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The younger fandom, and how they learned from exactly none of our mistakes.

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Josh, Jan 6, 2020.

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  1. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    Sonic Lost World had the Parkour system with a mostly otherwise-Adventure moveset, with the spindash effectively acting as a boost. It did not please everyone.

    This kind of thinking is what SEGA do already, and it's exactly the problem - you are not going to please everyone with one game. Different sections of the fanbase want entirely different things.

    Hell, there's no reason they can't just use a different character as the mascot for each of the different sections. Keep Sonic for the current, Boost-style games; have Shadow be the face of Adventure-style games; and let Mighty have Classic-style games.

    If there are three people sitting down to eat, and one person is a carnivore and wants a steak, one person is a vegan and wants a salad, and one isn't hungry and wants a bottle of rum, you're not going to please them all by offering a steak soaked in rum with some salad sitting on top. Your best bet is to serve them each what they want individually.
     
  2. Laughingcow

    Laughingcow

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    Change Mighty to Classic Sonic and I'd agree with this sentiment.
     
  3. NyaNyaLily

    NyaNyaLily

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    Man, I'm really lucky that I grew up with Sonic Mega Collection, because now I'm part of the group that is being catered to with Sonic Mania and all that. I really fit in with everyone else here. :V

    ...

    Lol who am I kidding. Sega maek edgy boost Sonic gaem but with gud story plz.
    Also wers Episode III!? I WANT MODRN SNOC IN 2D GAEM STOP IT WITH CLASSK BULLSHITE UR JUST NOSTALJA PANDRIN WE NED TO MOOVE FORWARD.
     
  4. Josh

    Josh

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    SERIOUSLY. At the time a lot of us Oldbies were annoyed that Mega Collection wasn't even gonna try to live up to Sonic Jam's excellence. But DAAAAMN, Mega Collection ended up being an incredibly important release. Can you imagine how much worse the fandom would be if the Adventure kids _didn't_ grow up with at least the option to play the classics?
     
  5. Azookara

    Azookara

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    I don't think that's the problem. I'm 99% sure most people would've gone "aw HELL yeah" to Lost World just by that descriptor, lol.

    It's the binary movement via run button, redundant mandatory extra moves (like the kick & the charged homing attack) and lack of slope physics (or any slopes at all for that matter) that made LW bad. All of which are pretty exclusive issues unto itself!

    Nah, rather I think BraveYujo is looking in the right direction. While I stand by believing trying to please as many audiences as possible with narrative or art style is a lost cause, trying to find the solid middle to all of Sonic's best gameplay traits is a smart pursuit. SA1 but with tightened movement at higher speeds (with maybe drift & quick-step to compensate for that?) plus some parkour is something I'd very much like to see. They're not only unique moves in themselves that take advantage of 3D space, but they work as answers to questions SA1 leaves in need of refinement.

    Basically I believe Sonic's gameplay in 3D has found it's proper answers, they're just scattered across different play styles. Finding a standard rounded-out one to stick with is probably the best path the series could take, IMO.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2020
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  6. Sid Starkiller

    Sid Starkiller

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    To throw my 2 cents in on the trend-chasing arguments: I feel like chasing the trend of "Mario but cooler" was the driving force that brought out Sonic Team's passion. The Genesis trilogy plus CD, as well as the Adventure games, clearly had a great deal of love and care put into them. Once Sega went third party, though, Sonic Team seemed to say, "Well, we're not competing with Mario anymore. Now what do we do?" And no one on the team had a real answer. From the lackluster port of SA1 to Heroes and beyond, they seemed to just be going through the motions.
     
  7. LockOnRommy11

    LockOnRommy11

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    I definitely support the belief that competition kept Sonic Team fresh. Without it they slowly declined and eventually just set their games to mimic other games, largely Mario titles.

    *Sonic 4 = NSMB
    *Sonic Lost World = 3D Land / World
    *Sonic & SEGA Allstars = Mario Kart

    I even felt that Unleashed was in many ways aesthetically similar to Mario Galaxy; not so much the setting, but the cartoonish Werehog style levels, the globe-like map, and the orchestrated theme. On the Wii version I’m sure even the menus were similar. Sonic was toned down and a bit more campy and silly too, being so much less offensive than before - even more so than Heroes. It was refreshing when Colours came out and I felt it did it’s own thing. It’s definitely gotten better since 2010 in all honesty, if one were to ignore Sonic Boom.
     
