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Sega Teases for new 2D Sonic(?) game - Project Needlemouse
- Thread starter jman2050
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BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Sure.. of course young kids will have nostalgia for newer Sonic games. But I think that while we're all discussing what is technically the same series, the type of nostalgia we have is quite different.HUELEN10 said:In 5 more years when the kids that played shadow and 06 get older, do you think they will want classic style Sonic? Unfortunately of course not. They want what they grew up with. I don't think we will ever see Sonic go back to hi roots, but I am just hoping that all future games use the best of past games, and make it better. It sounds like it's a no-brainer, but this is Sega..
Old school fans have nostalgia for a classic videogame character. Sonic is right up there with Megaman, 2D Mario, Castlevania... we liked him because of his very solid games. This type of fan might not even care much about Sonic as a character.. they probably have a simple appreciation for his character design but they needn't care about his overall storyline or "universe". It's the same way that Mario fans might not give a shit about Italian Plumbers or the Mario Universe. Some old fans might love the characters and world but it's totally optional.
New school fans have nostalgia for a cute, mildly interesting cartoon character. It's kinda like how every shitty kids show has some kids who grow up to revere it. Name the show, it doesn't matter how terrible, and you'll find a group of people who gush over it... like in that one OT thread where they posted every cartoon opening youtube ever. Now sure, Sonic is in videogames, and part of the nostalgia will be that they got to romp around in these mildly interesting colorful 3D worlds.... but these fans will necessarily have a love of the character, his friends, the story (however terrible and childish)... because it surely isn't the gameplay alone which hooks them.
Old school fans like Sonic games... New school fans like Sonic the cartoon character. While he's still in games, the latter generation doesn't have good enough games to generate interest by merit of gameplay alone.
Alain-Christian
Neo Member
The Simpson's Game overcame this. Lisa's hair looks correct from any angle.Kulock said:
KurowaSan said:As long as they reduce the length of his spikes, arms and legs I'd be moderately pleased with the redesign. I'm so hoping this time they manage make a Sonic game I want to play.
Personally, bring some sort of classic design back
that is by far the best design of sonic.
To Far Away Times
Member
Makes too much sense for Sega to use the classic, established Sonic design.
I hate when Sega uses the "appeal to newer generations" argument. Instead of having focus groups with younger kids trying to come up with new junk to add they should have been perfecting a formula that had already proven to be a big seller. Maybe they thought they were, at first; but they quickly got off-track. Nintendo got it right with Mario. They kept everything that was essential to Mario fairly consistent while still presenting new experiences.
I know new Sonic appeals to kids, but so did old Sonic. Sega stopped focusing on what Sonic actually was (an excellent platformer with speed) and started focusing on what their own PR said he was (fast fast fast and full of attitude). It would have made more sense to keep Sonic more consistent so that he appealed to more fans in the long-term instead of just trying to change Sonic with every game for newer and newer generations.
I know new Sonic appeals to kids, but so did old Sonic. Sega stopped focusing on what Sonic actually was (an excellent platformer with speed) and started focusing on what their own PR said he was (fast fast fast and full of attitude). It would have made more sense to keep Sonic more consistent so that he appealed to more fans in the long-term instead of just trying to change Sonic with every game for newer and newer generations.
RobbieNick
Junior Member
BocoDragon said:
QFT!! And this right here is part of the problem. Sega has got to satisfy both the younger crowd and the old school. They are two seperate generations.
But man!! The over reaction in this forum one guy in a UK branch of Sega says "Hey man, please don't insult our young fans" (Which lets be honest you guys went WAAAAAYYY overboard on calling modern Sonic fans skat-loving furries and stuff. That furry fetish group is an increbily small minority. Basically, that "Sonic Passions" forum that any normal Sonic fan avoids at all costs.) This is suddenly translated into "WE ONLY LISTEN TO THE YOUNG FANS AND ARE ONLY GONNA MAKE SHITTY GAMES SO FUCK YOU!!"
Sega does not go out of their way to try and make a shitty Sonic game. They really don't. But after the death of the Dreamcast, Sega lost a lot of what made them Sega. They started making crap games no matter who was the character. Remember Golden Axe Beast Rider? Iron Man? Sonic isn't the only game in town that's had shitty games by Sega.
