R2TRRFF: High-speed Hedgehog Monogatari

[cfx]

I do not know how 2D Sonic games generally sell in Japan, but Sonic Superstars has not lit the Famistu charts on fire. The Switch version made it to #9 with 4128 copies sold for first week sales; the PS4 and PS5 versions did not make the top 30 at all, meaning each sold less than 1269 copies, the amount sold by the #30 entry on the list.

Via Gematsu: https://www.gematsu.com/2023/10/famitsu ... 3-10-22-23

[Steven]

Very few people in Japan have ever cared about Sonic at all, and most of those that do are probably Sega employees. Sonic Jam was specifically created to increase awareness of Sonic in Japan, partially because Sonic Team got so many letters asking who Sonic was because nobody knew.

[cfx]

Very few people in Japan have ever cared about Sonic at all, and most of those that do are probably Sega employees. Sonic Jam was specifically created to increase awareness of Sonic in Japan, partially because Sonic Team got so many letters asking who Sonic was because nobody knew.

I didn't expect huge numbers, and on Switch launching the same week as Mario is no doubt a mistake, but I didn't expect this low either, and on Playstation there wasn't competition. Well, PS5 got Spiderman, but I doubt there's much overlap in the audiences. I certainly wouldn't touch Spiderman if I had a PS5, but I'm a weirdo that hates modern cinematic so-called AAA games.

[Sengoku Strider]

Very few people in Japan have ever cared about Sonic at all, and most of those that do are probably Sega employees. Sonic Jam was specifically created to increase awareness of Sonic in Japan, partially because Sonic Team got so many letters asking who Sonic was because nobody knew.

I think this is more a function of people being new to the Sega console ecosystem during gen 5 in Japan than any broader lack of awareness. The Sonic games sold quite well on Mega Drive and there were TV commercials all over the place, all three main titles were in the top 10 MD all-time best sellers:

1. Puyo Puyo
2. Shining Force
3. Sonic the Hedgehog
4. Street Fighter II’ Plus
5. Virtua Racing
6. Sonic 3
7. Shining Force II
8. Phantasy Star IV
9. Langrisser II
10. Sonic 2

I think it's just that the MD itself was a distant 3rd place behind the SFC & PC Engine so it wasn't top of mind for your average kid, and Sega compounded that by not getting out a meaningful Sonic game on Saturn.

[XoPachi]

https://youtu.be/QZF8Of8s6Z0?

[Lander]

https://youtu.be/QZF8Of8s6Z0?

Hold up, a new 3D Sonic game that actually looks pretty good? What's the catc-

Exclusive to Apple Arcade

There it is. They'll never learn

[XoPachi]

Hold up, a new 3D Sonic game that actually looks pretty good? What's the catc-

Exclusive to Apple Arcade

There it is. They'll never learn :?

Yeah, that is the fucking annoying part. Zero reason for that.
But I wanna give this a spin. I'm gonna guess iOS can't be emulated in a similar way BlueStacks emulates Android though, can it?

[ryu]

When asked how he plans for Sonic to grow in future, Ohasi replied: "Simply put, I want to surpass Mario."

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=sega+w ... rio&ia=web

Oh boy.

[Steven]

Sonic surpassed Mario in 1994. I'm still waiting for Nintendo to make a game that's better than Sonic 3 & Knuckles, or at least even Sonic Mania. So far, aside from Super Metroid, they haven't, and I don't think they can. Of course, Sega can't do it either. If it was theoretically possible, Sega really should have permanently hired the Mania devs and had them make 2D Sonic games. That would have at least avoided the mediocrity of Superstars, which I grow increasingly less interested in replaying every time I attempt (and fail) to replay it.

Very few people in Japan have ever cared about Sonic at all, and most of those that do are probably Sega employees. Sonic Jam was specifically created to increase awareness of Sonic in Japan, partially because Sonic Team got so many letters asking who Sonic was because nobody knew.

I think this is more a function of people being new to the Sega console ecosystem during gen 5 in Japan than any broader lack of awareness. The Sonic games sold quite well on Mega Drive and there were TV commercials all over the place, all three main titles were in the top 10 MD all-time best sellers:

1. Puyo Puyo
2. Shining Force
3. Sonic the Hedgehog
4. Street Fighter II’ Plus
5. Virtua Racing
6. Sonic 3
7. Shining Force II
8. Phantasy Star IV
9. Langrisser II
10. Sonic 2

I think it's just that the MD itself was a distant 3rd place behind the SFC & PC Engine so it wasn't top of mind for your average kid, and Sega compounded that by not getting out a meaningful Sonic game on Saturn.

