The Blog Sega doesn't want you to read

[Linkjing Donuts]

Im sorry but I'd just like to reiterate that Sonic Adventure 2 was amazing. The soundtrack (disregard Knuckles and Rouge levels)

i happen to like those two specifically

[Salluz]

Sonic Adventure was revolutionary, but you know, the story wouldn't have suffered a bit if they took out Big. He is just slow and pathetic; a huge disgrace to anything Sonic-related. I'm understanding Nekofrog's opinion, but regardless, I loved S3&K. I'll never forget the similarities between Michael Jackson and Sonic 3 music.

Im sorry but I'd just like to reiterate that Sonic Adventure 2 was amazing. The soundtrack (disregard Knuckles and Rouge levels)

WHAT!? Heh, well, Knuckles did have those hilarious wannabe raps, but the music was slamming! It actually beats what's left of hiphop. Oh, and Rouge's music was outstanding (though annoying at times). Jazz vibes with improvisation! Well, heh, guess it's not your type.

was great, and the level design was hoo boy awesome. Add in chao and extra missions and you have a one player game with ridiculous replay value.

Right on, but they messed up with their shitty 2P mode. Especially Chaos, he was chaos.

No, the shittiness started with Sonic Heroes, my friends. Coincidentally, the first time a sonic title went on an xbox and ps2, shit went down the shitter.

The only things that impressed me about Sonic Heroes was:

1. The sequence of the levels (even when the levels sucked). I hated the gameplay, but I liked the vibe of Hang Castle.
   
2. Team Dark, Espio and Knuckles. Everyone else was lame.
   
3. Egg Emperor

To add, three reasons why Sonic Heroes failed to save Sonic's reputation:

1. Any team or team attack apart from Team Dark, especially Team Rose. Cream: why don't we go up? Um, no fucking shit. I would give the Chaotix team some credit, but... Charmy's high voice? Vector's stupidity? Dangerous bubblegum? Chaotic singing? Go to hell.
   
2. Wack ass battles. You know, the pathetic enemies and the pointless team-on-team super-ghetto hood-reppin' gang fights.
   
3. Big the Cat. Yes, I said it.

Bonus answers: WTF? Abysmal stages? What a way to make a challenge! <(Cheap) They fucked Metal Sonic over. He was badass until this Metal Overlord shit. Oh, and why couldn't Tails and Knuckles be super? The ending was worse than the beginning. [/anti-fan-ism]

Still, Sonic's latter games weren't Sega's worst mistakes...

Epic Fail.

This was Sega's worse mistake ever. I never even played Sonic R and that's irrefutable.

[Vivi22]

I'm going to use the same argument I used to defend Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - if you wanted to see Raiders of the Lost Ark, why didn't you just watch Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Same basic principle applies here. Even if Sega didn't push and punish their employees, the games would still likely not be of the classic quality we want them to have. If you want the gaming quality and experience and overall greatness of Sonic 1 or 2 or 3, you're better off just playing 1, 2, or 3. Saves you time and money in the long run.

I'm not saying the Sonic of today are any good, I haven't played a Sonic game in years, I'm just saying this would've happened naturally sooner or later anyway.

I'm not going to say you don't have a point, because you do to an extent, but the big problem with recent Sonic games isn't that they get away from the play as Sonic and run really fast through a level formula. The problem is various combinations of bad controls, sloppy collision detection, crappy level design/cameras, and annoying as hell characters that do nothing but force you to play shoddy gameplay styles that suffer from the same problems that plague playing as Sonic, but fail even further because the developers slapped them together with even less care and effort than Sonic's gameplay modes.

If they changed the gameplay style and added more characters, I'd be ok with it if the games were well made, but they're not.

And frankly, I'm surprised by all of the talk of not buying Sega games anymore unless they come out with something really good. Aside from Valkyria Chronicles, when was the last time Sega released a game that didn't suck? Why were people still buying these games? The last one I bought before VC was honestly Sonic Adventure 2, but Sonic Adventure 1 was the last time I enjoyed a Sega game.

[SwordBreaker]

Interesting read there. Aside from a lot of love going into Valkyria Chronicles, nothing from Sega has impressed me in a long while.

I think the Sonic Rush series is currently the closest Sega will ever get to the greatness of the classic Genesis series. The only thing I ever liked from the 3D games is the continuity in storyline. Sonic Adventure 2 was good stuff if you're playing with Sonic or Shadow...all other characters have crappy gameplay mechanics and level design.

[Shadow Wolf]

Wait, I lied way up there somewhere. I did adore Sonic and Knuckles, that was an awesome game.

[Toadofsky]

Dude, I think I bought that game... did it have a screensaver with tails blowing off panels of a sonic picture with his helicopter thingy???

