Sonic Superstars

[Madmya]

Good post, Deef.

I think it looks great, and I'm confident that the physics will be good enough. I'm loving that Sonic is finally getting back on track after 20 odd years, haha.

Edit: Damn, that great post is now consigned to the last page.

[unfnknblvbl]

I refuse to get excited about any Sonic game. Not after they somehow made a bad Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

It's just easier this way.

[Deef]

I think my hype level has settled to about a 7 on this one. I'll get it, but I think I'm expecting irritations to exist more than I'd like. I'll never get over not having the S3 style rolling jumps and insta-shield.

Now that I think of it, I'd say I'm just skeptical about the acts themselves... that won't compete for size with what we're used to in S3/K/Mania. That, and being a bit apprehensive about this emerald stuff being a distraction (namely, the auto-prompt for Vision).

Maybe I'm keeping my expectations healthily low too.

[Deef]

Bridge Island Act 1 music, apparently.

Meh, inoffensive, doesn't excite me.
Sonic 3 probably going to remain king in this area too, for me anyway. Hydrocity and Icecap in the same game, come on.

[unfnknblvbl]

OK, so my hot take is that a side scrolling Sonic game should never have 3D character models.

Firstly, there is simply no need for it, other than to save time and effort. There have been many essays on the subject by people more eloquent than myself, but basically, stuffing 3D models into an otherwise 2D game has never looked as good as good 2D spritework. It's really only done so that it's readier to do fancy tricks like rotating and zooming the camera. These days, zooming looks excellent thanks to modern hardware and file formats, and rotation isn't really all that necessary anyway.

Secondly, Sonic has simply never, ever looked any good in 3D. His style simply doesn't go across dimensions well at all.

I'll be extremely chuffed if this game is All That, but after Sonic Origins, it's not even close to being on my radar.

[Deef]

While I actually disagree with most of that heheh, I will agree that Rayman Origins knew where it was at. That was a great example of real effort going into, and taking advantage of, 2D animation, and the game looking and feeling amazing for it.

I definitely agree that 2.5D is very often used as the visual stylistic hook itself, rather than actually delivering something fresh. Superstars just looks "satisfactory" in its visuals and, with good effort going into only the animations and models (imo). It definitely doesn't pop on the whole though; it simply doesn't even try to.

Lost opportunity for them to channel something with real visual appeal, even if still going 2.5D. But this is Sega and Sonic; it's not like opportunities aren't already tumbling from their pockets left and right.

Funnily enough, I actually disliked the Generations take on what 3D classic Sonic would look like. They've hit the target more closely with this one imo; the model for Sonic himself looking the best of the 4 I think. And 3D or not, I'm very happy to see the classic Amy design. Which is odd because ew, Amy, like, so gross.

[F for Fake]

(You might not know, but the other half - Yuji Naka - is actually in prison lel.)

LOL wtf I did not know that.

(And nice write ups as always)

[Deef]

Oh wait. I read now that he was given a suspended prison sentence. Which the internet says means he got sentenced to 2.5 years, but suspended for 4 years, and apparently the typically way it goes is that they don't go to jail if they behave during that time.

So ok, not so bad but still pretty bad heh.


https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/7/23787 ... n-sentence

In the first case, Naka and two co-workers purchased 162,000 shares valued at around $332,000 (47.2 million yen) in the game developer Aiming before Square Enix told the public it was working with the studio on a mobile Dragon Quest game. The three men were arrested in November last year.

The other incident, which Naka was arrested for just a month later, involves Naka and a fellow Square Enix employee allegedly buying 120,000 shares valued at over $1 million (144.7 million yen) in another games studio that the company planned on partnering with. The studio in question, Ateam, collaborated with Square Enix on the mobile game Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier. The judge’s ruling concerns both of these cases.

Don't get on my back for the quality of that website or quote, I barely read either of them. Just dumped some text to chew on.


Man, Mario is so wholesome in contrast. Sonic was more like one genius thing amid ... mess. We get missing music, collapsed companies, Naka in jail... they don't even own the god damn rights to much of the OG Sonic music.. which is why this is a completely real thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2amalh3qZBE&t=114
I can't get that to embed. Just click it!


Discovering that Icecap, in particular, existed like a decade before Sonic 3 was a bit of a jolt, too.

[Madmya]

Hahah I was wondering why you posted that song, then it hit. Wow.

[unfnknblvbl]

Discovering that Icecap, in particular, existed like a decade before Sonic 3 was a bit of a jolt, too.

This is waaaay more common than you'd think. There is nothing truly new under the sun hahaha... even Mario's music is lifted from previous compositions!

[Deef]

But like... that similar? (You know about Hard Times, right?)

I mean, Icecap was literally an unreleased pop single.

[Scullibundo]

lol even I don’t have faith in new Sonic games anymore. Haven’t for eons.

Also, Hello!

[Deef]

Haha! Good to see you.

Well, what's this one on the hype-o-meter for you?

That said, what was your impression of Mania? Don't think I've seen you here since years before even that.

