Sonic needs a Divorce from Sonic Team

Posted by TGB (105 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Sonic the Hedgehog is a battered wife, Sonic Team has beaten the life, the will out of the poor little guy. Some websites are already lamenting the lack of gameplay and vision in the latest episode of the now tragic tale of the once beloved Hedgehog (some might say too beloved). In the late nineties only Mario and Sonic emerged from the 16-bit era as platform mascots that could survive in a 3D world, the two biggest and baddest franchises of their respective companies who each had earned a certain amount of respect from gamers for their gameplay quality.

Nintendo has been very careful, very conservative about when they release a core Mario game. A Mario game is typically released once or maybe twice a generation cycle and every single one of those games has had a minimum level of quality. Each one could be described as being one of the best, one of the most important games of that generation. They have long tails and the quality of Mario as a product assures that Mario's name will have cache when his name is placed on less stellar franchises, like when Mario throws a party or decides to play a game of baseball with his friends. Mario has a stable and happy relationship with Nintendo, Sonic...not so much.

No! Bad Sonic Team! *Hits with Morning paper*

Ever since the death of the Dreamcast, the reorganization of all of Sega's internal parties and Sega being bought out by Sammy, Sonic has been lost and listless. The Sonic Adventure games may not have been the most inspired games in the world, but they were generally fun. Games like Phantasy Star Online and it's iterations also showed that Sonic Team was a quality studio that could produce games from multiple genres. I think that ever since the fallout that followed the death of the Dreamcast Sega has been bereft of leadership, of vision. Producing consoles gave Sega an identity, it allowed them to be creative and proactive as any game they produced internally that was unique would help diversify the market for their console. Sega has since lost that creative spark, their Pachinko producing overlords have led them into a strategy that has made them too dependent on licensed products and has sent them from being one of the biggest game producers in the world to a middling company. Sega is going through one hell of a mid-life crisis, it doesn't know what its purpose or what its strong points are any more, and Sonic games have suffered as a result.

Sonic has been Sega's trump card, their ace in the hole. He is the one character in their line-up who has enough cultural cache to naturally

create sales, no matter the gameplay. Unfortunately, this means that Sonic is overexposed, that the lack of innovation in his games over the last decade or so has been made woefully apparent. Sega does not know how to evolve Sonic, they just know that their bottom line requires them to release a main line series game featuring his name. So they keep on handing Sonic back to his torturers, back to the people who have been unable to find a working formula for Sonic since the Dreamcast apocalypse, Sonic Team.

Sonic Team honestly thought I wanted to play as Big the cat?

Rather than attempting to move the series forward, Sonic Team has tried to tart up sonic, to patch him up with gimmicks. Sonic Team has so overloaded the franchise with unnecessary mythos, with new "Focus Test approved" friends and nemesis' that I struggle to see him appealing to anyone over the age of ten. Sonic has the worst friends imaginable, the kinds of friends who gum up the gameplay and make the story sickeningly juvenile. Whether their giving him a sword, turning him into a Warehog, having Shadow shoot a gun, have him kissing a realistically made woman, forcing us to use his shitty friends rather then Sonic, every last one of these things is just gaffer tape applied to the Sonic brand to cover up their lack of creativity. And this is from the company that gave us the Dreamcast! That gave us Samba de Amigo, Space Channel 5, Seaman, Phantasy Star Online, Sega gaga and Jet Grind Radio, the most off the wall creative games of their day. And now Sega and Sonic team are just a drunk with no direction, life has been cruel to them and in return they have taken their frustrations out on Sonic. They've made Sonic games no fun to play.

Now, I may not be a huge fan of Sonic over the year, but I always loved to play Sonic games when I was a kid. I loved the speed, the rocking music and the awesome casino levels in the Genesis era. I don't know if it's possible to represent those levels, those feelings that people had when they were playing those Genesis games on current generation hardware, but it would be worth a shot. Good platformers are hard to find these days and I'm always looking for an excuse to buy one, but Sonic Team's efforts have sickened me so much to the point that I don't even know if I am even going to pay attention any more.

Please License Sonic to someone else, they know how to treat him right

The Best Sonic game in the last five years has been an rpg made by Bioware. Bioware! Sega needs to realize that the visionaries and engineers that they have working at Sonic Team are just not up to snuff, that those who still life Sonic games deserve better then what Sonic Team is making. The most successful and popular franchise in the history of Japan is Dragon Quest, that Enix produced RPG that is almost always the highest selling title in a major consoles sales life in Japan. Since the SNES Enix has not been afraid to give their most important product to other development houses, DQVIII and DQIX are both games that have been or are being produced by Level 5, a separate entity to Square-Enix. If the most important games of the last 5 years in Japan can be produced by outside developers, why not Sonic? It would allow a plucky developer to give Sonic fresh legs, to come in with new and different ideas. Sega could also use this as an opportunity to treat their brand better, Enix has never been afraid to delay their games until they are immaculate, until they have distilled that special Dragon Quest essence into a playable experience. Frankly, Sonic deserves better then Sonic Team. Sonic needs to pack his bags and move in with a developer who will treat him right, and give the world the kind of game we've been expecting from a name that big for a decade.

