Urban Sonic

I’ve been doing some thinking about why Sonic feels a helluva lot less special than it used to back in the day. I mean… it should be obvious, but you all know I overthink shit. Part of it is that because most of the fandom have tried to compare Sonic games to other franchises without actually understanding Sonic games themselves, we often have a really difficult time trying to express what we actually want out of the series. This is how we get to some extremely vague definitions of what it means for the series to have substance. The problem, as far as I can tell from all the games we have now, is that since the beginning, damn near everyone that was involved with the production, conception, and development of the franchise has had wildly different ideas of what Sonic is and should be, leading to a very mixed and confused interpretation of what Sonic is by the audience at large. Much of the infighting going on is because there hasn’t really been a unified consensus on what Sonic is after the 2000s, and much of that can be laid at the feet of Sega itself. Afterall, Yuji Naka had mentioned that they “lost control” of the franchise’s direction, so they tried to overcorrect with the Adventure games. Then Iizuka bulldozed that in favor of something more Disney Channel flavored for Amma knows what reason. Shit’s all over the place. Developers constantly come in and cram in a bunch of their own ideas with little to no oversight or guidelines to maintain a semblence of consistency. Obviously because Sega didn’t care so long as it made money to justify it’s existence.

This has led to the devs now creating these weird and false dichotomies of certain Sonic games being designed for certain age demographics. Frontiers being tailored toward “Mature” audiences while Superstars being tailored toward kids (which is weird since Superstars is nostalgia pandering for older audiences while Frontiers is open world schlock for the kids).

But you know what? 2 can play that game.

Alright, how the hell do I put this… this is gonna be all over the place, so bear with me.

Sonic CD, Sonic 3, Sonic R, Sonic Adventure 1+2, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Riders, Zero Gravity… maybe Free Riders, I didn’t play that one. Maybe even the Rush Titles.

All of these titles present one similar aspect to why I enjoy them more than the rest. It is… a vibe.

An… “urban” vibe.

Over the years, I’ve heard this phrase “Shonen Sonic”, a buzz phrase that got tossed around by Sonic fans that lack the ability to accurately describe what they want from Sonic games. Probably stopped after Frontiers since that game was literally a bad anime with nonsensical powerups (Super Sonic 2 is vintage cringe, and just plain unimpressive compared to Hyper and Darkspine forms). 

From what I understand, the definition of Shonen Sonic is basically suggesting that, on the surface level of having only experienced the big 3 (Dragon Bonk, One Piss, Narutard, take your pick), Shonen Sonic is purely action oriented with as little character development as possible, Super Forms for merch possibilities, the most filler, a beach episode, and maybe an ending that is completely underwhelming no matter what you do. I jest, but considering how many Shonen Animes have been… AWFUL over the last decade, it begs the question of whether anime fans have allowed their egregious taste to fester amongst the fandom. If one wants to be technical, “Shonen Sonic” is what these people have deemed to be “juvenile” about 90s Sonic.

But as always, much of this can be traced back to the old “Japanese vs American Sonic” backdraft of old. Whether it’s anime fans or Amy Rose simps, these debates rage on for the same exact reason. This sick obsession with adhering to the “Japanese vision” of the series, something which is difficult even for these purists to pin down since the Japanese vision is barely defined or even distinguishable from the “Baka Gaijin” vision of the series. Nevermind that Green Hill Zone was inspired by California, Sonic was inspired by Bill fucking Clinton (somehow…), Mickey Mouse, and Felix the Cat, and of course Robotnik’s inspirational source, the Otaku of the west along with their false idols of IDW have bludgeoned the fandom with the idea that Sonic *should* be uber-tier Japanese anime. Yuji Naka being a fan of Dragon Ball is all the proof we need of Sonic being a Shonen, but his desire for Sonic to NOT be cute should be disregarded, I am still flabbergasted by this double standard. The problem is that, simply because the series was made by Japanese people, they believe there “should” be strong ties to Japanese culture and idiosyncracies, which I would put down to anime fans fostering racial stereotypes. I mean lets be real, Anime fans be some of the most racist mother fuckers online! If they had it their way, we wouldn’t have shit like Metal Gear, Resident Evil, and the like. Franchises with heavy influences from western culture. So much so that Resident Evil prioritizes it’s English Dubs over Japanese.

But I’m getting off track. We’ve been over exposed to mediocrity, so we started throwing out these random suggestions and buzzwords giving an extremely vague idea of what we wanted out of the series. In the case of the last decade, because it was dominated by Pontaff nonsense, people were hungry for a more mature Sonic experience that wasn’t dominated by the notion of Sonic being an exclusively kid friendly experience. I’d be overwhelmed by the irony if the fandom didn’t have a bad habit of deluding themselves into enjoying certain things because of their fair-weather nature.

Somewhere along the along, people started settling on “Shounen Sonic”.

So purely from the surface, it’d make perfect sense. Afterall, Sonic is an action series, so it needs to take inspiration and influence from a genre heavily steeped in action. However, because I’m a blackhearted Cynic, I can’t help but feel they specifically used “Shounen” just to anchor Sonic into a purely Japanese context and little else. Sonic taking inspiration from the MCU wouldn’t be too far from what people would want since that is an action franchise of superheroes (One that is total SHIT, but nonetheless). Or more preferably the Spider-Verse movies. Or shit, I’mma just say it. Even Fast and Furious would count considering they’re about driving fast (Sonic is about speed, so why not?!) There’s plenty of sources for action that Sonic can draw from. But the fans specified “Shounen” ala “Manga and Anime”. Because Sonic was made by Japanese people. And because Super Sonic was based on Super Saiyan. These fans are talking specifically of works like Dragon Ball, Naruto, Bleach, and the like. Works of fiction that’s centered specifically on martial arts and Asian Mysticism. The latter of which… doesn’t really fit Sonic imo. This of course completely ignores what Sonic Games have been, and focuses on their inane anime addiction. Like… how many manga and anime focuses on speedsters as their single power, and utilizing that to fight against armies of robots? You have anime characters that have super speed, but they have accompanying powers like ki blasts, super strength, and the like. Their speed is just one portion of their power sets, not their primary power. Sonic, that’s not exactly the case. While yes, over the years he’s gained more and more abilities, but the crux of his gameplay has been in the super speed. If you wanted Sonic to be “Shounen”, then you need to find a decent source for which Sonic’s core gameplay and content can be improved by. Anime and Manga barely has that much-here come the examples to prove I’m an idiot. American fiction would honestly have better sources of inspiration since Americans typically use speedsters in their works. You’ve got the Flash, you’ve got Speedy Gonzales, you’ve got Quicksilver, plenty of shit to get some ideas from.

Then there’s the other issues that Shounen typically presents. One, Shounen Anime/manga can often be pretentious as fuck.

“You’re one to talk, Mr. “Power is all that Matters” Robotnik!”

Quiet you. Besides, he’s a conceited villain, of course HE’S going to be pretentious. But I’m talking about the main character, Sonic himself. In recent years, the little shit has become a little too preachy as of late. This goes as far back as S06 with his whole “just smile” bullshit. That’s where Sonic started shifting towards that overly simplified anime character who goes on preaching about his virtues and the lessons that other characters should aspire to follow, such as when he talks about a world that shouldn’t go on forever in Black Knight, to his little speech to the female Scourge epxy in IDW. What happened to the asshole who would totally ditch you if you went on an extended bathroom break, giving you a game over in SCD!? “I don’t care if the world gets fucked, I’m not spending the next five minutes sitting around waiting for yo fat ass to stop taking fiber! Shit, I don’t wanna survive, I wanna LIVE!!!” Who is this pretentious jackass spouting off about his values as though he’s holier than thou!? Hell with that, I want my edgy blue bastard back!

That’s one of the biggest issues going into the future in that Sonic feels more like a REALLY bad anime with Sonic being that protag that everyone is automatically inspired by as if he’s the center of the universe. It comes across really cringy and completely misses the point of the series. If every character has Tails’s backstory and is inspired by Sonic to be better people, then I’m checking the fuck out. You’ve essentially turned him into Goku or Anime Dom Torretto. You have an entire ensemble of unique and interesting characters here, much like an anime series would, but most of the importance and focus is shoved onto the main character at the expense of the entire cast, much like an anime series would. On top of that, you change the character to fit this narrative. It’s probably done on purpose because the fandom was too stupid to demand that the games focus on Sonic at the expense of every single character in existence, enabling Iizuka to be lazy and never allow any other characters to be playable outside of shitty spinoffs until the end of time (or DLC IE fuck you if you don’t have internet), simply because they hated S06 so damn much, but they’ve warped the character himself to be this box of life lessons and to be essentially a mouthpiece for the author to try and justify his or her bad writing. Again, Ben Hurst, Ken Penders, the American dudes that people hate so much, had a much better grasp on the character than modern writers and fans because their frame of reference didn’t come from Dragon Ball. But… BECAUSE YUJI NAKA WAS A FAN OF DRAGON BALL! He was also, apparently, a fan of Star Wars seeing where the Death Egg came from. A franchise from a guy who understood that “kids were people too” and included them as a part of his target audience when he made Star Wars in the first place. Could use some of HIS influence in modern Sonic instead of some asshole who wants to split the fandom into false dichotomies-oh I’m rambling again. You see why I had to take a break from Sonic? The shit that goes on just irritates me, man.

We’re not even touching on the fucking music!

I don’t care how much people love this music, I’mma be real. GET DIS WHITE TRASH OUTTA HERE! GIMME SOME BLACK MUSIC!

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! OH YEAH!!! DIS SHIT BE KICKIN!!! DIS IS SO STREET!!! DIS IS WHAT SONIC IS SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE!!! But you know what!? Lets get some old school soul funk in dis bitch!!!!

This is my all time favorite Classic Sonic song right here. Nothing tops this shit. Matter o’fact… LEZ SEX THIS SHIZ UP!!

AUDIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BLISS!!! GODAMMIT, THERE WILL NEVER BE A BETTER MUSICIAN THAN MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON!!!! *punches table* How many times have I posted this vid!? 😛

We didn’t know how good we had it back in the day, and people wonder why I was proud to call myself a classicfag. Sonic shit back in the day was so gangsta! And yes, the US soundtrack IS better than the Japanese one! Don’t @ me, mutha fucka! Or… however that saying goes…

I’m serious though, whoever was in the studio was invoking shit like Kool and the Gang, Lakeside, Midnight Star, Prince, all the greats. And they had Michael Fucking Jackson on S3! Why did we steer all the way into Tween Rock in the 2000s? Mind you, there’s some good shit here and there. “What I’m Made of, Live and Learn, His World, White Jungle, Pyramid Cave, Cannon Core 2, Biolizard, Bullet Station, Death Ruin, damn near every song in Secret Rings, Will of the Knight”, yeah there’s some bangers. But after SA2, they just completely dropped all the black-esque music. The Tween rock stuff does… not… hit the same as the Funk we had in the classic games. I figured the Riders games would go back to the streets with the music and characters (I mean the Babylon Rogues were fresh as shit! LOOK AT JET’S KICKS, HE’S A SAVAGE!!!), but most of it is techno stuff… which isn’t bad, it’s just… dissappointing… and forgettable. Praise Amma for the Boulevards from Zero Gravity. Everyone else was all “BOOO, HOVERBOARDS!? SONIC IS ALREADY FAST!!” I’m like “Yo, this actually LOOKS like a Sonic Game! Dat intro is too gangsta to not be!” Again, still healing from Heroes and the Handheld titles that watered the series down. Hell, you’d be gaslit if you admitted to liking Shadow’s game.