Yes, the best-selling games on a system that sold absolutely miserably compared to its competitors. It wasn't as bad as the TurboGrafx in the USA and it probably outsold the entire Xbox line in Japan, but it was still pretty terrible. Thanks, Osomatsu-kun.

[Sima Tuna]

Most Mario fans would put Mario 3 and Mario World (maybe Yoshi's Island) on par with the best of the Sonics for 2d. For 3d, Mario fares much better, with 64, Sunshine, Galaxy, Galaxy 2 and Odyssey to lean on. Sonic has maaaybe Sonic Adventure 1 and portions of Sonic Adventure 2. As far as I'm concerned, Sonic has yet to successfully translate its core 2d gameplay to 3d. The momentum part of momentum-based fast edgedog doesn't come across in the 3d games.

Sonics 1, 2, 3, CD and Mania are all worth playing. Some people seem to have very strong opinions for or against certain games in the classic series, but I think they're all good games. Reflecting again on the series, I would probably give the crown to Mania for me personally, and then Sonic 2 with drop dash would probably take the second spot. I really enjoy the way the Ages ports added spindash and drop dash to the older games. Sonic 1 with spindash cheapens the sense of speed yes, but it is incredibly fun to play with.

I don't know why Sega treated the Mania devs so poorly. Apparently the Mania devs aren't bitter about it, but it sounds like they were subjected to crunch and their input/work was not valued. Hopefully they can go on to create their own indie products of superior quality to what Sega would allow them to make.

[Lander]

Yeah, that is the fucking annoying part. Zero reason for that.
But I wanna give this a spin. I'm gonna guess iOS can't be emulated in a similar way BlueStacks emulates Android though, can it?

Not as far as I know; if I remember right there used to be ways to bodge the SDK simulator into running other apps, but the chastity belt has only gotten tighter with time. Hoping for a wider release is probably the best bet at this point.

When asked how he plans for Sonic to grow in future, Ohasi replied: "Simply put, I want to surpass Mario."

Ahh, that vintage Sega hubris though the remainder of the quote is surprisingly self-aware:

Sonic is a game that was originally developed to compete with Mario, and it still hasn’t achieved that goal.

Not an admission I'd expect to see, all things considered!

[Steven]

Sonic 2 with drop dash would probably take the second spot.

There are very good ROM hacks I found a few days ago that implement the drop dash in Sonic 2 and 3&K. It was made by examining the code for Mania's drop dash and then implementing it into those games. I won't link to them because they come as game ROMs, not patches, but if you look around, they are easy to find because they were in a certain contest in 2018.

It's very nice to play these games on a real Mega Drive with the drop dash mostly properly implemented. The hacks also unlocked the direction change after rolling and jumping, which changes how the games work, and I am not sure how I feel about that, but Sonic Origins did it too, so that's how it is. It's not perfect, and some oddities can happen sometimes, but at least the game doesn't softlock when you drop dash on a Super Emerald like Sonic Origins used to.

[XoPachi]

The song in this changed and saved my life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAlUeROoFco

[Steven]

Here is something useful: Sonic 1/2 game designer and 3&K director/designer Yasuhara Hirokazu on how to make games "fun". In case anyone forgot, he is the main reason that those games are as fun to play as they are, even if Naka likes to take all of the credit for everything.

[XoPachi]

https://youtu.be/RjXgPQPsM7o

[Steven]

I replayed Superstars and have about 30 hours in the game now, and I have decided that the game is in fact half (give or take) good and half shit. I have a lot of stuff to say about the game, but I think I can basically say that the regular game, while highly uneven, is actually pretty okay. The fact that the bosses take forever to fucking die, the fact that the music is a giant mess (and supremely glitchy; I had 4 tracks playing on top of each other last night, including two separate instances of the Super music playing simultaneously!), and the stuff that comes after you beat the regular game are the major problems.