Note: will further edit for grammar and syntax when I feel like it :)

#1 Posted by TGB (105 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Sonic the Hedgehog is a battered wife, Sonic Team has beaten the life, the will out of the poor little guy. Some websites are already lamenting the lack of gameplay and vision in the latest episode of the now tragic tale of the once beloved Hedgehog (some might say too beloved). In the late nineties only Mario and Sonic emerged from the 16-bit era as platform mascots that could survive in a 3D world, the two biggest and baddest franchises of their respective companies who each had earned a certain amount of respect from gamers for their gameplay quality.

Nintendo has been very careful, very conservative about when they release a core Mario game. A Mario game is typically released once or maybe twice a generation cycle and every single one of those games has had a minimum level of quality. Each one could be described as being one of the best, one of the most important games of that generation. They have long tails and the quality of Mario as a product assures that Mario's name will have cache when his name is placed on less stellar franchises, like when Mario throws a party or decides to play a game of baseball with his friends. Mario has a stable and happy relationship with Nintendo, Sonic...not so much.

Ever since the death of the Dreamcast, the reorganization of all of Sega's internal parties and Sega being bought out by Sammy, Sonic has been lost and listless. The Sonic Adventure games may not have been the most inspired games in the world, but they were generally fun. Games like Phantasy Star Online and it's iterations also showed that Sonic Team was a quality studio that could produce games from multiple genres. I think that ever since the fallout that followed the death of the Dreamcast Sega has been bereft of leadership, of vision. Producing consoles gave Sega an identity, it allowed them to be creative and proactive as any game they produced internally that was unique would help diversify the market for their console. Sega has since lost that creative spark, their Pachinko producing overlords have led them into a strategy that has made them too dependent on licensed products and has sent them from being one of the biggest game producers in the world to a middling company. Sega is going through one hell of a mid-life crisis, it doesn't know what its purpose or what its strong points are any more, and Sonic games have suffered as a result.

Sonic has been Sega's trump card, their ace in the hole. He is the one character in their line-up who has enough cultural cache to naturally

create sales, no matter the gameplay. Unfortunately, this means that Sonic is overexposed, that the lack of innovation in his games over the last decade or so has been made woefully apparent. Sega does not know how to evolve Sonic, they just know that their bottom line requires them to release a main line series game featuring his name. So they keep on handing Sonic back to his torturers, back to the people who have been unable to find a working formula for Sonic since the Dreamcast apocalypse, Sonic Team.

Rather than attempting to move the series forward, Sonic Team has tried to tart up sonic, to patch him up with gimmicks. Sonic Team has so overloaded the franchise with unnecessary mythos, with new "Focus Test approved" friends and nemesis' that I struggle to see him appealing to anyone over the age of ten. Sonic has the worst friends imaginable, the kinds of friends who gum up the gameplay and make the story sickeningly juvenile. Whether their giving him a sword, turning him into a Warehog, having Shadow shoot a gun, have him kissing a realistically made woman, forcing us to use his shitty friends rather then Sonic, every last one of these things is just gaffer tape applied to the Sonic brand to cover up their lack of creativity. And this is from the company that gave us the Dreamcast! That gave us Samba de Amigo, Space Channel 5, Seaman, Phantasy Star Online, Sega gaga and Jet Grind Radio, the most off the wall creative games of their day. And now Sega and Sonic team are just a drunk with no direction, life has been cruel to them and in return they have taken their frustrations out on Sonic. They've made Sonic games no fun to play.

Now, I may not be a huge fan of Sonic over the year, but I always loved to play Sonic games when I was a kid. I loved the speed, the rocking music and the awesome casino levels in the Genesis era. I don't know if it's possible to represent those levels, those feelings that people had when they were playing those Genesis games on current generation hardware, but it would be worth a shot. Good platformers are hard to find these days and I'm always looking for an excuse to buy one, but Sonic Team's efforts have sickened me so much to the point that I don't even know if I am even going to pay attention any more.

