Unpopular Sonic Opinions

It is a conspiracy theory when he starts grabbing the reports to spin it towards "Sammy is laundering their image and that's why they bought Sega" (as if Sega wasn't also into pachinko and illegal connections) and then also positioning his theory on why the writing of the games changed as part of it- look at how he spends time going on about how "oh, Sonic wasn't a hero before, but now Sammy bought Sega, suddenly Sonic is a hero now!"

"Sammy and Sega merged because Sega was looking to merge with another company, Namco, the company that was planning to do it, stepped back, both already had experience in the amusement and pachinko markets, Sammy already had video game assets, and after the merger decisions were made to maximise immediate profit as it always happens after any merger" is not the same as "the criminal mafioso company just bought Sega to hide their activities but they're secretly puppeteering it behind the scenes, and that's why Sonic sucks now!" You only need to see how even on these forums suddenly people started spitefully calling the company "SammySega" after the video came out to show what this mindset actually ends up being.

 

I've now watched most of the rest of the video. I honestly find the evidence for his claims to be pretty weak. He seems to base it all on wording used in a 2005 investors's report.

 

Yea his points are interesting but I find he stretches it way too far beyond what makes sense. I do think the Sammy merger definitely played a factor in the drop in quality of Sega's output. I mean just look at how little they used their old ip starting around 2006. They started really just focusing on Sonic,Monkey Ball and Yakuza (and Valyria Chronicles I suppose) around this time. At the same time tho, for Sonic specifically, Shadow 05 was already in development before the Sammy merger. So the decline in quality for Sonic has nothing with Sammy. It would've liked happened regardless. If Sammy really wanted to hide behind Sonic, why would they make it such obscure information that Sega and Sammy even merged to begin with? As far as I'm aware Sammy stuff still uses the Sammy logo without any mention of Sega, right? Not really improving your reputation if it seems like business as usual to the average casual.

 

There's a lot to unpack here. Spinning it as a "Sonic started to suck after I was a kid because evil corporation bought it" kind of tale is your own projection. He never said that, or anything resembling that. The video is not even about the quality of the games anyway.

There's much to contest about his arguments -- Sonic was never not marketed as a hero for kids,¹ the games were never not developed with incredible amounts of crunch, the brand management was never really centralized EVEN when Yuji Naka was the uncontested figurehead, and SEGA (like you said) is no stranger to relationships with illegal markets. But the way games stopped being the corporation's main revenue and how the main value to be found in Sonic became PR is very explicitly stated in the reports. And if you've ever worked anywhere in the kulturindustrie, you know how these things go. It's not even particularly evil. It's extremely business as usual.

¹ I would personally chalk the change in Sonic's position in the market up to SEGA's withdrawal from the console market, unrelated to Sammy. Although Sonic was always a hero to kids, he was first this rebellious character, and playing Sonic meant playing SEGA, and that was marketed as meaning being HARDCORE and playing UNCENSORED MORTAL KOMBAT and being a REAL GAMER instead of a LITTLE KID, a position Microsoft tried to take for a while there. Sonic changed to meet a more generic, four-quad appeal not because of Sammy but because there was suddenly no more of a target audience for a SEGA console to form and maintain.

 

It could be a little of column A and a little of column B. Sammy could keep Sonic around because it allows them to have a kid friendly brand as the face of SEGA but I doubt the reason games came out at the frequency they did previously was anything but how they were selling and how SEGA was doing.

I think people forget about Rise of Lyric because it wasn't an 06 level disaster in terms of clear immediate effect or even quality (and even then after 06 we were still getting 3 or 4 sonic games a year post 06 until the early 10s) but it cost 20 million to make and didn't even see a quarter of that back. That probably accounts for a large reason for why Sonic took such a long hiatus because if Boom RoL had been an outstanding success they'd have greenlit a console sequel and the next mainline game probably would have had a bigger budget too as a result.

Then Sonic Runners, which had Sonic Team's name on it, failed after a year (I know that wasn't Sonic Team's fault) and a huge budget attached for a mobile game and that just scared them off of putting too much money into anything Sonic related even further.

I mean look at what SEGA does with their successful franchises. Persona frequently gets spin offs, remakes, and other material. Yakuza is damn near a yearly franchise. Total War gets a new game every 2 to 3 years like clock work. This was all DURING the Sonic drought so it shows they'll put money into franhcises they have faith in.

The movies surprise success just let them give an increased budget to Frontiers and allowed them the money to have multiple Sonic projects in development at once like the old days.

