Poll: Did Sega fail Sonic or vice-versa?

[dukethepcdr]

The problem was that Sega took a great original game (the first Sonic the Hedgehog) and got greedy with it. They saw it as a cash cow and went way too far trying to make money off of him. In my opinion, Nintendo has done the same thing to Mario. Both "mascots" were better off in their first two or three games. After that, it just got weirder and weirder until I find I don't like the newer games for either mascot very much. Give me Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and Donkey Kong over any of their newer games any day.

 

[Retoru]

The main problem with the Sonic franchise has been that they've tried to turn it into something it wasn't meant to be. The fun of the Sonic games is the blazing speed and platforming, which is great when played in 2D.

Once you transition that formula to 3D it just doesn't work as well. With 3D you have a whole new set of problems such as wonky cameras, poor collision detection, and oftentimes an inability to create that illusion of speed that worked so well in the 2D games.

Sega for some reason hasn't realized this, but they really need to. If they would bring Sonic back to the 2D side-scrolling type of gameplay they could easily create another great Sonic game and breathe new life into the series.

I doubt they ever will though, Sega is fairly notorious for making bad decisions. Taking Sonic to 3D is just another example of their lunacy. It's as bad, if not worse, than their insistence on announcing the Saturn around 2 months after they launched the 32X add-on for the Genesis. The 32X was a dumb idea to begin with, but it was made even more dumb by sabotaging it with the Saturn announcement.

All that announcement did was piss off customers and developers. Customers didn't buy it because they knew the Saturn was on the horizon, and developers didn't make games for it for the same reason. If Sega had just not had their heads way up their asses back in the 90s they'd probably still be in the console business.

The Saturn was great, but they didn't support it well enough and moved on to developing the Dreamcast very quickly. The Dreamcast suffered a similar fate, it was the best machine on the market at the time, but Sega didn't provide enough first party support to the system and they weren't really going out of their way to attempt to get more third party developers on board or work out deals for exclusives.

 

[cobrasting14]

Thank you Retoru, I was wondering if anyone would ever say it. Sega killed Sonic to an extent, but 3D is what really killed the franchise. I will admit, I had fun with Sonic Adventure 2, but I think it frustrated me more than the amount of fun I had. I hated the Knuckles missions *Searching for treasures for half an hour is a total pace killer* and the Tails gun parts were loser also.

It wouldn't take much for Sega to rekindle the Sonic name. If they would make a fast paced Side-Scroller Sonic with awesome 3D graphics, they would basically pick their fan base back up.

 

[Altorin]

I blame the fans for not being able to cope with the game dev's trying new styles, but shadow the hedgehog did suck, why did they put in guns?

hypocrite.

 

[raemiel]

I've honestly never been a Sega person so I cant say I can comment on many of the past Sonic games as I only played them at friend's places, but please don't stop reading now. (right, disclaimer over)

Honestly I don't think Sonic serves as a good mascot anymore. He was perfect when he was in his heyday of the mid-1990s as he was a smart-talking offensively blue (as in far too extreme for your parents to like) character who wasn't too much of a badass to not appeal to the little kids too. Fast-forward to now and his depiction in recent games (SSBB and the appalling Sonic and the Secret Rings) he keeps this 'rad' persona he always had.

This characterisation just seems a bit anachronistic nowadays, just like how nobody could take Duke Nukem seriously now but back then he was a badass (still satirical then but he was a cool muscley man in an era of cool muscley men where it was cool to be a cool muscley man). Since there has also been a dearth of successfully well-known Sonic games for such a long time it means that a whole generation of gamers were able to grow up after Sonic's good era and hence have never really played or identified with him.

Anybody to whom his 'rad' and 'cool' manner would appeal in the 90s has long since grown out of that stage and the present-day young gamers are far too cynical and versed in more mature characterisations and themes (I'm not saying they should be, but days of innocence are over) to be drawn in and identify with a weird blue hedgehog whom they've never played a game of before.

Compare all this to Mario. Mario's characterisation doesn't really seem constrained to a generation or decade like Sonic does. Additionally and as a result, he has consistently stayed and been successfully introduced with pretty much every generation of gamers since he started jumping on goombas. Thanks in no small part to Super Mario 64, the Mario Kart series and all those other spin offs which people may lament but are still really fun and successful (SSB is a silly concept if you think about it but its third game of the series has been one of the biggest titles for the Wii).

