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MightyMatilda Mr. Clueless from New Jersey, USA Since: Jan, 2015
Mr. Clueless
#65901: Jul 22nd 2022 at 9:40:26 AM

Don't people just call Unleashed onwards the "Boost Era"?

De Romanīs, lingua Latina gloriosa non fuī.
Tomodachi Now a lurker. See you at the forums. Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
Now a lurker. See you at the forums.
#65902: Jul 22nd 2022 at 9:40:51 AM

"Meta Era", named because of Aaron Webber's contribution to social media and the Sonic Boom tv show.

The games themselves don't really do meta.

To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.
BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#65903: Jul 22nd 2022 at 10:01:37 AM

Era names are dumb.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
Kiobi20 Since: Sep, 2016
#65904: Jul 22nd 2022 at 11:18:54 AM

[up] well do you have a better idea to distinguish a time period of a series from another?

Edited by Kiobi20 on Jul 22nd 2022 at 11:19:31 AM

BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#65905: Jul 22nd 2022 at 12:02:13 PM

You can just talk about the similarities and differences without throwing arbitrary labels around is all.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
randomness4 Ghost '11 from The Land of Inconvenience Since: Sep, 2011
Ghost '11
#65906: Jul 22nd 2022 at 12:21:13 PM

Video games are not subject to era defining labels as other media...

You can't do it for individual series, just for the industry as whole...

Remember that era of Disney when Mickey had dynamically angled ears?

Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.
KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#65907: Jul 22nd 2022 at 2:00:14 PM

Why not ascribe labels to things that are clearly the same category.

It beats always saying "time period in which games follow the same general formula and design philosophy as Sonic Adventure, including Sonic Adventure 1, 2, Heroes and 06" every single time, when one could just shorten it to "the Adventure Era."

BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#65908: Jul 22nd 2022 at 2:17:55 PM

Its more of a matter of being clear in what you're talking about; Like how people label the last ten years "the meta era" but with a very loose definition of why it's "Meta". When you say "Boost era" are you including Lost World in that, since it very clearly not a Boost game.

I feel like taking one or two elements and then using that to define roughly two generations of gaming is a bit misguided.

Classic era is fine since there's a very clear divide between Sonic's pre-3D and post-3D games. Modern era doesn't really work anymore since we've technically been in the "Modern" era for over 20 years now, which isn't very modern.

I'd personally call the 1998-2008 period the "Early 3D" era and Games from 2010 onward as the "later 3D" era.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jul 22nd 2022 at 5:20:33 AM

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
Negacube Since: Nov, 2018 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
#65909: Jul 22nd 2022 at 2:22:03 PM

I'm reluctant to describe Heroes as following the Adventure pattern. If anything, its structure is almost identical to the Classic games:

  • A loop of two thematically linked zones followed by a boss.
  • Video Game Settings are arbitrarily assigned (Palmtree Panic followed by a Metropolis Level followed by the trope-naming Casino Park and so on) rather than being thematically linked to any sort of overworld.
  • Cutscenes and exposition are regularly scheduled, rather than occurring as the plot necessitates.
  • Different characters have highly similar movesets and level layouts, rather than Gameplay Roulette.
  • Unlocking the final boss by getting all the Chaos Emeralds in Special Stages.

BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#65910: Jul 22nd 2022 at 2:31:57 PM

Yea that too; Heroes and Shadow are only related to the Adventure games in terms of story, and some gameplay elements but they're both structured completely differently from how the Adventure games worked.

Hell, both Adventure games are pretty different in design despite sharing the title.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jul 22nd 2022 at 5:32:23 AM

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
BorneAgain (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#65911: Jul 22nd 2022 at 4:31:22 PM

Internally, I've been leaning on calling 98-08 the Expansion Era and the time afterwards Redefinition Era.

Basically, the former was Sonic team essentially taking what was there (admittedly the Japanese version of it anyway) and going big and far with it. 3D games, many new characters, fresh gameplay styles, and building upon the (Eastern) existing lore with its stories. Even the games going multiplatform in a sense feels like an unintentional variation of that, literally going farther in terms of reach than Sonic titles had gone before.

Thus, the period after is Sega and company trying to undo the damage certain things (namely 06) did by paring things down a bit and reframing what Sonic was, sometimes naturally, sometimes not so much. Classic and Modern versions of the title character are now defined (eventually more rigidly than expected) Boom is a new mainline alternate universe setting out of nowhere, Mania emerges as a sub-brand for a bit after Boom's failure, even the social media shifts entirely from generic promotion to the meme embracing s***posting it's now known for.

