What Made the Original Sonic Games Great? · 12:39am Feb 15th, 2015
Not just the games even, what made Sonic in general so brilliant in his early days. I have no shame in telling you guys Sonic was the first video game I ever played. When my Genesis finally kicked it I balled my fucking eyes out. I mean yeah Sonic was quickly replaced by Lara Croft but that isn't the point. The next Sonic Game I ever played was Heroes and, although I think I'm opening up a can of worms here... I kind of like Shadow the Hedgehog.
Don't look at me like that! Hey if it's that surprising go watch my review of Bioshock Infinite, that'll really shock you guys.
I didn't really watch any of the Sonic TV shows. I mean I watched Sonic X whenever it was on but I can't really remember it very much and I think this was at the time when Jetix died out and it took me ages to find Nicktoons and I came in near then end and I was like the fuck is going on here? Anyway, getting sidetracked. My question is guys... what made Sonic so great at the start? And how could he return to that greatness. I get the feeling that the Sonic Team (whoever they are) has just lost that creative something in recent years. So what would mark a creative return?
Sonic was revolutionary at the start because of the gameplay and character. The games were fastpaced, made for speed. The character was free and cool (practicly every stereotype from the 90's). But as time got on, Sega made some bad descisions. Plus sonic's character doesn't fit in this time anymore. Beeing more of a guy stuck in the 90's. Sega had some promising comebacks. But sadly it crashed down several times.
2797144 So how would you revive the blue blur? If you could? What creative advice would you give to Sega?
2797257 I think it would be best for Sega to let the franchise go. Either that or give him a personality fit for this time. But that would be nearly impossible.
We've actually been having a few discussions along this vein over at Sonic Bronies, which is to say someone asks a question, and maybe three of us bother to chime in.
Anyway.
The reasons that Sonic was great in the beginning, really, were technical and design reasons. It certainly wasn't the story, since the Sonic games didn't really have "story" until Sonic Adventure. I mean, they did, but it was more of a synopsis of the world we were in and that was it; it wasn't until after Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, really, that developers started warming up to the idea of video games as interactive graphic novels.
Technically, early Sonic games were about speed platforming. Mario had platforming, yes, but it was a slow, plodding thing compared to Sonic games. I will admit that compared to Mario games, the platforming in Sonic the Hedgehog was simplistic in that you didn't really have to think about where the platforms were moving, unless you were trying to do it quickly. Mario platforming was about being aware of what the platforms were doing, and Sonic platforming was about being aware of what you were doing.
From a design standpoint, I guarantee that without even looking, you could describe exactly what the color palette of Green Hill Zone looks like. Could you do the same for any stage in Super Mario World? Sonic games stood out with vibrant, striking colors that you really didn't see in any other game. The Genesis could only render 512 colors, so they had to be used in visually striking ways to be interesting. The SNES could render 32,768 colors, but look at what that did for Super Mario World; everything is actually rather subdued and washed out, and while it's technically impressive given the hardware, it's not very interesting to look at.
As for the creative spark, it's not Sonic Team that has the problem; it's Sega. Specifically, it's Sega Sammy Holdings. The fact of the matter is that, unless you're Nintendo or consistently release games that move a lot of units, developing games for consoles isn't all that profitable. You can definitely see this in Sega's strategies.
When hardware wasn't selling well, they abandoned it for new hardware. That's why, even though the Genesis hung around for a long time (U.S. launch in 1989, officially discontinued in 1997 and still has third-parties making hardware for it), we had the Saturn and then almost immediately had the Dreamcast (Saturn U.S. launch 1995, discontinued worldwide 1998; Dreamcast U.S. launch 1999, discontinued worldwide 2001!). This unfortunately continued into their software, not in terms of cranking out Sonic titles as quickly as possible, but in stamping them with unreasonable deadlines.
Sonic X-Treme was to be released in time for the 1996 holiday season; when it became obvious that this was not going to be possible, Sega decided to cancel the project instead of delaying it (many elements of it would reappear in Sonic Adventure, though). Sonic '06 was to be released in time to be a launch title for the PS3 (and for holiday window on Xbox 360), and while it did that, it had to be rushed through development and this shows. Badly. SO badly, in fact, that it's the only Sonic game that actually writes itself out of continuity as part of its canon ending, and I remain fully convinced that Sonic Team did this on purpose because they couldn't figure out any other way to keep the ship from sinking.
