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[Ten-Song]

The classic sonic games were great at the time, but they havent aged well at all.

I still think Sonic CD plays great. :/

But I'd say Sonic 1 didn't age well, and 2 and 3 are still good. I wasn't such a big fan of S&K though.

 

[senahorse]

Hey, screw you pal! Viking is a good, fun little game. There's a lot to enjoy there. What does a Viking do? Run around and kill shit. What do you do in this game? Run around and kill shit. There's a story but each cutscene says PRESS A TO SKIP in huge letters, almost inviting you to not give a fuck about anything that isn't running around and killing shit.

Agreed.

Viking is a fun game, great button masher and rather pretty to boot.

 

[Azure J]

I just saw this article somewhere else and I have to say, it's got to be the most blunt and precise insight I've ever gotten of post 99 Sonic Team. The line about them being bored and close minded really hit home for some reason. It's saddening.

 

[Cheerilee]

NiGHTS Journey of Dreams bombed, but Sega didn't lose much money on it.

There's no doubt in my mind it would have done equally bad, or even worse on the PS3 and 360 given the demographics.

Perhaps, but it most likely would have been the better game for it, and might've helped to reinvigorate Sonic Team's zombie souls, and restored our faith in Sonic Team, instead of simply adding to the problem.

 

[Black-Wind]

Perhaps, but it most likely would have been the better game for it, and might've helped to reinvigorate Sonic Team's zombie souls, and restored our faith in Sonic Team, instead of simply adding to the problem.

Only Sonic can restore any faith in "Sonic team". I mean, if nintendo made crap loads of shitty main line LoZ/ Mario titles would a could-be-almost-decent-or-above Kid Icarus title restore faith in those teams?

And for the record I don't thing Nights would have turned out much different regardless. Sega being cheap only hurt what I feel would be a game that wouldn't have turned out too great either way.

 

[jeremy1456]

Perhaps, but it most likely would have been the better game for it, and might've helped to reinvigorate Sonic Team's zombie souls, and restored our faith in Sonic Team, instead of simply adding to the problem.

HD graphics don't automatically make a game 'better.'

It's not like they switched development teams - it was still being made by SONIC TEAM. The same Sonic Team that made PSU, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, etc.

Come on.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

to a degree, sure, but moving to a generationally weaker console that would force compromises in even the least ambitious design plan must be uniquely problematic

So the lesson to be learned is... don't work for Sega?

 

[Cheerilee]

Only Sonic can restore any faith in "Sonic team". I mean, if nintendo made crap loads of shitty main line LoZ/ Mario titles would a could-be-almost-decent-or-above Kid Icarus title restore faith in those teams?

Yes. Miyamoto's put out (almost) his fair share of turkeys, but after one great game, all is always forgiven. Clearly not everyone is Miyamoto, but the principle is there, and every game counts.

HD graphics don't automatically make a game 'better.'

It's not like they switched development teams - it was still being made by SONIC TEAM. The same Sonic Team that made PSU, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, etc.

Come on.

Yes, a game is automatically better with HD graphics than without. Nevermind the fact that HD graphics aren't the issue here. Sega telling Sonic Team to make an entirely new game from scratch after already spending half their time and at least half of their budget on something else is the issue. It's a near-certainty that the PS360 game (if it really existed) would've been better than the final product. It's just a question of how much better.

And as was mentioned in the OP, Sega initially wanted Nights 2 to be a sort of creative break for Sonic Team, because they recognized that they had worn the team out making endless Sonic and PSO games. Then they basically turned around and told them to be shovelware developers. Possible solution turned part of the problem.

 

[Kai Ozu]

Upon witnessing the overnight success of the Wii, Sega of Japan apparently forced Sonic Team to retool the game for Nintendo’s lower-spec platform

 

[Zen]

HD graphics don't automatically make a game 'better.'

It's not like they switched development teams - it was still being made by SONIC TEAM. The same Sonic Team that made PSU, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, etc.

Come on.

And Phantasy Star PSP Phantasy Star 0 Sonic Unleashed, most recently.