  8. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    Was this an attempt to use Markdown Syntax italics? Lol.

    A lot of this general subject seems to be implying that all younger fans consider Adventure Sonic the "true Sonic" because of childhood nostalgia. I think it's pretty condescending when people use "nostalgia goggles" as an argument against someone, not that anyone in this thread has been so blunt. With myself as an example, the only 3D Sonic game I put on a high pedestal of any sort is SA1, a game I hardly played at all before I was a teenager. Around the same time I played that all the way through, I revisited SA2 and Heroes, games I played on GameCube a lot for a short period of time as a child, and I didn't think they held up nearly as well. Truly great Sonic games to me are only Sonic 1, 2, CD and 3&K to a lesser extent, and SA1 to an even lesser extent. Over time, the classics are the only ones that stay great for me, and when I played through SA1, it gave me similar feelings that the classics give me. Heroes might have done the same had the gameplay been better though, most of it feels right tonally and stylistically.

    One thing I find strange about some fans of the Adventure games is the obsession with Shadow. Ever since I was old enough to understand tropes in fiction I've strongly disliked the entire concept of Shadow's character.
     
  9. Azookara

    Azookara

    yup Member
    I grew up in the mindset that there was no "true" Sonic for me in the game series.

    Having grown up with the classics and Adventures simultaneously (I first played Sonic 2 in 1997 and got into Sonic proper starting around 2000), this was always the same characters with the same lore, the only things separating it all being the art style and gameplay shifts. And I always felt like that was the point, even if I did have my own nostalgia and personal preferences. Same series, new adventures.

    It wasn't until people specifically attached to the classics started to claim there was a significant difference that it became a subject to consider them separate, and it's never been an angle I quite agreed with. Then Generations (and later decisions with Mania and Forces) validated that angle for everyone who took it, which then encouraged people to take sides while the series as I knew it kinda became an even further broken base than it already was. And now people who explicitly only grew up with the Adventure era feel left out, as if they need a "true Sonic" to cling onto and separate from the standard 'modern' Sonic fan.

    It's just never made much sense to me why it's gotta be like this. S'one thing to be a fan of a particular era, but geez.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2020
  10. Frostav

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    ^ God this is incredibly true and I hate it.

    Such as when non-Sonic fans are talking about the series and go "why does modern Sonic have to be so edgy and try too hard to be cool, classic Sonic was better because he was cute and fun!" motherfucker the entire point of Sonic was to be Edgy Mario from the beginning. It's just that gaming had gotten even edgier since then so what was once a radical badass with 'tude comes off now as a cutesy animal mascot in a post-GTA/God of War/CoD/whatever world. While you can absolutely critique the Adventure era as being dumb as shit ('cuz let's be real by the Shadow and 06 it was going completely off the rails into self-parody), but these people always act like the edginess and "cool" was something Sonic Team tacked onto Sonic come SA1 because they're just a bunch of dumbasses who have no idea what they're doing (in fact that specific sentiment also sucks but that's not the focus of this post or topic).

    Same with "they ruined Sonic with voice acting! He should never talk like the classic games" completely ignoring

    -Sonic talked in literally every single non-game media around the time such as the cartoons and comics
    -Sonic didn't talk in the genesis games because they were, ya know, 16-bit platformers who couldn't store voice clips and which didn't need dialogue to begin with
    -The moment they could make Sonic talk in a game, they did with SegaSonic The Hedghehog and that one clip in Sonic CD when he idles too long.

    EDIT: Another one of these is "why do they all have these dumb vocal tracks now" completely ignoring that 90's SEGA was all about extremely goofy vocal tracks in their games. Like, come on, this was the company that had (awesome) vocal tracks in racing games of all genres!





    Stuff like Open Your Heart and Live And Learn totally make sense when you take this into account.
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2020
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  11. MH MD

    MH MD

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    Generations should have been a one off, and it just was implying that "classic sonic" was just the same sonic but different time periods which was the correct approach , then they meddled the ground with introducing boom sonic, and then came forces and said "no actually they are different sonics after all" and now we are in a big mess, to speak nothing of movie sonic.

