When I think of Sega's decision making with Sonic 06 with stupid small tidbits like the spindash only being able to be used being at a complete stop, the fact that you can't jump out of it, the fact that the spin attack is no longer an attack, it's like... who programmed this shit? The point that Johnny made about SEGA was that they try to make Sonic do everything. They make Sonic games where they try to make Sonic and his friends do something unrelated to what made Sonic good to begin with. Now, we can look at the Adventure series and find that the gameplay styles outside of Sonic's gameplay were generally met with more negative criticism than that of Sonic's. Or you can look at other Sonic games such as Sonic The Fighters, or newer titles like Sonic & The Black Night or Sonic Unleashed. Agreeing with Johnny again on that it probably would have been better instead for Sega to incorporate these ideas (and further develop them) in different games... no game in the franchise speaks louder about how overcompensated the programming is than Sonic 06. Speaking of other games, Johnny also pointed out that when you play a Sonic & All-Stars Racing game, how many of the other Sega IPs do you recognize that aren't Sonic? Me? VERY FEW.
For myself, it really does beg the question again why Sega would re-release Sonic The Fighters. If there's one thing about Sega that hasn't really changed, it's their own unlaced ideas for promoting Sonic in ways that further his unpopularity through his weaknesses, opposed to promoting it through his strengths. Since Adventure, we've been given so much nonsense in one game, it totally makes sense to me now why:
- a) Sonic Heroes was such a financial success outside of it's accessibility, and
- b) why Sega can't please their fanbase.
Heroes was kept simple with two gameplay styles which gave players the access to characters they (more than anything) simply wanted to play as, even if their playstyle didn't completely reflect their actual abilities (i.e. Amy being speed based... Big being... okay, he was being big.)
But thanks to games like Adventure 1 and 2 and it's successors, the fanbase wants more story, more story that's edgier (SA2), more story that's dark (Shadow The Hedgehog), more Big The Cat (SA1), more hub worlds, more playable cast, more playable cast that has it's own gameplay (SA1/Sonic 06), more Chao Garden, another Shadow The Hedgehog game, more Sonic The Werehog, another storybook title, another isometric Sonic game, another Sonic RPG, a sequel to Sonic R, another Tails game, more Silver The Hedgehog, a successor to Knuckles Chaotix, a THIRD Sonic 4 episode, and the list goes on.
The problem with everything I've listed is that it is all the pinnacle of Sonic mediocrity or worse. There is a group of fans out there who likes these things, and all Sega can do is say to themselves from their efforts, they have made this little blue hedgehog famous and simultaneously infamous. It makes me wonder if Sonic's popularity will outlive Sega's financial stability because this strategy of popularizing Sonic's image over his gameplay that made him good in the first place doesn't seem like a long lasting tactic. What better example of this could you find of this fact that's not Sonic 4 Episode 1 & 2 from the marketing to the music and the meat and potatoes of the gameplay.
And now, I appreciate Sonic Heroes a bit more because even though I found it's story weak and disenganging, it took the Adventure gameplay and streamlined it. It was probably better on paper than it was when the game was finished, but I can honestly say it had much less to fix because it was... simple. A lot of people were pleased. Unfortunately, I wasn't among them, but look at the sales #s. Someone did something right, obviously.
Sonic really has no need to try to go head to head with Mario anymore, but to some extent maybe he should for the sake of an almost futile comparison. I do not closely follow the franchise, but I am a huge fan of it. It is a wonder why there are no fully 3D Mario titles for the Wii systems as of late. Everything has seeming fallen back to it's SMB1-3 2S roots. I don't know if Nintendo is trying to save money or what, but it's easy to say the franchise has made some smarter decisions be it transitioning from 2D to 3D and back to 2D, some racing games that were mostly successful, and some RPGs to go down in RPG's history of great RPGs with successful spin-offs starring Luigi or Princess Peach without turning the cast into something it wasn't.
