PS3 concerns ignite Xbox 2 support?

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[quote=“Lance Way”]

I can’t remember if I found this out from a genuinely reliable source, but I’ve read somewhere at least half-convincing that this game is Sonic Heroes 2. But of course, that wouldn’t be particularly surprising (given, as Abadd says, that Sonic Heroes sold)…[/quote]

Yeah, I read that it was Sonic Heroes 2, too, but like you said, that wouldn’t be surprising when considering how many copies the original Sonic Heroes sold for Sega. I would have been surprised if a new 3D Sonic game hadn’t gone into development already.

Even though I’m not the biggest fan of the Sonic franchise, as long as it helps keep Sega afloat then you won’t see me complaining

142

I already asked before but since no one answered :

what’s so bad about Sonic Heroes?

143

Although I haven’t played it myself, from the reviews I’ve read and the opinions I’ve heard it’s meant to be fairly mediocre. As Sonic Adventure 2 did strike me personally as being fairly mediocre (in comparison to SA1, which felt considerably more rounded and polished in my opinion), this wouldn’t surprise me. Though like you said above, when a game gets pretty heavily criticised I often have the urge to play it anyway, out of curiosity…

144

Sonic Heroes is the first game I’ve had to actually admit was below average. I can find five main problems with it.

  1. The overall level design is really poor. Basically, you’re jumping from platform to platform over a MASSIVE pit. The levels are nowhere near as large as, say, Sonic Adventure 1 or 2. Instead, you have various thin ledges where a wrong button press or an enemy attack which no human being could have avoided sends you over the edge, lowering your score to Zero and stopping you getting an A grade. Similarly, the special stages were a poor imitation of the Sonic 2/Sonic 3D blast ones, and it was oh so easily to have your character mysteriously run onto the ceiling, before dropping down and losing valuable time.

  2. There were quite a few bugs in the game. Examples: switching between team members directly after a hit (i.e. you’ve lost your rings) ends the post-hit invulnerablity and ends up that you take two hits almost instantaneously, killing you and doing the whole score reset thing. The character vs character boss battles sometimes ended after 9 seconds because the game glitched, sending the bosses off, or rather straight through, the stage. The complete lack of a character failing to jump when you could have sworn you pressed the button.

  3. The team idea was nice in theory, but it doesn’t work very well in practise. To play the game properly, you need to make constant switches. Level one: Speed to start with, then power to go through the robot, then fly to get past the gap. Then power again to all the items on the loop, Speed to light dash, power to defeat the enemies, flight to get up on the ledge… and all the while you get the same voice clips again and again. “I’ll take it from here.” “I’ll take it from here.” “Annhiliate” “I’ll take it…” “Annhiliate” “I’ll take it…”…

  4. The game’s structure just isn’t Sonic. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 both had serious effects of speed in them: try doing Mission 4 on Radical Highway (SA2) for an example, or the first section of Speed Highway on SA1. This game requires you to beat up loads of robots in order to get a passing grade, which slows gameplay down and makes it boring. Also, robots now take more than one hit from most characters until they are “levelled up” RPG style, which also resets…yep…if you die. Normal robots take 3 hits. Bosses take (get this) 99. Unless you use power. Annhiliate. Annhiliate. I’ll take it from here! You get the idea. Oh, and Rocket Boost is the most useless Sonic move EVER.

  5. The game has five stories, including the Final story, which combine to form the overall story. Except…the stories suck, and have very little to do with the previous games.

  • Oh look, Shadow is still alive! How? Why? Is he a clone? Is he the real one? How did he survive SA2’s fall from the ARK? No answers!

  • Where the heck were Team Chaotix in the last two SA games?

  • Why is Rouge chasing “Eggman’s treasure” when he has no apparent source of income?

  • How does going through a haunted castle help Sonic to get onto Eggman’s fleet towards the end of the game?

  • Why…actually, let’s not talk about Chaotix’s “mystery mansion” missions.

And the final boss was just a bad idea. The bad guy on his own would have rocked, but we get a Perfect Chaos clone instead.

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Wow, that was a pretty great summary. There goes any of my intention to play the game. Thank you for saving me time and money! SA1 was the best recent Sonic game I think.

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If you can get it preowned for ?15/$25, it’s probably still worth buying for a quick blast through, especially for the quotes.

147

[quote=“Abadd”]
As for the hiring of inexperienced people, most companies do that. It’s the best way to get cheaper labor and mold them to your desires. “Code monkeys,” as they’re sometimes referred to. And it’s actually usually the marketing guys that push for the resurrection of older IP. It’s much easier to market/sell than bringing something new to the market. The awareness levels are already there to a degree, and it gives you the excuse to be able to say things like, “The classic _______ is back in action!” even if nobody really cared about it. A lot of aspiring developers want to leave their own personal mark in the industry, to they want to create new stuff. If you’re a creative type, why shackle yourself with someone else’s vision, when you’ve got a million ideas of your own? <-- is most likely what they’re thinking.[/quote]

Well yes I believe that was the case for CHU CHU ROCKET which was an idea from a code monkey that was working in Sonic Team at the time.

[quote=“Abadd”]Actually, if a game was truly in development, it probably wouldn’t be mentioned at all. That would more likely get them in trouble than anything. Most of the time, developers drop little hints like that to try and stir up some interest to gauge reactions. Shinobi, I’m pretty sure, had been talked about for years, but the decision to actually move forward with the title wasn’t made until about 2001. It was meant to be a more “western” style action game, but IMO, didn’t really achieve that goal

.[/quote]

That’s my point. The interview appeared during spring 2001. So he was hinting at games that they might/are making. It was definatly ready to go ahead to be developed as a project as you have stated. it would be intresting to find out went exactly this game got the greenlight.

