Maybe! I always thought it was some kind of ethereal realm you passed into after going so deep into the temple. That volcano episode of Sonic X has something just like this, where they dig into the ground but come out in bright daylight, with that temple and huge monsters.
Yeah, I figured Sonic took a secret underground path, but that particular section is above ground as he transitions to another temple. It'd be fucking wild if underneath the Mystic Ruins was an entire ancient city though, complete with a fake sky. That's not too dissimilar to the Land of Darkness from the OVA.
We've been mentioning 3&K a lot but really Sonic 2 was already leaning away from the 1/CD-style surreality. I'm under the impression that Naka, Yasuhara and Yamaguchi always had a more grounded, less '80s 3d rendery' artstyle in mind for Sonic. I think fans who insist the former palmtree is more "Sonicy" are perhaps just fixated with Oshima's specific vision, which was never necessarily what Sonic as a whole was supposed to be. Notice how close the latter is to the Chao nut trees too.
I dunno, I think Ohshima's specific vision is definitively Sonic-y. As in, his visual stylings defined Sonic's. This was Sonic's initial and foundational visual identity. That its time was relatively brief doesn't take away from that, in my opinion. Whether they should have moved away from it, to what extent they should have, and to what extent moving away from it is a 'misstep' will vary from person to person. But I think you're correct in observing that this movement away predates even 3&K.
I still don't get valuing his creative choices more than the other creative leads. Sonic isn't a bunny, he isn't in a band, he doesn't have a human girlfriend, his enemy isn't some nightmare king guy because he doesn't live in the dream world Oshima wanted him in. Not even Sonic 1 or CD looks like Oshima's initial concepts. His initial vision wasn't 'Sonic', he needed other artists to help refine it into the thing you and I like.
I think it's valuable to see what Sonic was to the one person who could rightfully call it his "baby". Oshima's ideals for Sonic during it's inception are absolutely valid to look at. But it's worth noting that Sonic's many successes can be attributed to games (even within the classic era) that did not abide to it. Sonic's a character, world and franchise designed by a team with varying ideas, and was purposefully made to be as such. Not to say you can't call when something begins to be too far of a departure, nor does it make the work indistinguishable from something made by a non-caring committee, but Sonic can't really be heralded as the work of a single person's artistic vision. No mainstream game series can, honestly. EDIT: I only say all this not necessarily because of the current discussion, but because I feel like Sonic art style discourse has lost it's way for years on trying to find out what the "true" Sonic style is. Truth is, there is no "true" Sonic style. There are some guidelines and heavily recommended suggestions, yes. But it was largely a culmination of what the artists and developers' favorite things were at the time, and that was always evolving. If Sonic 3K wasn't locked to a 2D plane with a limited palette and tileset, it probably would've looked something like Adventure. The OVA kind of proves it with it's realistically rendered worlds (despite the sci-fi/fantasy setting). And that's okay with me! As long as it isn't completely unrecognizable then let 'em play, ref!
It's just funny to me when Sonic Adventure's feet are held to the fire for not being all Ohshima-style dreamy enough, unlike the simple point-A-to-B cartoon adventure that is Sonic 1. I guess fish checkerboarding into birds is somehow more like a dream than jumping on a trampoline in a tornado or driving bumper cars in space. I don't get it.
I'm starting to think that the realism/surrealism debate doesn't take place on one axis, but two: I think that most of the 3D games are roughly as exaggerated/cartoony as the 2D ones, but there's a big gap in surrealism between 2D and 3D. Frontiers gets surrealism points for Cyberspace/floating platforms everywhere, but I also gave it a high realism score because of the art direction of everything else. The positions of games are not very precise, and like I said earlier, there's a lot of variation within games that makes this discussion less clear-cut. But I have better things to do today than draw error bars over Sonic cover art.
Yes, obviously Ohshima's not 100% solely responsible for the visuals on the things we like about the series, but don't forget that we're talking about the palmtree, which you associated with Ohshima's specific vision. I mentioned Sonic's initial visual identity (ie: Sonic 1 in its complete form), not Ohshima's initial ideas for Sonic 1 (ie: Twin Star, etc.), so all of that stuff that didn't even make it into the game isn't especially relevant to what I was talking about. You bring up other artists refining it, and, well, yeah, exactly. Ohshima's style is what got refined, is my point. Sonic was "Sonic-y" in its first outing, because it defined what "Sonic-y" is. Other artists have indeed come to refine what "Sonic-y" can mean, and that's totally fine and good and I'm a fan of quite a lot of it. It's neat to see those branches grow, but that doesn't change what the roots are.
