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Trying to start debunking the "Generations of Sonic Fans" perception.

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Rhythm Raccoon, Mar 25, 2021.

  1. Overlord

    Overlord

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    Nah. Gamma is destroying robots to free animals, that's something that's been a thing the entire history of the franchise. In SA2, we have global armegeddon. Slight difference.
     
  2. So, legit question no bullshit, does it have to fit within the context of the franchise history for it to be tonal consistent?

    Because technically, Eggman has been making Armageddon devices since the second game.
     
  3. Dark Sonic

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    Does the Death Egg have the same function as the Death Star? We never really know what it does, like ever. It's just the foreboding object in space. Yet oddly enough the ARK does serve as a Death Star esq weapon, which always made me curious why Eggman felt like it was such a big deal because he's already built one essentially. Why rely on something from 50 years when you can do it yourself only without the space lizard who used the station as a dildo.

    In Archie it serves as a global roboticizer. I always liked that interpretation, it seems fitting to what Eggman's about.

    EDIT: This goes for EVERY Death Egg. Sonic 2/3K/Generations, Sonic the Fighters, and Sonic 4 (that one I guess served to encompass little planet but beyond that idk). Sonic Forces' Death Egg serves as a space prison and a phantom ruby battery or something (they never explain how that works), it also has Death Star esq defenses, but they still don't explain what that thing's true purpose is.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2021
  4. Sid Starkiller

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    Closest we get to finding out is the Lava Reef boss, where it superheats the cooled magma. I would assume it has the same function as the Death Star, if nothing else as to make it a more tangible threat. A robotizer/factory isn't exactly scary, you know?
     
  5. Dark Sonic

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    The Archie Death Egg was designed so that if it shot it's lazer or beam or whatever, it'd of encompassed the entire planet and turned everyone into a robot at once. So that way he'd still have a world to rule rather than just blow it up. It would have also blown up any pre-existing metal structures so cities would be obliterated and any pre-existing robots. So still pretty threatening in it's own way.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2021
  6. Laura

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    Im pretty sure you are supposed to assume it blows stuff up. I just don't think you are supposed to think too much about it. Eggman can destroy planets which means he is technically intent on mass murder, but it's just cartoony and you aren't meant to take it too seriously.

    Aside from later in the games where you are supposed to take him seriously, which I always found jarring.
     
  7. Well evidently, some people missed the memo because there are some who want Eggman as an actual villain rather than just a goofball.

    That's what I was alluding to before; it feels like everyone's threshold for what's "too serious" is different.

    Some feel like Sonic Adventures 2 goes too far with its tone, while others feel it's tone is perfectly serviceable for the type of story its trying to tell.

    For the most part, it feels like the ones who prefer the aesthetic of the classic titles feel Sonic Adventure 2 is totally dissonant with the series.

    While others who played it along with the Classics around the same time, don't see much of an issue.

    Its truly fascinating how people can draw such different conclusions about the same exact product :V
     
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  8. Beamer the Meep

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    Actually, while replaying Sonic Heroes, I was thinking about this. The sense of flare that the Adventure games brought to the table didn't feel all that out of place tonally with the classic games too much, and it actually gave some interesting perspective on the classic games' tone. I suppose with Heroes trying to aesthetically be a classic game, it's easier to see than with SA2 or even SA1. Personally, I feel as if SA1 & SA2 were the types of stories the team always wanted to make but couldn't back in the 90s, complete with the serious stakes, the light-hearted interaction between characters, and the coolness factor.
     
  9. Frostav

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    No it wouldn't, because that line is actually charming and befitting Sonic's character unlike [literally anything in Colours that isn't the Eggman PA announcements].

    SA2 is honestly not much darker than a kid's movie. Eggman spends the entire time being a cartoon supervillain who BLOWS UP THE MOON. Team Sonic crash-land on the ARK because Knuckles was a dipshit and pressed a level. Rogue is just a spy agent which is divorced enough from any real-world politics to be particularly heavy. Shadow is the one exception and even then...he knew a girl who died. Wow, edgy. Surely something truly dark.

    Oh god what are you doing with that kids' media like Harry Potter, Up, Avatar, and countless other media that goes over topics like death and even darker ones like genocide and racism nooooo my ridiculous conception that SA2 is a turbo edgefest can't work with those existing!
     
  10. Forte

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    I always enjoy reading how the English-language fandom approaches Sonic. I am from Poland, I was born in the early nineties, and as you probably know, the situation in Eastern Europe in post-communist countries was very specific then.

    Our market was flooded with practically 3 generations of consoles, coexisting with each other in a strange symbiosis. People were playing Pegasus (NES Clone), PlayStation, Amiga and PC all at the same time. Saturn suddenly appeared, followed shortly by Dreamcast etc. of course, hardly anyone could afford these consoles.

