Fuck you H.A.A.R.P
Before this AlphaOmegaChristianWrathSuperStorm hits my hometown and eventually ends my life, I might as well write this up now.
Ever since the dawn of 2006, Sonic fans have nosedived into the pit of insanity! Sega had crossed the moral event horizon. Sonic was finished!
It didn’t matter what Sega could do next to quell the tears of the Sonic fanbase. Pandora’s box was opened when a white woman kissed a corpse to turn it into a super saiyan! The franchise was fucking ruined. And nothing could change that.
Shadow’s “gangsta” attitude was already pushing it, and 06 sealed the deal. Yes folks, 2 games in an entire franchise is death. And usually, it takes just 1 time to kill something. Look at Bloody Roar 4.
Yugo: WHAT DID YOU DO TO EIGHTING!?
So, since the end had finally come, like all hardcore gamers, the sonic fanbase had been convinced, and nothing would change their perception. The only conceivable way to “save the franchise” (as several million blog posts will tell you)…. is to sell the franchise to Nintendo.
Yes, the company that produced classics such as Metroid: Other M, Pikmin, and Zelda: Skyward Bore should be given a franchise that can still be salvaged. The logic behind this insane notion is that Sonic’s rival from the over-stated genesis/SNES “conflict”, Super Mario, has produced nothing but quality titles since the very beginning of the NES’s birth. Mario has never seen a bad game (we just pretended sunshine never happened).
The fanboys and viral marketers couldn’t be further from the truth. The reason Sonic’s popularity is already in the shitter…. was because Sonic tried to be exactly like Mario.
You see, there’s a strange phenomenon in the gaming world. When things go 3D, franchises seem to die easily. The transition to 3D is always rocky, but Nintendo is known as the only company who has ever been able to pull it off. I mean, Ocarina of Time sold 8 Million units! And those awards! It won GOTY 3 times in the same year! Did Sonic Adventure make GOTY?! Hell no! That means it sucked!
What didn’t Ocarina of Time do? Well, it certainly got a lot of awards and “revolutionized gaming” by giving people a lock on system for combat.
…….So why didn’t it sell N64’s? Why didn’t it sell 3DS’s? Fuck, wasn’t the fact that this game sold like shit the major contributing factor that led to the 3DS going through a price drop and leading to Nintendo’s massive profit loss of 970 million?
It really IS in the red!
The problem is because Ocarina of Time didn’t do shit for Nintendo except give Eiji Aonuma an inflated sense of self-worth that allowed him to unleash his magnificence that is Skyward Sword, officially turning the franchise into a giant fucking laughing stock (hell, it already was when Spirit Tracks wounded up in the bomba bin of Japan).
Thought I was making that shit up!?
I wouldn’t even fucking joke about wanting to sell Sonic to this company just because of a “perceived” quality of Mario games. If people thought Sonic sucks now, then great Amma I fear what Nintendo would do if those Olympics games are anything to go by.
The truth is Mario games aren’t of the highest quality as many people think. When Mario jumped into 3D, the same thing happened as with a lot of 2D franchises. It’s popularity declined. The N64 was only popular in a tiny sect of North America. And Mario 64 hardly got people interested in it’s silly 64bit power. Infact, Mario was already starting to suck even before Mario 64 came out.
Back when the SNES first released, Sonic was already kicking ass. Super Mario World came out and didn’t even put a dent in Sonic’s asskickery. Super Mario World was less popular than his first 3 outings on the NES. Shitty music, lack of any real new content (oh sure, Yoshi was cool. That’s it’s only real contribution) and a downgraded version of SMB3’s gameplay. Super Mario World 2 came out, and no one wanted that shit. Cutesy graphics (yes, this actually MATTERED back then) and you playing the role of a mutant baby sitter. Who thought this would be a success!? Oh right, that “genius” Shigeru Miyamoto!
He secretly wants to kill that little fucker.
Sit down kids for a little camping story.
You see, what eventually saved the SNES from a supreme ass beating were 2 games.
Super Street Fighter 2
And primarily, Donkey Kong Country.
You can ride rhinos!? FUCK YEAH!
DKC was a special treat that nearly saved Nintendo’s asses back in the 90’s. It was made by Rare, you know, that company that gave Nintendo that fucking awesome fighting game and FPS called GoldenEye? Yeah Nintendo fans, feel free to curse their names knowing THEY ensured you have to buy those shitty, unstable Xbox’s just to play Killer Instinct, costing you more money to rebuy that shit.