I mean, there are obvious literal differences in how it renders detail, the color palettes and the nitty-gritty geometric construction of things. It's what separates the retro-futurist 60s look of The Incredibles apart from any animated film set in contemporary times, even though you can still clearly tell what everything is. And not for nothing! Colors and geometry are important. Colors are why the one aesthetic change I like in Dragon Ball GT is that space is blue instead of black. It's more vibrant! The problem is that a lot of that discussion about art direction cedes way to "it's just vibes, man" or clumsily tries to tie it into an alleged deal-breaker on the believability of the world between games, like what happened here. Like, just as an example...what is Collision Chaos? There are lakes, mountains, trees maybe...and some of it is floating upside-down in the sky? There are bumpers and neon signs in this nature area, and giant...tubes of...I dunno, they kind of look like the inside of a music box? This is one of the most indecipherable stage themes in the series, but it's also visually stunning, and for sure nothing in the 3D games has ever come close to replicating the atmosphere. My stance in this debate is not that no examples like this exist or are valid, but that it's much more the exception than the norm across the classic and modern entries, and it's a terrible way to judge what should and shouldn't conceivably be able to exist within Sonic's universe.
Oh, to clarify I was never arguing about what should and shouldn't exist in Sonic's world, I like both the surreal and the more grounded aesthetics of different games, as I said earlier. (Though personally I'm leaning more onto team surreal, Frontiers looks rather boring to me most of the time) I think Hydrocity is fun, and I think Lost World is cool. I appreciate what both levels are going for. I like both whatever the heck a Collision Chaos is, and I think Kingdom Valley is awfully pretty and I like seeing Sonic run there. Somehow Sonic looks like he fits in just about anywhere with the right direction. Again, sorry if poor wording on my part got some folks upset.
Based on the background at least, I think Collision Chaos is supposed to be an island in a valley like Green Hill. I interpret those smaller formations in front of the mountains as Palmtree Panic canyons, with those "lights" below the lake being stylized water reflections like Gigalopolis' background. CD otherwise does that upside-down landscape thing and I think it's just supposed to represent where Sonic came from in the opening, in this case Never Lake specifically. The foreground always struck me as a junkyard, or just the rotting, abandoned remains of a glitzy, neon civilization that used to be there. Like Casino Night Zone after a nice flood. Though that's just how I see it and yeah at least a stage like Twinkle Park is unquestionably amusement park-themed, despite both somehow taking place right outside of Station Square and also in space. Still surreal but at least I don't have to interpret what I'm looking at. I still wouldn't say CC is total nonsenseland and certainly wouldn't say realism is what most differentiates Twinkle Park or even any SA2 stage from a zone like it.
'Not surreal' - you mean realistic? I feel like your axes are maybe a little misguided there; and perhaps better pairings of opposites/antonyms would be surreal/realistic and exaggerated/conservative. As-is, you're going to end up with a permanently-empty bottom-left quadrant there by the very definitions it encompasses.
I was going to bring this hot take back because I agree with it. If Tails can switch from flight/slow/kinda hard to maneuver/vulnerable state; to a jump/faster/maneuverable/curled state at will, he just becomes so OP it's kinda cheap. SOME tradeoff would be nice.
So, is Knuckles in Sonic Adventure OP because he can quit his gliding state, fall down a bit, and resume gliding?
Eh it's not the same kind of gameplay so you can't even exactly compare to the other characters/3D needs different movement options, especially in a gameplay style in which you're looking for stuff instead of going A to B/gliding doesn't give you vertical movement so I don't think the question really applies? His infinite jump glitch is of course pretty strong though.
Is anyone else getting figure-8 burnout at about this time? I know it's a very small thing to nitpick about, but I think the comics (Tracy Yardley being the most guilty of it) and especially Prime have used it to a point where it's lost it's meaning as a visual representation Sonic's absolute top speed.
