I mean, part of the reason WHY Sega executives stepped in was because one of them saw a cover that had Sonic crying and was concerned over how he was portrayed.
Sure comics became a bit more obscure but they are still an important part of the Sonic brand. People actually read those.
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"Responding to someone on the last page:
- Belief that redemption is possible doesn't make one holier than thou. Especially when he had been right in the past about several of those cases. I'd say (in both the fictional and real worlds) it's the people who don't believe in second chances for anyone else that are the real "holier than thou", since they're quite willing to condemn others for life.
- The entire metal virus arc was about him being criticized and getting comeuppance, and just barely skating by on the skin of his teeth via a team effort that he couldn't have done alone.
- Do you mean the real Ohio, or Ohio the memetic hellscape? Either way, tastes differ. I like the IDW world, and wouldn't call it boring.
Speaking of the Archie Comics, Lowart released this movie length retrospective of the first 100 or so issues of said comic run. He talks a bit about why he got into it, as well as the highs and lows of both major and side plot arcs and the way the characters were written (he hates Geoffrey St. John for example).
Nobody likes Goeffrey. Thanks Penders :V
Sucks too because he was actually starting to become decent and then the book got canned.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.@The potential introduction of Archie characters / tv show characters / unused Classic characters / maybe even movie characters(?):
There is a tricky bit where few characters can really be adapted to the games while keeping their original concepts entirely. Forces excepted, there's no need for an organization of "Freedom Fighters" in the game. Sticks doesn't easily fit into the core character dynamic the games have. Game! Sonic doesn't have parents, so the Wachowskis can't be fit in that way, etc.
But that doesn't mean there aren't tons of ways those characters can fit, they just wouldn't be put in verbatim. You know like how in Mario games there's often characters in each world or hub area or set of levels that - like - live there and are in some kind of trouble, or are able to help Mario through some kind of trouble, and while they're not being playable they recur throughout the whole area, sometimes even in cutscenes?
I could see that working pretty well with Sonic, especially if they keep the Frontiers style.
The Sonic series has had characters like that before, but they've always been human - since until recently 3D Sonic's been strictly "Sonic and co. are the only animal people in a human world." But with that no longer being the case, they've got lots of opportunity to go on.
Like, think of that bit in SA 2 where Sonic goes to talk to the president. Imagine a scene like that, but he's going to meet the leader of an island whose being menaced by Eggman and - WOW! - it's Sally Acorn. Or you bring back Nack / Fang as a minor antagonist for a ruins level, and Tangle & Whisper in opposing him, with the idea that the plot of that series of levels is a treasure hunt. Not to mention all the roles that characters like the Hot Dog Seller had in Unleashed, or the Elder Coco in Frontiers - why not have that be Sticks or the Wachowskis or Mighty or whoever, bringing them stuff to get upgrades and such? I dunno, these are just off the cuff ideas, but the gist is that the sky is the limit as long as they don't
It does make a lot of sense. If they keep the Frontiers gameplay mechanic, they can't just always have every story take place on the Starfall Islands, populated by nothing but Coco. Imagining a game where it's Frontiers-esque, but it takes place in Sonic's usual areas and locations, why wouldn't they populate those areas with cameos and adapted characters?
Like with Blaze and Marine? That could work. Hopefully that would be enough for the, as Eriorguez rightly put it, "aggressively defensive" fans.
Earlier, Adventure 2 and Heroes were brought up in terms of introducing characters new to the games. I wanted to point out that Heroes, and to a lesser extent Adventure 2, aren't actually good examples of that. The only new character introduced in Heroes was Omega, who was a retread of Gamma in some ways. Adventure 2 introduced Shadow and Rouge as new major characters, and Maria, Gerald, the President, and GUN as minor characters.
The A Rchie Comics getting canned sucked for me too because they finally made the Fighting Vipers fursona a semi-major character.
Are explosions science?Something funny I realized is that Sonic doesn't really have much manga, just a couple really short runs. The comic is surprisingly the only really long-term run the series has had.
Its like how the Power Rangers fighting game became pretty popular with Sentai fans because Super Sentai never got a fighting game.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Heroes reintroduced Team Chaotix since their debut flopped back in 1995.
Heroes and SA 2 are the best examples because you're using three core abilities as functions. With that, you have a template for nearly every character design you can throw at Sonic Team. Amy Rose for example is not a speedster. She's canonically no faster than Tails and needs a giant hammer to come close to Knuckles' strength. By expanding her abilities to one of those three functions and a touch of balance changes for multiplayer, Heroes and SA 2 enabled Amy to become a playable character. Furthermore, Heroes forces you to use the entire ensemble. That enough leaves development open to reinterpreting newer and older characters of the Franchise.
Again, no excuses.
Heroes itself is a highly acclaimed title in the franchise as well, and so I know for a fact the fanbase would clamor for another Heroes installment. To this day, fans are still coming up with three-man dream teams. Writing the story isn't the issue; we already know what has to happen with that department.