But the Sega of today, is not the same Sega that hit rock bottom with Sonic'06. There are some great new I.P.'s by Sega. Valkeria Chronicles, Madworld, Resonance of Fate and of course, Bayonetta. That game represents everyrthing thats ever been great of Sega. Even Sonic Unleashed (Fuck you! I liked it!) was a much, much better game than'06. I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt about this game. This game that we still barely know a fucking thing about that everyone is overreacting to.
the problem is, even when sega tries to appeal to both the older sonic fanbase and children both, we end up with stuff like Sonic Unleashed. i know a lot of people on here really liked that game, even i thought parts of it were okay, it's pretty clear that sega can't make a game that successfully caters to all of the sonic fanbase.
i think that the resounding success of new super mario bros wii is a pretty clear indicator that many people are willing to play a perhaps more stripped-down classic approach to storied mascots/franchises. if the game is good and is easily accessible, it will not only sell but also repair sonic's rather tarnished reputation.
i think that the resounding success of new super mario bros wii is a pretty clear indicator that many people are willing to play a perhaps more stripped-down classic approach to storied mascots/franchises. if the game is good and is easily accessible, it will not only sell but also repair sonic's rather tarnished reputation.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
remz said:
Except the younger fans who dislikes oldschool 2D Sonic and loves everything the oldschool fas hate (Sonic's friends, awful 3D games, 'epic' plots, Robotnik being a harmless goofball rather than a sinister, murderous bastard, Shadow etc.) :/ Seems like it's next to impossible for Sega to please both Sonic fanbases.
RobbieNick
Junior Member
Sonic '06 wasn't made for kids. They attempted to appeal to the hardcore crowd with a live action style Final Fantasy knock-off. They failed miserably.
Also, name one kid who could beat either Sonic '06 or Unleashed. They are incredibly hard. ('06 mostly because it is so god damn broken.)
Want to know what was made with kids in mind?
Sonic Heroes (Juvenile Story and dialouge.)
Sonic Rush Adventure (The main Villain is a robot pirate named "Captain Whiskers" who tortures Marine by tickling her.)>_>
Sonic and the Black Knight - Definitly kids story. Incredibly easy game.
Sonic Chronicles - You can tell by how damn easy it is.
Sonic Advance 2 was probably the best balanced Sonic game for both classic fans and kids. Sonic and Knuckles were just challenging enough for the older folks while playing as Cream was a breeze for the kiddies.
Robotnik a murderous bastard? Maybe in A\SATAM, but in the games he was always a goofy manchild since day one. Look at him!! Look how he's fucking dressed! :lol
Also, name one kid who could beat either Sonic '06 or Unleashed. They are incredibly hard. ('06 mostly because it is so god damn broken.)
Want to know what was made with kids in mind?
Sonic Heroes (Juvenile Story and dialouge.)
Sonic Rush Adventure (The main Villain is a robot pirate named "Captain Whiskers" who tortures Marine by tickling her.)>_>
Sonic and the Black Knight - Definitly kids story. Incredibly easy game.
Sonic Chronicles - You can tell by how damn easy it is.
Sonic Advance 2 was probably the best balanced Sonic game for both classic fans and kids. Sonic and Knuckles were just challenging enough for the older folks while playing as Cream was a breeze for the kiddies.
Combichristoffersen said:
Robotnik a murderous bastard? Maybe in A\SATAM, but in the games he was always a goofy manchild since day one. Look at him!! Look how he's fucking dressed! :lol
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
RobbieNick said:
Maybe not the best choice of words :lol But anyway, Robotnik did seem like a far more sinister character in the old 16-bit/8-bit games compared to what he's become after Sonic Adventure and onwards.
Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
I dont think anybody on this board would actually care if a Sonic game had 10 thousand friends, princesses and huge spikes as long as the game was as good as, lets say Mario Galaxy.
Back in the day, Sonic games compared to Nintendos best ... I think that feeling and quality is what the "old guard" wants.
Back in the day, Sonic games compared to Nintendos best ... I think that feeling and quality is what the "old guard" wants.
The only people who honestly hate the old shit and enjoy the new shit are deluded internet fanboys who deserve nothing but our (and SEGA's) contempt.Combichristoffersen said:
Those guys don't even know what they want. sock em a good new old school style game and they'll love it anyway.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
brain_stew said:
No good. Now it just gives me "CRT not initialized". I've also heard Renderware games have problems with software like DXTweaker that try to override refresh rates.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
RobbieNick said:
I think very recent era Sega rules and they deserve recognition for it! Valkyria had me looking at the logo on the box and thinking fondly about the quality its been responsible for.. aside from a few bad years in the mid 2000s. This feeling pretty much launched me into a retro Sega kick over the last year or so.. buying up Genesis carts and Dreamcast discs, a Sega CD and such.