The director said that what he actually wanted to do with the gameplay could only be done with the power of HD consoles.

 

[drohne]

So the lesson to be learned is... don't work for Sega?

don't work for sega, wii is a piece of shit -- seems like all the lessons here are fairly obvious

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Yes. Miyamoto's put out (almost) his fair share of turkeys, but after one great game, all is always forgiven. Clearly not everyone is Miyamoto, but the principle is there, and every game counts.

...uh, like?

 

[Sciz]

HD graphics don't automatically make a game 'better.'

It's not like they switched development teams - it was still being made by SONIC TEAM. The same Sonic Team that made PSU, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, etc.

Come on.

Sonic Team USA is not the same team as Sonic Team. Kind of a moot point since they don't exist any more, but don't mix the failures of one up with the failures of the other.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

don't work for sega, wii is a piece of shit -- seems like all the lessons here are fairly obvious

No... this is a piece of shit.

*opens hand to reveal feces that appear to consist of whole skittles and toenails*

 

[lupinko]

They would have been better off selling themselves to Microsoft from a hardcore fan's perspective than merging with Sammy. MS at the time, and from all I've seen still to this day, is so fucking concerned with not shitting up classic hardcore franchises and development teams that they would probably have kept Smilebit and Overworks as their own development teams.

You do realize all they did with the "second party" Sega teams after the merger was just reabsorb them back into Sega. Basically nothing changed aside from some name changes (Sega AM3 became Hitmaker during the "2nd party initiative" then after the restructuring back to Sega AM3 again) and mergers between teams (Sega AM1/WOW Entertainment and Sega AM7/Overworks merged to form Sega WOW with their most recent games being HotD4, Rambo for Lindbergh, and Valkyria for PS3, Nagoshi still leads Amusement Vision which obviously has made both RGGK and RGG3 for PS3 this gen). Nothing changed really, other than Yuji Naka leaving to form Prope and Tetsuya Mizoguchi leaving to form Q? Entertainment.

 

[drohne]

i see you've played knifey spoony before

 

[Thunder Monkey]

i see you've played knifey spoony before

Never with one so adept.

...

Did we just have a bonding moment?

*wags tail*

I should send you my 50 page Buffy fanfic.

 

[AFreak]

...uh, like?

Wii Music

 

[Cheerilee]

...uh, like?

Naming names seems like it would be a bad idea. I assumed everyone would just insert their own names in their heads. :lol

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Naming names seems like it would be a bad idea. I assumed everyone would just insert their own names in their heads. :lol

I didn't!

But unless someone issues me a task I rarely follow through.

If they skirt the issue I doubt I'll notice. I very much live in the future. Always looking ahead, never looking at what's directly in front of me now. My brother lives in the land of "What now..." I live in the land of "What if..."

 

[Black-Wind]

Yes. Miyamoto's put out (almost) his fair share of turkeys, but after one great game, all is always forgiven. Clearly not everyone is Miyamoto, but the principle is there, and every game counts.

The key is to do alot more gold than crap.

(Would also like to know these "turkeys" Miyamoto farts out. Anything he is greatly involved in turns out "fine" or "gold!!!" from what I remember)

And everyone doesn't have to be Miyamoto . . . cause he doesn't makes the games by himself. But they have to have the insight and balls to GUT THE SHITTY PEOPLE and bring in new blood for new ideas.

As for Nights and this "could only be done on the HD twins!" bit . . . we have heard this phase before and I don't see Sega pumping that much money and effort into Nights to actually warrent such a feat. "It would have been sooooooo good! There were ideas that could only be done with the power of the HD twins!" . . . I think the game would have still been crap. I don't see Sonic Team as anything to put too much bank in when it comes to lines like that about such a low-key game.

I mean, Sega out right said "OK, we have to make a Wii Sonic title! Can't be bothered to port the shitty 06 title so you guys, make a new one!" which brang about SR . . . if Sega cared that much for this Nights title than that would have been the case as well.