    I first played Sonic on Master System, around 1998 when I was still a little kid. At that time, Sonic Adventure was coming out in Japan, but I had no idea about it. (I knew about SatAM, but good luck catching that on TV - to my knowledge, it never aired in my country) Then came PC gaming - I got to know Sonic Adventure DX and the classic trilogy at the same time. A little later, I played Sonic Heroes and Sonic Adventure 2.

    So, what kind of fan am I? A classic fan, or modern fan?

    The answer is pretty simple, I'm just a Sonic fan.

    To me, Sonic was always Sonic, starring in older games and newer games.

    By "fan generation logic" I should be considered an adventure fan, but truth be told, I love S3&K as much as SA2. I enjoyed Unleashed and even 06 is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine.

    Some time ago I started to think, that maybe I'm getting too old for Sonic, because I'm not enjoying new titles anymore. I hated lost World and Forces bored me. Then... I played Mania and the truth struck me hard in the head.

    My age is not a factor here. I still enjoyed Sonic Mania, and when I replayed Generations the other day - it was still good.

    The problem is lesser quality of newer titles. For example - Forces feels like a downgraded Sonic Unleashed. Avatar is just Sonic with a weapon, at least with Werehog they were trying something new and fun.

    Hope I didn't make too many grammar errors writing this post. It's already past midnight here and I'm getting sleepy :P
     
  11. Azookara

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    I feel like the more one reads into how Sonic Team talked about Sonic during the classic days and what kind of things they wanted to do with him, what you said becomes more and more obvious and apparent.

    If they never intended Sonic to be this kind of thing, the games wouldn't have continued to escalate in stakes even in the classic era, nor would have they approved things like the OVA. Hell, they never would've done SA1 in the first place. It is the same people that made the classics, in case anyone forgets.

    They always wanted this to be a flashy (and goofy) high stakes action-adventure series, with cartoony characters that have anime-inspired personalities and stories to tell. The Adventure era doesn't betray this one bit; the only way I can see anyone coming to that conclusion is if they hyperfocused on what was different and nothing else.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2021
  12. Vertekins

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    I've been a fan since early 1994, the first game I ever saw and played being the Master System version of Sonic 1. I grew up with the Mega Drive games and first three Master System games i.e Sonic 1, 2 and Chaos.

    I consider myself to be what was catergorized by one fan site as a "Universal Sonic Fan". That is, a fan of the Classics, the Modern era, the animated series', both SatAM, Sonic X and Boom (Except for AoStH and Underground) and the comics though I admittedly never really held pre-reboot Archie Sonic in high regard and can't stand Fleetway's Sonic comic and it's iteration of the title character, I always focused on post-reboot Archie Sonic and IDW when it comes to so-called western continuities.

    I can't say that I have an explicit preference regarding Sonic "era's", both era's have great games that I love immensely. It's just that the Modern era seems to have the larger concentration of games I dislike ('06, Chronicles, Shadow and whatever the hell Boom was). I suppose I like both the Classic and Modern era's of the franchise pretty much equally though. Can't say I like the direction the franchise took post-2010 with the exception of everything relating to Mania (The game, it's expansion and Sonic Mania Adventures). Which IMO is hands down the best thing about post-2010 Sonic alongside IDW Sonic.

    I can't say I care for categorical thinking regarding Sonic fandom, putting groups in tidy little boxes. Because from my observation, most fans I've seen appreciate a variety of Sonic media.
     
  13. Overlord

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    Indeed. And this is the point I'm ducking out, because we're never going to reconcile these two points of view (especially given Frostav's blatant attack post that I refuse to even justify with an actual response).
     
  14. XAndrew

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    This...actually was an interesting perspective. It actually makes me love how you guys in Brazil just got to see Sonic as Sonic. But I gotta ask, did how was it for you when it come to Sonic around...the time 06 released? Was it still Sonic even if the quality was sorta dropping then, or did you see the whole generations of fans thing around that time? I'm really interested to here how you guys saw that specific era to now when it comes to Sonic.
     
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  15. Palas

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    Please note I'm VERY partial to the classics for a lot of reasons, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. What happened in the middle of the 00s was weird to me, and possibly to a lot of Brazilians (and I'll ask @Forte here if it's similar to the Polish experience because it looks like it is). From my perspective, there are three factors that shaped how we saw Sonic in mid-00s:

    • The PS2 and piracy
    • Broadband and Youtube
    • Fangames and emulators
    The way I see it, Sonic phased out between 1999 and 2004 (which is sort of delayed compared to the rest of the world, I guess) because there was no Sonic for SNES, N64 or the PS1. Both Saturn and the Dreamcast were stuff of legends.