    Sure you can point to old cartoons and how different they were, but they were different media and didn't have that big of a presence, few people remember sonic underground for example, maybe one could say the same for movie sonic and i am willing to make an exception here, but it have a more mainstream presence that it is warranted to take into consideration
     
  12. Gestalt

    Gestalt

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    Yeah, everything could be so much better. I’ve heard that somewhere before. Some claim that it went from “wacky but cool”, the icon of an industry to “so bad, it’s not even funny anymore”, just another corporate mascot. But you can’t really blame Sonic Team. If anything, SEGA should have been clearer with Sonic Team about what going third party really means imo. SEGA has yet to convince the players that Sonic has changed for the better.
     
  13. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    When I referred to Adventure fans calling that the "true" Sonic I wasn't talking about myself. I'm firmly in your camp, and it's unfortunate that Sonic Team canonized the fanbase split. I wish it could just be Sonic, like it was when I was a kid, dang it! :P
     
  14. Considering Crush 40 of all bands came out of Jun Senoue being tasked with creating a soundtrack for NASCAR Arcade that had vocal themes, yeah, Sega had a thing for butt rock in the 90s and it absolutely rubbed off onto the Sonic series.
     
  15. Laura

    Laura

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    There always was a big split between the classic games and adventure games though. It wasn't just in people's heads and then got validation because of Generations.

    Adventure had a completely different art style and went with a more serious story. I accept that cartoons and comics had been doing similar things in the years preceding adventure's release, but the difference between Sonic 3 and Adventure was stark. This was made stronger in Adventure 2, which for a long time was much more popular in the fanbase than Adventure 1.

    And I don't need to discuss how differently the two styles of games play.

    So yeah, the Classics and Adventure games did have the same Sonic character, but a very different take on him. I remember reading magazines in 1999-2001 which talked about how much Sonic changed to look cooler on Dreamcast.
     
  16. Glaber

    Glaber

    Has Beaten Sonic Genesis for GBA Oldbie
    regarding classic sonic, why can't both be true? During Generations Classic sonic was Sonic's Past, but Because Eggman meddled with the past, it caused an alternate timeline were Robotnik tried to learn from his future and we got Mania as a result. Tails and Eggman caught on easily enough because they would have known about the various time Travel theories.


    I mean it maeks as much sense as Dragon Ball Super having 2 Grand Xenos because one of them is from a destroyed alternate future
     
  17. Aesculapius Piranha

    Aesculapius Piranha

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    Personally I've been amazed that the younger generation still knows and loves Sonic. Returning to college I've had a lot of opportunities to talk to fellow nerds 10+ years younger than me who don't even bat an eye when I say Sonic CD is one of my favorite games. I imagine this has a lot to do with the hard work of Headcannon guys and I love it.

    Actually I'm amazed how much zoomers seem to like old shit in general. If anything I'm scared their generation isn't finding their own identity outside of memes and 'yeet.'
     
  18. Jason

    Jason

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    Don't worry, they've got Fortnite and Billie Ellish. We had Looney Tunes and classic rock on loop for most of our childhoods, but we still got our own stuff.
     
  19. MH MD

    MH MD

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    It can make sense if you look at it that way, but their reaction in forces wasn't like " oh younger sonic" but more " Another sonic?!" as if generations didn't happen at all, i dunno


    I meant it more as in that even if you acknowledge the difference between art style and gameplay , people didn't really think of them as different characters, sonic is still sonic and tails is still tails etc, even if you vastly prefer classic games or Adventure games,

    Like, Mario also had different gameplay styles and his artstyle changed with time but you don't really see people say classic mario and modern mario, he is just mario, mario in new super mario bros games looks the exact same as mario in super mario galaxy games, despite the big difference between 2D and 3D gameplay, and in that way you don't make a big fracture in fanbase ,despite having a lot of gameplay styles and spin-offs, the fanbase are still unified and there is not "true mario" or some nonsense like that

    i guess the latest paper mario game did something similar with 2 styles of mario, RPG mario and paper mario, but this is still a spin off and not a main game
     
  20. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    I think we should be thankful that Sega/Sonic Team is no longer adhering to a yearly release schedule, which shows they’re at least trying to make something quality. Remember that Shadow, ‘06, Unleashed, Black Knight, Sonic 4, and Boom all came out under the yearly release schedule. IMO we’re unlikely to get another ‘06/Boom-sized bomb for a decent amount of time.
     
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