Whereas Mario's identity was established and streamlined literally by Super Mario Bros, Sonic was an identity crisis once he landed in the Adventure series. Where Mario remained simple, Sonic tried being complex and wound up being complicated. No Luigi in Mario 64? Welcome to Sonic & The Gang. 1 hub world? Here's 3. No mini games? Oh we've got plenty in Adventure, from pinball, to shooting an airplane, to raising Chao and even playing Frogger.
You see, Sega forgot one thing that made Sonic a worthy competitor to Mario. Maybe you've seen it on YouTube when Sega reps were comparing Sonic to Super Mario World graphically. Some Sega reps (or maybe it was Naka, idk) said something on the lines that Sonic was able to look just as impressive because they made the most out of their system in spite of the fact the Genesis was technologically inferior to the SNES. To their credit, they called it "Blast Processing" (and I know, for Sega it was a challenge to make Sonic work the way it did), but Sega made no commercial comparing Sonic to say... F-Zero.
My point here is that less was more with Sonic's success from day 1 to today. If you look at the main series console titles and their success from each predecessor, the evidence is clear. SA2 was more successful than SA1 because it streamlined the gameplay from the first game. Sonic Heroes was more accessible than SA2 was, but it lacked the excess of SA1 while offering a little bit of everything while being even more streamlined. Sonic Unleashed succeeds Sonic 06 for offering a promising 3D AND 2D Sonic experience (non-werehog), more hub worlds, just 1/10,00th of the sizes offered in 06 that are full of optional things. Sonic Colors rids the hubs, rids the mandatory non-Sonic gameplay all together, focuses on 2D through a condensed and modified Unleashed style gameplay.
Sonic Generations? Generations brings back an alternate gameplay that reflects the classic 2D gameplay, brings back 1 hub that accesses everything on a 2D plane, makes use of the cast in a non-invasive way, dumbs down the Unleashed style controls (a positive for the most part), but condenses the level design making it more about speedy platforming in open 3D areas with 2D areas that don't take advantage of Sonic's abilities enough. Generations was as much of a small step forward as it was a small step backwards where there is a flexibility a lot of Sonic fans are all too familiar with. It's a safe game that offers our favorite dishes of Sonic microwaved instead of freshly cooked or served edibly raw. After what's derived from Unleashed be it Sonic 4 ep1, ep2, Colors and Generations, it's about time for a new recipe or to expand/ improve these foundations instead of making their portions (of the gameplay) smaller and refined to a fault .
And finally, what do I expect of Sonic for the next Gen systems since the PS4 has officially been the talk of the Internet town? At first, I thought SA3. Really? Sure, why not? They've had over a decade to get it right and I can still have some optimism. However, after what a Sega forum mod said about their financial standings being that chances are there won't be a Sonic game that takes full advantage of the new graphics capability, perhaps it's time that Sega... like Nintendo has done with Mario - really go back to his roots? If 2D, I hope Sonic Team makes a real 2D Sonic game and doesn't bite off more than they can chew for crying out loud. Generations focuses on what works well with Sonic, but there's so much more that could have come out of both gameplays that's easily found from the games they originate from, being daytime Unleashed and the Genesis titles, or even the Advance series most people overlook. I know Sega wants to popularize Sonic through other mediums, but he's a video game character. He needs good video games to be worthy of being morphed into a stuffed toy or an action figure or an energy drink. I feel like everyone is going to lose if the next Sonic game doesn't do better than Generations did, but Sega usually succeeds when it means bringing something new to the table that's Sonic related.
After 06, how can a fan not worry, though?
btw, Johnny's playthrough is making me change my mind about wanting to play 06. Gamegrumps makes it look bearable, but Johnny? I think it's because I've watched his Silver playthrough while the grumps are still on Shadow's with an incomplete Silver run. The missions look atrocious and redundant, Silver's gameplay look redundant and uninspiring. The story promotes anti-thought and when it tries to promote thought, it's not even thought provoking (yet I can understand how that aspect holds allure to some). Johnny responds with the question, "What were they thinking?" towards a lot of things in this game, but it makes me ask...
"Were they even thinking at all?"
*drops mic startling everyone he put to sleep*
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