[Scullibundo]

Haha! Good to see you.

Well, what's this one on the hype-o-meter for you?

That said, what was your impression of Mania? Don't think I've seen you here since years before even that.

I really liked Mania - except would have loved it much more if the bulk of it hadn’t been remixed levels. I liked the original stuff a lot. Is this taxman and co as well, though?

This ain’t on my hype-o-metre at all. I honestly don’t get hyped for Sonic games at all anymore lol. If this was Mania 2 I know I’d be checking it out for sure.

[Scullibundo]

After watching a few videos for this, I think it’s gonna be dogshit.

[unfnknblvbl]

If this was Mania 2 I know I’d be checking it out for sure.

It's frankly staggering how Sega must know that Sonic Mania 2 would be an instant critical and sales success (assuming they brought back Taxman & co for it), but they just.... keep doing everything but that.

[Deef]

There are articles about nice sunny reasons for why there isn't a Mania 2, but there were stories of a bit of bad blood floating around earlier too. It's hard to know what's real and what's spin. But officially, Taxman & co were considered for Superstars and ideas were thrown around, but it didn't pan out. Unofficially, I can only maybe remember some mention of the crunch the team was under with Mania, and definitely remember the same kind of thing with Origins. In the case of Origins, it was a bit of a "shots fired" on Twitter.

But... yeah, hard to be sure. It's understood that Taxman genuinely wanted to get on with his own studio and own games at that point, which he has done.

@Sculli. Nope, not the same team, except Tee as a contributor on music. Taxman has said that Superstars is built on Mania's physics though, and all reports are solid in that it really is running proper classic physics. But yeah, all the other special ingredients that the Mania team could genuinely deliver, nope, they're likely to be missing.

That said, I totally agree on the remixed levels. That's the thing that hurts Mania most, by far.


I don't think Superstars will be bad. I think it probably won't achieve the level design greatness of 3/K/M + I am wondering if the chaos emerald tricks will end up doing more harm than good + I'm going to be unhappy that it won't have the control lock with rolling jumps.

But what I'll be asking myself after I've formed an impression of Superstars is whether I think it's actually disappointing, or if I just feel disappointment due to it not hitting that perfect nostalgic angle... and then incorrectly blaming the game for it. Superstars is unlikely to be a S3&K, sure. But will it be bad? Probably not. Will we be overly critical of its faults because of things it isn't rather than things it is? Probably. Or perhaps even just because we're all old farts now and we forget that 2D platformers don't blow our minds like they used to.

It's still bringing classic physics, non-linear levels, and multiple characters with the same base of controls. There really isn't any reason to crap on it too heavily yet, apart from a) fairly justifiable mistrust in the devs, and b) being the bitter vets we are. But what we've actually seen of the game so far is neither of those things. A few concerns, a few downers, but nothings that's really overriding the good we know so far; the classic physics, non-linear levels, and multiple characters with the same base of controls.

It has a decent enough chance of being decent enough, I think.

[Scullibundo]

From what I’ve seen of the game so far, I just think it looks too on-rails. It’s what you’ve already noted - ita level design seems awash with the boosters going into ball tracks going into grinds and I’m left wondering when we actually play the thing.

[unfnknblvbl]

Superstars is unlikely to be a S3&K, sure. But will it be bad?

S3&K and Mania have two of the longest shadows in gaming history...

[Deef]

What is Mania, if not S3&K persevering?

[Deef]

Can't really gather much from that video, except that the online battle stages will indeed be up to 8 players. I'm wondering if the 8-player battle mode is distinct from the 4-player battle mode... I think I put something about that on the last page. But lazy. Meanwhile co-op is local only.

The balloons and spinny wheel things trigger me a bit. I expect Tails to go soaring when he flies into a balloon, and those spinny wheel things... looks like no real momentum when the characters eject. Bah.

Oct 17th release.
Price is too high ($95 or $113 for some digital-only bits). A 2D game in 2023 needs to not look like a 3D game in 2011 to charge that much imo.

[Madmya]

I didn't really see anything wrong with the momentum coming out of those spinning things.

The price point is a problem for sure. I'd expect $60 max.

But I'm still going to pay for it.

[Deef]

I didn't really see anything wrong with the momentum coming out of those spinning things.

Yeah, maybe I'm just seeing things. I guess it's more that it wasn't super obvious that it wasn't a momentum-fueled fling, especially when it put Carnival Night Zone in mind, so my skepticism needed a bit more convincing.

That price, mmm. Likewise, I'll still just get it. I'd pre-order already if I could make sense of that little Amy skin bonus (shut up) appearing to only be on Epic.

It's amazing that Sonic is such a huge IP and it's like they just don't know how to actually use it. It's as if they don't want it to grow; blind-sided by every cheap tactic to get money fast.

[Madmya]

Feels like they're finally heading in the right direction, though. I'm clearly a lot more optimistic than the rest of you

My siblings and I would have smashed those multiplayer modes when we were young.

[Deef]

*quietly sweeps this post under the rug*