Sonic Superstars Ultra Mega Spoiler Containment Thread for Spoilers [SPOILERS]

I just wanted to mention there's a song that sounds a lot like a Fantasy Zone one and... Hiro actually wasn't a composer in this a game. Now, that's really something.

 

There seems to be a lot of "Senoue tried to make composers replicate other Sega work or his own synth style" with this game.

 

Anyone got a link or a source to Superstars' credits? @Trippled mentioned in the non-spoiler thread that there's a bunch of Sonic Team staff in the credits--namely composers (and Iizuka too of course), but they also mentioned the staff includes the director and two game designers. Makes me curious if Arzest had any input into Superstars from a design/direction standpoint, or if they were mostly responsible for building the game (gameplay/physics, asset creation, graphics, etc.) under Sonic Team's parameters.

 

Hiroshi Kawaguchi is his full name and is credited

 

Low-ish quality upload of the (Bad?) Ending and Credits from the stream. No (Good?) Chaos Emeralds Ending yet. Trip Gameplay shown at the end for a bit over a minute.

This may not stay up for long, so inspect it while you can.

Edit: I THINK this is an Amy Rose ending, since in this stream this was recorded in she delivered the final blow to the boss. That implies to me slight variants to the endings, regardless of any "Good" ending with Chaos emeralds existing.

Edit 2: Trip's gameplay and wall climbing seem to somewhat resemble the pink wisp wall sticking mechanic from Colors. Very similar looking physics, and she can cling to ceilings too, it appears. She also has a double jump, I think?

Edit 3: I also can't tell whether or not her gameplay mode is full playable campaign, or a smaller side story. I'd need to see more of how her starter level compares with the start of Sonic's campaign to have a better idea. It's possible this is just a shorter side story, though I'd be surprised if there's no way to make her fully playable in all stages?

 

The two technical directors from Sega/Sonic Team makes me assume that the pipeline went Headcannon ports into Origins > its now their code and they can send it to Arzest, rather than the pipeline going Mania physics > directly into Superstars

 

Nice cutscene, and Trip looks fun. But the music... yeah :\
Still, as an overall package remaining positive. Five unique characters is a big plus.

 

The more I look into certain things, like a boss fight underwater (because everybody knows we loooove those), the more the game looks downright unfinished. The stream out there was of the PS4 version, but certain environments look bland, empty, and entirely lacking shaders while having massively blurry textures, like nondescript Dreamcast-quality arenas, while other places look about what you'd expect with proper background details and lighting. The stream quality did it no favors certainly, but unless an inevitable day one patch is supposed to polish the visuals the final step, this seems to be yet another victim of the dreaded Sega deadlines.

I'm also absolutely baffled that the game is releasing with the Sonic Mania victory jingle. They had the time to make a new Super theme apparently, but not a victory jingle?

 

Not much I can find about the Sonic Team core development staff, from what I can find on here and at Sega Retro. They seem to be mostly new people.

The most recurring name I came across was producer Yasuyuki Tsuzuki, who up until now has only had roles in Project Support up to this point (Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, Puyo Puyo Champions, and recently Sonic Origins), as well as being on development support for the localization of Sonic Colors. Director Shunsuke Kawaraduka was listed in the Special Thanks on the TSR soundtrack. Nothing for the two game designers (Saki Ishiguro and Daiki Nakajima).

Meanwhile, looking at the Arzest group--I'd say about half of the team of people who worked on Balan Wonderworld as designers/directors fill similar if not identical roles for Superstars (e.g. Gen Shinomi and Ryo Sato were among of the multiple game designers for Wonderworld; come Superstars, Shinomi is the lead game designer and Sato is the lead level designer). Ohshima himself is also listed as one of the game designers, in addition to his usual role of being Arzest's development producer for their games and being one of the two character designers for Trip's design (Iizuka is the other character designer). [Ohshima arguably should had taken over for Superstars as Arzest's lead game designer, if not Arzest's game director.] The other half of the team of designers are new. (There are 13 game designers and 5 level designers in total.) Not too many holdovers from the earlier Arzest efforts (Hey! Pikmin and Yoshi's New Island) though, I'd say there's about three designers who have worked across all four titles.