The game is also quite glitchy, has problems with collision, and has performance problems even on PS5, but you can work around the glitches and collision problems (mostly getting crushed when you shouldn't), so I don't think it's too bad when you learn how to not break the game. The player shouldn't be responsible for that, but that's how it is as of now and most of it can be worked around.

As for the performance problems... yeah, the PS5 should absolutely not be dropping frames in this game at all, especially since I have heard the Steam Deck powers through the game with no issues at all and at like double the framerate. No excuses for performance problems on PS5 at all, but fortunately it only happens in a select few spots. One of the more interesting ones was during the final boss, but I only remember the final boss having performance issues when I was Super, but being Super made the entire first phase of the fight constantly run at like 50FPS.

Speaking of framerates, the fact that the PS5 and Xbox Series versions don't support higher than 60FPS is baffling, and, once again, there's pretty much no excuse for this, not that I actually have a display that can go higher than that, but it's still disappointing. Consoles are just now finally getting the ability to do stuff that PC games from 30 fucking years ago are natively capable of doing, so take advantage of that shit!

Digital Foundry is saying that the input lag is best on PC, then Switch (!!!) comes in second, then PS5 (yes, it is actually noticeably laggy, unfortunately, but playable, and no, it is not my monitor), and then the Xbox versions are last with apparently relatively high input lag, which is about as odd as Switch outperforming PS5. Sonic Mania apparently has slightly less lag on Switch than on PS4, too, which is also fascinating. I wonder what is going on with that, but that's a different game and a different subject.

DF is also saying that the graphics are basically completely identical on all systems except Switch, so there is probably not much of a difference between PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox aside from loading times and 120FPS on PC, but PC is sadly infested with Denuvo, so fuck that version unless it's removed. Seriously, Sega, get rid of Denuvo and stop using it. Denuvo is fucking awful and it needs to be removed from every single game that has it and then simply stop existing entirely. I know this won't happen, but it should.

Maybe I'll do a big review of Superstars or whatever, but I'm kind of lazy. Might do it this weekend if I have nothing else better to do, which is extremely likely, but I will probably not do it anyway.

Superstars TLDR = it's okay, but go play Mania instead. If you have quite literally any system that can play Superstars, you can play Mania, and you should. Mania is better, 1/3 of the price of Superstars, has better level design, looks significantly better, has significantly better music that actually works properly (it still glitches and stops working on rare occasions, but it's mostly perfect... and, most importantly, way better), doesn't have shitty fucking Denuvo (anymore), has a shitload of mods, has absolutely no framerate problems, doesn't look like shit on Switch, has the complete game with all of the patches on the PS4 disc/Switch cart thingy, isn't impacted by bugs that affect regular gameplay, Knuckles plays way better and doesn't arbitrarily jump off of walls for no apparent reason... yeah, there is literally nothing that Superstars does better than Mania except run at higher framerates on PC.

[ryu]

Props for enduring Sonic Super-average for 30 hours. I can't even bring myself to finish the game.

[Sima Tuna]

A denuvo-infested fake-2d platformer with framerate problems that's laggy on console (aka the version without denuvo) doesn't sound even half decent to me. Whatever engine Sega is using for these fake-2d games, they need to stop. I'm still baffled they could put time and money into a project as amazing as Sonic Mania and then immediately revert back to the lazy slop that drives longtime fans away.

[ryu]

A denuvo-infested fake-2d platformer with framerate problems that's laggy on console (aka the version without denuvo) doesn't sound even half decent to me. Whatever engine Sega is using for these fake-2d games, they need to stop. I'm still baffled they could put time and money into a project as amazing as Sonic Mania and then immediately revert back to the lazy slop that drives longtime fans away.

The game uses Unity. It's in the splash screen. Also Arzest's fault, not Sega's. Well, unless you want to blame Sega for contracting Arzest - which is probably a fair point. Apparently they're known for producing mediocre shovelware. Nintendo contracted them to develop Yoshi's Island 2 and all I ever heard about the game is that it disappointed people

[BrianC]

I'm under the impression that Yoshi's Island DS has many things in common with Sonic Superstars. The game is often mean in ways Nintendo games usually aren't, the aesthetics are questionable, the music is terrible, and the level design varies from surprisingly good to "what the heck is this?".

[XoPachi]

Very fair assessment, Steven.