They're hardly perfect descriptors (and as always Unleashed is the odd estuary between the two) but they've worked for me for a while.

Karxrida from Eureka, the Forbidden Land Since: May, 2012 Relationship Status: I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!
#65912: Jul 22nd 2022 at 4:49:04 PM

I'd still consider Shadow the Hedgehog to be Adventure-adjacent due to its strong focus on narrative and being a direct follow-up to Adventure 2.

Adventure Era works for that time period because it there are both narrative and gameplay throughlines tying all the games together.

Edited by Karxrida on Jul 22nd 2022 at 4:50:08 AM

Eriorguez Since: Jun, 2009
#65913: Jul 22nd 2022 at 5:14:17 PM

And the way Sonic controls is the same from Adventure to 06, while from Unleashed onwards it changes quite a bit.

I still think that Heroes was a great way from getting into 3D Sonic from 2D Sonic, even if that way of playing makes the Adventures play out as prequels to Heroes.

ultimatepheer Since: Mar, 2011
#65914: Jul 22nd 2022 at 5:41:50 PM

You know, honestly? You can play SA 2 completely stand-alone and it makes PERFECT sense without knowing the story of SA 1. The only slight weirdness is Tails having a chaos emerald for saving Station Square, which was weird already.

BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#65915: Jul 22nd 2022 at 5:53:35 PM

Me, a kid who played SA 2 before SA 1.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
KnownUnknown Since: Jan, 2001
#65916: Jul 22nd 2022 at 6:44:03 PM

Likewise.

And even Tails having a chaos emerald isn't so hard to swallow. Like with Dragonball, it's not unreasonable that a character might start the plot with one chaos emerald on hand for whatever reason, given how useful they are and how much those things get around.

Sonic stories in general aren't really built to be narratively connected. Every era has treated them like episodes of a series, each it's own separate story. There's some stuff that's everpresent and thus rarely re-explained, like Knuckles and the Master Emerald being introduced in 3, but that's about it.

The only story arc in the series that really had any staying power was Shadow's whole deal. Besides that, the only story I can think that otherwise pulls from another - ironically - one of the most bare bones stories of the lot: Generations, the whole evil plan turns out to be a consequence of Colors. But even that is late game information that isn't really important.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 22nd 2022 at 6:48:36 AM

BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#65917: Jul 22nd 2022 at 7:06:40 PM

Which is why I get so confused when Sonic fans talk about how much continuity there was before when any continuity centered around Shadow specifically. Aside from him, every game was still pretty self-contained.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
KuroBaraHime ☆♥☆ Since: Jan, 2011
☆♥☆
#65918: Jul 22nd 2022 at 7:14:02 PM

If I was being really specific, then this about how I would sort the Sonic timeline in my head.

1991~1997 is the Classic era obviously. The shift with Sonic Adventure was big and no one really disputes sorting things this way.
I would consider 1991~1994 to be the first half of the classic era. It's when all the main games everyone remembers came out, and it's the period people are mostly thinking of when they remember the Classic era. The popular Sonic cartoons also came out in this period.
1995~1997 is the second of half the Classic era. It's the awkward period when nothing but spin-off games where coming out (unless you count Chaotix as a mainline game, which I sort of do but a lot of people don't) because of Sega's problems with making a Sonic game for the Saturn. The games where mostly mediocre to bad.

1998~2008 was the Adventure era. The 3D games were all building directly off of Adventure in some way, the 2D games were handheld games doing their own thing (the Advance and Rush games), there were a bunch of spin-offs and lots of characters introduced.
I would split it into 1998~2004 as the first "half". It's when the negatively around the series wasn't very strong. People mostly liked the games except Heroes, and a single lesser game wasn't enough yet to get people really worried. Most of Sonic X also aired in this period, which was also fairly popular at the time.
2005~2008 is the second half, when things started to get messy. Things started to move into the next console generation, Shadow was when people started really complaining, and then 06 and everything surrounding it. Outside the Rush games, a lot of spin-offs coming out this time are either not that fondly thought of or are kind of forgotten, like Secret Rings, Rivals, and Chronicles.

