Why Sonic Boom's new style is the way to go.

MagnaderAlpha said:
I really hated that kind of shit. ESPECIALLY back then(which I was an actual teenager, senior in high school, no less). I guess I grew contempt for all that "Yo yo yo, look how hip and phat weez can BE!" because it was all in my face. It's the reason I never got into Jet Set Radio, and the reason I hate the phat urban look of The World Ends With You(and probably why I'll never bring myself to play it despite hearing good things about it). When stuff changes to appeal to a specific demographic(by way of trend), it just feels phony to me. It's the equivalent of The Simpson's Poochie.
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I'm on the opposite end of this opinion.

Dreamcast-era Sega made some brave visual design decisions, and pulling Sonic out of the "cartoon" mire that console mascots were stuck in at the time was one of them.

It wasn't an attempt to appeal to a certain "demographic", it was an attempt to differentiate themselves and breathe new life into game design.
 
Silky said:
Knuckles has always been 'the big guy', whereas Tails was the 'Lancer' of the trio.



That's Tails in a nutshell. Conversely, think Vector (The Idiot.) and Espio (The Stoic one.) This quote in general describes Knuckles, especially in the Comic series.
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Tails has some traits of the lancer role but not entirely because his differences are never played up to foil the main character. The lancer is closer to being a rival than a sidekick. Knuckes' differences as a character were constantly juxtaposed to Sonic's, which goes back to my original point, on why they were the same size.

In the older games where they fought, if Knuckles was twice the size as Sonic, , then it wouldn't make much of an actual rivalry.
 
RagnarokX said:
This has long been a problem with Sonic Team. You know we almost didn't even get Sonic 3. Yuji Naka thought 2 similar Sonic games was enough and they should radically change things up. He originally wanted to make it a 3D isometric game. The only reason we got another 2D Platformer out of them was because the technology wouldn't have been ready in time for the release date Sega wanted and they shut it down. Eventually we got Sonic 3D Blast and boy was that awful.
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Didn't know that bit, Sonic 3D blast was a game I managed to enjoy because I was a kid and loved Sonic, but it kind of was the beginning of the end. I enjoyed SA1 a lot as a kid too but, playing it today it's pretty bad, but SA2 is still good if you're good at it. Sonic needs a reboot but no one at Sega is competent enough to handle that task with grace, I imagine if Nintendo were given the IP they would be able to do the job and make it sell again (assuming their hardware isn't tanking anyways)
 
Can I just get potbelly Sonic back, please? I didn't care much for Adventure's designs or what came after it, old school Sonic style was a-okay with me.
 
goldenpp72 said:
Didn't know that bit, Sonic 3D blast was a game I managed to enjoy because I was a kid and loved Sonic, but it kind of was the beginning of the end. I enjoyed SA1 a lot as a kid too but, playing it today it's pretty bad, but SA2 is still good if you're good at it. Sonic needs a reboot but no one at Sega is competent enough to handle that task with grace, I imagine if Nintendo were given the IP they would be able to do the job and make it sell again (assuming their hardware isn't tanking anyways)
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Isn't Nintendo's influence one of the main reasons why Sonic: Lost World is shit sandwiches?
 
There's something about Sonic's new body that's messing with my head. Like, my brain is trying to relate to a body, as one would a face, but the shape is so weird that it doesn't come out right.
 
goldenpp72 said:
Didn't know that bit, Sonic 3D blast was a game I managed to enjoy because I was a kid and loved Sonic, but it kind of was the beginning of the end. I enjoyed SA1 a lot as a kid too but, playing it today it's pretty bad, but SA2 is still good if you're good at it. Sonic needs a reboot but no one at Sega is competent enough to handle that task with grace, I imagine if Nintendo were given the IP they would be able to do the job and make it sell again (assuming their hardware isn't tanking anyways)
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It's just crazy that a guy that didn't want to "keep making Sonic games" kept being in control of the IP for so long.
 
Sonic definitely doesn't look better with blue arms. Whole reason they were peach was so you could make them out from his body, similar to why Mario wears overalls. As it is, they blend in too much.

