The way I see it, Ian Flynn's current approach to writing this series (as seen in Frontiers and SxS Gens) is bending over backwards to please the crowd that hates Mania and loves '06, and I can't react to that with anything other than absolute disgust. It's especially disappointing since I really liked some of his Archie stuff. Sonic as a franchise is currently doing the exact same mistakes that Star Wars did in 2019, where they let whiny manchildren with awful taste essentially dictate the series' future.
There's a crowd that hates Mania and loves '06? That's so bizarre. I mean, I personally think Sonic Mania is overrated, but I don't hate it. Never played '06 so can't comment on that.
If anything, I think Flynn tries way too hard to appease every single type of Sonic fan, that it kind of dilutes the series for me. He has been well known to try to make Spinball canon to get the freedom fighters into modern continuity, which feels unnecessary to me. I don't know why some people think literally everything has to be canon to the mainline games. There's nothing wrong with being a separate continuity. Overall the writing in Frontiers just feels a bit bland to me trying to appeal to every type of Sonic fan. You can especially see this with Amy who was made as non-annoying and inoffensive as possible, which just makes her character forgettable. The whole Tails thing with him being meta about how he was in Forces was a bit cringe as well. It's so transparently responding to how fans in the real whole reacted in Forces, that it took me out of the game. Ironically I never felt this in the "Meta Era" even if the writing was generally terrible and the characters acted completely differently than how they should :p.
He's referring to recent crop of 2000's fans starting around 2018 or so. This is a bit of a strawman tho and I don't think there's some massive hate campaign against Mania. There are some 2000's fans online who don't like Classic Sonic very much and some of them may not like Mania and love 06. But they're a minority within a minority.
Lol I would say with that example people who love Mania and care about the writing on this series are more likely to like Ian Flynn's writing and say it's the savior of the series, they're both can't-fail crowdpleasers, people who like 06 (from a writing perspective) are more likely to just generally like the work of the Japanese staff. And now that I put it like that, that makes sense. It's all these old guys who played Sonic 2 specifically and maybe watched the shows or read the comics, and that's what Flynn grew up on and worked with and is overall influenced by, so of course they'd find that familiar and say that's why he "understands" Sonic. Meanwhile the "younger" people (like me I guess) that had largely unfiltered experiences with the series until Colors have a lot more respect for what Sonic Team was creating and miss it a whole lot that they haven't been able to evolve that in a while. And our time is fleeting. I can only imagine what the Sonic movie + Sonic Prime + Sonic.exe crowd will look like.
I'm not sure if this is even that unpopular, but I like the Sonic 3 standalone more than Sonic & Knuckles standalone. If you play for score it actually makes a really good replayable game. Kinda makes me wanna make a hack that adds more arcadey elements, not gonna lie. Not to mention it having funner stages than S&K. Sure MGZ is rough on the bottom paths, but the rest is some great Sonic level design. HCZ actually probably has probably the best underwater level design of the whole series. Competition mode is alright but does not trump Sonic 2 multiplayer. Although, it's both more and less refined than S2's multiplayer.
I’m really not a fan of this “people who are born in year XXXX like this Sonic game and hate that Sonic game, it’s the law” assumptions. It’s very bizarre. There was even a post a while back where someone was shocked and confused that his young family member preferred SA1 & SA2 over newer games like Colors & Forces, because he was “supposed” to hate the Adventure games because of his young age or something. My first game was SA1. I’m a fan of that era of Sonic and I’m not ashamed of it. However, my favorite game is S3&K, with Mania being a close second. But apparently I’m supposed to hate games like S3&K and Mania because I was born a little later (‘95) than most people here I guess?
I was born in 1996 and I like good Sonic games, so in other words I don't like any of them. I did grow up with the classics and liked them back then because I was born a retro-obsessed hipster. I still like them a lot though, even 1. I actually like 1 better than as a kid because I can beat it now.
Yea that stereotype doesn't really hold up under any kind of scrutiny. I was born in the late 90s and grew up playing the the 00s games like most in my generation, and yet those are some of my least favorite games in the series. There probably is some correlation between whatever a fan's first games are and what they like in the series, but I dont think its tied to age at all
My first Sonic game was 3D Blast and the first Sonic game I played brand-new was Heroes. I think 3D Blast is just OK and Heroes is just kinda bad, and I almost never have the desire to play either of them.
Conclusion is, everyone has a different experience with the series. And their age may not necessarily align with the form of Sonic they consumed. Everyone has their own opinion on every game, regardless of which was their first. And to group new Sonic fans into enjoying Prime, Frontiers, and the movies while disliking the classic and Adventure eras would be ignorant. That said I think Sonic 2 is bad and Black Knight is the best game in the series and I'm right.
Yeah I mean I played the series in a totally random order because I was stuck hopping between Nintendo handhelds and whatever limited capacity Sonic existed in on the PC before Generations came out, and I still only played Unleashed HD for the first time like four years ago. I don't know what "era of fans" I'm supposed to fit into and that's because eras of fans are an even more fake and unreliable concept than eras of Sonic. I love the Adventure games and the Classic games, and I'm probably nicer to the 2010s games than a lot of fans, so to see a phrase like "Ian Flynn is writing for people who love 06 and hate Mania" is kind of wild. Cause uh...what? The mid-late 2000s are the only period of Sonic I'd say I generally don't like. 06 is incomprehensibly plotted, throws characters and concepts at the wall with no regard for how they're supposed to fit in, and just has terrible dialogue, with Sonic acting more like a faceless cardboard cutout of himself. I like the current writers specifically because of how they write Sonic's dialogue, how they use the game cast and how straightforward and generally economical the plots usually are.
And on the other side, I generally have the same feelings about the different Sonic "eras" as you but I can't stand what I've seen of Flynn's work (which is pretty much just Frontiers). So the take in general seems a bit off. I'm not sure if there's a single trait you can point to and say, "This person will like Flynn's writing," but this definitely isn't it.
Individuals in a generation have varying tastes but it is also blatantly true that there are general generational tastes and fandoms. People in the 1970s liked Space Invaders and people in the 1980s liked Mario. Now people born in 2007 could well be Space Invader fans. But unless you are delusional, it is clearly the case that those born in 2007 on average are not going to have the same fandom for Space Invaders as those in the 1970s. I do think this mantra holds some validity for Sonic. But it's just not as sharp or even very important. But I think it is largely the case that those born in 1980s-2000s tend to be Classic and Adventure fans (its a common error that Classic fans in general hate Adventure) and those born post 2000s tend to prefer the 3D games as a whole even though they like the Classic games for what they are (another common lazy error is the idea 'modern' fans hate Classic Sonic).. But the problem is gamers often have laughably elitist definitions of the word 'generation' which is defined by what consoles and even often just games they played most as a child. Not anything actually tied to a real generation shift. As if being born in 1990 is totally different than being born in 1995. It is truly absurdist. And it's often tied to this idea as well that the games they played were the true games that anyone outside of their narrow lived experience simply couldn't understand.
Because as we know, Classic Sonic with BIRDS and BIRD STATUES with ISLANDS is obviously the true Sonic and everything else is fake