By comparison, Sonic Team was given time to work on Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors, and these games are both well-made and enormously fun to play (I would also argue that Sonic Unleashed probably has one of the best character arcs of any Sonic game). The Storybook games aren't the best, but they aren't bad either; mainly, their issues stem from being too gimmicky, incorporating the Wii motion controls when it wasn't really necessary to do so (compare to Super Paper Mario or Wario Land: Shake-It! which only have a couple motions controls, but which are used very effectively). Sonic Lost World was kind of gimmicky again, but it still wasn't bad.
Then, we come to Sonic Boom, which was Sonic X-Treme all over again, and I don't mean that hyperbolically. Look at the development, from the deadline to problems getting the engine to work to bugs to one of the lead designers being Chris Senn (FUCK YEAH!). One of the questions I still don't have an answer too is why Big Red Button wasn't allowed to use the Hedgehog Engine for development, forcing them to use the engine they had available; CryEngine 3 (which is designed for first-person shooters, and not third-person platformers). Quirkily enough, when Sega Technical Institute was developing Sonic X-Treme, they wanted to use the engine from NiGHTS into Dreams, but were not allowed to, forcing them to use a different, less powerful engine.
When you really look at things, it becomes clear that the real reason that Sonic has not been doing well lately is because Sega Sammy doesn't care about him beyond his ability to bring in revenue; Sonic games as they stand are almost unprofitable, but pachinko games are insanely profitable, so they would rather focus on those, and that is the greatest irony of all.
Throughout all his games, Sonic the hedgehog has stood tall against Dr. Robotnik and others who wanted nothing more than to visit ruin upon the world to serve their own agendas, wants and desires, and in the end, it is that very thing which laid him low:
Greed.
2797390 So what would the return to form be? Take Sonic away from Sega and focus on making a Sonic game that fans wanted to see? A fast action platformer like the old days? And what would the story be? The story of '06 is so damn complex that it'd almost be impossible to finish without looking up an explanation online.
2798452
As I mentioned, the story of '06 doesn't matter because it never happened.
But let's just break it down and be honest: We need another Shadow the Hedgehog game.
The problem with the 2005 Shadow the Hedgehog, when you really get down to it, is that it was still a Sonic the Hedgehog game. Shadow needs his own game, and it needs to be rated T so they can deal with more adult content.
Shadow works for G.U.N. now, so he needs to be doing G.U.N. things. In '06, he was sent to recover an asset (which happened to be another agent, or at least what Rogue was sent to collect originally), and we need more of that. Sonic is the guy that stands in the spotlight, dealing with the giant, world-ending threats like Dark Gaia and Chaos. Shadow is the guy that stays, no pun intended, in the shadows and deals with world-ending threats before they have the chance to get big.
Organized crime rings, rogue states like the Battle Bird Armada, Dark Gaia worshipping cults, things like that. Just keep Sonic out of the game entirely, give Shadow his own spin-off franchise, that way you don't have to worry about mucking up the main timeline.
On the subject of story, though: Sonic '06 was intended, originally, to be a reboot of the series. Of course, that game failed so hard that plan was scrapped. As it currently is, we now have two timelines: The Main Timeline, and the Boom Timeline.
I would like to see Sonic Boom continued as a franchise, and not for nothing, Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric could have been a pretty good game if BRB had more time with it; when you actually look at and play it, you can see plainly that it's not a bad game, but an unfinished one. Now that more of the world has been fleshed out by Shatter Crystal and also the television program, there's more to build on.
It's really too bad that a lot of this probably won't happen. Sega has already announced there will be no more Sonic the Hedgehog games for consoles, and in fact, the next game Sonic Team is working on, Sonic Runners, is being released only for iOS and Android. It might get a PC release later — hard to say right now — but Sonic is out of the console game, pun definitely intended.
2798477 That actually sounds like it would be a good game plan. A pity Sega doesn't seem to have that care anymore. It sounds better than my idea anyway. Do a reboot based off of the TV series. Have the world already be taken over by Eggman and see the rise of Sonic as a resistance fighter, banding together with Tails, Sally, Bunny and other characters from the show. Divide the gameplay, return Sonic to fast paced action platformed, have Sally be third person shooter, Bunny be more of a power house and Tails gameplay focussing more on puzzles and gadgetry. That would have been my idea anyway.
2799312
Funny enough, that was actually one of the concepts considered for Sonic X-Treme, or something close to that, at least.
2799442 Why the actual hell did they not follow through with it that would have been awesome!
2799550
There were a few issues — licensing being one of them — but really, they went through some strange ideas while they were sussing this all out. Hold on a second.... ah, here we go! And it's in parts, and British!