Back on the Sega Genesis, practically every game we had played often had this urban vibe to them. Whether it was Streets of Rage, Toejam and Earl, obviously Moonwalker, we had the impression that the Genesis was from the Streets. 😛 So when we played Spinball and S3K, we saw Sonic as a part of that whole. Genesis was for the cool kids, and Sonic was the mascot. What music was cooler than whatever Black people were producing? Black music was the definition of cool before Gangsta rap came around and fucked it right up. And the Genesis was the blackest shit you could own imho! 😛

So it’s like clockwork, you’ve got Sonic also being lumped in with all these other streetwise type of games (often in retro compilations, no less!), you associate Sonic… with the streets! He’s funky, he’s got soul, his first voice actor was a black dude just fyi, and he was a rebel! Look, here’s a song from Ghostbusters 2, tell me you couldn’t imagine this being in a Sonic game!

Yeah I know Bobby Brown is clinically insane, but does this not sound like something the Genesis sound chip could emulate!? Hell, I was listening to Prince/Artist music at work, and some young dude literally thought I was listening to some game music from the Genesis. Ain’t dat proof that the sound chip wasn’t just hype!?

You ain’t gettin this type of coolness from no damn Shounen outside of fight scenes! This is why everyone votes Pumpkin Hill as their favorite SA2 song… I think. Peeps is always jerking off to City Escape, and that ain’t even close to the top 20 best songs in the game (Yeah I said it). I mean come on, you got Vector gettin down wit his bad self in his idle animation from Chaotix alone! Got Knux shadow boxing and shit.. goddamn, Classic Sonic was a thug! These punk bitches ain’t representin the franchise right with that disgraceful ass Superstars!

I got way off track, I do apologize. But see, when I talk about Sonic being “edgy”, THIS IS THE SHIT I’M TALKIN ABOUT! These weebs bastardized the term to mean goth kids that cut themselves, but edge… was just “cool”. Nothing more, no less.

So… I recently played Bomb Rush Cyberfunk.

Now I’ve never played Jet Set Radio in my life, so lets get that out of the way. But this game… more so than whatever I’ve played in years… has felt more like a Sonic game than Sonic games as of late. It has more to do with it’s style, existence in an urban environment, bomb ass soundtrack, psychadelic and trippy areas, and rebellious cast of characters. It’s like Toejam and Earl but with humans and balls! The Vibe in this game is exactly what’s missing in Sonic games from the last decade! Could’ve had it with Forces, honestly. “JACK DA FUNK” and “Funk Express” are really good pieces that I could see coming out of a Sonic game.

While it says so in the script, the game naturally does feel like you’re a part of an urban crew taking down “The Man” so to speak. That might’ve actually been what felt so right about Sonic Adventure 2. It was your “crew” taking down another “crew”, while the game presented this urban chill vibe to every single zone you were in. Whether it was the music, the environments, what may have you, SA2 was doing something right, and it wasn’t just the story and characters. The atmosphere exodes Streetness, if that even makes sense. The old games just had more “chill” before Sonic Heroes.

I’d like to call this “Urban Sonic”. Yeah I get it. I’m shit at naming things. It’s more of a style and a vibe with characters that have “Radittude” so to speak, with a heavy influence of that American Street Culture from the 80s and 90s. How’d that Japanese Spinball commercial put it? “AMERICANOOOO FUNKY ACKSHUN!!!” All the characters had attitude back then, just going off their idle animations. Even Tails had tude, up here yawning out of boredom and shit. I keep forgetting Knuckles had a bad habit of chuckling after ambushing people with his traps.

Like.. this is the kind of music to suit an Urban atmosphere

And this is the kind of music that suits a Shonen (or rather “Fantasy”) Atmosphere

Hah, thought I was gonna put up some J-Pop, didn’t yah!? Nah, Anime fans are addicted to rock music. Half their damn AMVs are rock songs last I checked. Which was… 12 years ago. 😛

That… and it had more of a Sci-Fi tilt to the games rather than a fantasy one.

“NO YOU’RE WRONG!!! SONIC’S ALWAYS HAD FANTASY ELEMENTS-“

Hold on, shut the hell up. I imagine with the current climate of emotionally argumentive internet fandoms that a rebuttal of that nature would pop up if I had more readers (:P), but to get this out of the way, fantasy elements do not automatically = pure fantasy. Chaos Emeralds were just 1 element of the games. Special Stages were just one element of the games. But the vast majority of the time, you were fighting robots and crashing factories because of a fat fascist fuck who keeps kidnapping animals and roboticizing them. Robotnik would be “The Man” you had to take down with your crew. The fantastical Chaos Emeralds were just tools he wanted to use to take over the world. They barely had a purpose beyond being macguffins. SA1 is where we start fighting mythical creatures, but again, majority of the game was dealing with shit going down in the city. The fantasy elements took a backseat for most of the action going on until the late 2000s where we started fighting supernatural demons and going on these Storybook trips. And I would argue that the games started going further and further into fantasy because the real world inspirations for Sonic games started to dry up… somehow…

The thing about Sega was that many of their games were heavily influenced by western/American culture in the 80s and 90s, whether it be Outrun, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Shinobi, LA Machineguns (it’s literally in the name), Virtua Cop, House of the Dead or many of their sports and racing games (yeah yeah, same difference). It’d be unwise to assume Sonic doesn’t fall under this ladder. Likely this is because Sega’s devs did a lot of traveling and took inspiration from the places they visited. Most of what went into Sonic comes from California, New Zealand, South America, etc. You can see it all over Sonic Adventure 2 starting from the California hills of City Escape to the Golden Gate Bridge of Radical Highway amongst their many Earthquakes, and Alcatraz ala Prison Island. It’d be fair to say SA2 is the most American Sonic game ever made. And correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it the then President of Sega in the 90s that wanted a mascot that could largely appeal to Western Audiences? I might be misremembering things, but I swear that was one of the orders of the day.

But see, that’s another thing. You get the feeling that Sega’s current devs don’t get out much. There’s no traveling to different locales to get an idea of what to do for the next title, everyone is couped up in that one Island nation with the only thing to give them ideas is another dull Japanese RPG franchise to rip off. There’s very little to no inspiration for their games that’s worth a damn, with interviews often giving vague details of what their currents games take cues from. It’s easier to see the influences of stories like Journey to the West in 5th Gen Pokemon games than it is to see Yokai in the Zeti from Lost Mind. Hayao Miyazaki did mention something about the Anime industry being dominated by a bunch of otaku writers, maybe that trend spilled into videogames as well. Hell, what makes Yakuza work is that it is purely a Japanese setting, so the heavy heavy Japanese influence works to their advantage. But for their other works that don’t have a heavy Japanese bent, they wind up with less effort or being in the hands of other developers. How many hands has Sonic been in since the 2000s?

So for Sonic games now, there’s more fantasy stuff being pumped in there because fantasy doesn’t really need a basis. It can be whatever made up nonsense you could think of, and very few people would bat an eye. Real World Inspirations need not apply. Going back to see what made the Urban Vibe mesh well would require being immersed in the culture of America prior to the 2000s. Or… hell, going through your own catalog and pull out JSR like Team Reptile did. Or hell, pull out SA2, Riders, SCD, SOR, Shinobi or something! The heavy fantasy tilt is making the series stale. Homogenized. Barely distinguishable from the likes of most Nintendo games, and nearly went Final Fantasy if you can believe it.

But in eithercase, my point is Sonic needs to be “Black” again. 😛 Don’t take that seriously. I mean the style of the series needs to go back to being harder and edgier (duh). It’s difficult to even express this because there are less examples of Sonic having an Urban Vibe to pull from since so many games pushed for the Cartoon Fantasy angle nowadays, while the urban funk shit is contained in as few games as possible that the very idea of the series even going back to having Rap Music would be a mortal sin for many fans to consider. But as a result, the series is feeling pretty sterile and lifeless with little to nothing to compel even the most jaded of fans. Superstars was in everyway a disgrace and a slap in the face with all the above problems I mentioned. It’s a little sad that developers outside of Sega understand Sega better than Sega. But that seems to be the case for everyone in the entertainment industry. The people that worked on our favorite franchises no longer exist within these fields, being replaced by people with wildly differing perceptions of said franchises, and worse yet, they aggressively push their visions without a shred of a damn given to the people that supported them for years. It’s like…. I’m often coming to the idea that Capcom does Sonic better than Sega, and his name is Dante, Son of Sparda. Bomb Rush is everything that was great about old school Sega distilled into a science. All the while, Sega is chasing after Computer Centric fads set by Nintendo, it’s killin me.

At this rate, the only thing the success of the movies did was encourage Sega to jack up the prices of Sonic games.

Even DKCR wasn’t this bad (Sonic Superstars)

*sighs*

I… didn’t think I’d say this, but this is bar none… the absolute worst 2D Sonic game I have ever played in my life. As much grief as I gave Sonic Advance 3… I can at least say that much of it was merely incompetent design. Mistakes that anyone can make.. aside from the borderline insane task of rescuing all the Chao, that shit can go die in a fire. But… that is merely tedious. This game… is just endless frustration after endless frustration. INTENTIONAL frustration. Arzest, Naoto Oshima’s company who’s done nothing but make 2 Nintendo Games, should probably just stick to making said Nintendo games.. because that philosophy has completely ruined this game and whatever enthusiasm I had left for this franchise.

Jeez, you know how you get some fans that come at you like “I wanna everyone to be nice and love ALL eras of Sonic” but they blow your brains out with how much they just love modern kiddy bitch-made Sonic over and over again, like they’re pulling some “kill them with kindness” stunt to trick you into thinking you’re fucked up for not liking modern Sonic or it’s fans? That’s the Superstars experience in a nutshot. A game tailor-made for the otaku Kawaii-obsessed psychopaths that are practically in control of the franchise’s deranged direction who, ironically, also hate Sonic Prime. Btw, Season 3? Shit on a stick! A massive letdown! They called Shadow an Edgelord! A FUCKING EDGELORD!!! I’ve never cringed at pandering this desperate to appease the kiddy-grade pixies that would come at Yuji Naka for not wanting Sonic to be cute! Spyro is literally BUTCH compared to this game.

I’ll start off with the things I actually do like since it’s quite few and far between.

I like… that they fixed Knuckles’s face. I was not a fan of how Knuckles was designed in recent years with his snout shrinking in each subsequent appearance.

These… are not… Knuckles. So kudos to Oshima for doing that much. You know, I’ve seen people try to defend Knuckles’s movie design, thinking that it’s appropiate and respectful to the games. LOOK AT THAT PIECE OF SHIT AND LIE TO ME! Tell me that is legit Knuckles compared to this!

Take a good look at this nigga and tell me you’ve all been full of shit for this long!

Sorry, I told myself I was gonna work through these damn conniptions, but I’ve heard so many asspulls through these last 4 years, I tell yah, people were literally swearing Knuckles looked amazing in the movie. He looked as terrible as the other 2 Mobians, people were just in denial and thirsty for respect from other gaming fandoms. But MOVING ON!

Trip the Sungazer.. is actually kinda cool. Having a super form that turns her into a dragon… is one of the coolest fucking things to be introduced in this franchise thus far. I had my misgivings since they only showed this robot shit early on, but it is what it is. That and her gameplay literally makes the other characters obsolete. She has Amy’s double jump, Knuckles’s climbing abilities, and flight ala Dragon Form. Now if only the Dragon Form controlled well…

Tails can now rapidly descend in mid-flight. Useful in some cases.

Everyone has a super form, once again giving the middle finger to Iizuka’s retcon of only Hedgehogs having Super forms. The problem is only Sonic and Trip have anything unique while Tails, Knuckles, and Amy all get to glow in the dark (btw, Amy not having a proper Super Form despite being a Hedgehog is hilarious). I suppose the justification is that Tails and Knuckles’s forms really only came from the Super Emeralds and the Hyper Forms they were given, IE Tails’s Flickies and Knuckles’s faster glide and Earthquakes from S3K. These Super Forms are just underwhelming, but at least they have that much.

