Sonic the Hedgehog's Way Past Cool Panel (Comic-Con '18)

Bean and Bark theory time since the Archie comics are done and I kinda feel like it's time I throw this out there.

Bean and Bark were specifically created by AM2's Masahiro Sugiyama, who also was Honey/Candy's character designer, to be included as new characters specifically for the Sonic the Fighters arcade title. Sonic and crew never made it in any fighting games on the Saturn, but Bean and Bark made several cameos in other AM2 games on both consoles and in the arcade? Why? I'm sure it has to do with licensing. I'm fairly certain AM2 got to push the envelope a lot with hidden features and content if all the wild extras like PEPSIMAN in the home console edition of Fighting Vipers (Okay, yes, Picky had a licensed PEPSI skateboard), I would not be surprised if Sugiyama or someone at AM2, Yu Suzuki or maybe Hiroshi Kataoka, might have helped preserve the original content, including some licensing rights to Bean and Bark. What transpired between the mysterious "surprise" announcement of a Saturn port of StF to Kataoka and the rest of AM2 and the release of Sonic Gems collection to see Bean and Bark back on console is a mystery to me, but I believe the Sega AGES collection for PS2 holds a clue, but that would be getting way off topic.

As an aside, Ray and Mighty were never usually discussed until AFTER the posters in Generations I think. Bean and Bark had a strikingly similar revitalization with the Archie comics with Ian's massive love for the arcade fighter. But until these events, I had never heard close to any love for these characters.

 

I think one of the problems with bringing back old characters is that after you bring them back then what? What is their purpose? We've seen in Generations, Lost World, and Forces that the extended cast amounts to nothing more than cheerleaders. Hell, bloody Silver comes back in Forces and gets bodied by Infinite (why a psychic doesn't have immunity to mindjacking I don't know) which is what you can expect to happen should any of the old cast gets brought back. Just look at the Chaotix in Sonic Heroes, might as well not be there.

We're still riding high on Mania but be realistic. Sonic Team has nothing for them to do. At best they might show up in some Sonic Jam type hub world but that's it.

 

Well, I recall people complaining about Mighty's absense when they brought back the Chaotix in Heroes. But other than that, yeah, fans weren't so hot on Mighty and Ray. It seemed like people cared about Mighty only because the Chaotix felt incomplete without him. I recall him being referred to "Sonic with a wig", and Ray as "poor man's Tails", years ago. TBH, I find it hard to disagree with these assessments; I've always felt that they had bland designs, and Mighty seems to alternate between being a Sonic clone and being just "the strong guy" (a role already filled by Knuckles).

Same for Bean and Bark, they were obscure characters that tended to get ignored by fans. Personally, I'm indifferent to them. Bark has an okay-ish design, while Bean is a Bin clone.

So yeah, I don't think fans would care about them if it wasn't for them being "classic" characters, fueled by this recent retro resurgence.

I do like Fang, though, as I feel he brings something different to the table, being one of the very few villainous anthros in the series. He can work if they keep him as a side villain who has his own agenda and antagonizes heroes and baddies alike, serving as the occasional boss fight.

 

To be completely honest, I never cared for Mighty or Ray until Mania either, but that's just the thing — There's a lot you can do with the classic characters because a lot of them never really got a chance to shine. Fang is kind of an exception, since his lovable personality as an incompetent villain was showcased well in Triple Trouble, but for me, Mighty and Ray went from "who are these guys again" to some of my favorite Sonic characters (even if it's a little weird to have two characters whose main trait is super strength). If Bark and Bean make a proper return, there is a good chance they will be treated with the same amount of love, depending on who handles things from here.

 

They had plans to bring back all the old characters for Sonic Heroes but dropped them because they felt there were too many characters, so there's definitely no licensing issues.

Historically, Sonic Team's never been one to use characters they didn't create. Chaotix are the exception.

 

I've always been against things like this. What I enjoy about the way that different characters work (at least in 2D games) is that they are all fundamentally the same save for extra abilities. They principally share the same moveset and stats. It means that each character has options unique to them, but the core gameplay remains unchanged so that no character is better or worse than another. Knuckles has a weaker jump but so far it's the only example of such variation. I think it would be much less fun to add in more things like that is fine just for the sake of it.

 

Adding to that, Knuckles's jump is only shorter to give him his own unique routes and make some bosses harder. It's less of a hindrance and more of a way to ensure his campaign plays out differently.

 

I'm not sure how I feel about having lots of playable characters in the classic series. That was one of the problems with Modern Sonic: It just had too many characters and I'm glad they've moved to making only Sonic playable.

One of the charms of Sonic & Knuckles was how well the level design took advantage of Knuckles and Sonic's unique abilities. Pulling something like that is a lot more challenging when dealing with 5+ characters.

If they are going to all have the same basic movies, then I wish they'd design them differently. For example, I was disappointed to see that Ray's Spindash was identical to Sonic's.
That was the nice thing about Chaotix: Vector and Espios's basic moves were designed differently from Knuckles, so they didn't feel like clones.

 

Here we go.

Mania Plus debuted at #5 in the UK charts last week (behind Crash N-Sane [1], Lego Incredibles [2], Sea of Thieves [3], and Minecraft [4]) in the All Format (Units) charts.

Split between platform differences was 52% for Switch, 34% for PS4, 15% on Xbox One. (52+34+15=101?????)