Doesn't help that I've been trained to see blue arms as a coloring error for 23 years, give or take. That will never look right to me.

It's really the only sticking point I have. Tails looks great. Amy needed a new outfit anyway, she's been wearing the same one since 1998. Eggman's open lapel is badass. I don't even mind swole Knuckles as much as I thought I would. Sonic's proportions don't look too bad to me (well, other than that one from-behind shot of the Wii U game). It's just I keep seeing something I've always seen as an error, and can't get over it.
 
jstripes said:
I'm on the opposite end of this opinion.

Dreamcast-era Sega made some brave visual design decisions, and pulling Sonic out of the "cartoon" mire that console mascots were stuck in at the time was one of them.

It wasn't an attempt to appeal to a certain "demographic", it was an attempt to differentiate themselves and breathe new life into game design.
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Yea Dreamcast Sega did a lot of new, amazing stuff.
 
Sonic is legit way past whatever it was or could be. Im sorry but theres been way too many iterations for them to have an consistent long term fan. Mario is consistent. The type of games etcs change around him but you know what your are getting with mario. A fucking italian pudgey plumber of medium height with a mustache and M hat. No substantial tweaks. No longer legs and smaller noses. No added scarves. I think aonic may be the longest running franchise that jumped the shark the earliest.

Sry OP, these designs arent much of an improvement at all - i hope youre not in the art industry.

I feel like these designs resemble when crash bandicoot changed designs... Woof!
 
I think the new character designs are a regression.

As with most things, simple is better, and the new character designs added completely unnecessary complexity in order to provide a bit more juvenile/hip look to appeal to younger audiences.

I think Sonic's "Adventure" redesign was in good taste and felt like a proper modernisation of the classic character, just as Megaman X felt like a proper modernisation of Megaman, but this Sonic, within this context, looks rather silly in my opinion, and what they did to Knuckles' body is quite ridiculous.

It seems like this was a design made to enforce stereotypes more than it was to appeal to a larger audience. And it might just work in terms of sales, but as a long-time fan of Sonic the hedgehog, as someone who's accompanied the franchise from its very start, I am quite disappointed. But of course, like all opinions, this is just how I personally feel.
 
I think they put the bandages and scarf for one reason:

The animators have trouble transitioning from one body part to the other. How to draw a neck gave them fits, how to draw wrists gave them fits... So they cover it up with a weird scarf and a ton of weird bandages. The scarf could work on another character, something to animate which might show speed, but ... I just don't really get it on Sonic.

rvy said:
Why is hipster Sonic wearing a scarf?
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Because .. it's not just about going fast anymore. Sonic is really sensitive to that, you guys.
 
Silky said:
Isn't Nintendo's influence one of the main reasons why Sonic: Lost World is shit sandwiches?
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Lost world isn't shit, but I also doubt Nintendo had any real hands on influence to the project. Nintendo owning Sonic would mean they own a series that was only second to their own primary mascot. Sonic is bigger then Zelda in terms of highest selling game/most exposure, so i'm sure they would put the resources behind it to make sure the series is done right. This isn't their series or their studio so I doubt they put too much effort into it, but I can't say for sure since I don't know it's development history.
 
They're all cool with me except for Knuckles. He looks so stupid.
 
Silky said:
He came back in '11



Sonic's been copying Mario and putting it's own spin on it since the 90s. Some work out swimmingly (Sonic ASRT, Pinball Party, Battle to a lesser extent.) and others...well...
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Right, but the reason people keep wishing to see a Sonic game made by Nintendo is because Nintendo is generally very on the ball with game design and knowing how to play to the strengths of a particular IP.
 