The zones, derivative as they are, are actually all new unlike Mania whom’s newest zones were dwarfed by repackaged zones and gimmicks from Game Gear titles that most people have never played.

Some of the music is actually decent which is a far cry from the Sonic 4 titles whose imitation music had no effort put into them whatsoever. Of note, Speed Jungle Act 1, Pinball Circus Act 1, Cyber Sector Zone, Egg Fortress Act 2.

That’s about it. Sad, ain’t it? Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. What should is that people didn’t warm up to Superstars as much as I expected considering the extended honeymoon that people have been on for a while, but that’s likely because the game is just not fun to play.

One, the game simply does not control well, but this is more about comparitive analysis than something factual. For people who just see this as a regular old Sonic game and nothing major, it’s fine for the most part. People will likely only judge it from the perspective of having played most platformers that play a lot slower than Sonic games, so they won’t be as bothered by the game as I have. Some people have said that the physics engine is actually good, but that leads me to believe they did not play the game extensively.

For one, the spindash is completely broken. You can only charge it up once despite the fact that you can mash the button a million times and hear that it’s being chargedd over and over again, but when you launch the Spindash, it has all the force of a wet fart. This confused me. I tried this multiple times up a single incline and found that my character was not launched up significantly. If anything, he seemed to have slowed down when going up the incline. But that’s because the spindash itself cannot go above one charge.

Another thing I noticed is that in the Bridge Valley Act 1 (btw, shit name for a zone), there’s these background ramps similar to those found in the Advance games where the character can run up the wall. For some reason, my character, who is running at top speed, can NEVER reach above the bottom half of the wall no matter what I do. This wouldn’t be such a problem is I wasn’t trying to get all the rings on those walls. Or was using a super form.

Characters have poor acceleration when starting to run. In old games and even in mania, it doesn’t take too long for characters to start running and reach a decent speed. Like in Sonic 1, the moment you start running, Sonic is already at a decent pace. You feel like you have really good speed even without the Spibndash or air Dash or even boosting. But here, idk what it is, but it really feels sluggish when I start to run. You don’t feel an immediate burst of speed when just merely trying to start a run. Additionally, I don’t feel much of a difference when rolling down a hill, the speed doesn’t pick up unless it’s automated, which is… odd.

Knuckles’s glide does NOT pick up speed without his Superform. This was a massive oversight, and makes playing Knuckles one of the worst experiences out of any 2D Sonic game. The level design was not made with Knuckles in mind.

It’s not merely the physics itself, but overall movement doesn’t feel as smooth as it needs to be. You constantly feel slow, and given how the level design is, it’s probably intentional. So far, only Sonic’s Drop Dash carries enough speed and momentum to be worth a damn, and I personally don’t care about the drop dash. I would prefer Sonic’s Insta-shield to come back as it has more combat utility against enemies (as enemies are far more plentiful and annoying to deal with now). But the problem is outside of a few select zones and acts, the physics are barely a consequence to just how bad this game is because you don’t have any real opportunities to just cut loose and blast through these zones as quickly as possible. But the physics in the game are even MORE detrimental when you’re trying to fight the rather egregious boss fights in the game.

Shit, Palword is exclusive to Xbox. Well that just ruined my month.

Let me explain. Yes, I did say it was a waste of time trying to criticize the physics of Sonic 4 since people were ok with the physics of Sonic Rush and Rush Adventure having a similar physics engine where there is no momentum. But at the very least, Sonic 4 Both Episodes were easy games where Sonic had an Air Dash to compensate for it’s physics engine. The game could be enjoyed despite not capturing the 1:1 physics of the original titles because they had mechanics that could compensate for them. And for the most part, they didn’t play like traditional Sonic games, they still had the homing attack for one. So for the most part, my point still stands that S4E2 at least.. is still a pretty decent game despite not having the necessary ball-rolling physics. Even Retro Sonic of Forces was enjoyable to an extent because the game itself was still relatively easy.

That’s the key difference. The design of those games were cheap and low effort, thus they were more enjoyable than they should’ve been. That’s… not… the case here. Superstars, you don’t really have those mechanics to give you a good sense of speed, and the few you do have are butchered in a way that fails to give you any satisfaction. What kills me about this is that these jerkoffs had sold the Origins collection not too long ago which is just a retro collection of all the old shit that they’ve repacked and sold a million buttfucking times already, and they didn’t even bother to look at them to see how they worked to make this game feel good to play. Instead, Arzest and Sonic Team, in their infinite wisdom, designed the game to be gimmicky and challenging despite having slightly poor movement control… and that’s where the problems stem from.

A lot of this could be chalked up to having played Mania just a few years back, but being reminded of the series traditional pinball physics makes Superstars feel sluggish. Now the game demands you have more precision and skill with enemies and bosses, but presents you with a physics engine that makes the game feel more dangerous and risky than it does fun. I talked in length about how Mania’s design missed the point of Sonic games by trying to make the game “harder than necessary” when Sonic games necessitate that they be easy to play. Not that you can’t make Sonic games hard, it’s just that in order to do so, Sonic Team has often done things that are more frustrating to deal with than actually be fun. Rings make it impossible for players to die so long as they have at least one on hand, so the final bosses of S1 and 2 give you no rings to fight with, making those battles cheap and unfair as they now demand precision and skill with a physics engine that was anything but. This is why SCD and S3K were much better games as they don’t pull this cheap shit with their bosses like S1 and S2. You’re free to be as aggressive as you want to be.

Sonic games are supposed to be a total expression of player freedom. The multiple paths, the ring system, the ability to completely leave the screen and blitz the levels as fast as humanly possible, all of these aspects make the games feel liberating when compared to other conventional action games or platformers if you prefer. The nature of that freedom… demands that Sonic games be easy. If they are “hard” (IE cheap), then the games become frustrating, tedious nightmares to deal with. You’re supposed to go fast, not die often, and destroy bosses with ease because you are a weapon of kinetic destruction. Sonic is supposed to be the wind of destruction. You’re supposed to be a force of nature. Feeling as though nothing can stop you. This is what makes Sonic fun. It’s also why I will defend the boost system that was introduced with Rush because in spite of the problems that system brings, it reinforces the sense of freedom the player has when blasting through levels at high speed. Sonic games are supposed to be… relaxing in the sense that you can do whatever you want and not feel hindered in doing so.

Boss battles have often fit with this paradigm after S1. S2, you could actually sneak in a few extra hits on bosses that isn’t within the intended game design, so to speak. For example, in the Aquatic Ruins, if you’re quick enough, you can get on top of the totems before they’re out of reach and get in as many hits on Robotnik without falling off. This takes a little bit of accuracy, but is pretty easy to do. You’re expected to wait at the bottom and climb up arrows that shoot out from the totems, but you can skip all of that and go straight for the kill as soon as the fight starts. Whether it was intended or not is irrelevant. It was another means of defeating the boss, and it was rewarding in that it makes you feel clever and more skilled than you necessarily are.

Since then, however, Sonic Team has gone back and forth with how they want to do bosses. The Adventure games could have bosses you could strike at anytime, other times you had to multitask such as King Boom Boo and the Egg Golem. Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog, imo, had the absolute best boss fights because, again, you were allowed to be as aggressive as you wanted to be. But starting with Sonic 06, Sonic team had become very rigid with their boss design. Now… bosses require there to be a single, specific opening before you can even damage them, and boss fights in this series have sucked ever since. Firstly because they take too goddamn long, and second because these windows of opportunity are pretty small to begin with. They sacrificed player freedom and experimentation for “challenge” and gimmicks.

Those problems are SCREAMING in Superstars! So many bosses in this game require you to wait a whole cutscene’s worth of attacks or literal background noise before you’re allowed to attack again that the mere idea of having to restart the whole fight over is more painful than the actual fight itself. For instance, the Dragon… thing of bootleg Ice Cap is far too arduous due to having to run through a gauntlet of conveyer belts that are designed to screw you over rather than be just an obstacle to avoid. I was playing Knuckles, of course, so his low jump was not suited for this fight. But taking the poor physics where you cannot gain any real momentum makes this so much worse when after just a couple of hits, you now have conveyer belts that run in reverse and slows you down considerably. This makes it nigh impossible to ever get close enough to the boss to damage him while making it far riskier for you to take damage from it’s bombs and falling off the edge of the road. When I’m clearly running at the bastard, I will NEVER get the momentum I desire even when I’m squeezing the fucking right end of the D-Pad with all my goddamn might, because the fight is designed that way on purpose. You can only go as fast as the game WANTS you to go. It’s not as BS as the Act 1 boss of Studiopolis where you jump in the air and completely DROP all momentum which made it all too easy to get raped by missiles (Btw, Mania STILL sucks), but it’s equally as annoying because if you lose your momentum at all, your window of opportunity to strike the boss is completely gone, and you are at a heightened risk of death by the end of the screen. It’s bloody tedious!

Another example would be Fang in his Marvelous Queen where you have to wait through several cutscenes of him re-arming himself while you have to avoid more obstacles along the path which can take about half a minute before you’re free to attack him again. So if you lose your rings and find yourself empty by the time you get to engage him, and you die, you gotta start back from square one and go through this tedious slog of wading through obstacles before the little bastard can stop jerking himself off. And it doesn’t stop here.

You’ve got this Pseudo-Final boss in bootleg Death Egg where you have to run around to the guy’s backside and knock back blue missiles to damage it, takes about 6 to 8 missiles where the patterns become more sporadic and spread too thin so that you wouldn’t be able to find them easily (even having said blue missile delayed until the next volley of missiles just to deliberately throw you off and confuse you, fuck these designers for pulling this shit), and then they have the nerve to throw a part 2 at you where you’re likely out of rings, but that’s not even the best part. You can literally die before the next part even starts because sometimes, the boss will spawn right under your character, forcing you to fall into a bottomless pit and die so you can start the shitshow all the fuck over again (playtest your fucking games, you imbecilic retards! This happened TWICE in coop!), but now you have to go through yet another gauntlet where, again, small window of opportunity where you have to avoid everything and the kitchen sink. And you’re doing this with a poor physics engine. But you know what I like? This gravity gimmick where you are forced to float in the air to avoid plasma balls, and you can somehow hit the head of the robot while it’s doing this, but you move so slowly that it’s far too risky to even bother. This is what you call dogshit game design, not waiting for an event to proceed because of real time management (People literally hate Shenmue for a mechanic they praise in Dead Rising and Pokemon with 6 hour Honey Trees, I hate gamers so goddamn much).

But the solution to all of this… is apparently to use the bootleg wisps IE Chaos Emerald powers. A thing that’s easy to forget because they went and made it where you can only use them once per checkpoint, they are timed powerups, you get hit once and they deactivate immediately (forcing you to find a checkpoint just to use them again), and the powers are only really used for finding “secrets” like medals or giant rings for yet another poorly designed special stage, not nearly as terrible as Mania’s, but still really awful to play. The Avatar Power is the answer to most fights as it floods the screen with what amounts to Strider’s Ragnarok Hyper Combo from Mahvel Babeh. But here’s the problem. Bosses that don’t sink into the background before they can take damage… are still invincible before you’re allowed to hit them again! You’re literally not allowed to damage bosses until several seconds have passed. So the Avatar Power is functionally useless since in regular play, it has no purpose outside of Trip’s story (more on that bullshit later). But honestly, outside of powers that are only really used to find alternate paths, many of which can be discovered by Tails alone, the Chaos Powers are simply worthless. They’re so pointless that the game practically has to remind you that they still exist at certain moments when you have a little icon appear at the bottom right of the screen, indicated by a sound effect because they know you won’t notice it just by that alone.

