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Sonic the Hedgehog is 18 years old today. Lets look back, then forward. (no, 56k, no)
- Thread starter Mama Robotnik
- Start date
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Huh. I completely forgot it was June 23rd.
The way I heard it, it's not pressure from Sega at all. All of Sonic Team's worst ideas have apparently been born from Sonic Team under their own accord. In terms of what gameplay concepts appear in the next Sonic game, nobody is apparently forcing them to do anything, just so long as there is a Sonic game coming out.
That's all just rumors and anecdotal evidence, though.
EmCeeGramr said:
The way I heard it, it's not pressure from Sega at all. All of Sonic Team's worst ideas have apparently been born from Sonic Team under their own accord. In terms of what gameplay concepts appear in the next Sonic game, nobody is apparently forcing them to do anything, just so long as there is a Sonic game coming out.
That's all just rumors and anecdotal evidence, though.
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
drizzle said:This is now about awesome Sonic songs:
City escape
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6NaZrPQGfY
It doesn't matter (Sonic Adventure 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDpZ9Qg761I
Open your Heart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH_MCPcjxP0
Sonic Boom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPC8W672mXc
... and that's kinda it. Resume topic.
Fuck you; you forgot Live and Learn.
I'm also quite fond of Super Sonic Racing. It's so hilariously nineties.
RadioHeadAche
Member
SanjuroTsubaki said:
RIP Sonic.
That face on the right scares the fuck out of me.
Azure Dream
Member
Sega1991 said:
There was a sort of reality check in one interview, that in Unleashed Sonic's daytime stages cover so much ground, that they needed a slower alternative to make more use of those already-developed resources and extend the game out. The specific idea of a Werehog wasn't required, but they had to think of some reason for Sonic or another character to be going through areas using some of those assets again.
Making the Sonic stages cost a lot of money, and so "make more of them" instead of the Werehog levels wasn't really an option. The Werehog levels were so they could justify more Sonic stages, in a messed-up way.
Regulus Tera
Romanes Eunt Domus
Kulock said:
They should have used Knuckles instead of the Werehog then.
Eteric Rice
Member
APZonerunner said:
You know it's bad when your once arch rival company is the only one that can make your character right. D:
RobbieNick
Junior Member
You don't stop.
Ya proceed.
Cuz this is what'cha need.
Ingoring all GAf Sonic hating posts, Happy Birthday Sonic.
Now Sega, work hard on the next Sonic game and don't put it out till June 23 2011 so we can celebrate his 20th in style! (Also, make it half 2-D classic levels, half Unleashed Day levels.)
Ya proceed.
Cuz this is what'cha need.
Ingoring all GAf Sonic hating posts, Happy Birthday Sonic.
Now Sega, work hard on the next Sonic game and don't put it out till June 23 2011 so we can celebrate his 20th in style! (Also, make it half 2-D classic levels, half Unleashed Day levels.)
Mama Robotnik did you make this sonic fortress video?
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Kulock said:
But I have a hard time believing that. Sonic levels are big, yes - I'd say a single daytime Sonic level covers as much or more mileage than some entire games have total. But I have a hard time wrapping around the fact that Werehog content was actually cheaper to produce, especially considering that there is evidence that Sonic Unleashed levels were built in "special" ways.
Given all the DLC and some of the ways people have managed to glitch through walls to get to inaccessible secret areas, it would appear that a single Sonic Unleashed "level" is actually 2-3 times bigger than what you see when you play it. From my observation (so I may be wrong, here), a designer would build one, single, giant "environment", and a single environment would actually contain geometry for several different "levels". From there, a designer could re-use an "environment" in several different ways, just by changing the object layout.
Werehog levels are still big. They still need detail. They still take rendering time for all the complex lightmap data (2-3 days per-environment, remember). Obviously, I'm not privy to the budget on that sort of stuff, but I don't see how any of this makes the Werehog cheaper than Sonic.
I think it was more a matter of length. If you play just the daytime Sonic levels, minus the story, minus the medal collection, minus the hubs and minus the Werehog, it's probably under two hours of content. And for $60, today, that's ridiculous.
Of course, this is all under the assumption that 9 continents was going to be the max in Sonic Unleashed. It's very possible the quote means "We made 9 levels for Sonic, but our budget isn't going to let us make 9 more, so we need a way to squeeze more out of what we already have."
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
Eteric Rice said:
This sentence is so fucking on spot that you need a nobel for that.
Sakurai animators FTW!
I would even let Next level games do a Sonic Cell Shaded game, their animators are fucking fantastic. And they way they reimagined Punch-Out!! I know they can do with any retro game they want. I will surely give it to them before giving it to the Sonic Team if I was in charge.
Sonic is the posterboy for games that just couldn't make the jump from 2D to 3D with the playability intact. But what's worse is just the complete lack of care Sega took with their once killer franchise/mascot.
