You know what, I've enjoyed reading this thread. Makes a nice change from the usual discussion on multiple playable characters, open 3D environments, and Sonic having serious stories. I'm glad we are talking about what really matters. The shape of Sonic's quills.
I can prefer the original cover in the unpopular opinions thread if I want to. If you're gonna tell me that the US art is always worse, and then quickly make an exception for S1's cover, then I don't feel ~obtuse~ at all enjoying Greg Wray's covers in general. Turns out they're not objectively bad just because someone else on a Sonic forum might not like them. Yes Laura this is a stupid argument.
I didn't say you can't like the US covers. Also the Sonic 2 and 3 covers are by Greg Martin, only Sonic 1 had art by Greg Wray. I initially responded to an exchange specifically based around the Sonic 3 boxart, saying that Sonic himself looks really ugly in that specific piece of art. And your every response has, in fact, been completely obtuse, intentionally missing the point of everything I said.
I think the world would be a much better place if people had this thought process, but alas, onto the next 4 pages of American sonic bad.
I think it'd be even better if everything I was said wasn't being spun as irrational crazy-talk. But I mean look at it this way: at least my opinion is in the right thread!
Here's what Lapper (the Sonic Studio developer) has created: Honestly, I love how faithful it remains to Martin's original art in spite of the altered character designs.
"Sonic is freaking ugly!!" isn't the amazingly convincing argument you think it is. I have to assume you're referring to the mohawk quills if you're just going to call him ugly and walk away. I apologize for not already having your exact perspective on Sonic 3's US cover art or whatever I'm being so obtuse about. Now that's more like it.
You could've bothered to actually the read the posts and understand anything I (or Dek) was saying instead of dumbing it down so you can give the worst faith read possible. I'm not asking you to agree, I'm asking you to respect your fellow poster.
If they weren’t going to be like the games in terms of tone, characterization, and concepts of the plots, I think I would have honestly preferred if the movies went HARDER into being their own thing. Could at least be interesting. Don’t sort of, kind of act like the games (except not as good) Just with some minor, mostly inconsequential additions and undesired removals. Just go crazy. Like make Amy essentially Thorn Rose from Prime. Make it to where an entirely different character was created by Gerald as the ultimate life form rather than Shadow. Or Make Knuckles turn out to be the one who ended his tribe, and is now seeking to end all who know about the master emerald or something. I’m just making stuff up as I type this. I was never going to like these movies anyway with the directions they have taken. But again; at least it would make then somewhat interesting to see what twist they’ll do on what we know, rather than just feeling like a lesser version of it. I remember started to think along those lines when I saw the fakeout with Maria’s death. Okay, I get you didn’t want to shoot a child live on television in a kids movie. Sure, that makes sense… …but if you weren’t going to do that, why why did you make it seem like it was kind of going in that direction only to chicken out? Because that’s what that felt like to me. Not like an interesting twist, but just chickening out versus if… I don’t know… For example, its then revealed SHADOW axtually turned on Maria at that moment and killed her himself, for reasons that would later be revealed. That would actually be a shock or twist or whatever. Make him notably distinct from his game counterpart that pushes him ito unfamiliar territory; the end result of which is uncertain.
It bothered me how Shadow seemingly took less convincing to turn good than Knuckles did in the last movie. That whole third act just felt super rushed and weirdly low-stakes to me. Way too much focus on goofy Gerald/Eggman interactions and not enough focus on the world that's supposedly at stake. They easily could've fit in a scene of Gerald hacking all the terminals to threaten the planet like in SA2: The Game. Perfect opportunity to cut to that little girl who made Sonic's shoes when the Eclipse Cannon starts up. Show Tom and Maddie holding eachother close while Gerald spouts his madness, even giving his grandson second thoughts. It would've been a perfectly effective use of the human characters and the Green Hills setting in general and yet they didn't even bother. I don't even like the human characters much and I was still disappointed there wasn't that feeling of warmth between them they built up so much in that second movie. I don't know if Sonic 3: The Movie needed more twists necessarily but it definitely needed to actually go as hard as SA2 did, or at least that's what I expected. It was still a decent time overall but I really wanted more, especially with how the internet was hyping it up as "just like SA2" and "DBZ the movie" blah blah blah.