The Best Sonic game in the last five years has been an rpg made by Bioware. Bioware! Sega needs to realize that the visionaries and engineers that they have working at Sonic Team are just not up to snuff, that those who still life Sonic games deserve better then what Sonic Team is making. The most successful and popular franchise in the history of Japan is Dragon Quest, that Enix produced RPG that is almost always the highest selling title in a major consoles sales life in Japan. Since the SNES Enix has not been afraid to give their most important product to other development houses, DQVIII and DQIX are both games that have been or are being produced by Level 5, a separate entity to Square-Enix. If the most important games of the last 5 years in Japan can be produced by outside developers, why not Sonic? It would allow a plucky developer to give Sonic fresh legs, to come in with new and different ideas. Sega could also use this as an opportunity to treat their brand better, Enix has never been afraid to delay their games until they are immaculate, until they have distilled that special Dragon Quest essence into a playable experience. Frankly, Sonic deserves better then Sonic Team. Sonic needs to pack his bags and move in with a developer who will treat him right, and give the world the kind of game we've been expecting from a name that big for a decade.

Note: will further edit for grammar and syntax when I feel like it :)

#2 Edited by SmugDarkLoser (4619 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

I sort of disagree. Sonic Team just needs to realize what's fun about the games they make and what isn't.

Shadow the Hedgehog is the best example. Extremely fun but then they introduce bullshit like guns and it becomes less fun. If they coulld just keep the running and whatnot, it'd be pretty good.

This is the biggest example of Sonic failure ever. Actually, this is the biggest example of failure. Worst game I have ever played, ever.

My god, it's so bad.

#3 Posted by TooWalrus (11821 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Quick! How did we get Namco to stop making those stupid 3D Pac-man games?? Can we use that strategy? Angry gamers, unite!

#4 Posted by vidiot (2737 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

SmugDarkLoser said:

"
I sort of disagree. Sonic Team just needs to realize what's fun about the games they make and what isn't.

They have had almost a decade to figure out this out. It's time for a long over do change. Sonic Team, is devoid of creativity.

#5 Edited by SathingtonWaltz (1920 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Playing Sonic 3 and Knuckles and then playing any of the newer Sonic games almost makes me cry. I'm ashamed of what my beloved Hedgehog has been reduced to.

(Edit) - Btw, great blog! Agree 100%

#6 Edited by TGB (105 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

vidiot said:

"SmugDarkLoser said:
"
I sort of disagree. Sonic Team just needs to realize what's fun about the games they make and what isn't.
They have had almost a decade to figure out this out. It's time for a long over do change. Sonic Team, is devoid of creativity."

Wow, I wish I had known about that concept art when I wrote this up. Then again maybe not... that may have been crappy Sonic overload.

#7 Edited by Willy105 (4663 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

SmugDarkLoser said:

"
I sort of disagree. Sonic Team just needs to realize what's fun about the games they make and what isn't.

Shadow the Hedgehog is the best example. Extremely fun but then they introduce bullshit like guns and it becomes less fun. If they coulld just keep the running and whatnot, it'd be pretty good.

This is the biggest example of Sonic failure ever. Actually, this is the biggest example of failure. Worst game I have ever played, ever.

My god, it's so bad.
"

Really? It was the best received 3D Sonic game in half a decade.

#8 Posted by AgentJ (8775 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Did Sonic Team not do Sonic Rush? Whoever does Sonic Rush needs to keep doing Sonic Rush.

Sonic Chronicles was great, but it wasn't really a Sonic game. Easy way to fix this? Make Sonic Team do nothing but 2-2.5D games.

By the way, Sonic and the Secret Rings was a better game than Shadow the Hedgehog. There was almost no good aspect of that particular game.

#9 Posted by Wolverine (4240 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

I think the problem is that the Sonic Team wants Sonic to appeal to young kids and little kids like a different type a game genre then we do.

#10 Posted by AgentJ (8775 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Wolverine said:

"I think the problem is that the Sonic Team wants Sonic to appeal to young kids and little kids like a different type a game genre then we do."

Well, the 3d sonic games are still high speed platformers, but i get your point. The way those games are designed certainly doesn't resonate with most gamers.

#11 Posted by Milkman (14002 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Sonic is pretty much cursed. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood sucked also as much as the rest of the Sonic games. So, if BioWare can't save Sonic, no one can.

Online

#12 Posted by clarke0 (1077 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

The problem is that even though the games are awful they still sell very well. They are obviously trying to sell to a demographic of kids under 12 and it is working very well. I think that anybody who actually wants a all-around good Sonic game is out of the picture at this point.