That's Sega all over though. As with hardware throw a lot of shit at a wall in the hope that some of it sticks.
Sonic's demise mirrors that of Sega. A complete loss of direction. The only difference with Sega as a whole being the magical Dreamast-era when they got off the hard drugs for a bit and tried to turn their life around. But the mortgage repayments had already gone on the smack, so they still ended up homeless and on the streets anyway.
That's Sega all over though. As with hardware throw a lot of shit at a wall in the hope that some of it sticks.
Sonic's demise mirrors that of Sega. A complete loss of direction. The only difference with Sega as a whole being the magical Dreamast-era when they got off the hard drugs for a bit and tried to turn their life around. But the mortgage repayments had already gone on the smack, so they still ended up homeless and on the streets anyway.
Sega1991 said:
Maybe for the next game (to go along with the rumors of it involving more slower paced platforming and 2D, they might just want to generally make Sonic a tad slower. He's so fast in Unleashed that it necessitates absolutely absurd level sizes and probably is also a bit of a hindrance from a design perspective to be honest.
akachan ningen
Member
drizzle said:This is now about awesome Sonic songs:
Sonic Boom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPC8W672mXc
... and that's kinda it. Resume topic.
ahem... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3cFn6NneHA&fmt=18
Kuran said:Excuse me, but ..
AHEM...
SuperAngelo64
Banned
I just want to pop-in to this thread to say that anyone who thinks the old design of Sonic is better than the Adventure-style, Yuji Uekawa design is a fucking fanboy.
Not saying anything about the games, just the art.
That is all.
Not saying anything about the games, just the art.
That is all.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
SuperAngelo64 said:
The retro one is a lovable design, the new one is not. And im not talking only design drawing wise, im talking as a whole.
Mario also had an evolution in design but they took a good one. Sega Team did not. Sakurai's Sonic is the way to go.
APZonerunner
Member
SuperAngelo64 said:
I think the retro one is lovable but I think the trend that happened with him getting taller, the geren eyes, the longer, more distinct spikes etc were all very good things -Sonic 06 just took it to an extreme though where he was so lanky it looked weird and disproportionate.
Again, I think the ideal style is somewhere between the two, as showcased by Nintendo...
This is still significantly taller, has the stylised spikes, the green eyes and so on but looks a million times better than any of the recent designs of Sonic.
memecomplex
Member
Kuran said:Excuse me, but ..
Sonic needs to stop wearing green contacts. He looks so much better in his Naoto Oshima pre-focus group days.
APZonerunner
Member
EmCeeGramr said:
To be fair that isn't what they were saying at all. They were saying the problem with Sonic + Speed in 3D is that levels take hours to design, model and texture - and then people fly past them in no time. Because of the speed you pass stuff, Sonic levels have to be three or four times as long as say a Mario level in order to make them a decent length, but they still have to be well constructed and pretty so those who don't run at full speed have nice scenery.
These levels are difficult and time consuming to make considering how long they last. They're basically saying they need a gimmick because if they were to spend the same development time on just Sonic levels the game would still be short, and they have to charge full price for it and people would complain.
It's a fair point, and it's a difficult one to overcome. Sega only really has a few options. They can slow Sonic down (as they did with the team mechanic in Heroes). People will bitch. They can release a short game - people will bitch; or they can add a second 'mode' of gameplay that takes longer to play to pad out the time - people will bitch.
They've either got to resign to putting out short (less than 6 hour) Sonic games or find a gimmick that sticks. The best gimmick they've had so far was to have the different characters and split the story modes as in Sonic Adveture 1 so if you want 3 hours of fast Sonic levels you've got 'em but if you want your value for money there's also the Amy, Knuckles and Tails levels to play which are slower and more time consuming.
In SA1 they also saved money by having different characters go through the same geometry in different ways. It was a cleverly constructed game. They should return to that model and have a major design revamp to get closer to brawl for the next sonic game.
They should also do some 2.5D sequels or remakes of the original 4 titles on XBLA/PSN. But that's been said to death.
SpacePirate Ridley
Member
APZonerunner said:I think the retro one is lovable but I think the trend that happened with him getting taller, the geren eyes, the longer, more distinct spikes etc were all very good things -Sonic 06 just took it to an extreme though where he was so lanky it looked weird and disproportionate.
Again, I think the ideal style is somewhere between the two, as showcased by Nintendo...
This is still significantly taller, has the stylised spikes, the green eyes and so on but looks a million times better than any of the recent designs of Sonic.
Thats the right evolution in the Sonic design, and just like Kid icarus design they had to start from a void of years design evolution wise. So they did the smarter and easier thing, do a design between the retro one and the new one, getting the good things of both and taking the too retro things from one, and the atrocious things from the other.