 

[Mockingbird]

Despite all of the stupid things Sega has done and will continue to do, they have at least partially redeemed themselves with one of the best games released in the past ten years or so:

I still can't believe they made this. In the back of my mind I still sometimes think it's by Square, tri-Ace, Atlus, etc. etc. But, no, it's from the team that was once AM1.

I haven't played it yet (but really want to). This is from the developer of Skies of Arcadia right? Bless them.

Also, Phantasy Star 0 is awesome. I have 49:23 hours input into that game already. Don't know who the developers are, but if you liked PSO, you'll like PS0.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

The truth is...

Sega is a shell of it's former self. They make the dumbest design, and managerial decisions I've ever seen a company make and still survive.

The thought that they pretty much ensured the early demise of the Nights franchise on a whim, would be completely absurd to most other companies. That had to be an interesting meeting.

"It's gonna be on the Wii."
"We've spent millions on engine development, staff... when is it due out?"
"Same as before."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"What doesn't make sense? Make it on the Wii! Is that so hard?"
"Yes?"

 

[meppi]

What I find peculiar myself is that they seemingly had to change the game for to be on Wii overnight with the same release date and everything still in place. And yet, instead of trimming the fat and focussing on the core of the NiGHTS gameplay and levels, they still found a way too keep in all the crap like on foot missions, awkward storylines and throwaway padded levels.

This could have forced them to make a more compact game, which would likely have been a step up from the one we got in the end. But somehow, with the time they had left they still thought it necessary to inject the NiGHTS concept with fluff that made it anything but a better game.

 

[Slavik81]

Sonic Team needs to be dissolved and SEGA's management should be replaced. The cutscene guys can stay.

Sonic is an extraordinarily valuable franchise and they squander it. There's only so long that you can cash out on a brand. Even one as important as Sonic.

 

[ivysaur12]

What I find peculiar myself is that they seemingly had to change the game for to be on Wii overnight with the same release date and everything still in place. And yet, instead of trimming the fat and focussing on the core of the NiGHTS gameplay and levels, they still found a way too keep in all the crap like on foot missions, awkward storylines and throwaway padded levels.

This could have forced them to make a more compact game, which would likely have been a step up from the one we got in the end. But somehow, with the time they had left they still thought it necessary to inject the NiGHTS concept with fluff that made it anything but a better game.

This. The game could have been better than it was if the developers had the right direction. They did not, and from the way the game flowed it seemed as if they never did. Even though I enjoyed the flying levels, everything else was a chore to get through.

 

[GrotesqueBeauty]

There are an awful lot of people taking all this at face value. What happened to GAF's healthy sense of skepticism? There's nothing that corroborates what's being said about Journey of Dreams yet people are attaching all sorts of significance to it as though it were fact, then labeling their own hasty conjecture based on a few lines from some dude's blog as "near certainty". What's more, Famistsu published rumors about NiGHTS Wii an entire year before the blog entry being cited, and more than half a year before this guy claims development for the platform began.

So why are people treating this as gospel all the sudden? Could it be that they're more willing to accept rumors and speculation uncritically when it reinforces their already existing opinions on a subject? The article is an interesting glimpse into one guy's scattershot observations and largely second hand accounts, but some of you are gleaning way too much from a few tidbits of unsubstantiated information.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

This. The game could have been better than it was if the developers had the right direction. They did not, and from the way the game flowed it seemed as if they never did. Even though I enjoyed the flying levels, everything else was a chore to get through.

The rot goes real deep in Sega.

At one time they could do no wrong. Er... at least in my eyes, but now all I see from the company is WRONG!

 

[Panajev2001a]

I hope people don't seriously think that Nights 2 would have magically increased in quality if it had remained on 360/PS3 [...]

Yes, it would have... one year of development+polish time instead of having to use a good part of it to port the engine and tools to Wii.

 

[Haunted]

In Ben’s own words: “There’s no doubt that Sonic Team have lost their quality touch. They are worse than talentless: they are without passion. Bored, weary, closed-minded and out of touch with any sense of what makes games good anymore.” Quite simply put, after making so many of them, Sonic Team is tired of Sonic games - something Ben cites as a reason for Yuji Naka’s resignation in 2006.

holy shit :lol

 

[Deleted member 30609]

holy shit :lol

It explains... so much.