    But then came the PS2. Everyone had a PS2 and everyone had every possible game for it because piracy was, and is, absurdly widespread. I legit don't recall having ever seen a game for the PS2 in its original cover. I believe it was Sonic Heroes that paved the way, but just about every kid had equal and mostly free access to Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, SADX, SA2:B and Mega Collection, and probably liked all of them and saw them as the same thing (if favoring Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog a little).

    And there was not, I think, any talk about the quality of the games declining because people just wanted all Sonic they could get since it was all being "released" at the same time. Sonic X didn't make much of an impact because it wasn't in broadcast like SatAM and Underground (and apparently AoStH at some point?) were, so it was all about the games for the general public.

    Then it turns out when Sonic '06 launched, no one really had an X360 or, god forbid, a PS3. But, since both broadband and social media (namely Orkut) were getting popular, Sonic '06 was the first Sonic game whose launch I and a lot of people watched closely. There were a few really, really big sites on Sonic back then that provided details about everything Sonic, from emulators to secret content to forums to fanart. The community was huge and very solid, with new kids coming in who had just played either Sonic 3&K or Sonic Riders for the first time, and then could play everything else on emulators and ROMs provided by the community. Kinda like a Sonic singularity if you will. But when Sonic '06 got panned, people just went either "see! The Classics are better/Sonic and the Secret Rings will be better!", like me, or went "wait until you can play it/I played it at my cousin's house and it's actually really cool/Fuck Wii players and their baby, cheap ass video games". It's an interesting economic/social divide that only got worse with Unleashed.

    So Sonic was, at that time, kinda like a lo-fi cult. A lot of cool Brazilian fangames were created at the time, and I believe the most famous one was Neo Sonic Universe. Ultimate Flash Sonic was possibly played and referenced more often than Sonic Advance or Sonic Rush (not in the community, of course, but in general). And it was all just as much Sonic as the official games because, after all, since everything was pirated or emulated, there wasn't much of a reference on what was canon or official. It's not that we took fangames as canon, it's that we didn't take them as non-canon either.

    This all changed from 2008~2009 on, what with the Wii and videogames in general getting cheaper, but the fact is that Sonic is still very much a thing nowadays, and in ways you wouldn't expect.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2021
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  16. RDNexus

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    That's quite the outstanding account.
    I'm not sure if stated here before, but I only owned the SMS Sonic1&2 and Spinball.
    Mega Drive Spinball, I only came to know of it through the online community. Among other less popular titles and prototypes.
    The Mega Drive classics, my brother and I only played at friends' houses, since we never got a Mega Drive.
    Mega CD? 32X? What were those? What was Sonic CD? What was Chaotix? Only through emulation did we discover them, in the 2000s.
    Even Sonic3 and S3K were quite illusive to us until this time, having only played it once at a friend's house, through rental.
    And heck if I still remember how tough it was for us to get the emulator working properly to run Sonic CD ^^"
    At one point, we had Sonic CD on sale at our hometown. Silly little us never tried to get it bought xD
     
  17. Forte

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    I think our countries have a lot in common in terms of availability of the games. The situation with PS2 was pretty similar, everyone were using Swap Magic or modchips to play their games. The piracy was everywhere, same with PSX a few years back. Heck, even when X360 hit the shelves, most people were buying it, because it was way easier to play backups on, than PS3 (and a lot cheaper too).

    As for Sonic, unfortunately - the hedgehog was never that much popular in Poland. Most kids in the 90's were preoccupied with Mario (because of Famiclones), Dragon Ball and Pokémon (because of TV series). Of course I'm speaking from mine POV, but literally none of my friends knew Sonic back in the school days.

    Situation was a bit different for teenagers, because in late 1999, Sega was getting popular in Poland thanks to Dreamcast. People were buying the console (it even had nicknames like DeCek or Makaron, the latter means pasta - the DC logo kinda looked like it).

    So if Sonic was recognizable in the 90's, it was probably thanks to Dreamcast or some of the other Sega Consoles that were sold in limited quantity.

    Even in PS2 era, situation didn't change much, although we had Sonic X airing on Jetix. I remember the community growing in 2003-2006 on internet forums but it was still a small number of people IIRC, passionate about all Sonic stuff.

    Before Sonic Forces, we even haven't had a translated game, and in Forces case it's just subtitles. Hopefully, with the Sonic Movie things will change.
     