I agree that Sonic has to deal with deadlines in a way Persona, Yakuza, Total War and others seemingly have always seemed alien from but that was an issue starting in 1992 when Sonic 2's scope was drastically reduced to hit the November 1992 release date. So you can't put that completely on Sammy.

I mean they're using the movies success and the massive cash influx to bring back franchises like Monkey Ball (which seems to have found its dedicated niche audience), Jet Set Radio, and even Crazy Taxi. So they clearly have faith in video games as video games being a viable product when they could keep making Pachinko machines with these properties dressed over them and make plenty of money.

I get that people want to find someone to blame Sonic's failures but it's not a black and white issue.

 

Sega have been generally lax on their IP since the 90s, before they were acquired by Sammy, therefore Sammy are not the reason Sega are generally lax on their IP. There, I saved you 47 minutes.

 

Being bought by a gambling company probably had negative effects on their business practices and undoubtedly fucked with the development of some games.

Sonic, however, is the way it is because of compounded circumstances that have been there since the start. Do you know how crappy many of the 90s Sonic games were? The only difference between then and 2008 is that which games fared worse than others has shifted from spinoffs that "don't count" to main games that do.

 

Yeah it's kind of funny how people talk about how Sonic sucked since the mid 2000s when we've had loads of 90s stinkers like Spinball, Labyrinth, Drift 1 and 2, CD, Chaotix, Tails' Skypatrol, Blast, 3D Blast, and R.

 

I find it a little strange that Sammy would have to hide anything in an industry where Konami, glorified gambling company, openly exists.

 

Well, since this is the place for opinions, I quite like around half of those
I probably would like R, too, if I ever got the chance to play it.

 

I think his point was more that when people are looking through the 00s game Catalogue they have no issue counting handheld games and spin offs as parts of the duds when if you did the same for classic you'd soon realize that, outside of the main games, most of them are decent at best.

At least the 00s spin offs gave us stuff like Advance, Rush, and Sonic Riders 1. Their might be people who llve the classic spin offs but I doubt anyone is putting 3D Blast or Chaotix as their favorite Sonic game.

Basically, the series has never been known for consistency in terms of quality. The highs were just that high and the mainline was sacred and consistent (until Heroes for some and 06 for almost everyone) so it never became a point of issue until recently.

 

Personally I find gambling rather humorous (edit from 2 seconds after posting: just realized this doesn't add much to the conversation) (oh well, I'll say something of substance to make up for it.
Uhm do you, the reader, believe that Sonic characters are written differently between English and Japanese scripts or do you believe that any changes are tiny and people talking about it are just dummies?

 

You all ever heard of the Hope scholarship? Gambling money is behind a lot of things. That’s nothing new.

 

Talk about exaggeration. Many crappy Sonic games in the 90s?

I don't see how Sonic Spinball is a bad game. It may not be your cup of tea, but it's good.

Sonic Labyrinth is a dud, I agree.

The Sonic Drift games aren't bad, but there honestly isn't much going for them.

Sonic CD is in the same league as Sonic Spinball.

Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island is a good game. As a Sonic game, though, it's not that great.

Never understood what issues people had with Sonic R. It's a competent 3D Sonic racer with great music.

Never played Blast, Chaotix or Tails' Skypatrol so I can't comment on those.

 

sonic spinball is horrible and i will never be convinced otherwise. That game controls terribly for pinball and the gimmicks in each stage are more infuriating than fun. More power to you though.
I havent played most of the classic spin offs myself honestly but they few i have played have all been bad, or if nothing else, severely less polished than the main 4 games of that era.

 

Spinball is annoying and maze-like. The audio is atrocious as the Genesis keeps screeching for it's life.

The Drift games have horrible acceleration and steering, with a render distance of 2... Just 2.

Sonic CD, at least in it's original Sega CD version is a laggy poorly designed mess of gimmicks only made playable by the 2011 remaster.

3D Blast is also too much of a confusing maze, far too slippery, and collecting Flickies is boring and annoying to keep them from getting hurt and lost. They were so close to adapting Sonic into isometric 3D but they had to make it an item hunting game instead of strictly a platformer to get to the goal.

 

Sonic Spinball is actually fun if you understand it and give it a chance. I am talking about the Genesis version. I do understand a lot of people are not into pinball like that. Everyone won’t like it. You cannot say it’s bad because it's glitchy. It’s a polished game. The levels look very interesting as well. I’ll admit the idea of the game is controversial but it accomplishes what it was going for.

 

I have given it a try, and I've beaten it 3 times. I have given it enough time to assess it and compare it to other games. It's bad. It was just Holiday filler while Sonic Team was working on Sonic 3.