A few months ago I made a crappy "MML Rant" on the Sonic series and why I hated it, but I spent most of the time complaining about how the game ripped off of Dragonball Z without actually talking about the games and characters themselves. I figure that instead of recording LPs tonight, I'd dedicate the next few hours to giving the best analysis I can give on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
Before I even start, I have to state three things:
-I have not played every Sonic game. In fact, I've never completed any of them. I played a lot of every Sonic Advance game but never beat them, and I played a bit of Sonic 1. I also played a bit of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle at a friends house... and hated it. That's all of the experience I have playing Sonic games. I do plan to play more of the 3D Sonic games at some point to get a better idea of what they're trying to do.
-I have seen every main series Sonic game. Whether it be in a game review or a full-fledged Let's Play, I have seen bits of every Sonic game in the main series. This means I have not seen the games in the "Storybook" sub-series that included Secret Rings and Black Knight or the racing games.
-I will not complain about anything I don't have the right to complain about. Very rarely will you see me complain about game feel or control because I haven't played most Sonic games. If I do complain about something I haven't witnessed first-hand, I will actually mention from what source I attribute the complaint to.
With that out of the way, here we go.
Background / History
Back in the Super Nintendo days of old, Mario dominated everything.
Let's be honest with ourselves here. Sega was doomed if they didn't have a mascot. Their "Master System" was generally considered as a flop and so Sega immediately created the Genesis as a means of one-upping Nintendo. Unfortunately, however, Nintendo had a rebuttal: The Super Nintendo - with Super Mario World as a launch title.
I'll be frank: Super Mario World is an incredibly overrated game, but it did its job. The name "Mario" was forever to be branded as the mascot of all of gaming with that game unless someone did something. Thus began the "Mascot Wars", as I call it. Heck, even Bubsy was a participant.
Every gaming company rushed to get a stable series of games going. Some were lucky and already had a stable series like Squaresoft's Final Fantasy or Capcom's Mega Man, and some got lucky and established franchises, such as Rareware's Donkey Kong Country Series (which helped Nintendo more than anyone else) or Shiny Entertainment's Earthworm Jim. Sega went through tons of mascot ideas, including Ristar (whose game I really want to play), Eggman (whose name got changed to Dr. Robotnik and wound up being the villain of their new mascot and then later changed back), and, of course, Sonic.
The main problem here is that Nintendo didn't just have one mascot: they had tons. Mario, Link, Samus Aran, Donkey Kong, and so many others. Nintendo even started their new F-Zero racing series and practically made a new icon to be associated with their name.
So Sega having Sonic didn't really do anything. People can say that Sonic was Mario's equal, but he was really outnumbered. This is why Sonic as a franchise just feels out-of-place now. Mario has more spinoffs than he does main series games and Sonic doesn't, and yet Sonic was created to be Mario's equal. It just didn't happen, and that's where the problems only begin.
The Concept
Sonic's gimmick, if you will, was all about speed. Mario could run and jump, but Sonic could do that and do it fast. Mario can stomp on turtles, but Sonic can destroy robots, and he can do it fast. Mario can journey through the 7 worlds of Dinosaur Land to defeat Bowser, but Sonic is too cool for worlds - he has zones... and he can get through them fast.
Sonic's entire concept and personality revolves around being better than everyone else when he clearly isn't. Sonic's like a midget talking to a stereotypical basketball player and saying that he's taller. I have nothing against midgets, but that's just stupid talk. Sonic can certainly try to be better than Mario, but they don't need to rub it into the gamer's face. It's similar to the whole ad campaign for the Genesis. "Genesis does what Ninten-don't!" How cocky can you get?
