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[Piers]

Did the Sonic fanbase went weird before or after that game?
If it was after, I blame Sega.

I think it was arguably Sonichu that inadvertently shun a giant spotlight on the Sonic community and the rest kind of spiralled out of control. Star Fox, Final Fantasy, Digimon, etc. all fall into the same "weird internet fetish" shit, to the same degree as Sonic.

But also, I suppose, the fact Sonic had so many crap titles compared to Mario was also a morbid highlight.

 

[Ferr986]

The saddest part of this game is that the setting and idea behind it were excellent and was exactly where the series needed to go. The focus on story, speed stages and puzzle aspects in the hub world was perfect, it wasn't afraid to introduce new characters or banish old ones and it genuinely felt like the last Sonic game that was trying to be a market leading platformer. It was hugely ambitious, which is why so many were excited for it.

The game was of course a mess technically and performance wise but I felt with another year of development to fix the rampant performance and bug issues it could have actually been a very good game.
The unfortunate legacy of this failure is SEGA just simply never tried again with Sonic. The last 10 years for the series has been nothing but one and done gimmick ideas, nostalgia pandering a child focused attempted reboot. It pains to think of what could have been for the series if Sonic 2006 had been successful.

Nope, just nope. The FF style setting clash with the Sonic character, it looks plain wrong, like Sonic was a dude in a suit. Sonic characters aren't suited for this style.

The story sucked. It's felt like Sega x Nomura collab where they made shit convolupted for no reason. It's like a bad shonen, something that, again, clash with the usual Sonic style.

NPCs sucked. I mean, Elise. Nuff said. Bitch had to be rescued like 3 friggin times during the game

Hub was big yet empty, joyless, boring. Unleashed did it way better, smaller but more varied and detailed hubs. Same with the stages really, compare how boring 06 stages looks with the colorful and beautiful areas from Colors.

Most zones were trash. A couple of them were good but most had just plain bad level design. And let's not talk to the stages where you have to carry Elise's ass. Wtf was the point of that?

There was nothing ambitious towards it, it was basically a new Sonic Adventure entry, but even worse than SA2.

So yeah, even if it was the most polished Sonic ever, it would still be a polished turd. Sonic 06 was rotten from the core. It felt like a shitty non Sonic game where they slapped Sonic far into development. The loading times, bad controls and shit framerate were the lesser of my problems with it.


Can't believe this was the first game I bought for my 360, I was totally exited about it.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

I should check my old hard drives to see if I still have the leaked script from when this game was in development. There were a couple funny/odd things in the character profile section.

This would be amazing to read through, lmk if you find it.

 

[Kthulhu]

I felt the need to include this.

 

[GamerJM]

People want this game remastered. Which is the most damning thing I can say about us Sonic fans.

I don't want it "remastered," but I wouldn't mind a remake that just totally overhauled the whole thing (but kept the core gameplay) and made the cutscenes more self-aware with how stupid they are.

 

[Professor Beef]

I don't want it "remastered," but I wouldn't mind a remake that just totally overhauled the whole thing (but kept the core gameplay) and made the cutscenes more self-aware with how stupid they are.

With the amount of effort required, why not just have them make a good game instead? Nobody sane wants a new Sonic 06.

 

[fast_taker]

Screw all Sonic games except the Genesis/Megadrive games...

Sonic R on Saturn was great!
please remove it from the Screw Sonic Games list

 

[MrBadger]

I don't want it "remastered," but I wouldn't mind a remake that just totally overhauled the whole thing (but kept the core gameplay) and made the cutscenes more self-aware with how stupid they are.

What'd be the point in that?

If they released it on Steam, I'm sure a bunch of fans would fix it for free. Sonic fans are like that, they ported all the good levels from Unleashed into Generations

 

[The Flash]

Where's my Anniversary Remaster?!

 

[Hitlersaurus Christ]

Late responses, but here goes:

This would be amazing to read through, lmk if you find it.

I couldn't find it personally but it turns out there's a link on Sonic Retro's game page. I checked and it's the same one. Here are the major highlights:

• A change log of the script. It's in Japanese and it seems to have started after the script itself was first written, but you can see the dates when the names of characters who said lines were corrected, when the formatting was changed to match Sonic Heroes's script (or something similar. It's just about periods and commas.) and the dates when Silver was changed from Venice and Elise was changed from Oliga. (Note: This isn't part of the document but Shiro Maekawa --who was one of the people who worked on the script (and was responsible for the plot of SA2 and Heroes, as well as the Chao garden system)-- named her Origa after the singer but was told it didn't sound feminine enough)
  
• The script is the same as the final as far as I can tell, though it's broken down by individual lines and how long the recording of them has to be. There's a couple lines that were broken down into two recordings. (IE a 6 second line with two sentences being broken up into 4 seconds for one sentenece and 2 for the other)
  
• There's a very unorganized list of Japanese and English voice actors, though it seems that none of the newer characters like Silver or Elise had been chosen yet. It lists Blaze's voice actress by both her actual name and credits name which I found interesting.
  