Anywho, due to DKC’s success in saving ass, Nintendo wanted Miyamoto to make a similar game using 32bit graphics. But Miyamoto was “above” using pseudo 3D graphics. In defiance, he made Yoshi’s Island to show he can make good games without good graphics. And the hardcore gamers believe this was a good decision. How well did Yoshi’s Island do? Oh wait, it didn’t! It didn’t even sell half as much as DKC. It didn’t even get SNES’s into people’s households. The game was a fluke.
Nintendo fans seem to be in a state of continual psychosis that makes them believe everything they love is an astounding success. That explains the praise of Super Metroid even though it also sold like shit (1 Million in the 90’s was nothing to write home about, considering Nintendo could produce numbers bigger than that). Miyamoto’s defiance proved nothing except his arrogance. He also designed the Virtual Boy… which failed. He made 2 Pikmin games… that failed (yet has the audacity to make a 3rd one). He designed the 3DS… which cost the company 900mil. He appointed Aonuma to be Mr. Zelda… who made Zelda go into the Bomba Bin.
BUT IT WAS THOSE MARKETERS, I’LL TELL YAH!
History dictates that this man should’ve been fired a long time ago. But Nintendo likes to protect their employees from the investors. Miyamoto has been made into an idol to be worshipped, which makes him a valuable asset to the company’s image, which is working nicely. But his image apparently runs a high price tag considering many of his recent projects end up being less than stellar.
But I would pay money to see him fight Tomonabu Itigaki with the Master Sword.
His 3D Mario games haven’t been making serious numbers to compete with his earlier Mario titles. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that people hate fetch quests. When you have to spend hours looking for keys or items just to progress through a level, people will curse the game, and usually it ends up failing. Look at Knuckles in the Adventure games. People LOATHE ENTIRELY! And Sega has yet to get that message. No one likes searching a level for some items. It’s not fun. It feels unnatural to progress through a level by having to find X number of the same item. It takes the fun out of conquering a tough level by turning it into a chug fest to backtrack areas several times, especially if nothing happens. So what happened to Mario? Miyamoto turns the entire goal of Mario into a fetch quest! It wasn’t enough looking for stupid Yoshi coins in SMW, lets make that the main goal for all Mario games produced!
BRILLIANT! *toasts*
What happened next? People stop buying Nintendo consoles for Mario games. And usually, that’s the main reason to get a Nintendo console. To play Mario. Most people don’t give 2 shits about Metroid. But now they don’t care about Mario either. And who the fuck could blame them with terrifying marketing like this!? Hory shiiit! I don’t want to buy Mario games anymore!
Iz diz fool srs? That commercial was funny, not gay!
And nintendo wonders why the game didn’t sell well.
During 2009, people believed that the Wii would stop selling because usually after 3 years, consoles stop selling. Then we got NSMBW that got people buying even more Wii’s. What the fuck happened here!?
This is what people saw when NSMBW was launched.
It was a giant wake-up call to the industry that people like games that appeared before this 3d gunk shit. What did Miyamoto do? Same thing with Yoshi’s Island. He wrote it off saying it was “nostalgia” and proceeded to insult people’s intelligence by including an instructional DVD with copies of Super Mario Galaxy 2… which bombed. Hate to break it to yah Ninty, but people also don’t like being treated like idiots. Which is why Fi is being considered the worst Zelda character… ever.
One of the things that tickles my soul is hearing people say that Mario has always stuck to his roots whereas Sonic has not. Really? I suppose running around really fast while collecting rings and kicking enemy ass along the way to the finish line is so… un-classic.
Above: Totally not the roots of Sonic.
If Nintendo fans honestly believe that running stages 6-8 times to find an item over and over again are sticking closely to Mario’s roots, then they must be nutty as squirrel shit. Shadow the Hedgehog was literally closer to Sonic’s roots than Mario Galaxy 2 was to Super Mario Brothers. Even with the guns. Give me a pp7 over that pussy water gun anyday.
The votes are in. Mario’s popularity waned when he jumped into 3D. Why? Gay ass commercials and fetch quests as the main goal of the games. Nintendo fans are easily pacified due to Nintendo’s “innocent’ seeming nature. It’s easy to forgive a company that doesn’t display a bad boy image. Sega was “rad” and brash, while Nintendo was “so friendly” with it’s marketing. It’s easier to bash Sonic than the laughing stock that is Mario Galaxy because…. Sonic’s a dick. And Mario just saves princesses.
But the truth is Sonic fans need to stop going overboard with such hyperbole as “Sega needing to sell Sonic to Nintendo”, because Nintendo would fucking ruin Sonic in ways a pedophile could ruin a child’s life. They would rape Sonic sans lube, and that’s before greasing their “friendly” creativity dicks with bacon fat and then leaving them to baste in an oven for 2 hours. That visual alone isn’t enough to describe the horrors of Miyamoto’s arrogance in making quality products.