 

[Black-Wind]

There are an awful lot of people taking all this at face value. What happened to GAF's healthy sense of skepticism? There's nothing that corroborates what's being said about Journey of Dreams yet people are attaching all sorts of significance to it as though it were fact, then labeling their own hasty conjecture based on a few lines from some dude's blog as "near certainty". What's more, Famistsu published rumors about NiGHTS Wii an entire year before the blog entry being cited, and more than half a year before this guy claims development for the platform began.

So why are people treating this as gospel all the sudden? Could it be that they're more willing to accept rumors and speculation uncritically when it reinforces their already existing opinions on a subject? The article is an interesting glimpse into one guy's scattershot observations and largely second hand accounts, but some of you are gleaning way too much from a few tidbits of unsubstantiated information.

I think it might be some form of Group-serving bias maybe (?)

As in . . .
"I don't like the Wii, I like HD twins.

Nights Wii is a shitty game.

Now I hear that Nights was suppose to go to the HD twins with "things only the HD twins could do" but that changed because of the Wii's mad success.

There for this game could have been Sonic team's god sent gift of rebirth as proof that they are a capable team of talanted devs had it gone to the HD consoles (regardless of the shit they have done and are still doing to the Sonic series).

Soooo it was shit because Sega made it shift to the Wii (not because the devs behind it and the gameplay ideas were shitty). Should have stayed HD as planed! "

(That IS the feel I get from a few posters. Everyone else is just fucking tried of Sonic Team and don't care, they have already made up their mind that the team is shit so why pick apart something that agrees with this notion. )

 

[RobbieNick]

House of The Dead: Overkill

MadWorld

Sonic and the Black Knight

The Conduit

All Wii games by Sega for the first half of this year.

It's official. The Wii is no longer "two GameCubes duck-taped together", but a GameCube and a Dreamcast duck-taped together.:lol

 

[Deleted member 30609]

House of The Dead: Overkill

MadWorld

Sonic and the Black Knight

The Conduit

All Wii games by Sega for the first half of this year.

It's official. The Wii is no longer "two GameCubes duck-taped together", but a GameCube and a Dreamcast duck-taped together.:lol

...

 

[Shiggy]

I already wondered why some developers said Nights was developed on Xbox 360 dev kits...

 

[Segata Sanshiro]

NiGHTS JoD has its flaws but it is nowhere near a shitty game. Anyone that thinks so is a dumbfuck of the highest order. And a ball-licker. And a puppy murderer. And a PS3 owner.

 

[sprsk]

It would not surprise me if NiGHTS was the epic abomination it was due to that, because a lot of its low-tier problems were related to its technical aspects. But I have no doubt it would have still sucked if it was designed at all like the game turned out to be... it was a very very poor shadow of the original.

I doubt the platform was the problem here. Whatever was at Sonic Team during the Saturn years, is long long long gone.

 

[fresquito]

:lol at people blaming the Wii for what Nights: JoD is.

Those people obviously haven't played the game at all. The game was a failure concept-wise. It had little to do with technical problems. It was the usual Sonic Team game where part of it plays fine (although with camera problems, controls issues and the like, but still enjoyable). And and the other part consists on some of the most terrible platforming sections and collect-a-ton parts that you can play in a videogame today. Add a laughable story and an owl that you'd wish you could kill and you get the picture.

If Nights: JoD only had some of the Nights stages, it would be a much better game, although if that meant it only had only 9 stages to play.

 

[AniHawk]

NiGHTS JoD has its flaws but it is nowhere near a shitty game. Anyone that thinks so is a dumbfuck of the highest order. And a ball-licker. And a puppy murderer. And a PS3 owner.

Okay, now that's just going one too far.

 

[Tellaerin]

PSU is garbage.

You're wrong.

I got it at launch for the PC and half of the areas were still locked despite all the content already being on the disc.

That hasn't been the case for a long time now.

