Sonic Superstars: A New 2D Sonic Game (Fall 2023)

Oh my GOD, this. The bosses in Superstars are just insufferable.
Also, in regards to point 3, did you mean to say Superstars? Mania's bosses typically didn't have pinch phases or cutscenes in them, with the only exceptions I can think of being the Hydrocity Boss and Titanic Monarch Miniboss in terms of pinch phases, and Titanic Monarch's boss in terms of cutscenes (because lets face it, thats what the HBH re-fights during that boss are)

 

Yes, I meant to say Superstars. The subject of the post is pretty much "Why Superstars boss fights are bad" lol. Going off on a Mania tangent would be odd.

 

I feel like part of the issue with the bosses is the fact they're tacked on to the end of the actual stages. Which I appreciate is kinda the point of the boss, but I think it would make a big difference if A) they were a separate stage and B) I could skip them once I've completed the game. This way there would still be a big challenge to actually finish the game, but you don't have to go through it all again every 5 fucking minutes when you replay. Plus it means I don't have to play through Egg Fortress 2 again so I can get to the boss I'm currently stuck on.

 

Advance 3 doesn't exactly have the best bosses in the series, but the fact that they're their own act you select separately makes it way harder for any individual one to wear out its welcome. That was Advance 2 (and to a lesser extent, Rush 1)'s problem, getting all the way through two harrowing acts of Sky Canyon or Altitude Limit or what have you, being faced with a bullshit fight or dying to the instakill hand or whatever, and then having to repeat those acts when you run out of lives. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills whenever I see people call Advance 2's level design better than 3's on the face of it, but the fact that you never have to worry about a game over outside of a single act or boss makes it pace so much better. Superstars would absolutely, absolutely benefit from each boss being a separate act.

Obviously that won't happen though, so I propose patching them to never have any invincibility timers whatsoever. It wouldn't save the ones that physically move outside your range, but it would help.

 

I would be able to appreciate bosses ending stages in Superstars if your performance throughout the stage had any bearing at all in your survival chances. But you can have 1, 16 (the amount of rings close to the last checkpoint in Egg Fortress Act 2), 32 or 164827 rings and it will never matter because a) bosses will very often instakill you b) they aren't rhythmic like Sonic bosses usually are so getting hit once doesn't lead to getting hit more times because you get out of sync.

Getting hit in Sonic boss fights is usually dooming because it's kinda like dance: if you miss a step, it gets harder to get back. Which is why additional hits are dangerous, and why even forcing your way through the boss requires you to know what you're doing.

But in Superstars, there being clear "attack" and "defend" phases, frantically going after the rings you've lost doesn't really hurt that rhythmic aspect. You can just... wait it out.

EDIT: oh also score doesn't seem to matter in the slightest for anything at all so retaining your stuff (keeping your rings, getting better times) doesn't mean anything. So why bother. All of it just makes going through the stage and putting any kind of effort into the bosses a chore.

 

Took me a moment to understand this post, so I'll just clarify for any other dumb-dumbs like me: Advance 2 and Rush have separate boss acts, but the game doesn't save your progress until you've beaten the boss. So that means that if you game over against the boss, you'll have to repeat the preceeding acts to try them again.

Indeed, Superstars wins it there because it doesn't have lives and saves after every act regardless. But it's still very much a case of "pick your poison".

 

That's (traditionally) the purpose of Continues, at least to the point where you only have to restart one act.

This was actually a pretty big issue with Mania, most notably with Oil Ocean, and they didn't bother to implement Continues because the sentiment was that they made no sense with save files, so people were stuck playing that shit over and over.

 

Mania actually does have continues! But only in No Save mode, not on actual save files. Felt like a weird choice to me.

It comes with a fancy 3D floor and everything:

 

No, after an update they added it back to regular saves... My point was to point out the oversight.

 

Wow, I would never have known about this if you hadn't said! I don't think I've ever played Mania or S3K on no-save mode. I just start from a zone that feels fun and end up playing to the end.

 

You are completely right, also I wasn't trying to make any point I just wanted to mention it because it's obscure and in case people weren't aware. If anything I was furthering your point because I said it was a weird choice not tryna argue

 

I played this with my son over the Christmas period and we had a blast. Really good fun. Some glaring bugs but it definitely hit the spot in terms of recapturing that spirit of playing an old sonic game.

The last boss literally took us an entire day and we figured out it was better to just play as one player to resolve some camera troubles.

Other than that, we had a really great time with this one !

 

For people that enjoy score competition, it does matter. There doesn't need to be anything to unlock or level up or progress in any way. I enjoy beating a boss in Superstars with no damage to get a better score via a massive ring bonus simply because I like doing it.

Superstars doesn't really fix any of the balance issues that classic Sonic score attack has (in some ways it makes them worse due to the removal of the 10-minute time limit), but the very fact that the game actually keeps score records and acknowledges my favorite playstyle is a big thing for me.

 

What makes it even worse for me, is because of the lack of checkpoints, you have to sit through fang building his mech over and over. It’s like a 3-4 minute fight! You can spend 20 minutes in this single boss if you’re struggling!
Also most of the bosses in the late game suffer from these issues so it’s never something you can move on from. Unlike say sonic 3 it’s just the one boss in lava reef that’s annoying and then the rest of the bosses are great.
God imagine having to redo the death egg reactivating cutscene and auto scroller every time you died. Then you still have 12 hits on a timer. That is every boss in superstars.

 

Oh yeah, I guess that was unclear. I guess technically you could say it's more a consequence of Advance 3's hub worlds (of which this would be their only virtue). It's hilarious that they have minigames for grinding lives scattered all over the DIMPS game where lives matter the least.

 

My dude Dulcy literally looks like a character straight out of Dragon Tales or something. If I showed her to a casual they were would never guess she was a Sonic character.

 

TBF we did almost get a stylistically divergent dragon in 3&K, and Super Trip certainly isn't a perfect attempt herself. Like I said it's just hard to get these kinds of characters to look right in Sonic. Not that it's impossible or that Dulcy is super far off from working already. If you ask me Drawloverlala's fan redesign of her totally embarrasses Super Trip as far as an aesthetically-appropriate-yet-recognizable dragon design goes.

 

Dragons in REAL Sonic styles:




And everything was right with the world.

 

I think Time Attack is fun for what it is but the levels become so complex and difficult they aren't well suited to time attack.

I think there's a general problem among Sonic designers misunderstanding Sonic bosses. I remember Stealth saying he was proud that Mania actively doesn't have bosses which can be hit repeatedly. He pointed out Heavy Shinobi as one which punishes reckless attacking. Defeats the whole purpose to me. I think the bosses in Sonic are good precisely because you can attack them almost continuously if you are good.

Superstars isn't really unusual in its approach, since Advance, Rush, and Mania similarly want to move away from what made Sonic bosses good in the first place. But it goes mad and by the end of the game has completely lost the plot.

I would massively prefer the game also if there was an option to disable the bosses. At least if you could after you beat the game.

The problem is that the bosses aren't often bad in actual design and execution. They are just massive time wasters and it's that problem which ruins them.