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Idolization of Genesis Sonic The Hedgehog
Yeah, they're reasonably good games, but why are people so, er, damn attached to them? For a game series that advertises speed, the Genesis games often feel more like speed was just tacked on. Sonic 1 was obviously the worst about this (because having to wait for a block to move across boiling lava and having speed work against you with an underwater stage was totally what players expected), but even in the later games, the actual platforming can be kind of slow while the speed sections seem automated. It's not like Ninja Gaiden where the game actively encourages momentum throughout by punishing you if you don't keep moving. If anything, the fun came from the gimmicky amusement park-esque level design rather than blasting through at high speeds.
It's kind of odd that people complain about the newer games being style over substance. That was always the point of the series, as even in the beginning, Sonic's appeal was meant to be "look at how fast he moves compared to the slow, plodding Mario!"
And yes, I am aware of the irony of using an avatar of a Sonic & Knuckles boss.
Comments
@ Juan: Well, it can get to the point where you're slowly meandering around every silly little obstacle because you don't know what's next. Yes, I know: Memorization and all that. But I'm sure it must annoy even the player avatar to keep braking every 3 seconds XD
It's kind of odd that people complain about the newer games being style over substance. That was always the point of the series, as even in the beginning, Sonic's appeal was meant to be "look at how fast he moves compared to the slow, plodding Mario!"
I think people who prefer the Genesis games might make the point that this statement is a misunderstanding of the original Sonic series and that the speed part of the Sonic games, while definitely an important aspect of them, was never the main focus of the series. I have seen such critics argue (in places like IGN) that what they see as the overemphasis on speed in gameplay "features" like "press button to boost" or "hold right to win" ultimately stem from a misconception of what made Sonic good in the first place (i.e. platforming with a side of speed).
That being said, while I am not sure if those kinds of arguments are that persuasive, the only Genesis game I ever completed was Sonic 3&K, so I lack expertise on this subject. You could also argue that making more games as close to the Genesis games as possible is difficult to do for 3D games or just limits creativity.
"I think people who prefer the Genesis games might make the point that this statement is a misunderstanding of the original Sonic series and that the speed part of the Sonic games, while definitely an important aspect of them, was never the main focus of the series."
The one thing I don't like about that argument is that if it were true, then "speed" qualifies as misleading advertising.
Only one I didn't like was Secret Rings
A lot of the reason the Genesis games get the rose-colored treatment is because fake difficulty and having to memorize absolutely everything were par for the course for the entire generation of games. Even the 16-bit Sonic games and their dick moves of level design were downright friendly compared to the likes of Soldier of Fortune, or pretty much any beat-em-up ever. Shit, try playing Bubsy -- I'll be waiting here with a fifth of vodka for when you get back. A lot of that had to do with the fact that so many 16-bit era games were ported from arcade machines, which were overtuned explicitly to make you waste quarters, but when brought to the console, weren't retuned to be appropriate for a fixed number of continues. It made a general feeling that "the developer hates you" was a normal design approach, and making the game "fair" per se is a relatively new mode of thought.
There is a lot of myopia about why the more recent games have been criticized, but most of it comes down to just doing stuff awkwardly. The early attempts at 3D stuff had problems with floopy cameras, sloppy controls, and half-assed stories that weren't even all that necessary. And of course, rushed releases. Fans wanted them to go back to the basics and make sure they had that under control before they bit off anything else. The fact that the Advance series was continuing to be as good as the Genesis games ever were just kind of drove home the fact that the 3D games were missing something.
Unleashed day stages were the first time they went ahead and refined the "sticking" for those things (making them homing targets helped a lot), tightened the camera, and the general reaction has been going up and up from there. Just played Generations this weekend, and except for the last couple bosses (the Super Sonic boss is really, really clumsy), I feel like it's the most fun the series has ever been.
screen you could see compared to how big your character was and how far
you could move in one jump.
This.
If the game were like, say, the freeware game n, where your character is very small compared to the size of the screen, it'd be much easier to see where you're going, and thus much more fun to have that much speed.
Also, cleaner backgrounds.
Some of my first real memories are of playing them with my mom on our old Genesis.
My sister used to kick ass at games. I dunno what happened to her since the old days :P
I just spent eighty dollars tracking down a used Genesis console and the early Sonic games as a special Christmas present for my mom, since they mean so much to us. Most I've ever spent on a gift to anyone.
I used to play that level over and over again just for the music. I even had it as a ringtone for a time.
Oh, right, I also played Heroes, I liked it, but I'm still annoyed that instead of bringing back Super Knuckles and Super Tails, they just gave Knuckles and Tails golden shields instead
=/ I can excuse Tails as his super form required the upgraded emeralds, but Knuckles only needed the Chaos Emeralds!
I liked Heroes too for the most part, but there was a lot of stupid crap. Lightspeed Dash didn't stick properly, so there were a lot of times you'd jump into a trail, tornado in the air like an idiot, then fall to your death. The haunted mansion had this one part late in the level where you had to come out of a triangle jump and land on a rail, but dismounting from a triangle jump was uncontrollable and inconsistent. The Chaotix's battle strategy mostly came down to "spam the overpowered self-recharging super and try not to want too badly to kill yourself from Vector and Charmy singing their names OVER AND OVER AND OVER".
Don't even get me started on the Chaotix's fucking 25-minute janitorial mission in the haunted mansion. No reason at all for that.
It's kinda funny -- in TAS runs, they'll occasionally wait at the finish line till the 30-second mark because it takes so much longer to tally up the 50,000 bonus for less than 30 seconds than the 10,000 for 30+.
...Then again, that could have opened up the doors to the likes of Super Amy...
...Not sure if wash...