Conflicting Views 
Do you still think emerald hunting was a bad idea? Knuckles’ controls in SA2 for jump/swim should be inverted for sure, camera should also be fixed somehow, but the very idea of searching for things is nice.
Fetch quests in Sonic games have never been popular, even in the old days. Trying to get Chaos Emeralds alone was enough of a fetch quest. But flickies, emeralds, miscellanious things, sun and moon stones, as well as red rings are not pleasant to seek out in Sonic games. If anything, no one enjoys spending hours looking for stuff in ANY game as the process can take several minutes to hours even.
As of now, yeah, it’s still a bad idea. In a series about speed, putting in any element that slows you down significantly is guaranteed to garner scorn.
>Trying to get Chaos Emeralds alone was enough of a fetch quest.
We are not finding C.E. during actual hunt with a radar. We are getting them simply in cutscene or in a special stage.
>If anything, no one enjoys spending hours looking for stuff in ANY game as the process can take several minutes to hours even.
I’d stick with a minutes.
This is a same thing with Morrowind being bashed for not having quest markers on the map, and Skyrim being praised for having them. The real problem is that Morrowind had bad descriptions about where to go and how to find a quest cave. Same can be applied to Knuckles’ radar having just 3 states in SA2 instead of 5 in SA. It haven’t actually frustrated me though.
What’s the problem with having an excuse to be in a game world you like for a longer time?
>In a series about speed
In your “Why people hate Sonic, part 2” article you used to say that “gimmick of speed is killing the franchise”.
1. I know, I know. I’m just saying, we didn’t need the radar fetches when the special stages were enough.
2. Well, the problem would be that the game world itself becomes irrelevant when you’re doing work. Like for example, what if you enjoyed being in a particular store (like a gamestop) because you got to check out all the games available. But after a while, it starts grating on your nerves because you’re in the same area for a long time. The difference between that and the game world is that it is necessary for you to have employment. You go to work to break that bread. You’re playing a game to be entertained. And if you’re spending more time looking crap, that’s not entertaining. You’re gonna find yourself becoming bored and uncaring for the game world when you’ve been looking at the same environment for quite a few hours. This goes for every game created.
3. That was actually a guy at work harping about the speed. Not me personally. Actually, he hates Unleashed and every game that uses the day time stages as a template.
2. >game world itself becomes irrelevant when you’re doing work.
Huh, that’s funny coincidence… Remember that article? 🙂
http://www.igromania.ru/print/index.php?ID=53046
“In any computer game, it’s necessary to do something. And the thing is that it’s not intentionally hired people who do that, but the player himself-he builds virtual cities, leads the squads of excited warriors into a fight, controls cars/machines and mechanisms. He’s neccessarily doing something. Now that, my dears, is called WORK. This work also have quite specific results-number of killed enemies, character level, stages of storyline progress.”
>Like for example, what if you enjoyed being in a particular store (like a gamestop)
Is it correct to compare a store and an intentionally designed game level? In a store you’re paid to spend about 8 hours a day, right? And in a game it’s you who pays to spend not even as much as 20 minutes doing emerald hunting.
And there’s no gamestop in russia… 🙂
3. >That was actually a guy at work harping about the speed. Not me personally.
If so, can you highlight his words in an article?
2. He’s talking about a completely different genre. And key term “computer”, that’s the kind of boring stuffs I’d prefer they keep OFF the consoles. He seems to decry the notion of “entertainment industry” as if Gaming is or should be anything more than that. And since he’s talking about Strategy games in particular, his theories do not fit the spectrum in which Sonic exists within. That being action games. Action games (or “action platformers”) require less attention than do Strategy games. Less “thinking” until a problem or situation calls for it.
3. It’s best not to look too deeply into comparisons that lack 100% similarities with each other. The general idea is the same. Over time, you will become exhausted looking at the same environments over and over again. And if a game mandates that you do so, the game itself becomes less fun as a result. And good. Gamestop is a tad annoying to work with.
4. Will do.
Oh, course, it didn’t/doesn’t help that Mario was a lame and stupid character to begin with…
…right?
Well… he didnt START off that way. Infact, Mario is more of a necessary character these days that can (or should) appeal to all ages. A middle age working class stiff who still gets to go on wild adventures and saving princesses is incredibly appealing. After all, since it’s nothing but teens and 20s people having the adventures, Mario is unique in that sense.
But not if we’re getting more of that cat shit!
Was Ocarina of Time overrated?