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  18. Frostav

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    Also another thing about SA2 being "too edgy":

    When Sonic is captured by GUN in SA2, he cracks a joke about how the flight sucks compared to a normal passenger one, leaps out the heliocopter, and skateboards on a sheet of metal down Not-San-Fran. When he gets captured again, Tails flies over to the island he's locked up in, finds Amy there for some reason, and then blows up a buncha gun robots in a goofy ass mecha. Amy herself mistakes Shadow for Sonic in a rather silly scene, and when she goes to free him, Sonic is so nonchalant about his incarceration that he's exercising in his cell, and rejects Amy's offer to save him because he thinks she's a bit annoying. When she does, he then leaves, runs across a harbor base, hops on a giant-ass rocket, and then skateboards on ANOTHER sheet of metal out of there.

    That isn't edginess, frankly. That's a kids' cartoon.

    Now, in Forces, when he gets captured, we get two absolutely hilariously stupid lines about him being tortured and "this is war, Vector".

    That's edginess--comically stupid and clumsy attempts at darkness and maturity with zero thematic weight backing them. That's the real distinction. Eggman hijacking basically every single screen on the planet blowing up the moon in SA2 and later ripping the planet apart in Unleashed aren't edgy because they are handled with a cartoonish (I don't mean this in a bad way) levity. The citizens of Unleashed don't even seem to care, and when you're in a level or hub, there's no mass destruction everywhere. But there is still a sense of stakes and pressure to do stuff. Eggman can both be threatening and also a cartoon supervillain at the same time. We know that in Unleashed, he's not going to mass murder the entire planet, but there's still stakes regardless. Like, the "I'VE COME TO MAKE AN ANNOUNCEMENT" scene in the Snapcube fandub works because the actual situation is frankly a bit silly already!

    Shadow and 06 personally are were the "edginess" actually set in, with clumsy dumb shit like Shadow shooting gun soldiers and killing Eggman/Sonic or that one ending where he goes "I should never have been born [goes off to emo cry in front of fucking Vector]" or 06 killing Sonic for literally no reason. You should note that when people say "I wish the stories were more like the adventure era", people mean "I wish the stories had some tension and stakes", not "I wish the stories were edgy as hell". If that were true, Adventure fans would want the stories to be like Shadow and 06. Literally no one does.

    Because frankly, you could take the classic Sonic games and make them sound comically edgy and dark if you selectively framed them. "In classic Sonic Eggman tortures animals by putting them into robots and forcing them to kill Sonic and they can't do anything and he wants to destroy the world and build a new empire where he's the supreme leader and he builds a giant-ass thing called THE DEATH EGG (my personal emphasis because this thing literally has the word "DEATH" in it) that he's gonna use to help destroy the world and make his empire with! He's got this HUGE airship with so many weapons off mass destruction it's called the FLYING BATTERY"

    That's not even going into him chaining an entire planet to another one, and turning all the various regions of it into dilapidated mechanized nightmares, or the fact that he dropped an entire island into the ocean which if you took to its logical conclusion probably created massive waves that devastated the nearby regions.

    Torturing animals? Chaining planets and turning them into a nightmarish mechanized hellworlds? Creating a thing called the Death Egg and having a flying arship that, and I forgot to mention this above, CARPET BOMBS A JUNGLE and turns it into a literally blazing hellscape and is named after how it's a flying death machine of artillery weapons? Wanting to destroy the entire world and make a new empire where he is the supreme leader and crush all resistance?

    Sounds kinda edgy to me :V

    That thing about "people who started with the 3D games and played them alongisde the 2D ones think they aren't tonally incoherent" is true. Because frankly, SA1 and SA2 are pretty much as "dark" as the 2D games were--they just had that little dash of seriousness now explicitly told through the story, and not just having it be implicit and in the background. And games like Colors weren't a "return to form"--the classics were never this carefree and tension-less.
     
  19. Beamer the Meep

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    That was actually my experience with those two games as well. Around the time that we got Mega Collection for the Gamecube, my Brother and I discovered the world of emulation and hacking (via Retro actually). The Genesis was a near-mythical device that the classic games originated from, but it's not something I would ever see in person until about 7 years later which made the Sega CD and 32X absolutely toiling in obscurity. Gems Collection my Brother didn't get until 2008 I believe and he always tended to hog his games, so I really got into CD recently with the rerelease.

    Chaotix in particular I could never figure out how to emulate correctly, and honestly with it's reputation I didn't see the point of it. When I got my 2nd Model 2 Genesis, it came with a (very likely broken) 32X, Cosmic Carnage, and Chaotix. When I finally managed to get a cord for the 32X, Chaotix refused to run so I decided just to watch a longplay on YouTube instead.
     
  20. Sid Starkiller

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    Sonic CD (and the Sega CD) was actually advertised on the back of my Genesis box (got it Christmas 93, with the Sonic 2 pack-in). Chaotix I saw the boxart for in a magazine or something, but that was it. I never saw either add-on in person.

    I remember the ad blurb for CD called him "The Metal Sonic" instead of just Metal Sonic. A bit weird in retrospect.
     
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