The game is weird in that once I did beat it, got all the emeralds or whatever, it got more fun to come back to. But the caveat is that it's best played in Time Attack. It's kind of excusing it's crummier design elements, but time attack is where this game shines a little bit more. You don't have to deal with the terrible bosses. The few dumber levels like Golden Capital 2 or all of Egg Factory, you never have to worry about again. The slow as Hell hub trying to rekindle the Generations energy is gone. And since the mode doesn't allow emerald powers, it means you don't have to do this game's hideously terrible special stages to get emeralds.
It's just a much more fluid and balanced experience as someone who doesn't mind just having more Sonic levels to unpack and blitz. Time attack is pretty much the overwhelming majority of my time spent in a Sonic game anyway. It's let me give SuperStars way more time than I initially said I would give it. I'm having a lot of fun in Bridge Island, Speed Jungle, Pinball Carnival, and a good handful of other levels. Working on Sand Sanctuary right now specifically.

It IS a problem that time attack is basically the only thing worth playing long term. But there is some cool stuff about the main mode. The emerald powers are kind of neat ways to expand play in the levels. They do give a new incentive to earn emeralds and go back to that main mode of play for experimentation. They also definitely help with the tedium of bosses. I also think they're a natural evolution of Wisps in that they're a bit of DE-evolution. They aren't heavy handed in their implementation. They're not as excessively context sensitive as Wisps except for one or two. So they feel a bit more free form in their use cases. And the portals that appear to give you some rings and zip you to another part of a level are kinda fun. There's definitely some unique differentiators that aren't mind blowing but aren't problematic. But those bosses, special stages, and some levels you're basically forced to play are just awful spoiling most of the few things the game does well.

I kind of wish there was a leaderboard for emerald times and no emerald times in time attack because being able to use those in that mode would REALLY elevate it even further. Including Mighty, Ray, and maybe one more unlockable character would have been really incredible, maybe the robot you use in the dumbass multiplayer. The custom avatar was one of the only good things in Sonic Forces so it would have been nice to have some kind of return of that freely playable. But 5 characters from the start (as in no required DLC) is quite nice.

But overall, I do like SuperStars. It is definitely not a $60 game, but I'm finding an appreciation for it.
Time attack filters out the biggest issues for me and mods can take care of the rest. Shouldn't come down to that, but that's where I'm at.

[Steven]

The inconsistent quality of the level design is annoying. I didn't even talk about the level design, but it's all over the place, just like the music. The single act zones are really strange, but setting those aside, some stuff is really good, like Bridge Island, which I am considering doing a more detailed analysis of (spoilers: it's really great, in case you forgot what I said just a few words ago), but then you get stuff like Cyber Station, which is cool in theory and has really great art direction but ends up being kind of annoying to actually play, or Golden Crapital Act 2, which takes forever, isn't particularly interesting, and the constant and horrendous noise of your floating platform thing during the agonizingly long boss fight makes you want to shove sharp objects into your ears to make it stop... or just mute the volume.

I have a feeling that this game was probably rushed, just like with most other Sonic games; the weird and very obvious bugs, lack of optimization on PS5, which should have way more than enough power to run the game completely flawlessly at all times and at significantly higher framerates, and wildly inconsistent graphics that seem to get worse as you get farther in the game make me think that a deadline was coming up and they had to hurry to get it good enough to ship but did not have enough time to fully bug check, debug, optimize the game, and polish the graphics. Mario Wonder didn't have a deadline at all, and while I haven't played that yet, that's the sort of care that I'd like Sega to have going forward; let your dev teams, outsourced or not, do their thing while management leaves them the hell alone and gives them as much time as they need.

As for the music, they really should have just let Tee do the whole thing however he wanted with none of this fake Genesis/Mega Drive crap that doesn't even sound like a real Genesis/MD at all anyway aside from the Sonic 2 drums. I know Tee could have done a great soundtrack for this game and elevated the entire experience in doing so, but Sega decided to be stupid again. The sound balance in this game is also absolutely terrible.

Not related, but yes, Penny's Big Breakaway is most definitely allowed here since it's Sonic-adjacent-ish because it's made by a bunch of people who made Sonic Mania. Yeah, I'm being extremely loose with that Sonic-adjacent definition, but it's all good and I want to play it anyway and I imagine most people who like Sonic probably also will.