Yes on both counts. Mario Galaxy has some cutesy story shit too and we eat it up... why? Well first, the game is good, and second, it's not too much we have to swallow. It's charming.Raging Spaniard said:
I actually didn't think Sonic Unleashed story (what I played of it) was too dreadful. But the werehog levels stopped me dead in my tracks with boredom and now in retrospect I'm like F that SHIT.
I thought it's overall direction was fine... I just want a more fun, punchier, arcadey game. No slow sequences..
remz said:
YES exactly...
These kids are thinking what the old guard wants out of an old Sonic game is going to be obtuse and difficult for them to get into... it's the same as your dad trying to get you to watch an old black and white movie. What they don't get is that a proper Sonic game would be a fun pick up and play blast of fun.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Alain-Christian said:
EA mentioned a few times that they used a great deal of tricks and hacks in that game to make sure it looked as close to the hand-drawn animation as possible. But that is the nature of cel-shading. They were able to ignore certain pieces of geometry if they were being viewed from certain angles so that Lisa's head rendered like it does in the show.
Sonic isn't normally cel-shaded, so those sorts of "tricks" don't apply. Nor is the shape of Sonic's head at all like Lisa Simpson's.
Sega1991 said:
Which makes me think, it would be really nice to see a Sonic game come out and be really stylized. Something like going back to Sonic Battle's style, or a cell shaded approach. Sega's desire to put a cartoonish looking blue hedgehog in realistic settings with crazy level designs always struck me as weird and dumb. Odd as it may be to say something nice about Sonic Heroes, that first zone looked kind of nice as it tried to be a throw back to the way Green Hill Zone looks.
That's because they're really, really average and completely superseded by other games in the series (the classics for Advance 1, the Rush games for 2 and 3). It's the same issue I bring up in Kirby topics when someone mentions Squeak Squad; after the novelty is gone, there's no incentive to go back when other, better games in the series exist and hit all the same notes.Pappasman said:
Alain-Christian
Neo Member
RE: Remz
Hard but not impossible. And like I said The Simpsons Game solved that problem.
Conversely S-E didn't address the issue in Kingdom Hearts and Mickey DOES look odd because of it.
Hard but not impossible. And like I said The Simpsons Game solved that problem.
Conversely S-E didn't address the issue in Kingdom Hearts and Mickey DOES look odd because of it.
DeVeAn
Member
Love this Sonic gonna use as my avy unless someone owns it that is.KurowaSan said:As long as they reduce the length of his spikes, arms and legs I'd be moderately pleased with the redesign. I'm so hoping this time they manage make a Sonic game I want to play.
Personally, bring some sort of classic design back
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Regarding Sonic's "demographic".
To a degree, ArchAngelUK on the Sonic City blog is right. There are staunch Sonic fans right here on NeoGAF with VERY SPECIFIC and EXTREMELY NARROW definitions of what they want from their "perfect" Sonic game and its often rife with things that are no longer relevant or logical to the franchise. Things that are never going to come back and frankly, don't need to come back. But whenever a new Sonic game forsakes anything on this list, it's automatically The Worst Thing Ever.
At the same time, though, looking to the younger players doesnt strike me as the "ONE TRUE CORRECT PATH", either. A 10 year old doesnt know what they want. They'll literally watch anything as evidenced by the fact that I was 10 years old once, too. When I was 10, I was in love with shows like G.I. Joe, The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, He-Man, etc. If you watch a lot of that stuff today, it's clearly obvious that it was nothing more than a vapid, mindless, blatant advertisement for an action figure. Kids will watch that stuff and say that they enjoy it. I certainly did. There's certainly a lot of money in that line of thinking, too. But it is not better. "It doesnt have to be sophisticated and can be bad because kids will like it anyway" is not a valid defense.
Sonic the Hedgehog needs to be a balance. It shouldnt cater to children, it shouldnt cater to fanboys, it probably shouldnt be catering to any niche at all, really. Sonic the Hedgehog just needs to be a good game that everyone can enjoy. Like Mario - Mario doesn't really have a set "demographic". There is very little in any given Mario game that specifically gravitates towards children (or away from adults). Mario is for everybody.
That is an example Sonic needs to follow.
To a degree, ArchAngelUK on the Sonic City blog is right. There are staunch Sonic fans right here on NeoGAF with VERY SPECIFIC and EXTREMELY NARROW definitions of what they want from their "perfect" Sonic game and its often rife with things that are no longer relevant or logical to the franchise. Things that are never going to come back and frankly, don't need to come back. But whenever a new Sonic game forsakes anything on this list, it's automatically The Worst Thing Ever.