That still looks like Greg Martin's Sonic, after he ditched the initial design. So it's pretty neat in that way.
I prefer Japanese ones because they're extremely style-ish, but idk, US one are fine to me. It's kinda iconic, not as Sonic 2's, but it's iconic. (Still prefer Japanese ones, tho'.)
I wouldn't call the rhetoric here by people critical of American Sonic "elitism", or at the very least, I don't think it's in bad faith. It's a kind of sentiment that informs elitism, but it's a completely understandable anxiety to have when it comes to something people have emotional investment in. If movie Sonic influences took over the series, I wouldn't like it either. I guess... I really want people have emotional honesty on this matter? Feels like I'm preaching to the choir here, but I wish it was more clear where people are coming from and what they intend to accomplish.
Marketing makes games, but it doesn't make franchises or even sequels. There's all kinds of examples of marketing "fast ones" being pulled but Sonic ultimately would have never succeeded as a brand if the games weren't quality in their own right anyway. The fact that they mostly eschew the punk aesthetic and built a brand and fanbase up despite that shows this to be true. People didn't buy Sonic and think they got swindled by the anime aesthetics and city pop infused flavor. They were pulled deeper in. The original Sonic games continue to sell to this day, and whether you like the cartoons/comics or not you don't see the same affection toward them. This isn't the Pokemon anime, where the whole thing was (imo quite successfully) marketed as one cohesive experience. Growing up in 97-2004 the Sonic experience in comparison was just confusing for me, reading manuals and catching mention of a "Sally" character I had never even seen, long lost siblings on TV etc. 90s era gaming is the only time I've seen such transformative marketing not just tolerated, but praised as if it was instrumental to the final product at hand. We've had countless examples of North American marketing teams overreaching, and more often than not it ends in failure. Look to Earthbound if you want an easy example, but they were doing this all the time with RPGs in particular, from botched translations to tone def marketing. Gimmick marketing isn't always a bad idea, but just marketing the game for what it is, aimed at who it's for is a much more consistent strategy. It's hard to imagine Sonic would have been any worse off in that alternate universe, especially since he was designed from the start with international appeal in mind. Whether it was actually a success or not, I think it's kind of telling that there's no tolerance for this stuff now that the internet forces brands to be more "cohesive" whether they like it or not. Remasters of Japanese games often use more accurate art and scripts as a selling point and there's a more conscious effort to not change content or lore between regions. It's seen as a negative to be an obfuscation between the consumer and the art nowadays which I think is for the best. There's a chance this changes again with hollywood's interest in games but if we're still using Sonic as an example, it's pretty clear that the films have been pulled into the game's orbit and not the other way around. Sonic 3 is both the most "like sonic" these movies have been and also the most successful. Makes all the grandstanding for "wider audiences" the first movie did in hindsight kind of silly. Sonic is not some weirdo niche thing. It's already a brand streamlined and accessible for wide appeal out of the box! Trying to dice it up even more just splits the hairs and causing confusion. So to that end, I think it's unfortunate whenever Sega rereleases Sonic the Hedgehog and the NA art is still emphasized so heavily. Feels like a relic of a bygone era. Even more than that though it's just really, really fucking ugly.
I may be wrong on this, but one reason I feel that classic Sonic rereleases keep having some sort of emphasis on the old NA artwork is to keep nostalgic people who grew up with the Greg Wray/Greg Martin Sonic design happy. Although, considering how much time has past since the early 90s, I'll bet the amount of people who are nostalgic for it aren't as likely to buy a Sega product these days, as they probably had their nostalgia high some years ago by now.
Why shouldn't they show the US covers especially in the US? They sold best here after all. Maybe they're not in fact "really fucking ugly" and Sega just likes reusing them. Foregoing them entirely would just be disrespecting the Genesis' legacy.