That's not to say there will never be a good Sonic game again, I think it would be a great thing. However it would have to come down to a return to the traditional gameplay while still appealing to the large audience who never really identified with Sonic who seems to have never grown out of the 90s.

 

[Signa]

I can't say I've officially played a Sonic game since Sonic 3, but I have seen the characters enough to know that they are what is ruining the games. I blame Sega for adding them in there.

I have to say though, that one thing all this talk made me realize is that there are no enemy characters that I'm aware of. You can go play any Mario spin-off game, and you will see shy-guys and koopas being your average townsfolk in your RPGs, and even playable characters in your sports games. Though they are common enemies in the games, they have become more than the faceless hordes that you normally face. I don't know of any common sonic enemies as characters.

 

[demon lord 2037]

I believe that sega has really let sonic down by adding so many side characters snd different story lines.They just couldn't leave the original few alone and go about their buisness but no.

 

[CoziestPigeon]

Sega failed the hell outta my old favorite comic book character. Failed the HELL out of him.

And what the fuck is the 'eggman' bullshit? It's Doctor 'Buttnick' goddamnit!

 

[Mr. Moose]

Sega failed the hell outta my old favorite comic book character. Failed the HELL out of him.

And what the fuck is the 'eggman' bullshit? It's Doctor 'Buttnick' goddamnit!

He's shaped like an egg.
Thus, Eggman.

It's an insulting nickname the Freedom Fighters call h....
Wait.
'Buttnick is better.
Much better, it has 'Butt' in it.

 

[rossatdi]

Besides it's not his fault sega put him in bad games and surrounded him with crap characters.
They should have kept it down to: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Eggman, Shadow (for an alternate antagonist), that Silver one actually looked pretty cool so they could have kept him, and maybe a couple more.

By which of course you Robotnik and Metallix. Excuse my french but fuck shadow, fuck him right in his emo-let's appeal to the cool kids-ass. Sonic was never particularly 'cool', in fact he was a bit of an asshole. He even had a you at you if you weren't playing:

Sonic, Tails (love to hate), Knuckles, Metallix, Robotnik. That's all you need. I'm defending them as great characters just the most tolerable.

The original 2d games excelled because they combined a much more fluid type of platforming with (for the time) fantastic visuals. Sonic 1,2,3 and S&K were all easier than any Mario game but the joy of it was that it felt entirely fluid whilst playing.

For love of god, if they dropped the 3d rubbish (you just can't get control good enough for it) and they really put the effort into the art and level design we'd be but on track.

 

[Jharry5]

The first two Sonic games are still amongst my favourite old-school games. In my opinion, they only started to get bad when they (Sega) started messing with the basics by adding a 3rd dimension or gimmicks like guns or whatever...
Doesn't that prove who failed who?

 

[samsprinkle]

sonic could be totally great games if they went back to their 2D roots and moved to the XBLA scene or something like that. Sonic was one of my favorite series before the dreamcast came out

 

[ManiacRaccoon]

I think Sega has been trying a little to hard to make him better, and over the years has always seen adding new things to try and improve it as a better option than going back to what made him popular.

I think they could make an awesome Sonic game out of "Sonic: Unleashed" if they just took out the crappy hulk portions I saw in the trailer.

 

[Erana]

Sega failed Sconic by trying to make him do anything other than run really fast.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

Sega can make great games, but they need to put sonic team on a leash. -or put them to sleep and hire others.

I look forward to Valkyria Chronicles, and SEGA publishes the Total War games.

 

[DreamKing]

Sega failed Sonic adding stuff like extra attacks and guns when Sonic only really needed a homing attack and a spin dash of exploring.

 

[axia777]

Sega failed Sonic. Imagine what people would say if Mario games were made at the quality level of today's Sonic games. The out cry would be deafening.

 

[clarinetJWD]

I posted this in another Sonic thread recently, but Sega almost made a fantastic 3d Sonic game, but due to internal politics, and hardware/engine uncertainty, it was eventually axed months from completion. Look up Sonic X-treme (there's an excellent article on GamesRadar, though I won't link to another online games magazine here), it had the speed, the intersting platforming, and the multiple pathways that made Sonic great, as well as a truly interesting sperical gameworld (think Mario Galaxy)

The sonic/tails/knuckles parts of Sonic Adventure were fine to me, though the story can go fuck itself. I never played SA2, but besides the possibility of that one being great (which some here have said it is), that was where it all ended.

I still have hope for Unleashed, despite the Emo the Hedgehog, because the Sonic parts look like a complete return to what made the franchise great.