And that's where Sonic as a character stumbles. Sonic doesn't come off as a good guy anymore. He just comes off as an arrogent selfish prick. Meanwhile Mario is jumping around carelessly saying "Let's-a-go!" with no worries and perfect hakuna matata, as Timon and Pumbaa call it. Kids (who are the target audience here, for the most part) are clearly going to appeal to the more welcoming individual. Someone who claims to be "too cool" for most individuals may boost self-esteem in those kids, but the word "cool" could also be characterized as someone who is exclusive rather than inclusive. "Let's-a-go!" is anything but exclusive.
And yes, you could say that I'm thinking about this too in-depth, but I guarantee you that these are the types of conversations that gaming companies' marketing departments have.
Overall, Sonic's concept makes his character less likable overall.
The Lack of Unique Ideas
The reason why a game series is fun and addicting is because each series has something unique to it. You can call Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country platformers, but they're extremely different in just about every other way.
Unfortunately with Sonic, he's only got his speed to claim as his own, and nothing else. This principle applies to so many different aspects of the franchise that it's almost hard to recall them all, but I'll certainly try my hardest.
Platforming
Platforming, as we all know, was established by Mario in the original Donkey Kong and redefined with Super Mario Bros. Sonic stole that concept, added speed to it, and called it different.
I guarantee that the first piece of criticism I get for that claim is that that could be said with any game. My counter to that is that it can't.
See, if I were to say that Yoshi's Island was a ripoff of Super Mario World and they just added a whiny baby and a hover kick, I'd be neglecting so many other aspects of Yoshi's Island. The partially nonlinear level design, the collectibles, the score, the setting, the art style, and even the minigames were all unique solely to Yoshi's Island.
Let's take apart Sonic and see what we get.
If we take the speed away from the first Sonic the Hedgehog game on Genesis, then we get a linear platforming game that functions similarly to Super Mario Bros. 1. There's a certain number of levels to a world (or acts to a zone, in Sonic's case) and at the end of each world / zone there's a boss fight. Enemies are defeated by jumping on them (remember that the spin-dash or homing attack wasn't around yet), and if you got hit by an enemy, you died. The only time you didn't die is if you had a power-up in Mario or at least one ring in Sonic, in which case you lose the power-up or rings. The only difference is Sonic's crappy ring gimmick, which basically combined coins and powerups from Mario to make Sonic look a bit different - something I'll elaborate on later. The only reason I never beat the Sonic Advance games is because I kept falling into pits because of the speed. In this absurdly long paragraph it is easy to see that without speed, Sonic is just a crappy Mario clone, and I'll get into why the speed itself is bad for the gameplay later on.
Dragonball Z Ripoffs
Since I complained for an hour about how Sonic stole things from Dragonball Z, I figured I should at least mention it here. Here's everything that Sonic stole from Dragonball Z.
-The Chaos Emeralds. They're powerful, there are seven of them, and everyone wants them, just like in DBZ.
-Super Sonic. It's the exact same thing as a Super Saiyan. It even looks the same. And if you want to say that Sonic did it before DBZ, you'd be dead wrong because Super Saiyans were in the manga long before Sonic 2 came out.
-Chaos (the villain from Sonic Adventure). It's a complete ripoff of the Shadow Dragons from Dragonball GT, the crappy yet still somewhat entertaining sequel show to DBZ. Chaos is an evil entity spawned from the Chaos emeralds, just as the Shadow Dragons were spawned by making too many wishes on the Dragonballs.
-Shadow the Hedgehog is a complete ripoff of Vegeta, who is by far the best character ever created for an animated television program (I can't speak for manga). His dark personality, constant change of character, and rivalry with Sonic is a direct ripoff from Vegeta. I don't care what anyone says because it is blatantly obvious.
-The Space Colony ARK Crashing into Earth is a ripoff of the destruction of Namek by the hands of Frieza. Both were last-minute revenge-induced decisions to ensure victory in the end. Dr. Gerald Robotnik may have been dead when his plan was executed, but the same basic premise was still applied.