Yes, that very one.

[Meteo Xavier]

I'm not going to say you don't have a point, because you do to an extent, but the big problem with recent Sonic games isn't that they get away from the play as Sonic and run really fast through a level formula. The problem is various combinations of bad controls, sloppy collision detection, crappy level design/cameras, and annoying as hell characters that do nothing but force you to play shoddy gameplay styles that suffer from the same problems that plague playing as Sonic, but fail even further because the developers slapped them together with even less care and effort than Sonic's gameplay modes.

We're not actually disagreeing, I'm just saying this was going to happen sooner or later.

Frankly, I'm surprised the Mario games have lasted as long as they have, but even Mario isn't immune from this eventuality. I started noticing hints of it back in Super Paper Mario and Super Mario Galaxy.

[DarkeSword]

IThe problem is various combinations of bad controls, sloppy collision detection, crappy level design/cameras, and annoying as hell characters that do nothing but force you to play shoddy gameplay styles that suffer from the same problems that plague playing as Sonic, but fail even further because the developers slapped them together with even less care and effort than Sonic's gameplay modes.

If they changed the gameplay style and added more characters, I'd be ok with it if the games were well made, but they're not.

This.

I can forgive an attempt at "innovation" and different gameplay styles, but the biggest problem with Sonic games in this day and age is that they are just poorly made.

[Vivi22]

We're not actually disagreeing, I'm just saying this was going to happen sooner or later.

Frankly, I'm surprised the Mario games have lasted as long as they have, but even Mario isn't immune from this eventuality. I started noticing hints of it back in Super Paper Mario and Super Mario Galaxy.

Mario has certainly managed better than Sonic, but only because they made one great 3D game off the bat (Mario 64), then made lackluster copies of it ad nauseum. Not that Mario Sunshine and Galaxy are terrible games, but the level design and new gameplay mechanics pale in comparison to Mario 64. In fact, I got as many stars/shines as I needed to beat the game in both and never touched them again, but I still go back and play Mario 64 every few months. I just got bored with the level design and lack of compelling new play mechanics.

[Nekofrog]

What did Tails add to Sonic 2?

Two player mode, both in single-player and two-player mode.

Sonic 3 special stages are just Sonic 2 pseudo 3D special stages with another dimension of movement. Giant rings were in Sonic 1. Was it how they were hidden that bothered you?

I'm not saying S3&K is better, but it seems like some of your beefs with S3&K apply to Sonic 2 as well.

Access to the zones, specifically. Anyone can just "find" the giant ring, but you have to have at least somewhat of a decent handle on the game to be able to make it to the bonus zones in 2 (have enough rings to activate it). More challenging.

[FlagshipAmadeus]

Mystic Cave Zone? AMAZING. Chemical Plant Zone? ASTONISHING.

Well personally I hate those two, really I think all four of the original games have an equal percentage of really good tracks and really terrible tracks

[Meeting_Gman]

It seems this very thing has happened before. There is always some one that comes to the fore front and states, "<game/console name here> wasn't good because <persons name here> ruined it." We went through this with Sonic Extreme and the Sega Dreamcast. There seems to be so much internal squabbling at Sega. Always has been, always will be.

[Maco70]

Of course, now it seems that Mario has been toppled...

http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/wii-sports-is-best-selling-game-ever/1276855

Just note that this article is terrible.

PS: All the sonic series games (1-s&k) are excellent, regardless of who made them. The first sonic game is in fact my least favorite. So what?

[Strike911]

Mario has certainly managed better than Sonic, but only because they made one great 3D game off the bat (Mario 64), then made lackluster copies of it ad nauseum. Not that Mario Sunshine and Galaxy are terrible games, but the level design and new gameplay mechanics pale in comparison to Mario 64. In fact, I got as many stars/shines as I needed to beat the game in both and never touched them again, but I still go back and play Mario 64 every few months. I just got bored with the level design and lack of compelling new play mechanics.

I don't know. Certainly Maio has maintained better, but Nintendo games in general fare far better than Sega games ever have in the last generation up to this one.

And about the shines. I understand. I also have seen myself not being bothered with collecting things in games anymore, and I think I've pinned it to the fact that when 3D worlds and collecting things were new, it was actually compelling because it was, in fact, new. Now that its old potatoes I can't be bothered unless it adds to the gameplay, and isn't the equivalent of me trying to find some kind of missing trinket in my very messy closet. That's honestly what the closet comparison is.