Concerning platform-specific charts, Mania Plus was #2 on the UK's Top 20 Switch charts (beaten only by MK8 Deluxe), #4 on Top 20 PS4 charts, and #12 title on Top 20 XBO charts.

EDIT: Ignore this post please, this was supposed to be posted in the Mania Plus non-leaks thread. To avoid thread derail / discuss Mania Plus sales, please continue from this post here.

 

I kind of doubt that Mania is going to sit in the charts for very long, simply because of what it is as a re-release if a year-old digital retro-style game. But damn of those aren't some nice statistics. Have SEGA commissioned the Mania teams for another game yet? Cause they probably should.

 

I'd hold reservations about that: Sonic Forces was still appearing in the UK charts as late as the last week of June; well after it quickly dropped off the radar everywhere else.

If you ask me, a game with Mania [Plus's] reputation/word-of-mouth and budget price has the potential to hit some crazy evergreen legs in the UK (and maybe elsewhere, who knows); to sit among Nintendo games and certain titles like Crash as the thing that will not leave the charts for months if not years.

 

I also liked that. I think the big three should retain the classic versions of the basic moves (roll, Spin Jump and Spindash), with everyone else having their own tweaked versions (if not outright different moves) instead.

 

Up to and including Sonic Adventure, it was kind of an unspoken rule that only Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Mighty and Ray could spin attack/curl into balls. (Not that it ever made much sense for a fox or a flying squirrel, mind you.)

The Sonic 2 staff needed a "Player 2" version of Sonic, so they created Tails. Over in Japan the Sonic arcade staff needed a Player 2 and Player 3 version of Sonic, so they created Ray and Mighty. So from a historical perspective they all had a reason to function as Sonic clones. And then Knuckles was Knuckles.

But the extended cast never used Sonic style spin ball attacks. Not even Metal Sonic! It was neat how in Chaotix, Espio had his spinning top attack (which carried over into Fighters), Vector had his "donut" jump and Charmy just had flight and a dash.

But by Sonic Heroes everyone was running and somersaulting and being pinballed around - even Big the Cat. It diminishes Sonic as a character if everyone he knows can do the same stuff he does. Hell, it diminishes Big the Cat as a character.

Characters like Bark the Polar Bear don't ever need to be playable in traditional 2D platformer Sonic games. Bark could challenge Sonic to an Ice Cap Zone style snowboard race. Fang could (and should!) show up as a recurring boss character and trouble maker. But they should only be playable in games where it makes sense, fighting games, racing games, things like that.

 

I would like to echo this and add that Heroes was the first multi-console Sonic game released and that I felt also diminished not just Sonic's character, but his brand image as a whole.

Spoiler

I'm not sure we've broken the Sonic cycle since then, and I count the gap between Mania and Mania+ to be what bridges Mania into a full Sonic cycle for me, whereas before Mania+ we only had half the cycle.

 

Well said. To me, Heroes always seemed to be where characters started to degrade in terms of, well, being themselves. Knuckles was no longer this pissed-off Master Emerald guarding loner, and instead opted to be 'Cheerful Sidekick #2' with little to no reason aside from it being his contracted role as another 'good guy'. (Thankfully Sonic Battle remembered who Knuckles was and kept his character in line with Classic/Adventure Knuckles again. Actually, thinking about it - Sonic Battle did a damn good job using a good sized cast effectively and keeping everyone in character. )

I think your examples of using Bark and Fang well could still happen in a mainline Modern game. It's just that Sonic Team need to learn that you can't just have a character there for the sake of it without there being any meaning to it.

I mean, look at how Marvel managed to make use of a huge cast of heroes for the Avengers films, and make everyone actually more-or-less relevant to the plot - something which you'd think would be a hard job to write. Compare that to Sonic Forces, where characters were just... there... Did Vector and Charmy really need to be in Forces aside from just to be there and.. be there? (you know Sonic Teams' goofed when Ian Flynn's prequel comic did a better job of using the characters than the core game did)
Shadow the Hedgehog also reduced almost everyone's roles to being NPC "Help find my lost dog" villager quests which didn't help either.

So going back to the initial statement Iizuka made - I don't think there should be a restriction on who shows up in a Classic or Modern game, as long as it makes sense and is actually consistent with their character, be it playable or not.

Big the Cat running vertically up walls and loops is definitely a sight to behold however...

 

Sooooooo... how do Bean and Bark fit in there? Because those two sentences contradict each other regarding those two?

EDIT: I did not mean licensing issues with Ray and Mighty, just the AM2 creations.

 

I second all of this.

Honestly, Sonic Forces is the one instance in which I thought using almost the whole cast made sense, given the story. Eggman had finally taken over the world, forcing the heroes to form a resistance in order to fight back. You would expect the whole recurring cast to join in this kind of situation. I feel any inexplicably missing characters would have been be kind of akin to Nightcrawler's unexplained disappearance after the 2nd X-Men film; it would have prompted fans to wonder "Where's x and why isn't he helping the resistance? Was he killed, imprisoned or something?". In fact, I've already seen people ask these kind of questions about GUN and Blaze (despite the latter not even being from Sonic's dimension).

They were going to be in a team with Fang:
https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=8815&st=5565&p=926174&#entry926174

 

y'all are trippin, I'd love to see Big in a classic game; fucker could gain more speed rolling down hills than anyone else, because he's got more mass

 

Platinum Big the Cat action game or riot