The Speed and How it Makes the Games Worse
I'll make this subtopic short and sweet. It's harder to control things when they're moving fast. It's like trying to stop a rocket with your pinkie finger - it simply can't be done. So when a bad Mario clone is given speed, it literally does nothing but make the game harder to control. Unless the game is designed around it (like some of the 3D Sonic games like Unleashed's daytime stages (according to Fawful's Minion - Youtube username Animalguy001, who loves Sonic - so this exception is credited to him.)), it makes the game harder to control.
This is my main gripe with all of the 2D Sonic games and a majority of the 3D ones. From what I can tell, Sonic '06 is one of the worst examples of bad level design with regard to speed (check out Game Grumps - they got a series on that game), with Sonic 1 not too far behind. The Adventure games had some issues with that (from what I remember of Johnny's reviews on the Adventure games) but I wouldn't quote me on that one.
If you're going to make a game revolve around speed, then my question is then why would you force the player to stop? It's just a stupid thing to do. You can easily design the game solely around obstacle-course styled layouts. Take a game like Rayman: Jungle Run for iOS. The game was designed so that Rayman could always be running. Why couldn't Sonic be like that? I'll tell you why: because it was too different from Mario. Sega wanted their Mario equivalent and they were afraid to do something too different. That's why Ristar only got one game - because his grappling gimmick wasn't similar enough to Mario.
The 3D Sonic games were a step in the right direction with the automatic running sections and the homing attack, but there's still a lot that's lacking. From what I've seen of Sonic '06 in the Game Grumps series, most of the levels don't have Sonic moving automatically. The best way to do Sonic in 3D would be to have a setup similar to Kirby's Air Ride, except without the racing aspect and with the homing attack. Automatic forward motion, drifting to turn, trying to get speed boosts, and jumping over obstacles, using the homing attack to dispatch enemies in one hit. These enemies shouldn't be preventing you from moving ahead, but they should be a basic obstacle for players to dodge. Using the homing attack on enemies might also be a way to access a hidden path.
Point is, the only thing that makes Sonic unique actually makes his games worse as a result because it was executed badly. The sense of speed may be good, but if the game is worse because of it, it doesn't make the gimmick enjoyable.
The Hole With Rings (bad joke completely intended)
As I previously mentioned, Sonic's equivalent to Mario's coins come in the form of rings. The problem with this is that rings also act similarly to the Super Mushroom for Mario as well.
Basically, when Sonic gets hit, he loses all of his rings, and if he gets hit with no rings, then he loses a life. The main issue with this is that Sonic gets the same second hit with one ring as he would with fifty rings or more. There is little to no point in collecting rings when you only really need five or so on you (just in case the game decides to make a ring that you dropped unrecoverable). Sure, collecting 100 rings earns you an extra life just like Mario, but I'm pretty certain that nobody collected every last coin in Mario for just that reason. I'm also pretty certain, however, that people always went to get every powerup they could get.
My point here is that this whole ring gimmick is yet another thing that slows you down. If you lose all of your rings, then you have to stop, pick up a few, and press on. And if the rings are unrecoverable (which would be the game's fault, not the player's) then you might even want to backtrack to go get some, especially in 3D Sonic games when there's areas loaded with enemies and a task to destroy them all (like in Sonic '06 - once again, Game Grumps). Why have a gimmick that makes the gameplay experience worse?
Characters and Why They All Suck
Here I'll tell you about every character in the games and why they suck as a character. To be fair, I will mention that the Sonic comics (despite how fragmented and inconsistent the plot is) does give these characters more life and I can at least tolerate most of them there.
Sonic himself is an arrogent, selfish, "too-cool" prick, as I mentioned before. He acts like he's above everyone else, he's cocky and stubborn, and I hate him for it. Why make that your mascot?
Tails is a really inconsistent character that has no life. See, I would be fine if Tails were the mascot of Sega and these were Tails games because Mario doesn't have much character depth either. The problem is that he isn't, and because he isn't, he should have more personality - and he doesn't.
