General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

Least there aren't any boost pads.

I like the idea of the rings dictating your speed in Team Sonic Racing. I wonder if they'll ever introduce that in the main games?

It would make collecting rings meaningful again (that is, if they stick with unlimited lives like Forces had, which they should since that was long overdue), and it could be a nice compromise between Boost and non-Boost gameplay, where every 100 rings levels up your max speed, similar to Mania's special stages, capping at the equivalent to the current Boost's speed.

It would also revive the idea that speed is earned through good gameplay, like the classic games, instead of just given to you as a means of cheap spectacle.

Ring Energy from Sonic Unleashed was precursor to that idea. I do like the thought of that though.

Huh. Well, I'll be...

Edited by erazor0707 on Apr 21st 2019 at 10:46:48 AM

Rings from Sonic Advance 2 was the precursor to that idea.

I mean, i'm not sure it would work out that well with non boost gameplay

Kinda like 06 mach speed sections, kinda hard to control

Edit:Ok you can move at will, so I guess that alleviates the issue

Edited by Fedetropes on Apr 22nd 2019 at 8:39:05 AM

Do we really want unlimited lives in a Sonic game?

yes.

Absolutely!

Infinite lives helps out so, so much

And I do think increasing the speed per ring would be a nice mechanic to encourage ring collection, though with Ranking systems being a thing I don't think it's a necessity.

But then we would have to alter the gameplay of most of the modern games to suit infinite lives.

Edited by GAP on Apr 22nd 2019 at 2:48:03 PM

Like... Forces... already... did...?

And yeah that game had complaints, but I haven't heard a single person complain about the lack of a lives mechanic. Besides, with the exception of 1-Ups (which can pretty easily be changed to a power-up instead), everything either helps Sonic out directly or contributes to the score after beating a stage, so there's very little to even change.

It's not like lives actually affect anything about the gameplay anyway. It's always just been "lost all your lives? Well, lose three minutes of progress and start the level over".

They've been completely redundant since S3&K introduced a save system, and they were already kinda meaningless since even Sonic 1 had a level select code.

The whole concept is just a holdover from when games were played in arcades to get more money out of kids. They have never been important in any way, that's why nearly every modern game has completely abandoned the idea.

Pretty much the only place I'd imagine lives as-is to be an interesting concept would be in a Roguelike, as like easy mode to make losing ALL progress less frequent.

EDIT: Oh! And Mania even did some exploring with lives via their Encore Mode, which not only made every single life matter (by losing a playable character until you could get that life back), but also made the risk of getting a Game Over real even for veteran players.

Edited by Numbuh1234 on Apr 22nd 2019 at 9:25:52 AM

To hear someone say "this feature isn't important except to gameplay" in this thread, as if gameplay isn't important is kind of funny.

Sonic 1 had a level select code but I doubt most people who were playing the game back then knew about it. It's not like it was published in the game's manual, on the back of the box, or that every kid had access to a computer.

We also had Game Genies/cheat devices back in the day - but those didn't make the concept of lives, secret paths, power-ups useless just because the player could bypass them.

You might be right that lives aren't that important but what are we really removing them for? A few extra pixels on screen? They're a part of the overall aesthetic. The idea that there's some supply company out there in Sonic's world who consistently f-ck up and drop a bunch of little TV's everywhere including but not limited to cities, factories, glaciers, active volcanoes, and space stations - and that Sonic is apparently shelling out to have a series of these TV's with his face on them - is both hilarious and fittingly bizarre.

Well, I mean, we know how well-liked all of those games were so you might have a point. Maybe Sonic Team should follow that example. :p

Edited by Soble on Apr 22nd 2019 at 10:45:51 AM

n/a

Edited by Soble on Apr 22nd 2019 at 10:44:27 AM

Literally the only change in gameplay that removing lives would cause is removing that 'Game Over' screen that forces you to restart the level, which causes the last... say... 10 minutes (on average) to be a complete time waste. That's it. Nothing else changes at all. Especially if you're really good at the game/farm up lives, then it literally becomes meaningless. The addition/continuation of infinite lives would frankly be a Quality of Life change for the better.

Because I'm absolutely certain that following traditions is always the right call, and that certain traditions are never bad choices to continue holding, even if the cause was hardware limitations. Absolutely nobody complains when a game maintains a shockingly limited amount of save files because that's what the first game did.

"Well, we know how well-liked all of those games were so you might have a point." Literally the VERY next thing I said after my comment was that Forces wasn't amazing, and clarifying what I had said initially. There's no need to take it out of context to artificially make my point seem worse.

I literally said that they didn't affect gameplay... that's my entire point...

I’d only be down for removing lives if they also got rid of checkpoints (or provided significantly less), and also provided bonuses for never bonus and/or boosted the bonuses for timed completion. Otherwise chalk me down as another who doesn’t see the point of removing them.

The NSMB system is nice too: if you die, you get booted from the level and go back to the map screen. You can do anything at that juncture, but if you don’t re-enter the stage, you lose your checkpoint.