Anticitizen One said:
Do 5-12 year old boys even listen to Skrillex though? Banarang is like a 4 year old song at this point.
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You'd be surprised. Even so I guess you'd have to look at it from the point of view and perspective of the agency that put this together. They probably have a stereotypical image of the oh so alien and crazy civilization known as young boys aka the young teen :p
 
zeopower6 said:
Is this going to end up like the Sonic games that were retconned out of existence?
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I think it's going to be more like the old Dic cartoons, which got one spinoff game each (Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine for AoStH, Sonic Spinball for SatAM) and had no further bearing on the franchise. Basically, an entirely different canon, produced at a concurrent time with the mainline one, featuring similar characters, but that's about it.
 
DryEyeRelief said:
Giving Sonic a talking sword or turning him into a werewolf or making a game with Shadow as the star is totally trying to appeal to nostalgia.
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shadow the hedgehog was made to appease the grimdark sonic fans, but between unleashed and the wii-spin offs pre-colours was trying to recapture the whimsy of pre-adventure sonic

and then we have colours, generations, and lost world where the nostalgia baiting bubbles to the surface

and sonic 4, which is in itself an incredibly shameless attempt at playing on nostalgia (and coincidentally completely lacking anything that made the originals great)

sega has been juggling sonic as a brand for going on ten years now. they don't feel they can unify the fanbase.
 
The Sonic fanbase will never be unified. SEGA needs to stop catering to the fanbase.

Just make what they know what a Sonic game is. Colors was a sign of them doing what they wanted to do. Generations was a nod to past works.
 
rvy said:
Not sure how much different it would be. He's just a furry wearing a scarf now.
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It probably is more relevant to Knuckles since he's veeerryyy different now.

Shadow Hog said:
I think it's going to be more like the old Dic cartoons, which got one spinoff game each (Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine for AoStH, Sonic Spinball for SatAM) and had no further bearing on the franchise. Basically, an entirely different canon, produced at a concurrent time with the mainline one, featuring similar characters, but that's about it.
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I mean more like... they're going to pretend these games never existed, lol.
 
I'm probably one of the few people that likes Knuckles new design because he actually looks different from the hedgehogs now.

He's supposed to be an echidna but he looked too similar to sonic to really give off the impression that he wasn't just another hedgehog.
 
zeopower6 said:
I mean more like... they're going to pretend these games never existed, lol.
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Well, just like the Dic cartoons, Sonic Boom isn't hitting Japan in either its game or cartoon incarnations, and since Japan is where the rest of the series is developed... it basically will be like they never existed!
 
Anticitizen One said:
Sonic Boom's style is just as unnecessary as the 00s redo of Sonic. The original character designs are fine. There is a reason Nintendo rarely fucks with Mario's design.
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Mario's design evolved too, and it's actually comparable to Classic Sonic to Modern Sonic's evolution.

The Sonic model from 2008 onward was perfect really,
 
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Chuck said:
Why does he need shoe bandages?
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Why do pant legs need ten bootstraps? In the late 90s, early 00s, it's like to show how EXTREME someone was, they had to have bootstraps all over every arm, leg and chest in comics and games. They served absolutely no purpose either.
 
Silky said:
So you don't like 'urban culture.' More power to you. But I can assure you that Sonic's been 'urban' since his inception.

scd-misc-cheatsimg6.png
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It's kinda a rebellious thing, I guess. I grew up in a heavily urban area where that shit was beating me in the FACE. Some people go with the flow, others go against the grain.

That being said, that pic isn't THAT bad.

jstripes said:
I'm on the opposite end of this opinion.

Dreamcast-era Sega made some brave visual design decisions, and pulling Sonic out of the "cartoon" mire that console mascots were stuck in at the time was one of them.

It wasn't an attempt to appeal to a certain "demographic", it was an attempt to differentiate themselves and breathe new life into game design.
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Whatever floats your boat. Oddly enough, I actually don't mind the Sonic Boom designs.
 
Disagreed.

You call the Modern look lanky, yet stick up for the Boom look which is twice as lanky?

And being able to tell the character types at the slightest glance isn't really a good thing. Now people will just look at the characters and go "Oh, he's the stereotypical muscle man of the group, and that's the generic smart one". It's not so bad for Tails I guess, but Knuckles looked a whole lot better when he looked stron but not like a complete musclehead.
 
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