Knuckles is a hard-headed idiot. In Sonic 3 (from what I've seen in The Completionist's review and the LP on his Super Beard Bros. show) players hated him for being a jerk to you, but he just simply didn't realize that Robotnik was evil. In Sonic X he fell for this same trick over and over and over again, making him a predictable and boring character beyond Sonic 3.
Amy - well, everyone hates her. She's every guys' nightmare. She's a stalker, she's ugly as hell (but maybe that's because she's a hedgehog and I'm not into that sort of thing), and she's loud and annoying. Beyond that, she has no personality.
Robotnik, or Eggman now is also a crappy villain. I could complain that he does the same basic thing every time in the 2D Sonic games, but Bowser does that in every Mario game. The problem is that ever since Sonic 3 the Sonic series has tried to have a huge plot, and the generic villain really doesn't fit in here.
Shadow is a Vegeta ripoff that people say is cool when he really isn't. Seriously, if you're a Shadow fanboy/girl, then go watch Dragonball Z and let me know what you think of Vegeta. I guarentee you'll agree with me then.
Rouge is a pathetic excuse for fanservice, and by fan service I mean appeasing to the people that draw Sonic porn (why?). Beyond that she has no character depth (see a trend here?).
The Chaotix are your comic relief characters, and unfortunately the only Sonic character I ever liked, Mighty the Armadillo, hasn't appeared since Knuckles' Chaotix. The other characters are either obnoxious (Vector), annoying (Charmy), or a David Spade knockoff (Espio). Yes, I just called Espio a David Spade knockoff. Deal with it.
Big the Cat... just no. Just no.
Common Rebuttals to My Arguments and My Re-Rebuttal
MML, aren't you nitpicking a bit too much? I mean every game has flaws, right?
Every game except Yoshi's Island for the GBA has flaws, but that really isn't the issue here. There's a distinct difference between a game having a few problems and a whole series having blatant flaws that are never addressed. Sonic isn't just a set of bad games, Sonic is a bad concept in general. Speed doesn't work in a Mario-esque platforming environment, and while Sega has tried to deviate Sonic, they can't seem to realize the obvious conflict between the underlying gimmick and the design of the game.
What about the comics? Sally Acorn is cute! Sonic x Sally FOR LIFE!!!
Sally Acorn was a well-made character in the original Sonic SatAM television show, but the comics turned her (and just about any decent character) into an unpredictable mess. Different writers have had different outlooks on her and it destroys her character. The comics can't save Sonic because they are just a complete mess. I read them up to #200ish and then I stopped because it became too convoluted and just not worth my time.
HOW DARE YOU INSULT SONIC! HE'S THE BEST CHARACTER EVER!
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I encourage you to look past what you like and really look into the games and characters as they are. Everything about Sonic is flawed.
How can you make these judgments if you haven't played all of the games?
I have seen enough of the games to make a fair conclusion, but I plan to play through some of the games more to make a true conclusion. Is it just me or is the thing you hate the most the thing you're most intrigued by?
***
Holy crap, I think I'm actually done! This took a lot longer than a few hours, but I think I have finally fully elaborated on why I hate Sonic. Hope you learned something and hope you understand my hate.
-MML
If you're going to make a game revolve around speed, then my question is then why would you force the player to stop? It's just a stupid thing to do. You can easily design the game solely around obstacle-course styled layouts. Take a game like Rayman: Jungle Run for iOS. The game was designed so that Rayman could always be running. Why couldn't Sonic be like that? I'll tell you why: because it was too different from Mario. Sega wanted their Mario equivalent and they were afraid to do something too different. That's why Ristar only got one game - because his grappling gimmick wasn't similar enough to Mario.
