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

How is this a good example if that game doesn't look good? Maybe that art direction worked for MM11 but only because it's made entirely of blocks (specifically of extremely thin prolongated rectangles)

Edit: to clarify I'm speaking only of the level art. Character models look very good (even though Megaman's animations look extremely stiff, uninteresting, almost unfinished. But that's another story)

 

I think part of it is that seeing the modern dress with the classic quills is a little cursed, but also the dress just wasn’t made for the classic proportions - it feels oversized with classic’s shorter limbs and squatter body.

 

You're once again missing the point. It has nothing to do with the level art. This is on a technical level. The level art is completely irrelevant to the subject. The perspective is what's being discussed. I quoted the relevant section in the developer interview for a reason. Capcom decided against the second example for gameplay reasons. A lot of 2.5D game suffer from this issue where you are unable to get a clear view of the platform edges because of the perspective. Mega Man Powered Up suffered from this greatly, especially with platforms that were higher up on the screen. Not the best example, but I can't be bothered to load up the game to take screenshots of Fireman's Stage or Wily Castle. Hell, some of the challenge stages had you jumping near the damn borders.

Here's a more extreme example were the exact height and distance is a little harder to gauge on a first glance. Klonoa goes crazy with its perspective though but it illustrates the point.

The previously mentioned New Super Mario games don't suffer from this issue at all since it's all flat tiles sets.

Mega Man 11 greatly reduces this problem with their hybrid approach without needing to do any sort of pre-render work tom foolery. The actual level art can be worked around that, it's not restricted to just blocks layouts.

Why you are arguing about this I don't know, but I'm not going to entertain you any further.

 

Also Superstars is actually doing things with its 2.5D setup, such as the background-to-foreground tricks, or having characters you're not playing as doing little animated bits in the background. At least one boss is probably going to utilize it, too. Is the foreground on top of a blurred background most of the time kinda boring so far? Yeah, admittedly. But so far I'm not seeing any "misjudging the edges of platforms" problems from the footage so far, and hey, we'll see how it turns out with time.

 

It won't be a big issue in Superstars because there aren't that many instances where the camera is vertically locked in a cramped area like it is in Mega Man Powered Up or Maverick Hunter X. It probably won't be an issue at all. I'm just showing off that a solution without resorting to pre-rendering does exist.
I think 2.5d is absolutely the right decision to go with this game if they wanted to be cost effective. It allows them to do more dynamic things with the camera, like possibly zoom out in multiplayer mode if someone gets too far behind and still have your assets be readable.

You could also do it with traditional/vector art

but I don't think SEGA or Arzest has the internal talent to pull off that look with a modest budget.
Harmony of Despair did scaling sprite art but that game had the benefit of having years worth of assets to recycle. You also had to deal with extreme squinting at a certain point.

 

Speaking of which, I often find myself wanting a 2.5D Sonic that goes all out with the camera angles and winding paths like Klonoa. ...Buuut then I remember that Klonoa's gameplay is slow and steady which is probably why it works so well in the first place. No idea how you'd get something like Sonic to work with it, lol.

 

Generations played around with the concept and I honestly kinda hated it lol, but I don't see how they could've done a better job to be perfectly honest.
It's the kinda stuff I think inherently doesn't works for classic Sonic, and I think it's great Superstars seems to be avoiding it all together...hopefully.

 

Klonoa also works because the camera aims downward in a way that shows platform edges pretty clearly. It feels a little closer to 3D than other 2.5D games.

 

My argument is that Capcom's solution made MM11 look extremely flat so it didn't really fix the problem.

Why are you responding as if we had a prolongated exhausting discussion on that? I made exactly 1 (one) post responding to your claim and one to another person to repeat the same claim. If mere act of challenging your opinion is too much for you then sure, I don't really have anything to add anyway.

 

You know, I really like the way rhis first example feels. I'm gonna sound dumb talking about it, but I like how it only really looks like models towards the edges of the screen and, around Sonic, it becomes basically 2D. Looks very natural to me, and definitely not crammed like 2.5D games usually look, but also not flat.

On a tangent: I'll be honest here: the foreground/background shenanigan look like they could be used a lot more creatively than what we've seen. and I hope to see more of it. Going from background do foreground is what loops do, naturally. "Oooh what happens if you fall in the middle" you just fall to the other side. "That's not realistic!" Neither is jumping at a normal angle to the ground no matter what angle the ground is.

But from what we've seen so farthere isn't anything different happening anywhere you're not, to make you feel like you should actively be looking for ways to change lanes. Like Mania's Metallic Madness! I hope they go crazy with it.

 

I just don't like the way constantly changing camera angles make me feel like I'm doing some cinematic sequence or controlling an in-game cutscene. When the camera shifted in Generations it was cool the first run-through, but there's just something about those scripted camera sequences that makes me feel like I'm barely playing the game. Zooming in and out like Rayman Legends or NSMB is fine, but the crazy angles are a miss for 2D Sonic imo

 

I would personally go for the dynamic angles with curved /dynamic paths. pull out the camera maybe halfway to double its space, that's pretty much it.