The only Emerald power I did care about was the “Secret Power” emerald which gave each character a unique attack like Sonic having his homing attacks, Knuckles shooting fireballs like in SA1, and Trip spitting fireballs like in Super Mario Bros.

………….
…………………..
…………………….
……………………………..

WHERE THE FUCK WERE THESE ABILITIES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE ENTIRE GAME!!!!?!?!?!!?!??

WHY THE FUCK AREN’T THESE DEFAULT ATTACKS YOU CAN USE IN THE MAIN GAME!?

This sucks a ton because these abilities could REALLY have made the game MORE playable than before! Imagine actually having a multitude of attacks for each character that wasn’t limited to Spin Attacks and Spindashes! Something I’ve been JERKING OFF to having since the Sonic Advance days, and they TEASE me with putting them on a fucking cooldown, these guys are SHIT!!!

They are worth less than the effort it takes to get them sumbitches. The special stages in this game have you spidey swinging from orbs to chase down the Emerald. It’s not too difficult to pull off until you’re going after the Green Emerald where you’ll be tearing your hair out so much, your brain will be exposed before it’s all over! Then you get the last 2 emeralds and that shit’ll be a breeze! You know… there was a better version of this special stage, and it was actually in Sonic Heroes! Infact, Heroes’s Special Stages were GODDAMNED AWESOME!!! Yah know why? Because they built off of the Special Stages that people already LOVED from Sonic 2! Don’t know why Taxman and Arzest love the shitty special stages, because Superstars brings back the mazes from Sonic 1. Thankfully, they only exist for medals, a collectathon trinket that does nothing for you if you don’t like Sonic multiplayer (which is like… everyone that breathes). So they’re easy to ignore.

But Sega wasn’t satisfied with making 2D Sonic awful in every way imaginable, they had to go and ruin coop as well. As everyone knows, coop was really just Sonic having an invincible partner that can be abused to destroy bosses. Possibly the main reason we ever got far enough into Sonic 2 so often, until Wing Fortress arbitrarily removed Tails from play for Story reasons (Again, fuck you Sonic Team, because Tails couldn’t just jump out of the damn plane and fly to the goddamn fortress with Sonic! OHHHHHHHH!!!!). That and Tails could collect rings and add it to Sonic’s ring count. But… that was a problem for ol’ Arzest. No! They wanted the game to be a CHALLENGE! So they DKCR’d this shit.

What I mean is they turned player 2 into a MASSIVE liability. Here’s the thing now. The screen is zoomed out (which is the only real benefit to coop in this bitch), but they tried to make it like every other retro throwback revival with coop. But the way Sonic games work make it virtually impossible for this sort of coop to work. See, now both players can collect and lose their own rings. This serves no purpose. Whatsoever. And even worse, it is a MAJOR hinderance on bosses because the player’s natural instinct is to grab all the rings that get lost. So if a player is hording all the rings, and another player dies, well gee you just killed your own partner. So what we would do to help each other out… is get hit on purpose just to “share the wealth”. This doesn’t work out in the long, obviously, because trying to balance out each other’s rings so as to prolong our survival is even more tedious than the boss fights themselves. This was a completely tedious and inefficient system as it promotes a more “every man for himself” type of culture for a game that is anything but. It’s like they wanted the game to be more competitive than cooperative, and it just doesn’t work. The game doesn’t work well with this type of system, it’s just a hinderance.

On top of that, the old games didn’t really have a “true” coop system. The games were focused on Sonic while Tails was background noise. But here, they wanted to “fix” that problem too. So here’s what they did. They made it where whichever player was in front, the camera would focus on them. In front IE the player who is closest to the finish line. So if Player 2 got ahead of Player 1 and was closer to a loop that was along the path, the camera would focus on Player 2. But if Player 1 got in fron of Player 2 and got on a bridge ahead of the loop, the camera would focus on Player 1, so on and so forth. This… is fucking TERRIBLE as it causes the players to be disorientated and confused. The camera shifting back and forth depending on whoever is closest to the goal doesn’t do a whole lot for group cohesion, and it makes one wonder why they didn’t do the logical thing and spring for a SPLITSCREEN system if they were gonna pull this shit. It doesn’t help that the old problem of the player being behind… gets left behind via the camera focus, so they constantly have to press a button to warp to the player in front. If they don’t, they might LOSE ALL OF THEIR RINGS! Yeah since players have their own individual rings, this system is a goddamn liability. The camera drops focus on you because you fall behind, then you start running into shit because you can’t see where the fuck you are, tell me this wasn’t the worst goddamn idea they’ve had since putting in a fetch quest in Secret Rings.

So what about the zones themselves? Well, lets see.

Bridge Valley is the basic bitch zone where you get a feel for the game. Standard shit, also the place where you find the game doesn’t feel good to control. Act 1 feels like it was trying to be Seaside Hill near the end because we clearly haven’t seen enough of THAT place, goddamn. Act 2 tries to win browny points by having the boss of SCD Palmtree Panic Zone. Nice try, but I could hit that boss multiple times. Not once every animation loop.

Speedy Jungle Zone only lives up to it’s name in the first act. Wasn’t a fan of getting bit in the ass by random red enemies because we all needed to be reminded of Spring Yard Zone’s clone ball badniks. Idk why Act 2 had to be one of those lights out Acts, but eh. This zone also has one of the new and unnecessary “Solo Character Acts” where it’s single player only, and you play a designated character. These… literally serve no purpose and are just mere extras if you’re bored and don’t really wanna go to the next zone. This one has Sonic being chased by Fang on the Marvelous Queen. It was kinda annoying, but nothing major.

Sky… something zone is dull, and I hate that the wind currents take all control away from me and have me moving at a literal snail’s pace. This is that “Nintendo game” experience Arzest brought to the table, see how well it’s working gais!? They also put elements of that brick breaker game in here because Arzest doesn’t actually have original ideas outside of gimmicks. Strangely enough, this zone only has one act, probably cause they got lazy and didn’t want to make enough zones to matter.

Pinball Carnival is one of the few decent zones in the game (all the best zones are pinball zones, don’t let anyone tell you the games aren’t consistent! :P). Act 2 tries to be a haunted zone for some reason. Act 1’s boss gets a pass for allowing you to kill it with extreme prejudice. Act 2’s boss an eat nuts for being so tedious.

Lagoon City/Temple Zone wants to be Hydrocity when it grows up, it’s not even funny. Not much to see here other than the bosses start becoming obnoxious around this point. Oh and a big fuck you for the solo character act being mandatory, and OF COURSE it’s Amy Rose! I guess Sega and Arzest are committed to shoving Amy Rose in our faces as much as Ian Flynn is because for some very deranged reason, Amy Rose has become the icon of the frauds and otaku who want everything about Sonic to be watered down to the point of being sterile. I always have to question how and why Amy became so popular in the last several years, and why the fandom gets into a shit storm everytime someone argues about her lacking merits as a character. Aside from bringing Shadow around to the good side and keeping Sonic from getting murked by Silver, she doesn’t offer much in the way of value, and her portrayel in the 2000s did much to tarnish her character. But it is hilarious that a lot of this has more to do with the fact that Amy is a “Japanese first” character while Sally is a “stupid baka gaijin” character. Amy is less of a likable character and more of an anchor baby for the Otaku to shove in their obsessive habits and beliefs into a franchise that was, for all intents and purposes, tailor made for a western audience in the first place. Now watch all the weebs who bother to read this shit post “stopped reading here because he went on a rant about Amy Rose” because that cunt somehow deserves more respect than Silver the Hedgehog.

After this, I think is the desert zone, a place that’s just dumb, and the boss fight here is the first of many downtime bosses you’re going to see in this shit fest.

The next zone here is Press Factory, riding the coattails of Press Garden, a vastly superior zone and the only enjoyable Zone in all of Mania’s triteness. This zone can eat a sack of baby dicks for the crime of a gimmick that literally sends you flying into enemies if you aren’t completely paying attention to the background rather than what is in front of you. So you could be running, landing on something, or doing Amma knows what, and before you know it, you’ll be sent off into a different path or corralling into an enemy you were trying to avoid… simply because you wanted to run through the bitch. Then act 2 is just Act 2 of Sandopolis where you HAVE to rush through as fast as possible and press switches within a good 15-20 seconds, because if you don’t, YOU LITERALLY DIE! Hahaha, fuck this zone in all it’s triteness.

Golden Capital Zone sounds more impressive than it actually is as it’s a weird mix of Casinopolis and Marble Zone. Has a Solo Act where you play as Knuckles, and you’d think I would enjoy that, but that would’ve required the devs to not make Knuckles totally shit to play. Also has the afformentioned Fang boss where he spends most of his time in the background jerking off.

Cyber Station Zone is one of the worst zones in the game, which sucks because it’s the coolest looking one. This place is gimmick city, taking the Metallic Madness concept of shrinking Sonic to Chibi form, and making it into where the player is turned into a jellyfish to a mouse to a rocket. MORE GIMMICKS! YAY!! This zone doesn’t give a fuck about being a Sonic game whatsoever.

Bootleg Ice Cap (Is it Frozen Factory?) seemed like a breath of fresh air compared to the last 3 terrible zones, but then you get to the Act 1 boss and all my rage came spilling out… for Trip’s story at least. Tails has a Solo Act which is impossible to rage in because he can fly, but it didn’t stop them from trying to make it ass to play. Then Act 2 and it’s boss is Fantasy Zone which… it’s cute, I guess. I don’t care about Fantasy Zone, but whatever.

Finally, there’s Final Egg… whatever zone. Act 1 was piss easy, but Act 2… I admit I was having trouble. Again, this is more on Trip’s story than otherwise, but I do love the fact that you can skip the final boss altogether via an exploit. To hell with 2-3 long and arduous phases of a tedious boss fight with cheap 1-hit deaths!

Now… take all of these zones… and put them in the hands of Team Ninja… and you get Trip’s story with zero of the awesome aspects of Team Ninja. Trip’s story is the single worst experience I’ve ever had in a Sonic game. Much like Encore mode in Mania, the Zones are redesigned from the groundup with more obstacles, enemies, and traps than is ever necessary. I’m talking Spikes on countless stairs, with enemies that are constantly hovering above them (which makes it impossible to NOT take damage half the time because these fucking morons weren’t using their brains), Egg Robos randomly litered throughout the levels to the point that they can literally shoot you OFF-SCREEN before you even know they exist, and they have the nerve to make the boss fights completely unbearable and devoid of all rational thought. Yeah, lets make it where you have to deal at least 9-15 hits for bosses that already have an extensive amount of downtime in between attacks. Because that won’t cause burnout and make people dread having to fight these damn boss battles. 9-15 hits, that’s insane! If you could hit these assholes at any time, there wouldn’t be an issue, but the game fucks you over with so much downtime, you’d think you were playing that kaijuu fight from Ratchet and Clank, Going Commando. Yeah, the final boss in Sonic 2 took 12 shots, but as always, the difference is I could get off at least a good… 5-6 hits during the first walking sequence. You can’t do shit until the bosses stop jerking themselves off in between certain cycles, it’s unbearable.

Also, the level design is so terrible, they have a checkpoint right under 2 firewands in the final zone, with NO WAY AROUND THEM without taking damage. So if you die and restart in that specific spot, you literally have no way to get around said trap without killing yourself over and over again. Or double jump in between the wands to get that one ring, then try your luck. This is the kind of shit that people would try to excuse in some vainglorious attempt to blame you for not being adequate at beating poor game design, or point out one completely unnoticable method to get around said poor design, but these people are only interested in arguing and proving people wrong without considering the underlying issue with said poor design.