The 3D Sonic games were a step in the right direction with the automatic running sections and the homing attack, but there's still a lot that's lacking. From what I've seen of Sonic '06 in the Game Grumps series, most of the levels don't have Sonic moving automatically. The best way to do Sonic in 3D would be to have a setup similar to Kirby's Air Ride, except without the racing aspect and with the homing attack. Automatic forward motion, drifting to turn, trying to get speed boosts, and jumping over obstacles, using the homing attack to dispatch enemies in one hit. These enemies shouldn't be preventing you from moving ahead, but they should be a basic obstacle for players to dodge. Using the homing attack on enemies might also be a way to access a hidden path.
Point is, the only thing that makes Sonic unique actually makes his games worse as a result because it was executed badly. The sense of speed may be good, but if the game is worse because of it, it doesn't make the gimmick enjoyable.
The Hole With Rings (bad joke completely intended)
As I previously mentioned, Sonic's equivalent to Mario's coins come in the form of rings. The problem with this is that rings also act similarly to the Super Mushroom for Mario as well.
Basically, when Sonic gets hit, he loses all of his rings, and if he gets hit with no rings, then he loses a life. The main issue with this is that Sonic gets the same second hit with one ring as he would with fifty rings or more. There is little to no point in collecting rings when you only really need five or so on you (just in case the game decides to make a ring that you dropped unrecoverable). Sure, collecting 100 rings earns you an extra life just like Mario, but I'm pretty certain that nobody collected every last coin in Mario for just that reason. I'm also pretty certain, however, that people always went to get every powerup they could get.
My point here is that this whole ring gimmick is yet another thing that slows you down. If you lose all of your rings, then you have to stop, pick up a few, and press on. And if the rings are unrecoverable (which would be the game's fault, not the player's) then you might even want to backtrack to go get some, especially in 3D Sonic games when there's areas loaded with enemies and a task to destroy them all (like in Sonic '06 - once again, Game Grumps). Why have a gimmick that makes the gameplay experience worse?
Characters and Why They All Suck
Here I'll tell you about every character in the games and why they suck as a character. To be fair, I will mention that the Sonic comics (despite how fragmented and inconsistent the plot is) does give these characters more life and I can at least tolerate most of them there.
Sonic himself is an arrogent, selfish, "too-cool" prick, as I mentioned before. He acts like he's above everyone else, he's cocky and stubborn, and I hate him for it. Why make that your mascot?
Tails is a really inconsistent character that has no life. See, I would be fine if Tails were the mascot of Sega and these were Tails games because Mario doesn't have much character depth either. The problem is that he isn't, and because he isn't, he should have more personality - and he doesn't.
Knuckles is a hard-headed idiot. In Sonic 3 (from what I've seen in The Completionist's review and the LP on his Super Beard Bros. show) players hated him for being a jerk to you, but he just simply didn't realize that Robotnik was evil. In Sonic X he fell for this same trick over and over and over again, making him a predictable and boring character beyond Sonic 3.
Amy - well, everyone hates her. She's every guys' nightmare. She's a stalker, she's ugly as hell (but maybe that's because she's a hedgehog and I'm not into that sort of thing), and she's loud and annoying. Beyond that, she has no personality.
Robotnik, or Eggman now is also a crappy villain. I could complain that he does the same basic thing every time in the 2D Sonic games, but Bowser does that in every Mario game. The problem is that ever since Sonic 3 the Sonic series has tried to have a huge plot, and the generic villain really doesn't fit in here.
Shadow is a Vegeta ripoff that people say is cool when he really isn't. Seriously, if you're a Shadow fanboy/girl, then go watch Dragonball Z and let me know what you think of Vegeta. I guarentee you'll agree with me then.
Rouge is a pathetic excuse for fanservice, and by fan service I mean appeasing to the people that draw Sonic porn (why?). Beyond that she has no character depth (see a trend here?).
The Chaotix are your comic relief characters, and unfortunately the only Sonic character I ever liked, Mighty the Armadillo, hasn't appeared since Knuckles' Chaotix. The other characters are either obnoxious (Vector), annoying (Charmy), or a David Spade knockoff (Espio). Yes, I just called Espio a David Spade knockoff. Deal with it.