Assuming it's possible, it'd be neat to see stuff like Death Egg from Forces put in. I really like the look of that stage. I doubt anyone else shares a desire like that, though, and it's a heavy assumption that whole geometry levels would work compared to the (assumedly?) chunk-based stuff they're doing here. But then you could also put in some of the Classic 3ds gens stages.

 

The Sonic Rivals games were actually pretty close to this. It's too bad they weren't more substantive, because the Klonoa style has a lot of unexplored potential.

 

Nah I prefer it done the Generations way. It’s more immersive that way, unlike literally every mainstream game ever since where it’s just one camera angle and comes off as super lazy. Take Lost World for example when you’re in a 3D section and you enter one of those checkerboard funnel things from OOZ that just shoot you into the air, the screen fades, and suddenly, you’re in a completely new place. I understand that in this example it’s probably masking a loading screen, but at the end of the day it makes the level feel disjointed and takes me out of it. And all the 2D stages from Forces and Frontiers aren’t much better. If anything, they’re even more lazy because instead of having longer, more fulfilling stages where you seamlessly transition from 3D to 2D like in Unleashed, Colors, and Generations, they just separate 2D and 3D gameplay entirely. Maybe some people prefer that, but again, disjointed.

Superstars isn’t gonna be like Generations classic stages. But it also shouldn’t be as static as the 2D segments in LW, Forces, and Frontiers. There’s a middle ground here that they can go with and benefit from.

 

There have always been extended sequences of doing absolutely nothing while watching cool shit happen. Waterslides, tubes, elevators, the cannons in Oil Ocean, watching the Death Egg launch in Sky Sanctuary, all things that only exist for the sake of spectacle. I don't consider a wacky camera angle or 3d geometry to be any different.

 

I consider the Generations stages to have more of a "storyline" where it's tugging you through a specifically laid out cinematic experience, while the normal classic/Mania stages are more of a sandbox.

While I feel like moving the camera around during normal "sandbox" play could break the flow and mess with the formula a little, hypothetically if only very specific set pieces (like the corkscrews in Emerald Hill), enclosed areas (like the large hollow tree in Angel Island, or the submarines in OOZ Mania), and gimmicks (like those curved air boosters from the trailer) used some wacky camera angles for spectacle it could be neat and provide a lot less interruption.

 

The first sentence basically sums up how it feels for me. Camera movements and stuff are cool for sure, so long as it's not like a long cinematic thing that you're kinda being pulled through for a lot of the stage. I just like the illusion of 2D in a 3D space and if the camera changing stuff isn't done well, it takes me out of it. But Superstars already has what are effectively zoom changes by shifting between foreground layers, so I would welcome it if it's done well.

It's just, what bugged me a bit about Gens and Forces camera stuff is, when you cycle the camera behind Sonic it kind of breaks the immersion of the 2.5D stuff. I prefer to just see the side view (or a slanted side view, or whatever), but when I see the pencil-thin track Sonic is running along from an aerial perspective it's like this meta moment. That's why in games like MM they shy away from straight up showing you the whole level geometry, but I think Gens was trying to be kind of meta about the classic Sonic stuff, like the track he runs on isn't a result of the 2.5D perspective, they want you to know he's LITERALLY running on a thin line in the sky.

Then again, a lot of Classic media and concept art showed Sonic running along tubes and pipes and thin runways in the sky, so they were always kind of meta about it. It's hard to pinpoint what feels weird about it to me, but maybe I just need to see it implemented better.

 

I definitely see what you mean but I feel like Generations is much closer to what you want, compared to Forces and Frontiers at least. Even when it's a thin line in a sky, Generations makes it still look naturalistic, like yes, this is still a place in the world, and you can imagine playing it in 3D with no problem.

It was also much better as using the 3D to map the level despite being 2D; Sky Sanctuary is a great example.

 

That's true, there's definitely better examples like SS and City Escape where they fully flesh out the environment to account for the camera changes. The Sky Sanctuary towers were nice because it's just a natural evolution of the original gimmick. Though I guess I just always prefer the very specific appeal of Sonic permanently glued to a 2D space (but modeled in 3D). Like I said, I'm not wholly against the spectacle stuff but we just have slightly different tastes.


Side note: I think there used to be a fangame called "Project Needlemouse" that aimed to do Sonic in 3D along a fixed path, so 2.5D kinda but with the camera permanently fixed behind him at an angle. Unless I'm misremembering. The project existed around the same time Sonic 4 was revealed (no relation, just a coincidence), which is why I ended up discovering it through the search results.

Edit: Did a cursory Google, apparently Needlemouse wasn't actually going to be from a behind-the-back perspective, that was just concept art from their old website.

 

For me?

It's the corkscrew transition from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Special Edition for the SEGA CD 32X system.