[Sima Tuna]

I just figured all sonic-likes are allowed here. There aren't that many, honestly. Panic Porcupine, Polyroll, Freedom Planet, Spark the Electric Jester and the new game you already mentioned. That's about it.

[XoPachi]

Yeah! I'm glad it wasn't just me thinking the audio balancing was so bad! It honestly did the few really nice songs a huge disservice. The music is such a strange situation in general. It has an identity crisis. You get Tee Lopes making fire as usual. Then you put Jun Senoue on the shitty Sonic 4 instruments nobody likes. Then they have straight up modern VGM for places like Cyber Station and out of nowhere for Frozen Base Act Tails, it's someone actually using a legitimate 2612 tracker. Like what is going on?

The aforementioned Tails stage, Speed Jungle, Pinball Carnival 1, and Lagoon City are all very nice. And some have potential like Press Factory 1 if they didn't use the Sonic 4 stuff. There's others I liked, but inconsistency is seriously the best way to describe the whole package. It does reek of management meddling. You're right. Mario Wonder has it's own caveats but is absolutely more fleshed out and cohesive.

I want to say I enjoyed most of the levels. I think for me it really is just Golden Capital 2, Egg Factory, and Lagoon City 2 (but that's more me just hating Sonic's underwater levels and less of it being badly designed). Sky Temple is weird as shit. Pinball Carnival should have been the only one with pinball gimmicks and it actually handles them very well. But Sky Temple and Golden Capital have terrible versions of Carnival's gimmicks for some bizarre reason. It's totally out of place in Sky Temple as if they needed to fill the level with some interactable in a place that actually already has enough going for it. Even the visual elements of it clash. You're in some ancient arcane wind temple and then suddenly these pastel color arcade sections pop up inorganically. It's a shame because aside from it's visuals, HORRENDOUS boss, and the pinball stuff it's a very decent level.

[Sima Tuna]

Sonic underwater levels have potential. I forget which games it is where you can get a shield that lets you breathe. I think the underwater levels in Sonic could be fun if there were more ways to extend your air time beyond bubble camping or outright negating the timer. Rain World allows your slugcat to carry "bubble weed" which you can use to extend your breathing limit underwater. But it doesn't negate the need to breathe entirely.

Part of what I don't like about Sonic's underwater gameplay is how slowly he tends to move. If there were an aquatic character you could pick who had fast or free movement, that could also improve underwater gameplay. A bit strange to me that a game full of woodland critters doesn't have any aquatic mammal in the character select. No Penny the Platypus? Actually, if the movement were faster or more limited underwater, I might not care at all about the air timer. What annoys me about Sonic's underwater gameplay is that slowness combined with a feeling of frustration due to the strange physics (no doubt intentional) plus the ticking down of the timer. The end result of this because (for me) a sense of exasperation that Sonic isn't moving the way I feel he should, and that my failure is therefore not entirely my fault when he dies. Inb4 git gud scrub. I know that's probably a "me" issue, but I don't think underwater sonic is very fun even when I'm able to navigate successfully. I'm always so relieved when the underwater sections are over and I can return to standard physics. Compared to, say, Mario World, where underwater levels are great fun because of how free and fast Mario can move. He really scoots, especially when holding a shell!

[XoPachi]

Sonic Colors gave him an infinite jump, basically a swim, in the water. But it was also where drill wisp would shine. They compensated this by making Aquarium Park's submerged areas utterly massive with a lot to interact with.

[Steven]

I just figured all sonic-likes are allowed here. There aren't that many, honestly. Panic Porcupine, Polyroll, Freedom Planet, Spark the Electric Jester and the new game you already mentioned. That's about it.

You are correct in that all Sonic-type stuff, in addition to all official and unofficial Sonic stuff in general, is okay here.

Another game worth mentioning is Time Dominator on the Mega Drive, which I highly recommend trying. It is very rare and quite expensive, but it's good aside from some occasional slowdown, but even that doesn't really hurt the game very much. The worst thing about it is that it was very clearly intended to be played over composite video or RF. In every other case I'm going to say fuck composite and RF completely and use RGB (or S-video if you are fortunate enough to have a Wondermega), but this is the only game on the system where I'm going to outright recommend playing with composite or RF.