All of the programmers from Balan (and one new programmer, 17 total) are also on Superstars as well, again with certain roles swapped around and additional roles added (lead player, lead system, lead, enemy, gimmick, minigame, and network).

 

Oh God, I hope my gut reaction of disliking the game on reveal won’t prove correct. I’ve been slowly getting hyped for this thanks to the Pinball and Jungle OSTs.

My Switch copy probably won’t arrive from Japan for another week and a half, and the game store I go to in Copenhagen has their shit together too much to sell me an early Xbox copy. It’s going to be a long week.

 

God damn it, I'm quite disappointed that my initial thoughts of Jun's Sonic 4 influence (and that fucking drum soundchip) are being confirmed here. I haven't yet dipped into pre-ordering this anywhere, which is a first for myself personally. This game just smells of over-expensive, "Lets try and do Sonic 4 again but with Mania physics" and will be discounted before we know it. Even Trip's gameplay looks less like the Wisp power and more like the Sonic+Tails spindash from Sonic 4 Episode 2. It looks like cosmetically, and looks like it from a physics perspective too.

This generally feels like 2D / Classic Sonic's "Sonic Forces" moment. It's not terrible. But it ain't doing much else. I will say from friends that aren't massive sonic fans (but have played a sonic game) all come to a similar first impression of "Why is Sonic running slow?". I try to explain that the physics are being reviewed favourably and it'll "play similar to Mania" but from a design and cosmetic perspective, I can't help but agree that this just feels Sonic 4 levels of slow.

I've had enough mentioning Sonic 4 more times than I ever wanted or expected to do so in the last 8 months. First initial impressions for me is, like the new character, this game trips up.

 

Welp, that looks.... unfun, to be honest. Maybe not everything from the classics really needs to be brought back This looks so slow and sluggish just to move around, it's not even a hectic race against the clock like Labyrinth because they just keep giving you air bubbles.

REALLY gotta pay my respects though, that part where Sonic jumps on the capsule and a cartoon stock sound effect plays as Amy magically pops back into existence with no animation whatsoever? Pure gold. Also not a big fan of the deco at all, the entire boss arena is just the same big salmon-colored blocks, with no real design to them or anything unique to make them stand out. And the water looks... strangely geometric anytime the characters jump in and out lol.

Starting to get the sneaking suspicion that this game is gonna have some really unfinished areas... and that would be super disappointing, given that SEGA and Sonic Team have reeeeeeally been selling us this idea that "this one's different!! Look! See, look!". Guess we'll see, I'm gonna try to avoid the rest of this thread lol

 

Yasuyuki Tsuzuki was producer/assistant producer on the Olympic games and Saki Ishiguro had minor game design roles for Sonic Frontiers and Sakura Wars

 

Jun might be washed I'm afraid.

 

There's something funny to me about us finally having a dragon character in a Sonic game. Dragons are considered cool, which fits in with Sonic's image. Every 10 year old's dream! But instead of a badass, its a cute little girl.

The music is...yeesh. It sounds like demented carnival music. Even the BAD Sonic games at least have good music. Mario fans are gonna be stealing our lunch money and shoving us into lockers when Wonder comes out

 

I have to wonder how much of this was Jun's sound direction push, how much of this was his own direct work given how many composers there are, and how much of it was other people emulating his "style". Somehow people have bitched about this for 13 years and Sega just keeps letting it happen.

 

Wait, they didn't replace the Sonic Mania end of act jingle? I thought that was just a placeholder.

Gawd.

 

This and the sound mixing are the only things that really bother me about the music

 

From what I've heard, Cyber Station Zone song is actually pretty good.

 

Lmfao the explosion effects in the gameplay ending look awful