AND FURTHERMORE (rant beginning) there is often no equivalent reward for finding all the damned things in most of these games except the satisfaction that our dumbasses collected all of the damned things in the first place. What's my incentive to go and find all this crap the devs leave lying around if I'm not going to get anything back for it besides a 100% next to my save file?! HUH!? HUH!? Where the flying hell did all he secret unlockables go!? Achievements are nice, but they're not a substitute when people break their ass trying to find crap. Okay, I'm stopping.

Sonic's later games were especially plagued by this... I just don't care because the reward in return just isn't high enough with all the other fantastic games vying for my attention all at the same time.

Pardon the vulgarities.

[Salluz]

Mystic Cave Zone? AMAZING.

Preach it now, brotha' (even though I like S3&K more than StH2).

Interesting read there. Aside from a lot of love going into Valkyria Chronicles, nothing from Sega has impressed me in a long while.

I have yet to play it.

I think the Sonic Rush series is currently the closest Sega will ever get to the greatness of the classic Genesis series. The only thing I ever liked from the 3D games is the continuity in storyline. Sonic Adventure 2 was good stuff if you're playing with Sonic or Shadow...all other characters have crappy gameplay mechanics and level design.

Personally, I liked Knuckles/Rouge's stages (the SA2 Knuckles/Rouge stages put the SA1 Knuckles stages in the dust), but I know that it's NOT something that everyone will like. As for Mad Space, I did beat it in an instant, but it was still quite... maddening. Stages like that give people headaches, regardless of the player's skill level.

Sonic and Shadow had great stages, that I would agree with. Some of them may have been crappy.

Tails and Eggman? Hm... some of the stages were cool (Cosmic Wall was the ultimate stage between the two, and that goes for 2P mode as well; Weapons Bed was also made of win because of the sitting ducks! Perfects every ten seconds!). I'm not sure about Tails stages, I'll have to play the game again. I would say Hidden Base (the music), but that stage can be annoying too.

[PhiJayy]

That was an interesting read.

You know Sonic Unleashed could have been a very, very cool game.

The game started off pretty awesome.

I can't began to say how disappointing the Werehog was. Seriously...adding the Werehog totally killed the game. Simply killed it.

[Rophell]

It could have been worse... they could have added a werehog character instead of having Sonic turn into him...

And then added a bad werehog that fights for the forces of evil just to balance things out.

And then added a sort of in between character on some PSP game later.

[K.B.]

Just curious...could this kind of work condition be much different than the other big game companies? It seems like most of the game companies really push the envelope in getting games out in the market.

I echo this. From reading a few soundtrack liner notes and interviews with Uematsu and Mitsuda, it sounds like the conditions at Square back in the day were just as demanding (or unreasonable, depending upon your viewpoint) as those for the Sonic Team now, according to the blog anyway. The only difference I can tell is that Square was often successful and acclaimed then and Sega is mostly treading water and taking dumps now.

[The Pezman]

Sonic has been an uncharacteristically large part of my life from my earliest days.

It started, of course, when I played Sonic 2 at friends' houses. It was so cool to watch him spin through the pipes. I played computer games with my dad, but I wasn't a console gamer yet. That changed when I convinced my parents to get me a Genesis. The game it came with? S3&K. That's right, Sonic was my first console game. I liked it so much I got all the other Sonic games that existed for it.

Then, one day, I saw someone reading a Sonic comic book. I did a double take. Wasn't he a... video game character? I picked up the issue, liked it, and started getting them consistently. While I was making Knuckles run through Angel Island and Ice Cap Zone, I was also reading about him fighting against his great^1000 grandfather. This was when the comic started to become serious.

I wrote a story about Sonic once, and discovered a passion for Creative Writing, and I wrote Sonic stories throughout elementary school and read them to my class. I shit you not.

Well naturally I was a complete devotee at this point. I got a Game Gear, and all the Sonic games there. Yes, I even owned a 32X. Then the Saturn. Yes, I owned Sonic Jam.

All the way through Sonic Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast I was with him, missing only a few nothing titles along the way like Sonic Shuffle, Sonic Drift 1, and Sonic Schoolhouse.

And all along I read the comics, even as things got more convoluted, turning on styles, genres and plot directions at the turn of a hat. Robotnik died, but then an alternate dimension one came back. Sonic Adventure had a five issue long adaptation, and Sonic Adventure 2 had half an issue. Issue #100 was completely lame, and then they revealed Mobius was in fact Earth (WHY?) and then Sonic was killed, except he was actually warped across the universe. Eventually, Ian Flynn came in and brought a lot of it under control, although I don't like a lot of his story decisions. So I still read it now, but it is with a sigh of remembrance for the comic as it once was.

And then came Sonic Heroes. Expectations were high... all the characters I'd seen up to now were going to come together in one big mishmash... but my god, what had they done? THREE characters at a time? Ridiculous collision detection, clunky controls, a switching scheme that was laughable. THAT, I contend, was the major deviation, not Sonic Adventure. After that things only got worse and I was done.