The addition of item synthesis was completely pointless, the areas are incredibly short, unvaried, and this is made even more annoying by having to navigate between them via the much too large ship lobbies. The game simply had far too little content for everything to be spaced out that much.

You can jump straight from your room to locations on the Guardians station or any of the three planets, and you can instantly travel to any lobby you've already visited on a planet by talking to an NPC.

It didn't feel like you were actually questing, just playing same-looking 10 minute area, rinsing and repeating in order to level up. PSO may be the same 6-hour Forest, Caves, Mines, Ruins run every time, but at least it felt like an actual quest that had a point to it.

This is because the other areas were locked when you started playing and you didn't have a lot of content to choose from yet. Yet you're writing the game as it is today (which is awesome) off on the basis of your craptacular experience at launch.

And the music and art direction was worse. The game is just an abortion and I wish I could forget it.

The biggest complaint I've heard from PSO diehards about PSU's 'art direction' has been directed at the characters. I'm sorry the lack of ballroom gowns and jester caps with chunky platform heels at launch turned you off, but PSU added oldschool PSO outfits to the store awhile ago. If you want to dress your character in retro PSO gear, it's there in all its cheesy glory. As far as anything else is concerned, the overall visual style in PSU is head-and-shoulders above PSO's. About the only thing I can agree with is that there are fewer memorable tunes in the PSU soundtrack.

PSU may have stumbled coming out of the gate, but it's the only thing Sonic Team's done right for a long time now. Saying otherwise when you haven't touched the game since it launched just makes you sound ignorant.

 

[Cheerilee]

As for Nights and this "could only be done on the HD twins!" bit . . . we have heard this phase before and I don't see Sega pumping that much money and effort into Nights to actually warrent such a feat. "It would have been sooooooo good! There were ideas that could only be done with the power of the HD twins!" . . . I think the game would have still been crap. I don't see Sonic Team as anything to put too much bank in when it comes to lines like that about such a low-key game.

It doesn't have to be about the HD twins.

If Nights 2 was originally being made for Wii, and then halfway through development management came along and ordered that the game be scrapped and started over on PS360, at half the budget that the Wii game had, and if the final product turned out to be generally regarded as a mess that only Segata could love, and the game's director came out and said that he had ideas for the Wii remote that he wasn't able to implement in the PS360 game... then it'd be pretty darned obvious that the Wii game would've been a better game than the PS360 game, had they allowed it to continue.

There are an awful lot of people taking all this at face value. What happened to GAF's healthy sense of skepticism? There's nothing that corroborates what's being said about Journey of Dreams yet people are attaching all sorts of significance to it as though it were fact, then labeling their own hasty conjecture based on a few lines from some dude's blog as "near certainty".

I'm the only one who used the words "near certainty" when describing the theoretical quality of a game, which I stand behind (as I do the example above), and I even qualified it by questioning the existence of such a game in the very same sentence.

 

[Kilrogg]

Why would a publisher force its developers to remake a game without giving them more time to do it?

Oh, right, because they're dumb.

 

[Eteric Rice]

Why would a publisher force its developers to remake a game without giving them more time to do it?

Oh, right, because they're dumb.

Because they're Sega!

 

[FoxSpirit]

There are an awful lot of people taking all this at face value. What happened to GAF's healthy sense of skepticism? There's nothing that corroborates what's being said about Journey of Dreams yet people are attaching all sorts of significance to it as though it were fact, then labeling their own hasty conjecture based on a few lines from some dude's blog as "near certainty". What's more, Famistsu published rumors about NiGHTS Wii an entire year before the blog entry being cited, and more than half a year before this guy claims development for the platform began.

So why are people treating this as gospel all the sudden? Could it be that they're more willing to accept rumors and speculation uncritically when it reinforces their already existing opinions on a subject? The article is an interesting glimpse into one guy's scattershot observations and largely second hand accounts, but some of you are gleaning way too much from a few tidbits of unsubstantiated information.

Because it was confirmed that the source was valid? Both by confirming he was an ex Sega employee and his forcasting of Sonic Unleashed's werehog.