Edited by Tony-Sharx on Feb 18th 2023 at 6:08:00 AM
Certified, self-appointed Sonic VisionaryAmy wasn't a new character in any sense, which is what I was responding to. She's one of the oldest characters in the franchise, with established character relationships with several of the cast at that point. And she's not even a case of an existing moveset being slapped onto a character. She'd already been playable with her own abilities in Fighters, Adventure 1, Advance 1 and 2, and Battle. Team Chaotix also weren't wholly new characters, either. Hell, Vector even predates Amy. Like I mentioned, the actual new character in Heroes was Omega.
And no matter how much you brush off the role of writing, it does matter, even in a Sonic game, and especially for what characters are involved and how. Hell, complaints about too many playable characters without narrative importance was a meme for decades, and still gets brought up. Those complaints were so strong they led to Heroes and Advance 3 being the last mainlines games with more than 3 main characters for 14-20note years. Not that additional characters should even have to be playable. Some of us just agreed on how characters could work in a story. Reread BorneAgain's comment
or KnownUnknown's comment.
And just because some fans come up with an idea doesn't necessarily mean it will work in practice or execution. Remember what happened when some fans thought it would be cool for Sonic to have a gun? There's a difference between some fans thinking something is a good idea and what can actually work in a game that makes it to launch and doesn't damage a series' perception. They're not always the same.
And could you please drop the "no excuses" bits? Just because you don't agree with something doesn't mean it's an "excuse".
@Mighty Kombat: Honey exists in the IDW continuity, as one of the characters in Classic Sonic's portion of the timeline.
And even before that, SEGA and Sonic Team have still shown willingness to bring her back in Fighters, so I wouldn't be too quick to count her out completely, even if it's just cameo appearances.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Feb 18th 2023 at 8:48:28 AM
Also, while saying a Sonic title is divisive is a bit like stating that water is wet, Heroes was not exactly a universally loved game in its time or even now. That's not to say that the Team format is inherently the core issue with it, but the various trios were just as much seen as padding for the game length by some as they were interesting combinations to others. It feels like the character duos in Advance 3 have aged a bit better as a gameplay concept, even if it has less than half the cast Heroes does.
I do have to agree with the suggestions about Sonic characters being part the world he's traveling in. While them being NPC's would be controversial to some, given the mixed reception to the roulette wheel that is multiple gameplay styles, the former may be the most practical option outside just making several of them outright ability clones of Sonic with slight variations ala the Classic cast.
Edited by BorneAgain on Feb 18th 2023 at 10:14:34 AM
To be honest, the use of the word "function" got a laugh from me. I don't know if you know this, but using that word to describe characters has a memetic history:
In the lead up to the release of MVCI, it became apparent that the game would be dropping all of the X-Men characters in favor of recent MCU characters. A lot of players of the series had built a connection to the X-Men being in it, with the series having started as being X-Men vs Street Fighter. Plus, a lot of comic fans in general really like the X-Men, which is pretty much an understatement. A professional gamer working publicity for the game was basically directed to say that for fans who like a character based on how they play, they shouldn't feel like they're missing out, because some of the new characters will still have similar abilities to the missing X-Men. For example, Magneto's aerial mobility could still be found in Nova. Fans did not take this response well, because, again, people care about characters. Not just that they're in or out at all, but also how they're interpreted as being true to the character or not. People don't often like the idea of treating a character as a skin to slap on a moveset, or as an interchangeable piece in a set.
Edited by wanderlustwarrior on Feb 18th 2023 at 9:34:26 AM
I'd rather them just be actually remotely unique. Not mostly carbon copies. That's when I enjoyed them the most. The issue was polish, not its existence. But the whole Dreamcast era was very lacking in polish in many places(Adventure 1 was great, but it had its issues. One big one is how long doing Sonic's special abilities took, as charging them was ridiculously long). That said, they do keep trying new things and sometimes streamline moves better(the Ring Dash got improved in Adventure 2, and at best it was only an issue with the polish of it, less so the actual way it generally worked, as seen in how often you can die in 06 after one cause you just slip off the edge. It's very noticeable when you attempt to get to the first stage).
That said, I really enjoy those unique moves, and I loved when parkour was added too. I also liked the concepts with Unleashed's Werehog, the Hunting Stages in general, the Shooting Stages, Amy's invisibility in 06(wasn't completely stealth, though, but fun). About the only ones I really couldn't get into were Big's Fishing, any of Tails' stages in Unleashed... and that's... kind of it? Like, ones I actively disliked, not simply "were meh" at worst.
Shadow?Amy and Knuckles seem obvious. Hammer combos and a brawler style respectively. Tails on the other hand will be the difficult one.

I mean to be fair, given the financials of Sega in the late late 90s/early 00s (including 5 straight years of losses circa 98-03) the belief may have been that excess meddling with a licensed media property that was still making them money like the Archie line had been was an unnecessary risk. Its worth noting that the Archie reboot and relationship with IDW both occurred when Sega had largely stabilized its business, possibly putting it in an easier position to effectively restart its comic media property even with the potential loss in readership that might initially occur.
Edited by BorneAgain on Feb 18th 2023 at 12:39:05 PM