Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

I just realized something. This is gonna be the 2nd Sonic game in a row that releases close to the same time as a highly anticipated game from another series that the series gets compared to a lot (albeit not the same kinds of comparisons). Except this one looks like it actually stands a chance and be a huge success rather than a one sided massacre against its favor.

 

what's the other game it's releasing close to? the only other platformer i can think of coming out late into the year is astro bot

 

I never said it's a platformer

Dragon Ball Sparking Zero: 10/11

Exactly 2 weeks before Shadow Generations

 

Seems like an awful roundabout way to find a rival release competition honestly.

 

I've never seen a case for it but I imagine it is. The cover says, "Sonic Adventure Promotion Disk" at the bottom. That, combined with, "Not Playable," probably indicates that it's the Autodemo.

Pre-posting edit: I looked it up and yes, it is. https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHe..._late_for_christmas_but_it_finally_arrived_i/

 

Mario Wonder and Sonic Superstars were games of the same ilk going after largely the same audience.

Sonic X Shadow Generations and Dragonball Whatever are world's apart.

 

I don't know how many kids care about Dragon Ball these days the way they care about Sonic, it hasn't even had a show airing on kids TV in years. Japanese kids maybe, but we know they're not going to be buying Sonic. Dragon Ball in the west runs almost entirely on nostalgia for the shitty 90s dub, and while Sonic is certainly not immune to nostalgic pandering, it seemingly has a much broader demographic, at least in the US. Everyone excited for Tenkaichi 4 is someone who played 1, 2 or 3 back in the mid-2000s, and they're not going to be the same kids grabbing say, the Switch version of SxSOuToG. Also Dragon Ball isn't really a video game series.

 

2 Weeks are not that close, if anything, SEGA should be worried about Metaphor releasing at the exact same time as Dragon Ball

But Also Shadow Generations releasing at the exact same day as the new COD, of course wouldn't be really the first time a sonic game released close to one, like the Original Sonic Generations


Also, Sonic Frontiers released like a day before GOW Ragnarok? and yet it was the best selling sonic game in years

I would not downplay Dragon Ball as a videogame series, Xenoverse 2 -being developed by Dimps too- not only sold 10 millions , but is still supported TO THIS DAY, the game released back in 2016, and it STILL gets new content and DLC, it's unusual but speaks to how popular it is

Same can be said for Dragon Ball FighterZ. a new fighting game that sold better than many old fighters series, it also sold like 10 million really fast

Not to mention that when we talking about the show itself, Dragon Ball Super, especially the Tournament of Power, was actually REEEALLY HUGE back in 2018 , people were watching this shit like it's the world cup especially in Latin America , Ultra Instinct Goku was such a huge deal that when his episode aired, all streaming services went down, torrent sites went down too, people actually had to go to porn sites to actually watch the episode there cause someone uploaded there, it was nuts and not to be downplayed.

Dragon Ball is STILL huge all around the world, it's nothing to scoff off, be it as a TV show or videogames, and Sparking Zero is going to be a huge deal.

 

Black Ops 6 releases the same day as SxG Gens. It's joever for Sonic.

 

I'm talking about demographic overlap, not whether Dragon Ball is still popular. I'm just saying I haven't seen an adolescent Dragon Ball fan here in America in a long time, just adults and maybe late teens. I don't think the Unleashed kiddies that flood every twitter thread are really going back and watching Goku vs. Freeza with the Faulconer score or whatever.

In somewhere like Brazil where they're both enormous though, maybe you have a point.

 

Yeah but Shadow Generations won't be a 300 GB install that requires a constant internet connection to (allgedly) stream textures as far as we know.
At the end of the day, the Sonic property is extremely marketable, so almost anything they throw decent promotion behind is going to blast one million easily, as I think there's probably more interest in the games now than ever with Frontiers having modest cultural impact alongside the first two movies and the third coming out this year.

 

I originally completely agreed with you but his point about LATAM is a good one. The popularity of both series is huge there though I’m not sure how much of a financial contributor it is to either.

As for western DB fans, I think the point stands. My brother and his friends are in uni and have been pretty big anime fans since HS and while they’ll watch the Super movies and play FighterZ a bit, they’re not nearly as into DB as much as newer things like Kimetsu no Yaiba or Boku no Hero. Definitely not enough to buy this game new, if at all. That said, they’re also not going to buy Sonic lol.