So it's not a rumour. Stuff like that happens from time to time. On the shoryuken forums we recently had one of the developers of Streetfighter:The Movie (The arcade version). Was a nice discussion with some nice behind the scene pics from the mocap work.

 

[GrotesqueBeauty]

I'm the only one who used the words "near certainty" when describing the theoretical quality of a game, which I stand behind (as I do the example above), and I even qualified it by questioning the existence of such a game in the very same sentence.

I realize you're the only one who used those specific words; I quoted them because they happen to capture a general posture being taken by a few people in this thread. I also realize you felt the need to qualify your assumption, but that only underscores why harping about how much better the game would have been in HD is presumptuous to begin with. You've built one assumption on another.

Even taking everything in the blog at face value your assumption seems misguided though. He states that the reason why development shifted was because "By the time of TGS last year there were playable ROMS on X360 and the general response to the code was not positive." So basically the project was already on shaky ground. Compound that with the fact that the HD version was purportedly more ambitious in nature and we're to believe that the same team that supposedly couldn't properly execute a scaled down version, despite their analysis that it would be easier to create, would have somehow succeeded in executing a grander vision from a build that was flawed enough to make the directors question whether an HD version was even warranted?

That does not make sense.

Because it was confirmed that the source was valid? Both by confirming he was an ex Sega employee and his forcasting of Sonic Unleashed's werehog.

So it's not a rumour. Stuff like that happens from time to time. On the shoryuken forums we recently had one of the developers of Streetfighter:The Movie (The arcade version). Was a nice discussion with some nice behind the scene pics from the mocap work.

The article says the guy was a "Game Evaluator" and an "Admissions and Recruitment Executive" at Sega Europe. It's all well and good that he had foreknowledge of some themes in the next Sonic game (something you might expect of a "Game Evaluator"), but that doesn't make him an authority on all of Sega's internal dealings, particularly when he's talking about matters not even taking place within the same division of Sega, or even on the same continent for that matter. We can confirm the Sonic unleashed info because the game has been released, but the same can't be said of the NiGHTS stuff. Like I said before, there is nothing outside of a single blog post to corroborate his version of events, so while it's interesting as speculation and conjecture it should ultimately be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[Deleted member 30609]

Oh good, this thread exists again.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

NiGHTS JoD has its flaws but it is nowhere near a shitty game. Anyone that thinks so is a dumbfuck of the highest order. And a ball-licker. And a puppy murderer. And a PS3 owner.

I would never say their games are shitty.

Shallow and derivative yes. Shitty is reserved for Superman 64 and their ilk.

Games so bad that the term abomination actually applies.

Shadow of their former self is Sega.

Okay, now that's just going one too far.

The nerve of that guy eh?!

If he didn't have me chained to a wall in a cage I'd be glancing some fierce eyes at him.

PS3 owner?! I'll PS3 owner you!

 

[Ponn]

I realize you're the only one who used those specific words; I quoted them because they happen to capture a general posture being taken by a few people in this thread. I also realize you felt the need to qualify your assumption, but that only underscores why harping about how much better the game would have been in HD is presumptuous to begin with. You've built one assumption on another.

Even taking everything in the blog at face value your assumption seems misguided though. He states that the reason why development shifted was because "By the time of TGS last year there were playable ROMS on X360 and the general response to the code was not positive." So basically the project was already on shaky ground. Compound that with the fact that the HD version was supposedly more ambitious in nature and we're supposed to believe that the same team that supposedly couldn't properly execute a scaled down version, despite their analysis that it would be easier to create, would have somehow succeeded in executing a grander vision from a build that was flawed enough to make the directors question whether an HD version was even warranted?

My assumption of your assumption at his assumption and subsequent assumption is built upon the assumption of an assumption.

Spoiler

ASSumption

 

[Thunder Monkey]

My assumption of your assumption at his assumption and subsequent assumption is built upon the assumption of an assumption.

Too much ass in this post.

Masturbation imminent!

 

[Ponn]

Too much ass in this post.

Masturbation imminent!

just stay off the carpet.