And you know what the best part is? Trip’s Story… is FUCKING MANDATORY! Yes, going back to their old tricks from the 2000s, there is a last story that requires you to complete both the main game and Trip’s story to get to. Oh and get all the Chaos Emeralds ofcourse, for the reward of… a final boss with no actual context. I haven’t talked about the game’s story because Sega didn’t bother putting one in! But the final boss is some random dragon that is so long and tedious to fight… that I didn’t even bother to try and beat it after the final segment where you have to lockon to fireballs and knock them back. Done knocked back like 7 of them bitches, but ran out of rings, and that’s on top of how LONG it is, and that most of the fight is confusing to figure out as it’s not exactly clear what you’re supposed to do. It’s not even difficult, it’s just tedious as hell. And the one thing that makes you faster drains your rings so you’ll be spending most of the fight scouring for rings until they don’t come out anymore, and you’re boned on what little pittance they bother to give you. It’s simply not worth the trouble and frustration.

These are all massive problems with the game, sure, but… they aren’t the main problem. The main problem… is that it is simply… not… compelling at all.

The game is proof positive that Sega… still doesn’t care about Sonic despite it’s new found success. It is yet another cynical take on the Genesis era of games with a perception of said games that simply isn’t true. The game presents itself as something purely for children when Sonic was meant for all ages. From it’s cutesy and cuddly music to how the characters are presented overall as just these… Care Bear-esque darlings out to save the world from Gargamel and his demonic dragon. There’s no real indication of a plot, even less so than the genesis games, so you have this vague understanding of what’s going on. The crux of the main plot doesn’t come around until the Last Story, and by then I’ve stopped caring because the game itself is quite shit. The game is presented in a way that tries to convince you that it’s the most family friendly shit they could ever produce, and it’s a total misrepresentation of the 90s Sonic series as a whole. Yuji Naka himself was against the very idea of turning Sonic the Hedgehog cute. But for some bizarre reason, people aside from him DESIRED this.

There’s a LOT of 90s Sonic games that went pretty slapstick with music that blows chunks. Arguably without some help of SOA (because fuck the weebs, SOA knew what was up), Sonic games would be perceived as just another Kirby franchise. Sega Sonic Arcade had a Sonic that wasn’t at all cool, instead he was panicky and scared-like. Sonic Championship looked and felt like Crash Bandicoot. The Game Gear titles clearly were made by Nintendo fans. Knuckles Chaotix had generally poor and kid friendly music. And only the saturn version of 3D Blast had some balls. But these were all mostly the unpopular and obscure titles. If Sega truly gave a fuck about Sonic and being respectful to fans, they would look toward the most revered games of the classic era, those being S2, SCD, and S3K WITHOUT a tainted lens. These games all had BANGER MUSIC! You had Michael fucking Jackson on S3, that man was the personification of cool! Clearly you wanted Sonic to be mother fucking cool if you had the king of music working on the soundtrack. Oh and did I mention that Sonic was MEAN-MUGGING in each of those games!? Not a shred of cute could be found in his blue ass outside of Japanese commercials. But clearly, there were creative differences way before the rise of the Pixies.

But back then, people understood that Sonic was supposed to be the cool kid of videogames. What distinguished him and Sega from Nintendo was that they were the rebellious ones. They were too cool for school, they were rad beyond all reason. And I am genuinely sick of people trying to convince me otherwise. Trying to point out all the games here and there that had Sonic being uncool and a tad cuter than normal, as if people gave a shit about those portrayels. Clearly there was a difference in opinion when people were dunking on Sonic Heroes for being CHILDISH!

But alas, we’ve come to this point in time where 90s Sonic is now portrayed as this cutesy little kid with all his recess playmates fighting against their fat principal for spoiling all their fun. I absolutely hate how the 90s Sonic is portrayed, and the shallow justification that people can find is that “it’s for kids”. This single pervasive argument has dominated all rationale for decades after the 90s, and for some reason, it keeps winning. People’s collective egos deny them any and all emotional frustration to the bastardization of their favorite works whether it be the entirety of Marvel, the Ninja Turtles, and even the franchise that was known for being way past cool. All because no one wants to be perceived as being angry at what is a “Kid’s franchise”, even though we’ve had people from then claiming they were marketing the games toward all ages, not just the collective ignorant children who wouldn’t know better. Children being used as a shield for poor quality, design, and sheer fucking laziness is getting older than Evil Superman. Btw, so glad Godzilla kicked his Kryptonian ass as a I watch DC fans squirm as their dick measuring icon gets murked by one Atomic Breath. Long live the king, bitches.

All in all, Sonic Superstars isn’t even a game. It’s barely a concept. It is pandering so diabolically thin and aimless that it is impossible to know who this game was even designed for. Clearly not for fans my age, we should know better by now that Sega doesn’t respect us enough to portray the 90s Sonic correctly. It has to be a revision, a reboot, a misconception of what Sonic is and was. Which is ironic since Naoto Oshima worked on the game and should know better, and Iizuka came in on the game that had MICHAEL FUCKING JACKSON on it. But considering his level design has been shit for years, we know his mind was in Nintendo games full stop. Dare I say it, but dimps might’ve actually had a better grasp on Sonic the Hedgehog than modern Sega. Sure their games were hit and miss, but one can’t deny that they were fucking fun to play. It says a lot more when my sister (who BOUGHT that shit) literally quit the game after 2 zones! 2 ZONES, she clocked out faster than in Infamous Second Son when Laura Bailey was introduced!

Ubisoft’s statement about game ownership is exactly why you digital loving pricks should’ve been gatekept out of gaming communities years ago, btw. You’ve enabled such idiocy and conceit for years to come.

The End is Nigh (Disney)

Yurugu’s egregious mistake… it is time to correct it!

Getting off the gaslight express (Sonic the hedgehog)

I haven’t really paid attention to Sonic in bad ol’ 2023. Minus a few things here and there like Tee Lopes shilling for Sega, I was purposefully avoiding anything regarding this franchise. Too much of what’s going on, whether it be the fandom being co-opted by corpo shills to Sega only using the hog as a side hustle with low effort cashgrabs of Nostalgia Bait over and over and over and over again, is honestly too depressing to keep up with. Plus I had all these personal issues to deal with, the less nonsense I have to read, the better.

Then “she” had to go and order that damn Superstars game…

Guess I’ll get to that when it arrives. Probably have to blame Sonic Prime for that one. We had watched season 2 recently. Still… don’t hate the show. Glad they fixed Shadow’s personality for the most part, now he’s just a dick who’s too quick to hit somebody. Not sure I like how much Sonic gets his ass kicked in this show. Not sure I enjoy Metal Sonic being retarded. Ninetails is now going to be the enemy of the series which… is an interesting take, maybe. I was kinda hoping there’d be more dimensions for Sonic to visit, but he goes back to the same 3 he had been in last season which is a little dissappointing. Devan Mack is still killing it as Sonic, though. Even the jokes are better than I’d thought they’d be. Sonic Prime is a bright spot in this era of misery, I must admit. Course I was informed the show was also a proxy for gaslighting by the fandom which…. sucks. And that’s where we’re at when it comes to Sonic. It’s been nothing but pure gaslighting, full stop. And… hell, maybe it was getting to me.

All this talk of “let people enjoy things” or “It’s finally successful, and you’re still complaining” or “You’re just LOOKING for flaws!” or “You’re a revisionist nostalgiatard, Sonic was never cool, it was just American Advertising!”, these niggas jerk themselves off on that one. Oh and “Well everyone else thinks it’s great”. Sorry, that one was a cardinal sin of the Castlevania fandom in regards to Lords of Shadow and that piece of shit Netflix cartoon. But honestly, it all comes back to a simple point. The franchise is finally popular again. People are jolly in the ass because Sonic is finally back. He’s relevant again after 20+ years. People are happy, and… there honestly shouldn’t be anything wrong with that.

It’s just that… the franchise is simply moving in a direction that I personally do not enjoy. I despise the movies even though everyone swears they’re the shit, and are somehow the “most faithful adaptations of a videogame property”. I think they’re delusional and were lying about Knuckles not being a retard, but they brought Sonic back to relevance, can’t deny that. I don’t like Open World games in general, and Frontiers looks like a barren wasteland of Indie developer tools that were cobbled together while under the influence, and it just looks boring as hell to play, but… it’s the most successful Sonic game in decades, and the most highly rated while every review in the universe annoyingly praises it while talking about Forces as if it’s the absolute worst videogame in existence. I mean they must not love it too much since they had to patch in a new ending that people… still kinda hate, but whatever. Can’t argue with sales figures.

Honestly, you kinda start to feel like you’re the crazy one because everyone else, even the smart hedz, were throwing accolades at these things. Not to mention… I remember when I was telling a few guys that I actually enjoyed Sonic Prime, they thought I was crazy! Like “dude, this show sucks ass! What’s wrong with you!?” I’m like “wtf!? I thought being positive about some shit was seen as a good thing, but I guess that’s only if the majority thinks the same way”. I figured “You know what? I no longer have a place in the discourse of this franchise.” Opinions have changed rapidly over the course of these 4 years, and it’s become clear that the style of Sonic that people prefer is one that I simply don’t. But the style that I don’t enjoy is the one making money. So I’m assed out. Then for a while, I started questioning whether or not I didn’t like the quality and style the series was going into, or the ideology behind it all.
I admit, I was honestly bitter that it took bastardizing Sonic’s character in the movie to make Sonic popular again as that signaled that Sonic’s essence, it’s core, is inconsequential to the survival of the franchise. What made Sonic unique, what made it stand out as a franchise, was apparently the thing that was indeed holding it back. People were not going to accept Sonic as it is, but only if it changes itself to meet their standards, and not simply in terms of quality control but indeed… the very NATURE of the series. Something told me that shit was going wrong when I saw that video of these kids (maybe around 12-15ish, I don’t know) playing Sonic Mania and talking about how “scared” they were just by running fast. Because they didn’t know if they were gonna run into some traps or a bottomless pit like this was Sonic Advance 3 or something. No, I don’t like Mania. I tried to replay that shit recently, and was reminded of it’s trash heep level design. But the thing is on a surface level, it is an homage (ugh) to the Genesis era of games. And these little bastards were scared to play Chemical Plant. “CHEMICAL PLANT”, that’s just the second fucking zone! They didn’t even get to the bullshit that is Studiopolis’s Act 1 Boss or Lava Reef or Titanic Monarch! Or even the Special Stages, those damned things deserve their own rage videos!
But… that’s neither here or there. The fact of the matter is… Sonic is successful again. Doesn’t require my input or support. People have made it clear that this is the direction they approve of, and it’s not going away anytime soon. So… what else is there to do? I figure “Well, I gave up on Pokemon, having to give up on Resident Evil now, clearly I need to stay away from Guilty Gear now (Strive is awful!) or anything ASW related for the forseeable future because those snakes can’t resist the smell of money, the Warriors games are dead to me now, gave up Street Fighter years ago, haven’t played Nintendo games since switching (pun not intended) over to Playstation… which sucks now, Marvel is ruined, the Ninja Turtles was recently raped so there’s that, The Conjuring Universe is out of gas, Super Bomberman R2 is trash (I’m SO upset with this one!), Borderlands is likely dead to us both, Need for Speed is for the kiddies apparently, and SUMO got bought up by Tencent. Gave up a LOT of franchises over the last couple of years because the quality and direction of those franchises just.. didn’t sit well with me. Maybe….maybe it was time to pull a Jebtube and put Sonic on that list as well. Let the kids enjoy their new toy and I’ll.. fuck off and find something else to enjoy. Because clearly… this series just isn’t for me anymore. Maybe it’s… finally time to move on.

