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

Well again, Amy has had a double jump before, it's not like her having the ability is unheard of. And 2nd, I think a lot of people (especially the casual audience) would probably just prefer her having a double jump over a bubble shield style bounce, given it's like the most common form of additional vertical movement in platformers and therefore most people understand how it works just from the get-go. It's not like people wouldn't get a bounce but something like that, especially if its identical to the bubble shield, would probably end up being a lot more situational in comparison.

(I for one can't think of more then a couple of times where I used the bubble shield's bounce for anything other then slamming into an enemy slightly faster)

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Amy could break spikes with her hammer or something.

The double jump is fine. Not interesting, necessarily, but it's fine.

 

This is INCREDIBLY encouraging. Who knew they had such an ace up their sleeve ready to drop on even the most jaded of the fandom?! The fact they built this from the physics/mechanics on up is most telling about it's potential. And now having seen a few demos of it in action, it really does appear to have the 'Mania' physics in play.

Loving the art direction, character designs and overall 'feel' in these most recent GameSpot videos. I will say that this particular music track for the vine level is pretty underwhelming. It's the one thing that's really evoking the worst of Sonic 4. That said, it's only one level, and it's arguably still 3 months out from locking stuff in.

Perhaps Tee Lopes is being a bit cheeky/troll-y because he's being brought in to polish / punch up the music tracks? It wouldn't be unheard of. Even re-orchestrating this current track with better samples (and a stronger arrangement) would go a long way in taking it away from the DIMPS musical landscape.

 

A Scrooge Mcduck-style bounce with her hammer really does just make much more sense. The double jump has nothing to do with her hammer or anything really besides it being in the worst 3D Sonic game. And what she could do in 06 isn't any more important than what she could do in Adventure/Advance/whatever. I don't know what it has to do with helping her keep up in co-op considering we've got another character who can literally just fly over and away from everyone whenever they feel like.

 

Am I the only one who doesn’t feel like Sonic has the “worst” abilities out of everyone? In S3&K & Mania I actually prefer to play as Sonic because I find that his elemental shield abilities provides far better and faster mobility than either of Tails’ fly and Knuckles’ climbing/gliding abilities. And during times you don’t have an elemental shield, you could even argue that insta-shield makes him OP.

 

I think what makes Sonic boring is precisely that he only gets interesting with items you have to find and can easily lose.

 

I've never thought flying and gliding were super interesting to play with honestly. Flying is slow and trivializes a lot of things, and with gliding/wall climbing I feel like I just end up climbing walls to nowhere a lot. My favorite gameplay style is Sonic + Tails because flying feels less OP with how big the combined hitbox is and I just like Sonic's abilities, be it Insta Shield or Drop Dash.

 

Maybe because I know S3&K like the back of my hand the “find” part has never been an issue, and the “easily lose” part also isn’t really an issue either (for me at least) because they’re so OP, and to be honest I hardly ever get hit lol

 

Iizuka did mention that the special and bonus stages are altered (either in design or difficulty) for co-op. I’m wondering if the main levels might also get altered designs for co-op. This could allow for more exploration in single player. Also I think I saw a clip yesterday of someone collecting a medallion in the main level… am I misremembering? If I’m correct than there would be incentive for exploration in the main levels

I absolutely love the Ducktales NES game so giving Amy an Unca’ $crooge-esque hammer bounce would’ve been awesome!

I def agree that in 3K and Mania I never felt like Sonic had less tools at his disposal thanks to the elemental shields. I honestly hope superstars still has elemental shields. Anyways, I usually play as Sonic in 3k and Mania but I love playing as Tails, Knuckles and Ray almost as much. In fact I’m looking forward to 100%ing superstars once with each character

 

The drop dash and insta-shield made him even with the other characters in my opinion. I'm a Knuckles guy but I played with Sonic a lot with no Tails in S3&K. When they added the drop dash in Mania, that allowed me to speed through levels, which made the game more fun.

 

Ok, this clip shows that there are collectable medals in the single player levels. We also get a full look at the sonic CD-scrapped special stages. Interestingly the main special stage is shown but the player’s awarded medals not an emerald.

https://xcancel.com/worthplaying/status/1667614343511543808?s=46&t=S0_YkQ8TRA2Bk54XvKgWfw

 

I think this is also final confirmation that these bonus stages are built from the scrapped CD Concept?

This is at least the first footage I’m seeing that confirms the BG layer wasn’t just aesthetic

 

The entire game uses the background and foreground mechanic. The fact that it's in the Bonus Stages in no way confirms that it has anything to do with the scraped Special Stages from CD.

 

Mainly meant in the sense of “multi-layer special stage”

until this footage afaik it was just us speculating that the stages would be multi-level mazes; we hadn’t actually seen sonic move between them yet

it’s just also not a far reach to assume a link between the two concepts considering Oshima’s involvement

 

Loved the buzzbomber near the middle there. It's neat that some badniks actually seem pretty quick and aggressive which is something we never really got much of even in the classics.

 

It has to be connected. Everything lines up.

 

It's not a far reach. Sonic's got the peel-out running animation after all, when most other animations instead look like they're being adapted from Mania. But I'm not willing bank on the deep-cuts just yet.

 

I've only seen solo play footage of the demo stations. Do they not have any co-op stations set up for this? Anyone seen anything?

 

Honestly, Tails and Knuckles runs are more boring to me because that means I'm probably going to start exploring, or needing to get creative with climbing and gliding. With Sonic, I know what I'm in for, and that's a straight rush through a stage as efficiently as I can possibly be.

 

Agree. If anything, to me knuckles and tails seem to be unfairly nerfed gameplay wise.

• Tail's flight is great and all, but without a way to cancel it, you're left defenseless in all angles except above + you will take way longer than necessary to get back to the ground, thus making playthroughs unnecessarily slow sometimes. The recent Sonic Triple Trouble remake solves this by making his flight cancelable into a roll.
• Knuckles has a glide, which IMO starts slow and is then nerfed by momentum-killing sudden stops whenever he gets out of it. The smaller jump also doesn't seem to make up for the ability to climb.

The above coupled with the inability of either character using elemental shields makes playthrough with them "less fun" than what they could possibly be -- especially after the drop dash was added to Sonic's Arsenal.

All in all, what I would like to see in future 2d titles would be a further refinement of Knuckles' and Tails' gameplay style, to have them be able to be fast in different ways. This could mean, for example, the ability for knuckles to instantly spindash up a wall when in a climbing position, or tails ability to aim a bit of a rolling dash downwards from his flight position.
These are just simple random examples out of the top of my head and not necessarily the best or the most well thought of (and there would be plenty more potential simple additions worth considering tbh).

IMHO the my point and bottom line can be summarized as this: It would be nice to have knuckles' and tails' toolset of moves and abilities (not to mention mighty and ray -- or whatever other returning classic character SEGA decides to resurrect) be expanded or altered very slightly, in order to have their playthroughs become as technical, speedy and interesting as post-dropdash-Sonic playthroughs. And have these characters be just as interesting in different ways, that explore different attributes of the terrain, slopes or physics.