't a thing Sonic does anymore and I just can't see a perspective from which returning to that makes sense.

 

Richard actually returned in Team Sonic Racing to work with a song with Jun Senoue. But you're right tho', he's not part of "SEGA SOUND TEAM" anymore, his recent works at SEGA were as a freelancer.