2008~2012 is the early Boost era. They did some experimenting that seemed to pay off, and Sega made several popular games in relatively quick succession - Unleashed, Colors, and Generations. There's still some change from the Adventure era going on, Unleashed is sort of in-between Adventure and Colors/Generation with the tone and writing, and Black Knight came out between Unleashed and Colors. Colors and Generation are fully into this period. Sega also mostly stopped making spin-offs, and the only 2D game to come out in this period is Sonic 4, which is trying hard to win over Classic fans. This is the period when Sega is starting to react to the negativity the second half of the Adventure era got.

2013 onward is I guess the Meta era. This is when things get weird in a way. I feel it's hard to come up with "eras" after this. The weird thing is that the franchise feels like it's sort of stagnating, but not from constant saminess, but more the opposite. There's a just a bunch of different stuff that makes the franchise feel like it has no central direction. Only two main 3D games have come out this past decade, Lost World and Forces, which are both trying to do very different things, and now Frontier is also doing something different. The Boom games and cartoon came out and did their own weird thing. Mania came out for Classic fans, way more successful at it than Sonic 4 was but with seemingly no plans to follow up on it. There's been no spin-offs outside the Mario Olympic games and a racing game. In general, there's also kind of the feeling like the games are no longer the absolute driving force behind the franchise, and a lot of marketing for the game is surrounded around Twitter and memes, which are sort of why people will call it the Meta era.

Edited by KuroBaraHime on Jul 22nd 2022 at 10:15:13 AM

BlackYakuzu94 CHADhan Player. from Easy Coast/NY Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Longing for my OTP
CHADhan Player.
#65919: Jul 22nd 2022 at 7:22:14 PM

Anyone else noticing a pattern here :V

90's: First half good, second half bad.

2000's: First half good, second half bad.

2010's" First half good, second half bad.

So basically, Frontiers is gonna be a banger probably and Sega will coast off that for maybe one more game before everything goes to shit.

But then again, given how long Sonic games are taking to come out nowadays, the next game more than likely won't be out until 2027. They might have no choice but to remake/remaster older games just to have something in that five year gap.

Between Forces and Frontiers, all that we got was Mania DLC, TSR, and Sonic Colors Ultimate.

A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.
Tomodachi Now a lurker. See you at the forums. Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
Now a lurker. See you at the forums.
#65920: Jul 22nd 2022 at 9:24:13 PM

Keep in mind that, because of Sonic Origins, the classic games now are more interconnected than before.

Sonic saves the day from Eggman, but then gets a vision than the seven Emeralds are on West Island. Before going there, he takes a detour to Little Planet which, oh goodness, Eggman is also there, but Amy then has a vision with the cards that Sonic will meet both Tails and Knuckles.

Adventure had a little continuity with Adventure 2, and then Heroes and Shadow are all about Shadow's return and character arc.

Rush and Rush Adventure obviously had a connection, and Colors DS aknowledge it.

06 and Unleashed are very self-contained, funnily enough, while Colors and Generations have a connection. Then Lost World and Forces are in their own episodic room.

To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.
TargetmasterJoe from Velocitron Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: I like big bots and I can not lie
#65921: Jul 23rd 2022 at 3:25:20 PM

Speaking of interconnectivity...

Did Ian Flynn just drop that Knuckles' Chaotix is canon, the Classic world is the past, and that Mighty might actually be somewhere in the Modern World? Because that kinda seemed to have happened when asked how the Modern Chaotix would have reacted to their Fleetway variants and to Mighty.

(Relevant point at 10:04, question at 8:35 point)

In any case, it's left Sonic Loreposting in a bit of a tizzy...

diddyknux Straw Hat Robin (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
Straw Hat Robin
#65922: Jul 23rd 2022 at 3:42:25 PM

Why would Knuckles Chaotix not be canon? Just because Knuckles and the Chaotix really don't interact in the modern day as if they've got a history?

Edited by diddyknux on Jul 23rd 2022 at 5:43:50 AM

PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#65923: Jul 23rd 2022 at 3:45:17 PM

[up][up]GOOD.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jul 23rd 2022 at 3:45:28 AM

Tomodachi Now a lurker. See you at the forums. Since: Aug, 2012 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
Now a lurker. See you at the forums.
#65924: Jul 23rd 2022 at 3:50:31 PM

I heard Chaotix isn't taken as canon because it wasn't exactly made by the same staff or something.

To win, you need to adapt, and to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back.
randomness4 Ghost '11 from The Land of Inconvenience Since: Sep, 2011
Ghost '11
#65925: Jul 23rd 2022 at 3:50:33 PM

The Chaotix redesign was meant to be them as new characters...

Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.

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