#13 Posted by TGB (105 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

I think that Sega may be better off giving Sonic to an American developer, give it to a group developers who are fans of the franchise like the Bionic Commando Team or Contra IV people. I think that Sonic Team has really been trying very hard to make a game western gamers will like, but haven't really been able to find the right formula. Giving it to a western developer who understands what western gamers want from a Sonic game, and don't want, could be a nice way the franchise to reinvent itself. Sometimes a game is Tomb Raider-ed to death and another team needs to come in and return the series back to its roots.

#14 Posted by NukeGoBoom (492 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

Sonic is the cash cow keeping Sega alive and well.
Sonic is now a kid only game unfortunetly but at least its great funding for sega and hopefully its enough to get Yakuza 3 to states.

#15 Posted by hyperdyne (2 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

you got it ass backwards. sonic team is doing what they can to preserve sonic. the people at nentendo are racing him against mario... and mario has a chance to win????? FAT chancE! also sonic doesn't need a fucking sword! he has thousands of razor shrap quills that he can use better than a flying chainsaw with nitrous rockets! the only thing i want to see with sonic is so many loops twists and turns at blinding speeds that you lose your mind! no slow downs wtf is with the slowdown at the gate?? and a werehog!! not only do they not have noodle arms. not only does it have 0% association with sega... wii... nentendo or else but its down right unsonic like! hes slow as crap and his abilities suck! sure fihting the phoenix was neet.. but sonic the invalid cant get off his ass and spindash through water? i was hoping the werehog was likesuper strong sonic in a way that he can still spindash so fast that electricity arcs off his quills! sega had it right friends!!! your killing off many of the fan base including me!! ive been with sonic team all the way until nentendo.. they didnt need it! just keep making the same old games! i would have died to have a sega genesis with 5 stackons of sonic.. tons of items wierd bonus levels deadly creatres that smak you when u least expect it.. not a freaking 10 minute head start and retarded walls that if you accelerate into them sonic breaks 'plays dead'. if i wanted to run my character into walls all day i would have picked crashed bandicoot (decent game btw). sincerely i want to see a loop de loop with sonic going on it precariously and at the top barely making it.. but all the way going screamaing demon fast as hell! takes a breath. Now thats a show stopiing game. forgget jumping badly angled ledges over the worlds tiniest great wall. i want to run for miles and miles and have chains of rings everywhere. final note ive seen absolutely every single image text video movie and show and miniclip of sonic. wierd stuff included. if you want to keep the 50% of the fanbase you obliterated. contact me geniusthemaster@yahoo.com. note to advertisers. if u mail bomb me i will mail bomb your main.

#16 Posted by Halberdierv2 (1819 posts) - 4 years, 2 months ago

give sonic to DIMPS or Nintendo. they'd do a lot better with him. (besides, a PROPER "mario and sonic" game is needed.)

#17 Posted by LightGaia (30 posts) - 3 years, 9 months ago

Sonic is doing a lot better now than he was in the Saturn ages. What's so bad about him?

#18 Posted by Kentro (12 posts) - 3 years, 9 months ago

@TGB:

Ok, first things first.....RE-THINK YOU THINGS YA IDIOT!!!!!
For one thing, sonic is sonic teams icon. Another thing is that mario is too copyrighted. Ok tell me if this sound right to you guys, A high cracked plumer whos brother is a attempt at retard state, who they try to defeat turtles, bombs, and brown things that look like mushroom olive, and theyre friends with mushrooms (which makes me think mario got high off of). Who Princess toadstool (aka: SNOWWHITE) gets kidnapped by a evil spiked turtle that breathes fire (which makes no sense), and mario (aka: the prince UGLY AS HECK) has to go retrive her, and then it goes all over and over and over again. AND THATS REALLY TACKY!!!!!

Plus, sonic team was creative, they used somethings, but atleast they dont repeat a process, and they have NEW CHARACTERS!!! And i can count them all! The Unleashed and Black knight were THE BEST IDEAS! You have to FOCUS ON THE ACTION! You are focusing on the STORYLINE. Sonic, is SONIC TEAMS ICON!!!!!! Witouht him, the company would be nothing! And sonic fans would hate you cuz you made fun of their ways! Sonic is awesome, MArio is a copyright off of SNOWWHITE!

All the basics in this post is useless, cuz.:
1. Like i said, Sonic is their icon
2. They have standard action, mario; is a copy.
3. Sonic over runs mario.

#19 Posted by Madgamber316 (2 posts) - 2 years, 27 days ago

are u on CRACK?!?!

Sonic the Hedgehog

The Sonic series features the platforming legend and Sega's mascot, Sonic The Hedgehog, and spans countless titles both 2D and 3D featuring a variety of gameplay styles, as well as spinoff titles including racers, pinball, fighters, and even a party game.

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