Yeah! I'm glad it wasn't just me thinking the audio balancing was so bad! It honestly did the few really nice songs a huge disservice.

It's really bad. Can't hear the Golden Crapital Act 2 boss music over the droning sound effects, but even if you could, the boss music is not very good anyway, so in either situation you get to hear something disappointing. Final boss has cool music, though... by this game's standards, anyway.

BTW Tee posted the full list of stuff that he did for Superstars on Twitter, and here it is:

- Opening/Title Screen (Arranger)*
- Bridge Island Act 1 (Arranger)*
- Bridge Island Act 2 (Arranger/Co-composer)*
- Speed Jungle Act 1 (Composer)
- Sand Sanctuary Act 1 (Composer)
- Lagoon City Act 2 (Composer)
- Chaos Emerald Special Stage (Composer)
- Super Sonic (Co-composer)*
- Invincibility (Co-composer)*

* with Jun Senoue

Sonic underwater levels have potential.

Hydrocity and Aquatic Ruin are some of the best zones in their respective games and Hydrocity is one of the best in the entire franchise, so I tend to agree. Aquarium Park is also a lot of fun. The interesting part about Aquatic Ruin Act 2 is that the fastest and most fun path is probably the very bottom path through the deepest part of the water, so water levels are absolutely possible to do properly in Sonic.

[ryu]

I played multiplayer with two friends last night. The game couldn't keep a steady framerate and would often make very noticeable jumps that felt like the characters were teleporting around the stage. Then it couldn't keep track of who to focus and everyone kept being pushed out of the game like Tails in Sonic 2 and 3. Every couple minutes the game faded into a blue PS4 system screen for a second or so. God knows why. Sometimes players would be unable to reenter the game for no discernible reason.

What a mess.

Oh and there was that part where we fell out of the stage because the game couldn't keep up with loading the terrain and collisioni data.

Hydrocity and Aquatic Ruin are some of the best zones in their respective games and Hydrocity is one of the best in the entire franchise, so I tend to agree. Aquarium Park is also a lot of fun. The interesting part about Aquatic Ruin Act 2 is that the fastest and most fun path is probably the very bottom path through the deepest part of the water, so water levels are absolutely possible to do properly in Sonic.

Yes. I have no idea why people complain about Sonics's underwater zones. I even like Labyrinth Zone a lot.

[Steven]

I played multiplayer with two friends last night. The game couldn't keep a steady framerate and would often make very noticeable jumps that felt like the characters were teleporting around the stage. Then it couldn't keep track of who to focus and everyone kept being pushed out of the game like Tails in Sonic 2 and 3. Every couple minutes the game faded into a blue PS4 system screen for a second or so. God knows why. Sometimes players would be unable to reenter the game for no discernible reason.

What a mess.

That sounds quite miserable. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but most of the reviews that I have read have mentioned that it's pretty terrible.

Oh and there was that part where we fell out of the stage because the game couldn't keep up with loading the terrain and collisioni data.

You too, huh? Lol this game has some problems.

It's always been comparatively easy to break collision in Sonic games, usually by jumping into a hill or something when moving at extremely high speeds, but here you don't even need to do that because you can easily fall outside the game boundary by simply using Knux's (now really slow) glide or something similar in the wrong place to end up between two separate planes on the Z axis. It's really somewhat concerning when this can be done as early as the first act in the first zone.

I even like Labyrinth Zone a lot.

I mostly like Labyrinth and I like it more than Spring Yard, which I consider to be the true low point of Sonic 1. Making Labyrinth mostly underwater was probably a big mistake and I wonder why they thought that was a good idea. It is too bad they decided not to use the awesome prototype version of the Labyrinth background, though, as I think it's better than the final one.

[Lander]

It's always been comparatively easy to break collision in Sonic games, usually by jumping into a hill or something when moving at extremely high speeds, but here you don't even need to do that because you can easily fall outside the game boundary by simply using Knux's (now really slow) glide or something similar in the wrong place to end up between two separate planes on the Z axis. It's really somewhat concerning when this can be done as early as the first act in the first zone.

And the Z axis shouldn't even factor into a 2D gameplay simulation, amateur hour! Even if it does nifty stuff like paths that branch in 3D, a good engineer would keep the traversible space 2D and partition it into a tree structure that you can't accidentally 'escape' from.