• The character profile section is what I found most interesting. The main characters like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles seem the same as usual, though at the very least Knuckles's profile text seems familiar. I think I remember at least parts of it from the original SA2 website from before it came out. (15 years ago I know but I remember weird stuff like that). Amy's Japanese profile has her listed as both Amy Rose and Rosie the Rascal. Otherwise the major characters seem like their usual profiles.
  
• From Rouge's profile: In the games, she shows some interest in Shadow, but in Sonic X, she also has something of a love-hate relationship with Knuckles
  
• Shadow's profile has no mention of Shadow the Hedgehog (the game), and says he's still missing most of his memories and the English version of his profile says it's unknown if he has the same "murderous traits" as his SA2 incarnation. However, the Japanese profile (they're shown side by side btw) differs, instead saying that it's unknown if he's the same Shadow as in SA2. So I'm guessing they just didn't bother updating his profile from the document they used for Sonic Heroes.
  
• Speaking of not updating profiles, Blaze's is a bit strange. It says she wears a cloak to hide her ability to control flames because she was treated strangely for it. Some of the unused concept art for Sonic Rush has her with a cape, so I'm assuming they just copy/pasted her internal profile from Sonic Rush.
  The Japanese version of the profile uses the term tsundere while describing her personality which I found kinda amusing. At the end of the profile it mentions that she has a weird outfit under the cape and she's very self conscious about being flat. Alright then Sega. No mention of her being from the future at all.
  
• Silver's picture is a 2D Adventure-style illustration with weird looking eyes and orange fur around his neck. The profile starts off with "(The below is all temporary)" and while most of the rest is pretty much what you'd expect, instead of mentioning his telekinesis it just says he has strange powers that can draw upon the chaos emeralds and it's unknown where he got them. Then it just says to think Trunks from DBZ, both in the Japanese and English versions.
  
• Elise's profile (also labeled temporary) is... well, it's accurate to how she is in the game. The only interesting part is that it says the key to releasing the demon 「FORCE: Iblis」 is her despair. So I guess at some point Iblis had a cool anime name.
  
• There's brief descriptions of the King and some generic NPCs like Elise's maid. They have what looks like concept art of them though it's very sketchy and small.
  
• Eggman is once again mentioned to be a feminist. That's been part of his profiles since the classic Sonic days yet never seems to come up. Same profile as usual.
  
• Mephiles's profile is the strangest to me because it has parts that don't make sense and don't fit up with what's in the script at all. It states that during the accident ten years ago, he was warped into the past with Shadow and was sealed away in his pod on the ARK, becoming Shadow's dark side and the reason for his resentment and his drive as the ultimate life form.
  Maybe they were planning this but Shadow the Hedgehog's story messed it up. The two games were made by two teams with presumably little interaction after all, and there's a rumor that Sonic 06 was in preproduction but got put on hold when Shadow won an online poll for which character should get their own spinoff.
  EDIT: I translated the Japanese version and it turns out that whoever was writing the English version just didn't know what he was talking about. It just says that 10 years ago Shadow sealed him in a capsule (I'm guessing they meant the darkness rod thing) and that's why he holds a grudge against Shadow and half the reason he used Shadow's shadow to ressurect ( the other reason is that he's the ultimate lifeform)

Jesus christ Sonic lore is dumb

But...it is? I mean not all people have the same tastes as you, especially in the Sonic community.

Sonic Colors may not be to your tastes, but it's objectively better designed and polished than Sonic 06. You can like Glover more than Super Mario 64, but that doesn't mean it's better.

 

[UpDownLeftRight]

Results screen music was better than everything else in the game combined. I wanted this game to be good so bad though. It basically killed Sonic Adventure and all my hopes of any favorable aspects of that coming back.

 

[Jay RaR]

Sonic Colors may not be to your tastes, but it's objectively better designed and polished than Sonic 06. You can like Glover more than Super Mario 64, but that doesn't mean it's better.

In terms of a polished and better designed game with a much more focused scope, yes I think Colors is better but in terms of an enjoyable experience with controls I prefer and level design (in terms of Sonic's story) I prefer 06.

A game can have the best design and lots of polish but it doesn't make the game enjoyable if a person doesn't like it. For me, its the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. There's not too many glitches you can encounter in a casual playthrough and it is a very polished game but I did not like it. Simple as that.

Spoiler

I've not played Glover but imo Super Mario 64 has not aged well visually and in terms of level design. Amazing gameplay though.