Just learned that "What I'm Made Of..." also appears on top What other vague terms end up bringing back Sonic results on search engines?
I'm sure there were some journalists back in the 90s who thought 'Sonic was never good' too. That's the thing about there being billions of people on the planet: there are guaranteed to be at least some people with a certain wacky opinion.
Sure, but "Sonic hasn't had the same commercial success as these other games" (ie: is selling worse) is a more objective statement than an opinion like "Sonic isn't as good as these other games". Whether that objective statement is true or not is another matter. I'm not sure how well the 3D Sonic games had sold by 2003 relative to the other name-dropped 3D platformers of the time. Would be interesting if there were any sales figures from around that time.
A few years ago my friend and I told a discord music bot to play "edgy theme" and it started playing infinite's theme
Random thing i remembered today, as a kid I would never ever roll in the classic games specifically because i thought the animation of sonic in a ball was lame compared to the running animation. Even when I used the spindash, i'd immediately jump so i could see sonic running. Anyone else have any memories of doing dumb shit like that in sonic games as kids or was I just a very strange child?
Not gonna lie, I feel like this exact mentality is why rolling in Sonic games has been downplayed ever since Heroes or so.
As a kid we'd play Sonic 1 8-bit on the Master System, but with a (knock-off? Dunno) Mega Drive controller. For some reason, it was always the down button that would stop working first, and we'd keep on playing for a while before begging my parents to get us another controller. As a result I never really got quite used to rolling whenever possible and kept running like a dumbass even in other games and situations. Even today, if a fangame has peel out and spindash, I'll always peel out and then roll instead of just spindashing lol
Maybe you just thought rolling around like a marble was out of character for him. He is the running man, after all. It's kind of like refusing to switch weapons in those stylish action hack and slash games because, well, most other weapons beside the standard one don't look as stylish. *looking at you, Bayonetta*
If you're in the market for some more vague memories: I think there was some noise about how Sonic Adventure 2 Battle wasn't as big on the GameCube as SA2 was on the Dreamcast. And even more noise about SADX, because put side-by-side with Super Mario Sunshine, there was a bit of a gap. It willfully ignores the fact both Sonics were old games available on Dreamcast, but people are weird. Sonic Heroes meanwhile is meant to be a next generation step above anything on Dreamcast, but it kinda isn't, and we're all too polite to say so because having Sonic not on Sega console is still novel. And there hadn't been any super mainstream Sonic blunders before that point - Shadow and 06 of course coming later.
Okay, but we are just going to ignore Miyamoto was at the Sonic booth at CES? I wonder how the whole experience went down, but at least he gave a congratulations.
Miyamoto checking out the competitor's booths is something he's done for a long time at trade shows, I'm sure I've seen a picture of him playing Halo before now.
The gamepro review for Sonic & Knuckles at the time mentions these sorts of people. They call out those other journalists which say sonic isn't our thing and tell them to get lost and defend their perfect score review. They mention other journalists getting burned out on the Sonic sequels.
Too polite? From what I remember the general sentiment at the time was that it looked like a "glorified Dreamcast game".
I had the exact same mentality as a kid. If i wanted to go fast in Sonic 1, I'd just let go of the controller.
For what it's worth, when I was younger, I genuinely thought Sonic's 'figure 8' running animation in CD was really badass, so sometimes I'd peel out just to see it in action. I also thought the more exaggerated 'blur' for Sonic's running animation in the Simon Wai/Nick Arcade build of Sonic 2 just looked better and I still kinda hold that opinion. Basically I just think it's neato when they exaggerate Sonic's speed in his animations like that. I'm not entirely sure I'd say that's the primary reason rolling was downplayed later on though. I really just think it's more challenging to design in a 3D space than people give it credit for, and some of it might have had to do with trying to find more mainstream appeal in Sonic when he went multiplatform. Not in the sense that 'oh Sonic is fast so of course we'd want him to run more', but I think Sonic's rolling ability is slightly difficult to grasp if you're coming from someone who's played a traditional 2D platformer and you're used to a jump being the end all-be-all for enemy attacks. Sonic is a bit more unique than say Mario in that when Sonic is in a ball, his hitbox impacts hazards regardless of how he's approached by said hazard. With Mario, if he's in the middle of a jump and gets hit from the side, then he gets hurt. This isn't the case with Sonic and that'll usually destroy whatever hazard you collided with (hopefully!). Sonic having the ability to go in a ball nearly whenever means he can be a walking sawblade. Even if you've played a platformer where there's an 'attack' button (think DKC's cartwheel or Wario Land's shoulder barge), you have to initiate that state with an additional button press where it can usually only be done while standing on the ground. Sonic is a lot more free in that regard. The issue with that is that I think it's difficult to communicate to the player and try to encourage it whenever possible. I've seen quite a few people who went into a traditional Sonic game blind and just see a jump as the only means to an end. It doesn't help that again there are challenges in designing the character in 3D. How big should Sonic's hitbox be if we want him to roll into a ball in the middle of running to attack enemies? How do you effectively communicate that to the player with visuals? Even my personal favorite 3D Sonic game (Sonic Adventure) doesn't really have an instance where the player is sort of encouraged to go into a ball midway through to plow through an obstacle, and Sonic's small hitbox when in this attack form makes it difficult to do something that isn't more precise. It's sort of why the Homing Attack was created. I dunno. I think the lack of precision and wanting to make attacking easier is more why the roll fizzled. The boost concept kinda has a good idea of how I'd implement it in a Sonic game with the nice blue aura visual indicator of how 'wide' the attack is going to be.
I couldn't find any picture of Shiggy playing Halo, but I do have this picture of him playing Crash 1. "Why didn't I make Mario a funny spinning marsupial?"