Though even that system doesn’t quite match Sonic - which, especially in certain titles, is a game more geared towards speedrunning and the like, which lives have a bit more impact towards.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 22nd 2019 at 11:19:26 AM

>.<

I missed the "anything." My bad.

Still. I don't see why it should be removed. Redundancy isn't the same as being obstructive. Save files might invalidate the function of a lives system but it's still a noticeable part of the aesthetic that would bother me more if it wasn't there.

That sounds less quality of life and more of a fast way to ensure the player has little incentive to do well or to keep trying.

I can't say I've ever had to spend 10 minutes on a level in any Sonic game other than maybe Shadow due to how sloppy the mission system was. I can't sympathize with the frustration of "losing 10 minutes" of progress because of a limited number of lives. I can understand that save files are convenient. That said, lives keep the game from being too easy. You can have both.

Farming isn't possible AFAIK unless you gain 100 rings to get an extra life. There aren't so many 1-ups in most levels that farming is an issue. Generations is an exception since you can literally purchase extra lives (which I admit is a problem). But there are solutions to preventing players from abusing this that don't involve simply removing extra lives all together.

It's certainly better than fixing what isn't broken.

You were saying "yeah it had problems but no one had a problem with the lack of lives" which doesn't invalidate my point "why are we following that game's lead to begin with?"

Taking out lives because Forces already did so, and because we don't have a loud example of fans disagreeing with it among the mountain of other complaints with that game's design, doesn't really convince me that it was a smart decision. All that tells me is that the lack of extra lives was a smaller complaint to the litany of greater issues people had.

Edited by Soble on Apr 22nd 2019 at 12:05:06 PM

Keep lives, because extra lives matter.

Forces didn't exactly have to be the main example, dawg. It could've been any game, but the main point is that Forces removing lives is seen as a positive thing.

The argument against lives never really had it made though, the main thing people should be doing is offering alternative punishments. They don't so they're pretty much saying nothing.

The main "alternative" is no difference from having lives anyway.

Edited by randomness4 on Apr 22nd 2019 at 12:10:03 PM

If the problem is the lack of any sort of punishment remaining after removal of lives, I can think of two ways at least that don't involve making the player have to sit through a part that may very well serve as nothing more than an extended loading screen for them. I'll grant the premise that there needs to be any sort of punishment whatsoever, as opposed to a game like Celeste. The first is revocation of collected rings, similar to Super Mario Oddysey's approach. This of course is inconsequential in games without an in-game shop of some sort, never mind that, depending on whether rings are lost in sets or all at once, it may be no different than punishment for taking a hit at all. The other is an end-level rank penalty, requiring a no-death run to get the best possible rank, as done in Sonic Generations.

Lives don't make a game difficult, they make a game tedious. If someone keeps dying on one particular area, how does occasionally forcing them to replay the areas that they've clearly already mastered make it more difficult? Or what if they keep dying on the first area, how does occasionally booting them to the title screen before they start again at the exact same spot improve the experience? Is the difficulty in testing your patience?

The inability to progress is all the "punishment" you need, and that's exactly what every game does these days, even "retro-inspired" games like Super Meat Boy and Celeste, and they're not any less difficult for it.

In Unleashed, extra lives were consistently placed immediately after checkpoints, almost ensuring that you never actually run out. That, and how, as you brought up, you can just straight-up buy more lives in Generations, should be all the proof you need that lives are an outdated relic and were only kept in because people expected them.

Now, if you make lives an actual mechanic, like the aforementioned Encore Mode in Mania Plus, that's a different story, but the usual "completely arbitrary limited number of attempts" kind of lives, those gotta go.

Lives don't make anything tedious but collect-a-thons and metroidvanias,which are games that rarely ever have them.

Most all games with lives are so generous with them that even this "game over" punishment isn't a thing...which is what most of the arguments are about.

The idea of having to redo the whole level instead of just the part you're on is the main goal anyway of deaths in death.

And the other ideal is just a limited amount of tries per stage, which is pretty much the same thing.

Edited by randomness4 on Apr 22nd 2019 at 2:04:23 AM

Considering videogames lives as "part of the aesthetic" seems like the bigger reach to me.

Aesthetic?

Amazing.

Tedium and difficulty aren't mutually exclusive.

What's harder/more frustrating? Restarting from 3/4 of the way through a level or starting back at the beginning.

Super Meat Boy is hardly a fair comparison. It's specifically designed to be harder than the average platformer. You can (and should) have extra lives in a Sonic game because the gameplay is easy enough that failure is nowhere near as agonizing. You can't (and won't) have extra lives in Super Meat Boy or any modern platformer like it because that would be mental torture.

Without harping on Generations and Unleashed just suffering from poor design - I might agree they're outdated. I disagree that they need to go.

I wouldn't call it a reach to say that extra lives should be kept for aesthetic reasons. Franchises like Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, the Tales series, Persona, etc, some of the oldest most well-known franchises to come out of Japan hold onto long-irrelevant visual and mechanical elements they've had since inception simply because the fans appreciate it.

Extra lives are like old cars. The main reason you keep them is because they're aesthetically pleasing.

Edited by Soble on Apr 22nd 2019 at 3:40:01 AM