Are you
tired of Jim Sterling's skits?
Are you
sick of being told Capitalism is bad?
Are you
just plain done with listening to a Brit convince you his tits are true and honest?
Do you think Jim is/was
capable of making good points but he's too much of a spiteful, bigoted, terminally-online Twitter weirdo to live up to that capacity?
If you said
yes to any of these, then don't worry.
Gloria From Pokemon Sword (and Shield) Presents:
THE JIMLESS JIMQUISITION
with your host: not Jim Sterling
Today's Revised Topic:
Fucking Up Sonic: A Time-Honored Tradition
I cannot think of a more successful series defined by failure. The games generally do well enough, with some doing exceptionally well. A new game getting announced tends to turn some heads. And yet, there's almost this fear to praise the blue blur without backhanding the series in the process. Like if they don't mention the shortcomings of the series. Their entire online presence will be black-listed and their family will have the plagues unleashed upon them. In other words, most Sonic discussion on forums hasn't left 2014, and it's left a lot of us wanting to move on to something else relating to the cartoon pin-cushion bored and exhausted.
When the new 3D Sonic game comes out, expect a lot of reviews to go "Sonic had a rough 3D career right from the get-go" while not talking about how Sonic Adventure is the most accurate jump from 2D to 3D for any game from that time (Mario 64 and Pac-Man are very different games from their 2D-counterparts). Some would say this is the result of Sonic Adventure waiting so long that it didn't have to worry about figuring everything out and it had the failed and canceled game (Sonic Extreme) to learn from. And those people would be correct, and probably hypocrites. I say that last part because, if it wasn't Sonic, it could and would be framed as "[popular series] realized what wasn't working, and instead focused on worked before. This makes [popular franchise in 3D] unique among its collect-a-thon contemporaries." But they won't because Sonic is too acceptable of a target these days to be left unscathed.
It'd be fun to blame Arin of Game Grumps, and somewhat accurate since he made it not just acceptable but popular to go on about Sonic having never been good. But there's no getting around that, ever since
2006, SEGA has gotten really good at making bad choices with Sonic. While people will debate the exact details, Sonic arguably has more bad games than good with just the mainline stuff. Spin-offs never survive more than a few games. Sonic has the Spongebob problem of always referencing old material (especially Green Hill Zone) because reliving the old memories is easier than making new ones. The Sonic Twitter is just a carbon copy of Wendy's because SEGA was so desperate for something people liked that letting their mascot have the same online reputation as a smack-talking burger chain even if it means that it can only be seen as "I know I suck. laugh at me".
And so with Sonic Origins, it should be impossible to fuck up as long as you put effort into it. And to be fair, they may have. the Animated cutscenes in the style of Mania with Sonic 3 and Knuckles included? Promising. We'll need to see if the emulation actually works properly (something SEGA has a worse track record than even Nintendo does these days), but promising. So naturally, they had to include per-order bonuses and de-list the original games.
Now, that spreadsheet they showed looked worse than it is, so let me quickly explain what it actually said before tearing it apart. If you pre-order the game, you get Mirror Mode right away, 100 coins (assuming that's the collectible currency for some extras), and some extra songs. The digital versions give you extra special menus, extra modes to look at menu and character sprites, and hard mode versions of the levels. All of this will be DLC for those who don't want these versions right away.
Okay, now to explain why this is stupid: this makes me think that if Sonic Mega Collection came out today, you'd have to pay for the stylized menu that makes people still love that collection to this day, even if it's outdated. The style that helped justify re-releases back then, when these games were harder to get by, is now being cut out and sold back piecemeal at a time when stuff like that would be one of the few things emulation cannot easily replicate because, aside from absurdly devoted projects like Sonic 3 AIR, it's just not worth the effort.
Oh yeah, Sonic 3 AIR is now something you cannot get while supporting SEGA because de-listed the original games. This is what pushes it over the edge for me personally. This reminds me of when Nintendo de-listed Tropical Freeze from the WiiU to make it seem more like a Switch original/exclusive, and most people have already compared this to Rockstar with the GTA 3 Saga. The fact remains the same: this shows a lack of confidence in what they're selling. The fact these games now have extra support and cutscenes to offer a story isn't enough, but they have no more to offer thanks to the pre-order bonuses and deluxe editions cutting out everything else for extra money. What they have to offer isn't enough, so they have to force value onto it. Now the selling point is "this is the only way to buy these games on Steam" instead of "the definitive way to play these games".
And then there's Denuvo because fuck you and your security from threats. The security of this product with no sensitive information is far more important than your actual computer and your real-life details.
I don't know if this will lead to the privacy of OG Sonic or even this game, but even with a slam dunk like Sonic Origins, SEGA manages to not just drop the ball, but slam it against the floor hard enough to deck them in the face and lose a tooth.
Again.