Big the Cat... just no. Just no.
Common Rebuttals to My Arguments and My Re-Rebuttal
MML, aren't you nitpicking a bit too much? I mean every game has flaws, right?
Every game except Yoshi's Island for the GBA has flaws, but that really isn't the issue here. There's a distinct difference between a game having a few problems and a whole series having blatant flaws that are never addressed. Sonic isn't just a set of bad games, Sonic is a bad concept in general. Speed doesn't work in a Mario-esque platforming environment, and while Sega has tried to deviate Sonic, they can't seem to realize the obvious conflict between the underlying gimmick and the design of the game.
What about the comics? Sally Acorn is cute! Sonic x Sally FOR LIFE!!!
Sally Acorn was a well-made character in the original Sonic SatAM television show, but the comics turned her (and just about any decent character) into an unpredictable mess. Different writers have had different outlooks on her and it destroys her character. The comics can't save Sonic because they are just a complete mess. I read them up to #200ish and then I stopped because it became too convoluted and just not worth my time.
HOW DARE YOU INSULT SONIC! HE'S THE BEST CHARACTER EVER!
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but I encourage you to look past what you like and really look into the games and characters as they are. Everything about Sonic is flawed.
How can you make these judgments if you haven't played all of the games?
I have seen enough of the games to make a fair conclusion, but I plan to play through some of the games more to make a true conclusion. Is it just me or is the thing you hate the most the thing you're most intrigued by?
***
Holy crap, I think I'm actually done! This took a lot longer than a few hours, but I think I have finally fully elaborated on why I hate Sonic. Hope you learned something and hope you understand my hate.
-MML
*Reads article & tries to hold back a chuckle* You can't be serious.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBefore Sega made sonic they already had franchises with potential mascots, Like Shinobi and Phantasy Star. Sega didn't need to make a platformer to compete with Mario, all they had to do was actually market the games they ALREADY MADE. Once Sonic came on the scene Sega suddenly forgot to advertise their other ips as much as they did with their overrated marketing ploy.
ReplyDeleteSega Seriously needs to forget about their rivalry purposed games and games not even made by them, and actually build upon and advertise their best intellectual properties. They need to do a lot more worldwide marketing for their (in-house) games than what they've been doing, so people will actually know at least as much about them as most other popular games and companies. They definitely have the creativity, characters, and innovations to deserve at least as much recognition as Nintendo. Sega simply needs to stop being deliberately stupid, like they've been acting for far longer than critically thinking people should. If Sega is so good at fan service, then why the hell do they not even have the common sense to market and continually build upon most of their internally developed games, so they can gain more fans to appeal to in the first place?
Sega, for whatever mysterious reason, ONLY advertises Sonic, a series that isn't even worth crap compared to the quality of their rpgs, action games, etc. It's one of the greatest mysteries in history what Sega could possibly see in Sonic that they deem more worthy of recognition than just about every other game they work on, which makes one wonder why they even bother making other games if their hell bent on making sure only one gets enough marketing to get it noticed and make a profit from it. Meanwhile Sega's gaining laughably low sales on all their other series (many of which they've been leaving dormant [some for years now] completely pushing away potential sales and popularity for them...because they can I guess) and then they complain about low sales like they expect people to just magically know about their other games, when they only market freaking Sonic. And then there's the problem of them half assing sequels to classics or letting people not even from Sega work on them, almost like they're in a rush to just get another game out of the way so they can hurry and get back to the oh so brilliant masterpiece that is (definitely not) Sonic. While Capcom screws over their mascot, Sega screws over most of what makes them a developer in the first place. At least Sega actually markets most of their games in their native country of Japan, but that can only go so far in terms of establishing a worldwide fanbase and at least as much profit from it. And it seriously makes no sense that the foreign divisions of the main Japanese corporation ever bothered making their own games. It ain't Sega unless it's internally developed from the country where they established what Sega is today.