The animation in this Sonic is also topnotch, becuase they captured the feel of the retro one.
Grant DaNasty
Neo Member
Dude, it's 2009.
It's time to let the 56k warnings go to their final resting place.
It's time to let the 56k warnings go to their final resting place.
Eteric Rice
Member
Grant DaNasty said:
Like 40% of the US still uses dial-up. So yeah, no.
APZonerunner said:I think the retro one is lovable but I think the trend that happened with him getting taller, the geren eyes, the longer, more distinct spikes etc were all very good things -Sonic 06 just took it to an extreme though where he was so lanky it looked weird and disproportionate.
Again, I think the ideal style is somewhere between the two, as showcased by Nintendo...
This is still significantly taller, has the stylised spikes, the green eyes and so on but looks a million times better than any of the recent designs of Sonic.
On an unrelated note, I wonder what the exact contract was between Sega and Nintendo? I bet Sega charged a fortune for Nintendo to use Sonic in Smash Bros... Too bad we'll never find out.
No doubt letting Sega use Mario in their Olympics game(s) was part of the deal too.
It was defiantly a 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours' kind of deal. In a way Sega got more out of it though as they have 2 massive Wii and DS releases out of it. Not that Nintendo needed to get much out of it, just having Sonic appear in Brawl probably sold an extra million or so for them too.SovanJedi said:
People saying Sonic's design hasn't been right in a Sega produced game for a while need to see his Unleashed (non werehog) look again, I actually think it's even better than the Brawl design (the mouth never looked right in the center of his face, for example).
Compare that to the lanky deformed freak from Sonic 2006:
Looks like a guy in a dodgy costume to me. :lol
I still think visually Unleashed got a LOT right. Now they just need to work on the gameplay and get back to basics. Just Sonic in that game was a good start, but next time just Sonic AS Sonic, or even Tails and Knuckles if they play like they did in the 16-bit games (read: pretty much the same but with tweaked attributes).
bumpkin
Member
In all fairness, Sonic Unleashed would've been great if they had simply not included the werehog stuff and didn't litter later levels with abyss' that were almost inavoidable at top speed. The side-scrolling, speed-running, platforming levels were an awesome example of what Sonic is about; speed.
Exactly. There were short moments in that game where it just felt so right, if they could hold on to that feeling for a whole game rather than about 25% of it they'll be onto something.bumpkin said:
Sonic 6th birthday event from 1997 in London:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJSmPQI-Lbw
HE'S CUTTING THE CAKE.
Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were awesome 3D games. People only started complaining after the shadow game and decided to lump the adventure games with all the suckfest.
A 3D Sonic where you only play as Sonic, with rich and colorful graphics, and the gameplay style of Sonic and Shadow's levels from adventure with a tweaked camera is what they should do.
A 3D Sonic where you only play as Sonic, with rich and colorful graphics, and the gameplay style of Sonic and Shadow's levels from adventure with a tweaked camera is what they should do.
Azure Dream
Member
Gagaman said:
Agreed, I thought that they did a really good job echoing Sonic's old animation style amazingly well, particularly when you're talking about drawings versus a polygon model.
Chun-Nan secret cutscene
The animation is extremely good, and there's several shots during this that really harken back to old Sonic designs very well.
SonicMegaDrive
Member
SuperAngelo64 said:
Oh the irony.
Gagaman said:
:lol :lol
You're right on the mark about that. I've always felt that way about making funny animal characters 'taller'. It reminds me of those people in the Disney character costumes at Disney Land.
Sonic Unleashed's shorter Sonic was a nice compromise.
Also: Sonic's mouth should NEVER be in the center of his face. EVER.
Icomeinpeace
Banned
Good point about about the green eyes, there was something I've always found wrong in the new Sonic but I never was able to put my finger on what was it, I've edited back to the old black eyes and it looks miles better.
Cygnus X-1
Member
Sonic needs only to be playable.
Just let Nintendo develop the next Sonic.
That would also be a good solution, actually.
Just let Nintendo develop the next Sonic.
MidnightScott said:
That would also be a good solution, actually.
Nikorasu said:
this guy is right
sonic cd japan box art > sonic cd pal box art
ChackanKun
Member
Sonic died after Sonic Adventures (and took a leap of faith right above Sonic 3D).
Only good games were Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic CD, the game gear Sonic 1 & 2, Sonic R and Sonic Adventures 1 & 2. All these in a blu-ray would make the ultimate Sonic compilation!
Only good games were Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic CD, the game gear Sonic 1 & 2, Sonic R and Sonic Adventures 1 & 2. All these in a blu-ray would make the ultimate Sonic compilation!
ajvizzgamer101
Member
Happy Birthday Sonic! My 18th birthday is in a month + 1/2 (Same day the SNES came out in the Americas!!!!)