![]() 2016’s AM2R was detail-obsessed to the point of alienating anyone not intimately familiar with Metroid 2 and Street Fighter x Mega Man (despite an official blessing from Capcom) missed the intangible je ne sais quoi from classic Mega Man. A 16-bit styled Sonic game could never come out of present day Sonic Team.Įnter the Sonic fan community. It’s been over twenty years since Sonic & Knuckles, and much of the staff from Sega Technical Institute and Sonic Team, other than Takashi Iizuka, are no longer present at Sega. Sonic Forces will change that this November, obviously, but it speaks to their magnetism toward larger products. Development of Sonic Boom was handed off to Big Red Button and Sanzaru for its Wii U and 3DS entries, respectively, leaving Sonic Team without an AAA project on the market since 2013. In fairness, Sonic Team has slowed their recent output. It should have been better and it never got a second chance. Sonic Lost World, in particular, was a genre-spinning concept left to twist in the wind. ![]() Each make the original feel like a prototype, a mess of ideas too valuable to throw away and too potent to leave unrefined. Look at the relationship between Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed 2, Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. There is virtue to be found in not settling on a single idea and constantly moving forward, but there’s usually also a creative (and financial) incentive to taking another crack at a foundational premise. Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, Sonic Lost World, and Sonic Generations are all wildly different Sonic games – and each could have seen improvement from a proper, industry-standard follow-up. With the exception of Sonic and The Secret Rings and Sonic and the Black Knight, both auto-running Wii experiments, none were direct sequels. Over the last ten years, Sonic Team had a hand in over a dozen Sonic games (along with sequels to both Nights: Into Dreams and Phantasy Star Online). The machinations that drive Sonic Team are, as a measure of pure speculation, chaotic and grueling. In a world where the PlayStation didn’t exist and the Saturn was allowed to be a 2D power house, Sonic Mania’s style may have mirrored Sonic’s first Saturn entry. The idiom, “it’s what you remember Sonic playing like instead of what Sonic actually played like,” may be trite and overused, but it’s also valid. Sonic Mania’s characters are better animated, its color pallet and level size extends past the Genesis’ limitations, and there’s zero slowdown, but it all feels like it could be a 16-bit game. Gorgeous pixel art, emotive sprites, engaging level gimmicks, and sprawling pathways were defined by Sonic the Hedgehog and perfected around Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Solutions that were not obvious in 2011 make more sense today just literally make a game that looks like Old Sonic. For whatever reason, Sega wasn’t comfortable with a true pixel reconstruction of Sonic’s 16-bit aesthetic. It’s where 2D gaming felt comfortable and Sonic seemed like a good retro-fit, but it didn’t feel like Old Sonic. Around the same time, Sonic Generations pulled Sonic closer to home, but only for half the game. Sonic the Hedgehog 4’s two episodes embraced the popular 2.5D aesthetic but suffered under a regrettable physics system and a cynical delivery method. In the past, Sega met Sonic’s demand for a 2D plane with a compromise in 3D space. ![]() Flaws are easier to overlook if they’re part of a game you fell in love with. They’re defining parts of Sonic, much the same way the entirety of Scrap Brain Zone, Sonic Spinball’s agonizing music, and Sonic CD’shaphazard level configuration are part of Old Sonic. The lack of acceptable control, the poor lock-on mechanic, the proliferation of insufferable, pathetic characters - these are not perceived as negatives. “New” Sonic fans (which are impossible to define, but we’ll just say “came to Sonic after Sonic Adventure“) first knew Sonic in a three-dimensional world. Pulling Sonic out of 3D hell and away from nostalgic modernity risked alienation from the young and cries of blasphemy from the old. Sonic Mania, on the other hand, accepted Sonic’s inherited limitations (or problems) and transformed them into practical solutions. Despite a smattering of dissimilar attempts across a variety of platforms, there wasn’t a Sonic game that nailed it like his 16-bit heyday. The odds of this happening-of Sonic narrowly escaping his cursed cycle-were not tough to bet against. ![]() PagodaWest and Headcannon’s take on Sega’s emblematic hedgehog delighted skeptical critics and satiated ravenous fans.
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