….But I don’t want to give up this series!

Shit man, this is honestly the only series I can safely say that I grew up on! Watched all the cartoons, tried to get all the comics, I had that tacky ass Halloween costume back in the 2nd grade, tried to get that OVA on VHS (Bet y’all don’t even know what a VHS is), shit… I’m so big on this damn series, first game I’d get for a new system had to be a Sonic game. DS, Sonic Rush. Wii, Sonic Colors… well that and Smash Brawl at the same time, but you get the picture. PS3, Generations. 2DS, Generations. PS4, mother fucking Forces. That’s sad as hell, but this was my shit! I don’t wanna give it up just because you got assholes running the asylum, phasing people out of it! But it’s obvious that I’ve lost my passion for this series, and that isn’t easy to regain when the bar has been set apocalyptically low. So far… I’ve only really enjoyed Prime, and that series isn’t enough to reinvigorate my interest.

So then I started thinking “Why am I taking this shit seriously? It ain’t like the movies are the final word on the franchise. They’re just another take on the series. A really SHITTY take, and Jeff Fowler can kiss my ass 12 times over, them and those sons of bitches working at Paramount since they’re keen on raping everything they touch INCLUDING the goddamn Ninja Turtles, but… it’s just an alternative take, s’all. Even though Colors Ultimate was meant to have DLC based on the movie, FUCK!” I mulled this over for a while, and… I think maybe my issue with this series has less to do with the quality, direction, or ideology of the series itself, and more to do with the actual fandom. Because Amma… the shit these people have been doing over the last couple of years is enough to put special needs kids on suicide watch.

Something told me there was some nonsense going down when after the success of the movie, every figure that we associated with the “cool” aspects of Sonic (Yuji Naka, Tom Kalinske, Ken Penders) all started coming under fire. Just a stream of videos coming out to “expose” them for being frauds and having nothing to do with the success of the franchise, and I’m thinking “why wait until after the box office figures, and not years and years ago when they were being put on pedestals?” Internet has been around for decades, but none of these jewels were important to start flooding the internet with until the movie did well, that’s pretty suspect. On top of that, we had that weird situation with Yuji Naka saying “I don’t like Baby Sonic”, and mother fuckers on twitter were going “NUUUU, SONIC CAN BE CUTE” and I’m just like “what in the fuck happened in this time period!? People WANT Sonic to be cute!?” Either these people were missing a few chromosomes, maybe a little testosterone… or maybe these niggas work for Sega! Cause yah notice everyone got smoke for the former employees of Sega. So I get the wondering… “are these dimes actually true, or are we in some sort of campaign of defamation here?” I’m not saying the factoids on these guys is false, I’m saying that the timing of these reveals is a little too convenient. And frankly, I’m not in a hurry to believe the whole “Tom Kalinske was trying to cheat SOJ out of their profits” bit right then and there.

But as I was saying, we associated Naka, Kalinske, and Penders with all the “cool” aspects of the franchise. So it’s too much of a coincidence… that them mother fuckers are always the ones that are attacked! We know Penders gets the most shit out of any comic creator this day in age, but how quickly people turned on Yuji Naka when he didn’t jive with Baby Sonic. Then he gets arrested, that didn’t help his case at all. But again, all of this started to come out… after the success of the first movie, and I was questioning that everytime people brought it up. Why wait until now… to start flooding the internet with these expose’s (I don’t know how to put that line above the “E” on a keyboard, just work with me) when you had plenty of time to do otherwise.

But then I thought… maybe the goal of these reveals… ain’t about setting the record straight. Maybe it’s to demonize the idea… of Sonic being “Cool”. You see, the Sonic Fandom has always been at war over the ideology that Sonic should follow. Should it be “cool”, should it be “edgy”, should it follow Nintendo’s example, should it be a Shonen Anime (No the hell it shouldn’t), should it be dark, should it be light, should it be more western, should it be more eastern, etc, rinse and repeat. Around the time of the first movie’s release, we started getting a shift in attitude from certain fans (if you could call them that). They started attacking the idea of Sonic being cool. One even suggesting that it’s wrong to be cool 100% of the time. I could tell for a fact that these people weren’t real, who the fuck DOESN’T associate Sonic with being cool? Apparently, the “SegaSonic” crowd. The otaku. The people who ascribe to the mentality of “Japan’s Canon”. They claim that the aspect of Sonic’s coolness is an exclusively “American” construct, and is thus false and unreal. And they are VIOLENTLY OPPOSED to anyone who disagrees with this mindset. Afterall, American Kirby is hardcore. I get it. Americans bastardize everything they get their hands on because we think we know better of how to make things appealing, there’s a list of several animes we’ve fucked up over the years, and sentai in the form of Power Rangers (even though most of our versions were more successful than Japan’s, yikes). But that purist attitude is a byproduct of aspirational selfishness. Again, a lot of people in the world are not fans of having their “vision” being changed in anyway. Anime fans in particular think that if you change just one tiny aspect of an anime series, it is tarnished forever. And that may be the case for 4kids and how they fucked up One Piece and Sonic X, but the point is for them, if Japan made it first, then they should be “respected”, period.

Until Yuji Naka contradicted them. Then they flipped the script, they told him… that he was WRONG… about a series he had a hand in creating! See, something was fucked up the moment they started going in on Yuji fucking Naka about Sonic the Hedgehog, and it told me that these niggas weren’t real! Something was wrong here! I’m thinking… they had to be employees of the company! Yuji Naka was one of the 3 creators of Sonic, why is his opinion on the franchise suddenly disqualified!? I could see if it was like Miyamoto who went back on his word saying he was inspired by Alice in Wonderland when he created Super Mario Bros., but you can go back to an article in the 90s and find he was consistent in his thought process, so that wasn’t the issue.

The thing is… for the longest time, Sega, Iizuka, or whoever had the final say… was trying to change the image of Sonic from being Way Past Cool… to being a hero for children. And somehow that includes stripping him from everything that is cool… to the point that even the games that are supposed to be homages to the 90s era of Sonic… have all this cutesy, pansy, baby ass music that likens Sonic to Care Bears. Which is funny because you have a fucking movie from the 90s that showed Japan’s vision of Sonic… wasn’t that far removed from the American perception! So who are they trying to fool!?

But again, we associated the cool shit about Sonic… with these 3 dudes. So this whole campaign of dropping dimes on them, AFTER the success of that piece of shit movie, isn’t about getting the facts straight. It’s to, by association, declare that the cool aspects of Sonic the Hedgehog are illegitimate, conjured by immoral people. So we shouldn’t want Sonic to be cool, we should want it to be cute. Because the current people who handle the Sonic property are these squeaky clean, pure as the wind driven snow breed of content creators. They just want to put smiles on people’s faces with their adorable charms, don’t you see!? Don’t be like those 3 assholes who left our illustruous employ! They have this and that type of stain on their history and permanent records, why one of them is in PRISON for insider trading! And see!? Our adorable little Sonic found success by being softer, cuter, and more kid friendly than he’s ever been before! Truly, THIS is the TRUE Sonic! And we’re gonna bash your heads in with Cuteness Sonic from now on and forever! ….While these bastards praise the boss music in Frontiers, but it’s wrong for this shit to be “cool”. Deez be sum frawds, I swear.

I just remembered Sega ported Unleashed to the Xbox and left our Playstation asses out to dry, sons of bitches…

There was just a little too much of this shit going on, especially with all the cope surrounding Frontiers. You know, the shit I heard regarding this game is truly astounding. “Peak Sonic Gameplay”, “Best Sonic game since Sonic Adventure 2”, “Best Sonic Game Ever” (hahahaha), but the most damning thing I’ve read, and I shit you not, this was a thought that had crossed everyone’s mind… they tried to equate this game’s combat… to Metal Gear fucking Rising.

…………….
…………………..
………………………
…………………………..

I tell yah, I shat bricks for days! Metal Gear Rising, the single greatest action game from the 7th generation (I’ll take that claim to grave, goddammit), my personal crack addiction… Sonic Frontiers’s combat is comparable to that masterpiece? The only reason I could see claims like this being made is because Frontiers, like so many other games in the last couple of generations, have aped Platinum’s combat system as though they were still employed by Capcom such as the slow-down after a dodge mechanic used in Bayonetta. But more to the point, a lot of the cutscenes against the bosses are reminiscent of QTE events from MGR. That doesn’t even come close to a comparative analysis, but if we were to humor them, the piss poor presentation and animation of those sequences would be insulting as a direct comparison. Not to mention the existence of the Ring Loop… thing that allows you to have rings at all times ensures that there is no challenge to be had. Just jump in the air, hold one of shoulders down, and enjoy roleplaying as Pegasus Seiya as you spam the same attack over and over until you get to one or two enemies that require a parry or 2. Frontiers combat just looks dull, by the numbers, full of redundant cutscenes, and absolutely derivative of other, better games with the cardinal sin of extremely boring enemy design, and you have people who are crazy enough to make direct comparisons to Metal Gear mother fucking Rising. I’ve seen more depth in Sonic Battle.

Sonic Frontiers is, by all accounts, the complete antithesis of everything Sonic is. A slow, monotonous fetch quest broken up with slapdash obstacle courses, lazy combat and friggin puzzles to give one the impression that it has variety in it’s desolate and obnoxiously dull environments (I’m sure the rebuttals will include all the special stages from past games). Yet this shit has the most insane hype I’ve ever seen where people have the nuts to compare it to Metal Gear Rising. I can’t even get over the gall. But what was even worse was people getting harrassed back and forth for not giving Frontiers the time of day. These lunatics have gone on literal witch hunts all across social media in order to browbeat dissenters into submission just so they can have a homogenous positive reception of the game. This is the 8.8 situation but on steroids. Adding to that, Ian Flynn was involved with Frontiers’s development, and we know that fat bastard has an ARMY of shills at his beck and call, so we can’t discount that at all.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new for this fandom, these guys have been on witchhunts against professional reviewers for games that were already hated such as Sonic 06, Unleashed, and the like using the same exxagerated claims of “they didn’t play it” or “they just suck at it”. The difference now is that they’re backed up by sales figures and metacritic, giving their lunacy more credibility than they deserve, so people felt less secure in their criticisms of the game because now the sycophants have reinforcements by proxy. Inquiring as to why so many people enjoy the game when titles of similar quality have been universally panned (including those within this series) leads to circular rebuttals of “complaining about people liking games they don’t like” and such, which gets spammed over and over and over to the point that people just gave up and withdrew their reviews and critiques on an almost mass scale. They literally chased these people off of the internet, and I’m sitting here thinking “what the hell episode of the Twilight Zone did I get trapped in!? Fuck Covid, these little bastards are the real killers!”

Then that awards show went down, and at that point, I think I had enough.

I joked about it at first because the idea of an award being handed out for a game “just because” was ridiculous, but whatever, right? I had laughed at the prospect of the fans being furious that they lost an “award”. They weren’t satisfied with making a sales chart, having a high metacritic score, and winning an ideological war online. No, they wanted the prestige and recognition that came with it all. Sheer.. fucking hubris. These people have lost their minds. Losing a popularity contest was enough to burn their worthless asses, and they won’t even recognize why. They told on themselves when many of them acknowledged that Frontiers wasn’t going to win a whole lot of awards, or even be nominated for any of them. So why the fuck would the game win a popularity contest… if it loses in all other categories? Make it make sense!

