General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

Sega might just need to accept that their non-Sonic titles are niche outside of Japan and be satisfied with whatever cult fanbase they'd end up having. That's how smaller studios handle it.

Let me re-phrase:

Even the new day Sonic games have an actual narrative to them, with a variety of cutscenes to display the story (even in games where there's really not that much to talk about, like Generations). This is a lot more than what Mario typically has, which is an intro, MAYBE a scene involving Bowser, and the ending, and none of this involves any kind of dialogue whatsoever.

Sooo, Sonic has dialogue and Mario doesn't.

That's something.

A narrative is anything that makes up a story. What you're talking about is HOW the story is told.

Exaggeration makes up serious arguments now, mang.

I mean having a narrative, story line, dialogue, etc. is cool and all, but they aren't enough to sell a game like Sonic these days, as you can just watch the cutscenes online.

If by “the Classic games” you mean Sonic 3&K, and only Sonic 3&K.

None of the other Classic Sonic games have particularly complex or deep plotlines. And even in Sonic 3&K, the depth is largely just the “there’s a second antagonist who thinks Sonic is a villain” bit, whereas the rest of the plot is pretty identical.

And if we’re judging the entirety of the storytelling in the era by one game, a good comparison to Sonic 3&K is probably Super Mario World 2.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 26th 2019 at 11:22:30 AM

It had a few other subtle bits of story telling you typically didn't (and still don't) see in Mario aside from that. Doomsday Zone being prophesized a few levels earlier on a mural, the stage continuity, Knuckles having a change of heart once he realizes what's really going on, etc

Triple Trouble's plot is still more expansive than its contemporary Mario games. Admittedly, it's mostly in the manual.

You forgot the fact that Knuckles turns the lights out.

We probably shouldn’t count manual, because loads of games had plot in their manuals that didn’t actually appear in their games.

Like how Super Mario Land’s plot turned out to all be a set up to get Mario away from the kingdom, so that Wario could sneak in disguised as him and use it as an opportunity to take over while the protector is away in Super Mario Land 2.

I mean, if the manual actually matches the game...and isn't just a flavored read.

If the content isn’t actually in the game, then it’s just backstory: it’s certainly not part of any narrative. This was a noted problem in the 80’s and 90’s for everybody: the games themselves had minimal plot, so everyone wanted to throw something that looked complex into a manual.

Some companies actually tried to deal with it: some games like Sonic 3, Mario 3, and Metroid went for dialogueless storytelling. Others like Super Mario World 2 or Donkey Kong Country went for written dialogue. It wasn’t until a while that consoles could support fully realized stories, however.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 26th 2019 at 11:56:48 AM

Sonic CD had a deeper narrative than Sonic 1 & 2

It really took advantage of the environmental storytelling offered by the time travel gimmick, and the actual kidnapping of Amy happened on-screen, and her being rescued and the day being saved are different events that are shown, and how beating the boss doesn't automatically save the day, and how Metal Sonic is there as a pseudo-rival, with an explicit test of speed.

It's still not much, but it's still more than what a typical Mario game has for its plot.

... Also I do get words mixed up, so thanks to Black Yakuza for helping me out!

We can go on and on about which franchise has more elaborate storytelling, but point of which one is more successful is inarguable.

So it's not like having a more in-depth story actually means anything in this context.

The animated cutscenes in CD still look really nice. It's impressive it not only has an ending, but two different ending sequences depending on the completion.

... CD's narrative is pretty much exactly the plot of your average Mario game. None of what you pointed out is stuff you didn't get in at least one or another classic Mario title.

Well, besides the existence of a time travel mechanic, but CD is hardly the only game anyone did in 80's and 90's where you needed to accomplish a peripheral/additional objective to truly win even if wasn't always specifically time travel.

The thing it had that pretty much every game of its type didn't was fully animated cutscenes, rather than the in-game stuff of both the rest of the Sonic repertoire, Mario, etc. Or a full soundtrack full of tracks that even included vocal performances.

Agreed. The underlying problem with this whole conversation (besides the exaggeration of content) is the idea that if two styles of storytelling are different, one has to be superior to the other.

Honestly, the whole "Sonic has to be what Mario isn't" thing is silly. It didn't actually matter back in the day, when all it was was a means to sell titles. What people look at with Sonic in terms of personality and attitude was mostly given to us by tertiary content, not by the source material, and at his core, Sonic wasn't much different than Mario narratively (especially in Japan). His gameplay is what set him apart.

The console wars were cultivated to get people to buy consoles. Nobody involved in the actual creation of these characters took it any kind of seriously that the two were supposed to be rivals. It's kind of disappointing that it's still being taken seriously decades after it outright stopped mattering.

And this idea that Sonic's games had to have been narrative masterpieces, and Mario games have never actually had plot, is always going to have been wrong on several levels. Both companies enjoyed their simplisitic narratives and storytelling back in the day, because it made it easier to release new games frequently. Both companies enjoyed putting little tidbits of story in those games regardless, both for amusement, and for flavor.

Neither company was too intent on it at first (both had games they considered more narrative focused at the time), but those stories did get stronger for both.

It's true that Mario's narrative has ultimately proven more successful than Sonic's, but the thing I want to iterate here is that one doesn't have to be better than the other. They're both fine ways to create a platformer.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 26th 2019 at 4:37:11 AM

You overestimate the minds of 30 year old adults who still play video games.

Also I didn't say this earlier but going "well, there's an extensive plot in the manual!" is really reaching.

There's people that still want Sega to go back to consoles, regardless how plausible that would be, even if they wanted to. Sega's not the company it was, it's gone back to a lot of its arcade trappings and is more of a distribution company with several teams to handle its franchises. It's still very much a successful company just because Sonic isn't its top priority anymore.

That's the difference between Mario and nintendo. mario's the top franchise for Nintendo, and they're the most successful video game company in the world. You just can't compare that to Sega.

Yeah, Sega kind of gave up after the Saturn's failure and the Dreamcast didn't create waves like they thought it would (though, to be fair, nobody was beating the Playstation).

Edited by erazor0707 on Jun 26th 2019 at 5:21:13 AM

At the time the PS 2 launched at least one mag worried the PS 2 was dead on arrival and told people writing in to stick to Dreamcast.

I don't think comparing Mario to Sonic in terms of sales is a good idea. Super Mario Bros is way more popular and has been for over twenty years.

It should be compared to other collectathon characters. There was a gap for a few years, but we're having a collectathon renaissance right now. We can go back to the Crash vs Sonic wars after a decade.

Mario is called Big Red now, I don't think they have any differences anymore.

I was watching some Sonic theories on Youtube. 99% are hilariously wrong, but I did like one that theorized Amy has psychic powers (more specifically, ESP or clairvoyance). That'd be an interesting thing to explore and it'd be fun for gameplay.