And in Japan, it’s not even a competition. I’m curious how well the game will do in light of Frontiers selling decently there though. Sonic’s popularity has always paled there in comparison, but Adventure 2 had enough notoriety to be included in a user poll Famitsu did a couple years ago for people’s favorite game (twice lol).

https://nintendoeverything.com/famitsu-readers-choose-the-top-100-best-games-of-all-time/

Dreamcast at 29 and GameCube at 57. Not sure what happened that year as I don’t think I’ve seen Sonic pop up on any other list they’ve done. Sega in general had crazy representation on that list, having published 20% of the selected games (more than any other publisher).

 

I'm trying to think of other boss fights, but I'm having a very hard time thinking of any. The only other villain Shadow has a personal relationship with before Generations is Mephiles, but considering... You know, I doubt they'll use him. I know Crisis City is in base Generations, but for some reason I find Mephiles being a lot harder to justify. I know there's also Infinite, but if the campaign really does happen while the Sonic campaign is happening I can't see them using someone from a future game.

I guess if you want to stretch it and assume they'll use multiple bosses from the same game they could also go with Diablon, Black Bull, and maybe the Egg Dealer, but that's all I can think of.

 

I'm just going to say that the circumstances for why DB is in the state it's in are less about the brand not being popular, more about the simple lack of a weekly and seasonal anime to keep driving interest. If there were one, people would watch it, discuss it, and you'd see marketing for it everywhere. Super's last Tournament of Power arc was insanely popular all across the globe, to the point where Latin American cities had mass audiences watching bootleg screenings, but its abrupt end (despite the continuation of the manga) simply stopped the franchise's forward momentum. But let me assure you, as someone who works in the entertainment space? Dragon Ball is very, very popular still. The only reason kids don't get into it is because there's nothing new to attract them with, and younger kids tend to follow the hype of what's new until their teenage years when they get curious about what's older, and then legacy franchises start to appeal to them. It's a very consistent cycle, and very few brands break away from this without new content. Sonic itself has been through this cycle, and the movie was one of the things that revived it in this exact same way.

And honestly, it's going to be hard to continue that brand for much longer after Toriyama's death. They've got a few years worth of content based off of his notes and ideas to use, and they can use it to reach an eventual satisfying end point, but after that it'll be stuff produced without his notes or supervision, and I do suspect the brand will struggle or fall off once we reach that point.

 

The only disappointment I have is that the 3DS game is not available in the remaster. I know it's completely unreasonable to expect it, but ... I dunno, it's hard to call something the complete package when it's missing a game with the same name. Even throwing in a 3DS emulator instead of porting it would've worked. Shame really.

 

It's a "remaster" of the console version, not a collection.

 

Whilst not untrue, it's a shame that neither this nor Colours Ultimate included the handheld versions of the same games. Feels like a missed opportunity. The handheld games are under pretty much forgotten because they're always overshadowed by their console contemporaries. Including some incredibly basic, no frills emulations would have been a good way to keep these games available.

 

That's the thing, people love to talk about ports and remasters in terms of keeping Sonic available to newer audiences, but there's so much catching up to do that by the time you finish one of these one-game-wonder remasters you've already got multiple other games that need porting. That's why I honestly still want a second Sonic Origins DLC, because there's still six pre-SA1 games (seven if you count SegaSonic) that are totally unrepresented. I'd much rather see collections than "remasters", especially if they're not so locked-off that fans can't still dig into and mod them. Megaman and Kingdom Hearts had the right idea.

 

Technically it *is* a collection, it's a collection of Sonic Generations and Shadow Generations

But still, it's my problem with this. It's not too big a deal, as a fan I have a physical copy of the game, but it'd be nice to see it get represented. Same as Sonic Unleashed if they remaster it- I'd rather UnWiished, and given half the sales of the game *was* UnWiished, it'd not be out of the question that many people have nostalgia for that version. Generations 3DS has very few fans, but that doesn't mean it deserves to get entirely ignored.

 

A proper Black Doom boss seems like a safe bet, considering we've already seen his eye thing. They've also brought back Kingdom Valley so I don't think they'll have any issues bringing back Mephiles too.

Other possible bosses might be Metal Madness, Egg Hawk, Neo Metal Sonic, Sonic, and even Solaris. These are less likely but still possible.