But I think the part that irritated me was that these jackoffs were trying to spin this into a victory by saying the fandom wars going on between Sonic and Genshin Impact was the highlight of the awards show. At that point, that was them saying that they do not give a fuck about the direction the series goes in. They only cared about their image as being loyal supporters of the franchise. The desperation these people had bordered on delusion and vanity. If they don’t care how the franchise is being handled, how the hell do you engage with them? The rabbid attacks against any and all forms of criticism of a single game or movie, the damage control over the twitter takedowns by Aaron Webber, the denial of Yuji Naka’s own claims… what kind of fandom is that damaged… than one of sycophants… or those that work directly for the company that controls the object of the fandom?

No, I do not have proof. Hell, I don’t even have a lead. I just observe some very oddball behavior that… I’ve honestly never seen in other fandoms if I’m being perfectly honest. Even the most diehard of fanboys would be hardpressed to defend a flagging compaign of any sort. Afterall, Sega has had a lot of deranged methods of trying to preserve whatever was left of their squeaky clean image. Any game that receives a shit score on Metacritic, they’d pull them off shelves, for instance. I doubt they’d be above using shills to infiltrate fandoms to strongarm other people to their whims. Twitter, Youtube, Reddit, all these places can be gamed easily. There exists companies that these corpo cunts can hire out to buy up existing accounts with good karma to go in and pretend to be regular ass people. And Sega’s already shown that they can be rather heavy handed with people who have done nothing to them. So… I don’t know. Shit be sus.

It also should be noted that Sega isn’t actually all that cool with fan projects, they went after fan compilations on khinsider back in 2021. Just thought I should point that out even if it ain’t relevant to the topic at hand.

I still think back to that movie review made by Arlo when he was talking about Shitshow 2. People tore him a new asshole over it even though he made a very poignant point that gets glossed over in the honeymoon. We would shit on videogame adaptations for taking a piss on the source material. But then people would give a pass to Shitshow 1+2 for essentially doing the same thing. Then weirdly enough the following year with the Mario Movie, a videogame adaptation that actually feels like it was made by actual fans of the games, it got shat on. Yes the plot is simple, but the more I think about it… movies with shit plots get passes all the time. Why do we treat the Mario movie ay differently? Man I know I’m gonna be written off as a hypocrite for that one. In eithercase, it’s a little concerning that he had to make a followup video going “hey, you mother fuckers is crazy! You don’t know the kind of shit that people are going through, so… to tell somebody to NOT avoid social media for their own mental health and well-being just to “deal with all the criticism”… you are a piece of shit, basically!” That’s… those aren’t his exact words, but he had to explain that he goes through some shit, he’s taking anxiety medication, and… the bottom line is that it isn’t healthy to just be logged into social media only to be dogpiled and harrassed. People have committed suicides over shit like this. And the idea of people being shat on for just trying to get away from all that noise is… thoroughly fucked and completely narcissitic, honestly. That people SHOULD be logged in and just take abuse because they had the so-called “wrong opinion”. Maybe it’s fortunate that I don’t have many readers if that’s the shit people gotta put up with! And the unfortunate thing is that’s something you can’t pin on a shill. Sonic fans have had some pretty deranged thoughts. Some of them have expressed the desire to KILL certain people (Penders), might’ve even been spurred on by certain key figures, idk. But… that’s the kind of shit that’s going on.

Speaking of the movie, I think what really grinded my gears was… as I saw it, a pretty blatant double standard going on when it came to how certain writers/directors handled the portrayels of certain characters. Cause yah see… everyone gets on Ian Flynn for how he bulldozed several beloved Archie characters, chief among them being Sally Acorn, and eventually leading to the death of Archie Comics in favor of what’s clearly a feminist direction for the IDW comics, and ok fine, Sally was one of the best things about SatAM so fuck him for screwing her over. But then… we look at Jeff Fowler, and he can completely bastardize Sonic’s character, they turn him into this whiny little dipshit who thinks he has a right to criticize a person for trying to get his own life together, and is beyond stupid to get himself blown up, plays with turtles and shit, farts in towels, and acts like a hyper active child on ritilin… and everyone is giving him gold stars, I don’t get it. Everyone talks about “well that’s the point, idiot! He IS a child!” And this kinda goes back to my point with the Ninja Turtles and how we just generalize personalities based strictly on their age group. Not every kid acts like this overly emotional dinkwad with outbursts that put Tails from Lost Mind to shame. Not every teenager desires social acceptance. Why are we so forgiving of a stereotypical portrayel of kids and teens!? Am I the only one who wants VARIETY in personality traits!? I don’t want Sonic to be this goddamn annoying! He’s not cool, he’s clearly not intelligent, he doesn’t think on the fly (maybe he does in Shitshow 2, but you couldn’t pay me enough to see that shit), he’s not… anything resembling what I’ve known Sonic to be. He’s just an unlikable dork, and I’m not so shallow to hand wave that just because “he’s a child” who can glow in the dark. Dash from the Incredibles is more Sonic than what the fuck Sonic is in the movie! Do people just have different standards depending on the medium it’s presented, or is it because the movies made money while the comic didn’t, and the standards favor whatever succeeds? I don’t get it. Comics and Games, we don’t like comedy and flanderization of characters, but tv and movies, they can do whatever they want. I don’t… get it. I just don’t! This bugged the hell out of me for a while because it just didn’t make sense.

But aside from the fandom, there’s also another reason I haven’t really paid attention to this series. Frontiers was a trial run for the “new direction” that Sonic is going to go in for the next decade. And all I could think about… was this song here.

A friend o’ mine had tried to explain to significance of this song to me, and… well… me being an idiot, I hadn’t given it much thought until the movie and frontiers came out. You know some music that clearly has some bad singing going on, but the lyrics are more meaningful? This one would be it.

“In his world… Where Compromise does not exist!”
“Breaking down doors, never following!”
“The only way to break free is to break the mold!”
“Gotta make your own way!”

Now I’m sitting here just listening to old music, and I’m going “Fuck me, I just got it!” And the funny thing is my dumb ass had been talking about this for years. It explains why I’ve slowly been losing interest in this series.

Sonic.. is the original “Rebel” of videogames. A rebel in the sense that the Sonic series did what so many other franchises couldn’t. Redefine what makes a game “fun”. A lot of videogame franchises were stuck in this weird cycle of just taking staples from one or 2 franchises and calling it a set in stone standard of how to design a game. In terms of action games (or platformers), this meant looking at Mario and going “this is peak platforming gameplay”, and any character who resembles something that would fit in a Mario game had to have something on par with it. That is why every platformer, even those made by the indies, have some sort of intricate mechanics to produce their own set of unique challenges which can only be overcome by the mastery of said mechanics. Sonic goes in the opposite direction and allows players to handle the games in their own way. Instead of being locked into this cycle having to master the mechanics, players were actually allowed to experiment with what they could do to completely break the game and make it bend to their will, all for sake of achieving the highest speed they could. When I watched a video of a guy playing the Game Gear version of Sonic 1, he literally blitzed the level just by rolling off the first hill “and completely leaving the screen!” That shit is awesome, unintended or otherwise! That’s the kind of shit Sonic allows you to do! This is the real reason people harp about the physics of modern games, and why Sega likely will not change course on that matter. The physics provided this sense of liberation, allowing players to break all the rules of conventional game design.

How do you impose a challenge or a 2-bit gimmick on people if they’re allowed to break the rules?

The gameplay of Sonic offered a unique experience. The experience of “freedom”. This is completely lost on people today because they stubbornly try to apply conventional platformer logic to Sonic via Mario’s example (because of that damn rivalry). They go “I don’t get it! I don’t get it!” You ain’t supposed to get the shit! You’re supposed to “feel” it! When I was watching that video of zoomers playing Mania and “being scared” to move at a fast pace, I knew it was a wrap for Sonic being original. It’s because they couldn’t let go of all their formative years playing regular platformers that are restrictive in what they can do. How they move, how they jump, how they deal with obstacles, all of that in accordance to level design and challenge. Sonic says “fuck that” and allows you to throw caution to the wind. It’s a liberation from conventional gameplay standards that seem to go in one direction of meticulous and intricate gameplay. There were so many stupid videos and editorials about how Sonic “Forces” bad game design, but they were clearly made by people who just can’t see the appeal. And admittedly, modern revisions of the classic Sonic formula haven’t done much of a service to rectify this as you have level design tailor made to be “challenging” when that isn’t what Sonic is supposed to be about. Sonic games are relaxing in their own way. They’re easy. Supposed to be easy, and I know there’s those assholes that’ll go “Ahhh, fuck you, challenge matters! UndertheMayo said so even though he refused the challenge of Elden Ring and Ultrakill!”

Perhaps that’s what really drew me to the series. It’s just so wildly different from anything on the market. And the series kinda reveled in it! Like “Yeah, we’re awesome, we’re not like those other squares, and we’re damn proud of it!” But then as we go into 3D, we start having some hard limits on what we can do. Knuckles’s Glide and Climbing abilities allow him to bypass level design, so lets just have him looking for rocks all day. Tails’s flight can do the same thing, so lets strap him to a mech and have his movement speed completely crippled. Sonic Heroes, we have.. NONE of the character’s own unique abilities, instead everything is compromised by the Team System. Sonic 06, we actually REMOVE abilities that characters had in previous games like Tails’s whirlwind attack and Rouge’s kicks… in favor of cumbersome abilities that exacerbate the technical issues of the game. And then… well… you all know the song and dance from 08 and beyond. And… perhaps I owe an apology to Shadow the Hedgehog for this very reason.

This game… I’ve often said that Sonic Heroes was the last GREAT Sonic game, but I would also gather that Shadow the Hedgehog was the last REAL Sonic game, because it exemplified the merits of freedom within the series. Controversy be damned. Everything in that game felt like a proper evolution of Sonic’s gameplay and overall spirit, and I know that’s going to burn people’s asses because of too many reasons to count. But I’ll try anyway. The game had a really good sense of speed. As soon as you start running, you’re literally going at top speed in as little as 0.5 seconds. The movement in this game feels really good, rarely is it ever hindered by any gimmicks designated by level design. The mission design could use some work, but I really loved that you could do any of the 3 missions all at once while only having the option to just complete one of them, you weren’t constrained to one mission over another, you could literally stop doing a mission and focus on another on a dime. You had multiple options of killing enemies, you weren’t limited to guns like most people will claim. I’ve actually killed more enemies using regular spin attacks without the homing attack as the homing attack was definitely nerfed. But I honestly preferred using the Katana for dispatching enemies. I loved how the checkpoint system worked so if you wanted to revisit certain parts of a zone, you could do that at all. But the one thing I LOVED doing in this game?

This was in the Gun Headquarters Zone, or Gun Base or w/e it was called. You’d have these long corridors where GUN was fighting the black Aliens, and you have the option to engage them if you wish. But because I’m a speed freak, I’d ignore everything and blitz these corridors. But on occassion, I would often jump in a jeep… and just drive on through even though it’s slower. And I’d be like “man I’m cruising in my whip while the world around me is gone crazy!” And it’d be the most chill shit I could do in the game! I don’t know how to explain that, it was just fucking awesome to me. Cause for me, the game was basically… you could do whatever the fuck you really wanted… and you wouldn’t be punished for it. That’s a feeling of freedom that is sorely lacking in a vast majority of Sonic games because everything has become too uniform, too formuliac, too focused on singular objectives rather than giving players a sense of freedom and a desire to experiment. That’s what Shadow offered. As much as I love SA2, you gotta admit that the game can feel pretty rigid at times. Again with the treasure hunting, mech battles, so on and so forth. Shadow’s game was the only one that really allowed you to experiment with different options on how to complete zones. Every other game in the series… doesn’t really do this anymore. So I have to laugh at people who’s rebuttals to certain arguments of people saying “Oh you just want another Shadow the Hedgehog!” I’m like “Yah damn skippy I would!” Shadow the Hedgehog kicked ass!