The one thing I missed out on the first time around was the TV serieses. I only saw SATAM episodes a couple of years ago. They were awesome (well, my eight year old self would have thought so), but of course it was cancelled, and the other shows were pretty lame.

So where does that leave me? Of course, I can still play the old games and read the old issues, but it's obvious to everyone that Sonic isn't aging well. There are other places which have kept track of Sonic over the years, and I have pipe dreams of becoming a successful game artist so I can buy all the different Sonic IPs and bring the 'hog back to his glory days, but more realistically I imagine he will fade from the hearts and minds of younger gamers, known only to the passing winds as "that wolf hog game."

[Strike911]

@ Pezman

Be glad you missed Sonic Shuffle. I think I got it for free when I bought my Dreamcast back in the day.

It was like Mario Party, except minus the party, minus a lot of minigames, and more board games. The minigames were fun when you got to them, but it was like... half the time was spent wasting time on the game board doing nothing but moving your piece, not to mention the weird rules of the game. I could only stand it for a little while.

>_<

One day Sega will take the old Sonic formula that worked back in the early 90s, make a 3D engine that mimics the gameplay perfectly, while adding some cool interactivity and physics, then they'll start making new Sonic titles that sell. Those games played really tightly, the controls were spot on. My main issue with the newer 2D GBA sonic games is that the controls don't feel nearly as tight as they did back on the Genesis, just a little unresponsive...

[Mr Azar]

I'm so glad I have the Sonic collection for Gamecube.

[Xenon Odyssey]

I'm so glad I have both Sonic collections for Gamecube.

Oh yeah.

I told my little brother about this article (he's 12 and started playing Sonic with Sonic Adventure), and he's been trying to defend all the Sonic games that have come out since Heroes. It's difficult to explain that sonic is way shittier than he was in the past, but ah, little kids...

[DarkAura]

I'm sorry, but the minute Sonic started losing his luster is the minute SEGA stopped making consoles.

If they were still making home consoles, then obviously they would care more about the direction in which Sonic was heading.

[/rant]

[Toadofsky]

Jeez, five pages in, and we've got into the what's wrong with Sonic topic.

I guess I'll be the only one to defend Sonic Heroes, it was the last good game of Sonic in my opinion. Sure, it was annoying as heck in some spots, but I enjoyed it. The whole tag team thing didn't bother me, I adjusted to it, especially when I would replay a stage I would get the idea of who was up next.

As far as Mario goes, I'll admit, he's shown his age. But we only get a new Mario game like what? Every five years? So that's a good long break. Mario 64, I'll still keep coming back to that till the day I die, but Galaxy was an improvement. But I'm hopeful that Nintendo will maybe change him up a bit, not much, but a little more subtlety. No, not with an RPG (which by the way, let Square handle the next one please?), or a Mario Sports game, but a platformer. Just please don't add no STUPID building machines gimmick ala Banjo Kazooie. God that game was awful for me. Sorry off topic...

And I recall (not here), but alot of people complaining about the so-called "Butt Rock" of Sonic. I honestly ask, what's wrong with it? I loved the ska feel from Sonic Adventure 2. Every time I play the first stage in Sonic Adventure, I get this great fuzzy feeling inside. The guitar, the beach, the killer whale in the scenes, just takes me back to better days.

Well, these days, Sonic is catered to kids, like he probably always has been, and that's not going to change anytime soon from the looks of it. So most kids today, are probably not concerned with the quality of it. If they enjoy it, that's all they care about, and really, isn't that what it should be with games?

But that's the point, most fans from the early Genesis days, no matter how hard they've tried, have not enjoyed almost any of the recent Sonic games, and the blog shows why. Sonic Team is put under a proverbial gun every year, to make another Sonic game time and time again. They don't get a chance to spread their wings on new IP or change Sonic up.

Here's hoping Sega may start seeing they need to ease up on the team, maybe...

[DarkeSword]

Jeez, five pages in, and we've got into the what's wrong with Sonic topic.

I guess I'll be the only one to defend Sonic Heroes, it was the last good game of Sonic in my opinion. Sure, it was annoying as heck in some spots, but I enjoyed it. The whole tag team thing didn't bother me, I adjusted to it, especially when I would replay a stage I would get the idea of who was up next.

Sonic Heroes had great ideas that were executed so poorly. It was a technical fiasco; wonky camera, bad collision detection, etc. Total crap. The idea of using formations and controlling a team of characters? Fantastic idea! The implementation? Horrible!

I was actually excited for Sonic Heroes. I bought it the day it came out.

What a waste of money; such a disappointment.