At the same time, though, looking to the younger players doesnt strike me as the "ONE TRUE CORRECT PATH", either. A 10 year old doesnt know what they want. They'll literally watch anything as evidenced by the fact that I was 10 years old once, too. When I was 10, I was in love with shows like G.I. Joe, The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, He-Man, etc. If you watch a lot of that stuff today, it's clearly obvious that it was nothing more than a vapid, mindless, blatant advertisement for an action figure. Kids will watch that stuff and say that they enjoy it. I certainly did. There's certainly a lot of money in that line of thinking, too. But it is not better. "It doesnt have to be sophisticated and can be bad because kids will like it anyway" is not a valid defense.
Sonic the Hedgehog needs to be a balance. It shouldnt cater to children, it shouldnt cater to fanboys, it probably shouldnt be catering to any niche at all, really. Sonic the Hedgehog just needs to be a good game that everyone can enjoy. Like Mario - Mario doesn't really have a set "demographic". There is very little in any given Mario game that specifically gravitates towards children (or away from adults). Mario is for everybody.
That is an example Sonic needs to follow.
DeVeAn said:
Your avatar is now too long, since GAF automatically resizes avatars to be 90 pixels wide. I suggest opening the pic in a graphics program and adding some white space on the sides, then rehosting it on Photobucket or Tinypic.
(you will lose your avatar privileges if you don't comply to the avatar size rules ASAP... I'm just trying to help you out, mang.)
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Looks dope!OnPoint said:
Use this.
I always thought the recent Sonic games were just ideas Sega was hellbent on making but slapped Sonic's mug on them cause they knew they wouldn't sell otherwise. I can see the conference now:RobbieNick said:
"Alright guys how about this, you play as John an Olympic marathon runner who gets bitten by a werewolf while training in London. During the day you would race around the world performing at small track meets in order to gain experience and improve your skills/reputation. Then at night you would morph into a werewolf and go around town beating up other runners turned werewolves in order to thin out your competition and cleanse the earth of evil!"
"Uhh Rick, that is a terrible idea."
"But I spent like..two hours coming up with it last night"
"*Sighs* Fine, change your character to Sonic and find a way for the earth to explode. That'll give it that epic feel kids seem to want these days"
Combichristoffersen said:
I will never fucking forget his laugh in Sonic CD. After going back and replaying the game recently it still seems out of place, its just so unsettling compared to the more comical oafish character hes always been portrayed as. The Damn thing nearly scared me shitless when I was younger.
ALSO
I will have none of this. Black and white movies are the best movies.BocoDragon said:
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Wren said:
Yeah... but then you're an exceptional film geek compared to the average joe. Right now there are rare young videogame geeks who go back and recognize Genesis Sonic as the best and proper Sonic titles.... Just as some rare young people love old B&W movies... while most of their peers favorite movies are Transformers 2 and think Sonic is the star of bad 3D platformers.
RobbieNick
Junior Member
Sega1991 said:
Very well said.
The generation gap is evident even in my own home. My 13 year-old niece brought her GameCube down from her dads house and wanted a game to play. Instead of Sonic Mega Collection, Gems collection, or even Mario Sunshine, she wanted to play Sonic Adventure 2 and she loves that one. Shadows her favorite character. It's just a generation thing.
To your point, yes, the best thing Sega can do is just make an appealing and fun game that reaches all demographics by pandering to NONE of them.
HeresSomeWeapons
Member
There seems to be a lot of hate for the Archie comics, and while I can't vouch for the quality of the new issues (I stopped reading them around issue 60, I think), the old ones were particularly badass.
Come on...you know that looks cool.
Come on...you know that looks cool.
You mean cool as in DERP? Look at Sonic's face...HeresSomeWeapons said:There seems to be a lot of hate for the Archie comics, and while I can't vouch for the quality of the new issues (I stopped reading them around issue 60, I think), the old ones were particularly badass.
Come on...you know that looks cool.
RobbieNick said:
To continue along this train of thought, the thing is... Sega is the only thing responsible for a "generation" gap of Sonic fans. They've been so inept at handling the character over the years, that the only thing that's made a generation gap is the fact that kids raised on the newer stuff, are conditioned to like something that is mostly trash, and has lost all sense of focus.
There's no generation gap with Mario games. People are constantly being exposed to that character for the first time, and can jump into a Mario game of any kind from any era and likely enjoy it. That's because Nintendo just makes excellent games. Mario changed quite a bit moving from 2D to 3D, but Nintendo understood what made the series fun, and was able to tap into that with stuff like Mario 64 and Mario Galaxy.
Sega doesn't do that, Sega applies gimmicks to the series instead. It's never a matter of "what would make a Sonic game fun to play?" so much as it's a matter of "what can we use as a bullet point on the back of the box?"
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