I would often say that this game ruined the franchise, but that was only ever in terms of how people perceived Sonic games from that point forward. The game was never bad. It was a victim of surface level, pre-release bashing and hatred where a lot of people didn’t even bother to play the game… and judged it based primarily off the fact that Shadow used firearms. But… you know, seeing how people act today when the very soul of the franchise has been purged, and now the characters are just a slightly more entertaining Tiny Toons skit, I need to take that back. Because quite frankly, people were still willing to buy Sonic games after Shadow, there was a lot of forgiveness since Sonic Rush existed, and the hype for Sonic 06 was tremendous. In reality, however… people got addicted to the idea of Sonic being shit, and used that narrative to pander to certain audiences and establish their own brand by reinforcing a negative image of the series. So in many ways, the fans or general audiences (IE people with ulterior motives)… have done more harm to the series perception than Shadow’s game ever did. And I don’t want to generalize that because the games did have clear problems! They were rushed out the door, they weren’t properly tested or designed, and they had weird design choices that simply did not sit well with people. But a lot of these antics were exaggerated by these people just so they can build their brand off of shitting on Sonic games. Cause lets be real, people SHAT all over Sonic Unleashed when it first came out, but here it is being heralded as one of the best Sonic games in the series a decade after it’s release. It’s because the quality of the games did not matter. Their image, their brand as fans or critics mattered more.

And the same applies to Sonic Forces. Regardless of what you may think of the game, you might think it’s mediocre for legit reasons (and there ARE legit reasons, don’t get me wrong), you might think it was a baby step in the right direction, hell you might even love the game for just not being Sonic Boom, but the critical response to the game is so far gone into the territory of “overblown” that I’m almost certain it’s become the new Sonic 06. I will never hear the end of how this game ate everyone’s babies and made puppies cry, but I know for a fact that prior to the game’s release, people were already determined to HATE that game and run it into the ground simply to support Sonic Mania because “fans” worked on it, and the fans were all too eager to psychologically fellate themselves as being more competent at designing videogames than Sega. Sonic Forces was yet another victim of people with ulterior motives, and I will not apologize for that.

But back to my point, Sonic offered a unique experience that up until now was never replicated by any other game. And… we lost that in 2020. We fucking lost it! It’s gone! It’s no more! It’s not coming back! And that’s the real killer! Shitshow and Frontiers… those are the compromises! It acquiesces to the whims of Computer Centrism, and characters that vy for the approval of others. It’s so against what Sonic stands for that it pisses on the legacy of the series. And that hurts me the most because I was the main one talking about how Sonic needs to be mass market and all. If I had known that would require the series to sell it’s own soul, I would’ve taken back every word. Cause as it stands, people never wanted the True Blue to remain true to himself. Instead, they wanted to warp him into something he’s not. To mold him into the blue bastard that he is now. It’s like a perverse pleasure in taking away the things that makes shit special which is far too common as of late.

And I can see people saying “Well the fishing minigame lets us break the rules!” Because… not playing the game is so much more rewarding? Then why did you spend money on it? And… see, that’s another thing (going back to Frontiers, I’m just all over the fucking place today!). Frontiers, on the surface, on paper… merely sounds like something I could get into. The bosses aren’t these shlogs of mult-tasking nonsense that has plagued the series since Sonic Adventure 2 (more points to Heroes and Shadow, lets be real), and the prospect of just running around a large open space doing whatever the fuck I want sounds too good to be true (which it is). And maybe before release, I was partially interested in what was going on. Admittedly, when it was announced that Ian Flynn was onboard for the writing (localized story, at least), that was a wrap. “Naw, I’m good”. The guy who wrecked Sally’s character, naw I’m good. But that also leads me to believe that his involvement with the game had contributed more to the positive reception than otherwise. I remember reading some comments on a youtube where people were praising a line of dialog in the game where Amy tells Sonic to stay out of trouble or something along those, and Sonic goes “where’s the fun in that!?”. And people were falling on their swords praising Flynn’s accurate characterization of Sonic, and I’m like “WHAT!? ARE YOU THAT EASILY IMPRESSED!?” Sonic was doing wise cracks in every game sans 06! Shit, the STORYBOOK GAMES were peak Sonic characterization in my eyes, but that one line of dialog was all the convincing you needed to say that Flynn was absolutely perfect for the job!? How do you trust this level of reception when something that simplistic gets a MOUNTAIN of praise!? It’s like “do people actually like the game, or do people just like Flynn!?” cause I’m being reminded of everyone dick riding the movies because Jim Carry is in it, and he “carries the movie”, which to me is just next level cope because Ice Cube wasn’t enough to salvage the Ninja Turtles, Jack Black apparently wasn’t enough to praise the Mario Movie (and he was absolutely the best part of the movie, holy shit), but Jim fucking Carry is all you needed to fall on your swords when he is a flanderized version of modern Robotnik when we’re SUPPOSED to hate the flanderization of characters in the comics and games, I just don’t get it.

Like… the fandom is so fucking wild and contradictory these days, it’s completely unrecognizable. I keep telling myself “I don’t belong to this fanbase”. I can’t fuck with these niggas, it’s too much even for me. Maybe I’m just getting too old for this shit, idk. I still love this franchise even when it’s going down the drain in my eyes, but a large part of what’s turning me off… is the fandom itself. I personally don’t want to give it up because of them, but the direction the series is going… is tailor made with these weirdos in mind, so it’s kinda difficult to say. What kinda brought me back was that Sega recently released a new DVD set of the SatAM series, so I snatched me up a copy real fast, but I’m pretty sure someone’s gonna inform me that this set is a bastardized version of the series I knew and loved, but… I’m past the point of caring. I just want to enjoy something. So… don’t know when that Superstars game will arrive, but we’ll definitely see if it’s worth a tit. Until then… yeah, this is why I haven’t really posted much in regards to Sonic the Hedgehog. I’ve just been out of it. Shit, I didn’t even know there was a new Mobile game. What’s it called? Sonic “Dream” or some shit? A title that’s… honestly ***er than Colors, yikes. But it’s mobile, who cares…

Also, were people actually saying that it was unfair to compare Sonic to Spark the Electric Jester? If so, then these people are more pathetic than I thought. Hopefully I got the name right this time.

Startin the New Year Crying (Like a Dragon Gaiden)

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

And screw you, Sega!

Done fucked up my emotions with this game, oughta be ashamed of yourselves!

Well I figured since my sis did me a solid with that Scarlet Nexus last year, I’d return the favor with this one since… well, it’s the only series keeping her happy since Borderlands is now on her shit list (Welcome to my pain, sis!). Unfortunately since Sega is in full shitlord status, I had to import a physical copy a month in advance. Not happy paying that much. (Yes I’m so cheap that $44 + $8 shipping puts me in a sour mood, but after AC6, I don’t get to complain. It’s Christmas and all).

In eithercase, I think Kiwami has been surpassed as my personal favorite in the series. Gaiden is… dynamite. It’s much shorter than the other games (PRAISE AMMA!), and shockingly, the writing is much better here sans Shishido’s motives. Though I must say, I’m honestly sick of the writer’s obsession with age. Like… fuck, everytime a character spills on about the qualities of particular villains, them being “young” is listed as one of their traits, as if youth is a personality or a skill. It’s like the guys writing this are so insecure about getting old that most new villains are young and crazy now. On top of how most of the characters are whining about how the Yakuza have been turned into the lapdogs of Police Departments and Politicians. Having skipped out on Y7 for being turn-based crap (even my sis ain’t down with that), I wasn’t aware of how important that game’s events were to this one before we got a rundown on everything that went down there.

That being said… that Jingweon K-Pop dude that was clearly SHOT IN THE FUCKING HEAD BACK IN Y6… why is he still breathing?! How is he here fighting in the Omi Alliance building!?

Who the hell is Hanawa and why does he know Kiryu’s other go-to name!?

The monk dude that’s supposed to be “disguised”, who the hell is he supposed to be!?

Was Nishitani supposed to be a cheap expy of Majima!?

How does a cargo ship with a city inside go undetected when you’ve got satellite cameras and shit!?

Why is Tsuruno the funniest character in the game!?

Why is Akame so fine!?

How is Akame’s information network so good, but she didn’t expect Tsuruno to barge into her office?

How much does Sega pay these models to act like sluts for a music video?

Why is Baka Mitai so goddamn popular!?

Why does Kiryu think back to Fighter from Y6!?

Why did the Daidoji leader take such a huge gamble on Kiryu and Hanawa being best friends and not killing people!?

Why does Shishido take being called a lapdog so well?

Why does Shishido keep Nishitani alive when he could’ve used his death to further spur the Omi Alliance to his cause?

If Shishido was going to keep Nishitani alive, why did he fake his murder in the first place?

Why does Yakuza need celebrity appearances now?

Why did they wait until now to bring back Pocket Circuit!?

Why is the Hornet Gadget so game breaking!?

Why do I need Sponsors just to fight in tournament matches now!?

Why couldn’t the Daidoji just assign Kiryu to the Omi Alliance as a bodyguard and explain everything instead of making up some bullshit “Test”!?

When did Kiryu become so good at making schemes!?

Why doesn’t anyone carry guns when the villains are monologging!?

How does Nishitani survive getting run over-wait this is Yakuza, characters survived getting their backs broken by sledgehammers…

Why did Kiryu agree to never see the kids ever again? That wasn’t really explained in Y6 in a satisfactory or logical way.

How does a camera tip Taichi and Ayako off that Kiryu is alive? It’s not like grave sites don’t have security cameras (or I don’t know how Japan does shit).

Why is Mitsuo going from Job to Job when he’s supposed to be a Baseball star!? Wait, don’t answer that!

Why doesn’t Hanawa disinfect his tablet after Kiryu snotted that shit up!? It’s the advent of Covid for crying out loud!

Who in their right mind would play a Master System in 2019!?

Why do I have to take a picture of a guy’s nutsack just to get the 7th Dragon Ball?

Why can’t I use the Rocket Shoes for regular traversal?

But most importantly…



The fuck is this awesomeness and why haven’t I heard of it?! Motor Raid kicks too much ass to be this well hidden for eons! Controls like pisswater, but it’s so damn fun!

Nitpicking aside, I personally think this improved on most if not all the issues I had with the series, it being a spinoff says a lot. Though I don’t Sis feels the same way. She thinks the game is too short, she hates running back and forth to Akame for missions, hates the increased emphasis on the Coliseum, and she hates Sotenbori as a locale. Sounds like I wasted my money if that’s the case 😛 . She claims it’s “mid”, but that spells disappointment in my eyes.

Then… the ending comes! Ooohhhhh lord, I think we ran out of kleenix on this bitch! The last time I seen Kiryu bust out the waterworks was for a guy he barely knew in Okinawa. Didn’t even cry this much for Nishiki or Yumi back in the first game. But ohhhhhh damn, that ending got us good. So that’s all the kids playing FF7 felt when Aerith got murked. Or all the LOU fans felt when Joel got a club sandwich. Like… something told me he wasn’t gonna see them kids again in this game. But I was hoping! But wish fulfillment from Japanese entertainment is like finding a needle in a mound of dirt. It’s nigh impossible. And the Yakuza games aren’t exactly known for having anything but bitter sweet outcomes. Sans Y3, at least. If Y5 didn’t come in with that bitch Mirei Park, I probably wouldn’t be this upset. But it is what it is.

There is that “To be Continued” thing. And I was shocked when I saw Kiryu with that white hair. I thought that was a completely different character in Y8, but since he’s returning, I wonder what…

*reads deets*

Oh fuck this! Y’all givin him Cancer too!? Man, they gonna kill Kiryu off like a bitch!