[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]

I can’t remember if I found this out from a genuinely reliable source, but I’ve read somewhere at least half-convincing that this game is Sonic Heroes 2. But of course, that wouldn’t be particularly surprising (given, as Abadd says, that Sonic Heroes sold)…

Yeah, I read that it was Sonic Heroes 2, too, but like you said, that wouldn’t be surprising when considering how many copies the original Sonic Heroes sold for Sega. I would have been surprised if a new 3D Sonic game hadn’t gone into development already.

Even though I’m not the biggest fan of the Sonic franchise, as long as it helps keep Sega afloat then you won’t see me complaining[/quote]

Wasn’t SONIC HEROES developed by an outside studio? This SONIC game may be the one that YUJI is actually working on. Besides another SONIC game is heading for the NDS according to what he said in that interview.
I’m holding out that it will be SONIC VS. MARIO considering he said that Sonic Team will be concentrating on the ps2 from now on. It sounds like this new Sonic game is an NGC exclusive so it can’t be SONIC HEROES 2.

148

I’m quite sure that it’s indeed a Sonic Team game, though as I say I haven’t played it myself; can you confirm this, Arcie? I know that most gaming press sites automatically credit any Sonic games to the Sonic Team, so searching online isn’t particularly helpful… as far as I know, the recent Sonic games on the Game Boy Advance were created by another Sega studio, though.

Unless there’s been some news on this front that I’m unaware of, an actual Sonic / Mario crossover would seem fairly unlikely; it would either involve one company licensing out its most important franchise to the other so that a crossover game could be made by an existing team - and it wouldn’t seem likely that either company would trust the other enough to do that, as I’m sure we can agree that Mario and Sonic are a different matter to F-Zero - or it would involve an actual working collaboration between teams from Sega of Japan and Nintendo of Japan to complete the project, which would of course seem fairly unlikely also…

149

I would n’t say it was an impossibility. Nintendo has been lending their characters out to other companies lately as a secret character or bonus in their Gamecube games. Sega has become Nintendo’s important third parties to the Gamecube. So Having Mario appear in a Sega game isn’t that unlikely depending if Sega wanted to do it.

150

It depends what kind of an appearance it would be… something like Link’s cameo in Soul Caliber wouldn’t seem as unlikely, but an actual game where Sonic and Mario shared the limelight sounds like too much of a logistical nightmare as far as company and developer politics are concerned… I’d assume that relations between Sega and Nintendo are better now than they ever have been, but when it comes to their single biggest franchises, and the prospect of combining those franchises… it would be a much bigger step than any IP licensing that’s been done in the past, and I’m relatively sure that neither company would feel comfortable doing it as things stand.

151

Screw your politics I want my SONIC VS MARIO game :anjou_happy: LOL.

I dunno It probably won’t happen. But I definatly know that SONIC HEROES 2 is not.

The big question of the day is of course that is it going to be a true SONIC game?

152

I remember Naka-san mentioning something fairly recently about Sonic “getting back to his roots”. Maybe this is said game.

153

I hated Sonic Heroes so much… It didn’t even feel like a sonic game. It made me sad.

154

[quote=“Lance Way”]

I’m quite sure that it’s indeed a Sonic Team game, though as I say I haven’t played it myself; can you confirm this, Arcie? I know that most gaming press sites automatically credit any Sonic games to the Sonic Team, so searching online isn’t particularly helpful… as far as I know, the recent Sonic games on the Game Boy Advance were created by another Sega studio, though.[/quote]

I’ve got Sonic Advance 3, and it comes up with the “Created By Sonic Team” logo at the start. I think there’s more than one Sonic Team though, one in America, and one in Japan, although I could be wrong about that.

Sonic Heroes (spit) also comes up with the Sonic Team logo at the start.

I wonder if the next Sonic game will use the Sonic Heroes engine. I sure hope not… the Heroes engine could use some serious improvements. The movement felt too limited, and it was far to easy to fall off things (one punch too many as Knuckles and you’ll find yourself hurtling over the edge to your death).

To be honest, I prefer the recent 2D Sonic games on GBA than Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes… they’re just more fun.

155

The game flopped in Japan but was sucessful everywhere else. Which will mean we may never see another SONIC HEROES game again as Sega always takes into consideration the desires of their japanese market over
the western ones when it was the western Sega fanbase that basically
got them to where they are now…

SONIC ADVENTURE DX and the MEGA COLLECTION did well for them in japan
which is why we got another MC game. I know the GBA SONIC games has
done and scored better than their 3D counterparts.

156

Maybe that’s the reason they don’t take them much into consideration :-P~~

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As far as I’m aware, the Sonic Advance games were made by a Japanese team called Dimps - or possibly DIMPS - who’d previously made Sonic Pocket Adventure for the NeoGeo Pocket Color, and who for the Advance games worked under the general guidance and supervision of Sonic Team. This might not have been the case for Sonic Advance 3, but on the other hand Sonic Team might have thought that they were “involved” enough in the project to add their logo to it, I guess. The old Sonic handheld games for the GameGear (and their Master System counterparts) weren’t made by Sonic Team either, but that’s probably more well-known.

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[quote=“Al3xand3r”]

Maybe that’s the reason they don’t take them much into consideration :-P~~[/quote]

Yeah,But seriously if Sega relied on the japanese to sell their products they would have pulled out of the home console front after the Master System era.

DIMPS are the people who make GUILTY GEAR for Sammy are n’t they? So they’re basically working or owned by Sega now. I’m not suprised that they have made better Sonic games than Sonic Team themselves. As far as i know regardless of who made the latest SONIC game Sonic Team will always have their logo in the front as they originated the character and keep up the illusion that they still make good SONIC games

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Since we’re talking about Sonic…

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