Retro|Spective 061R: Sonic the Hedgehog

[Neon Ignition]

Game 47 - SegaSonic the Hedgehog
One of the more well known arcade curiosities of the Sonic franchise, SegaSonic was an isometric title controlled with a track ball released in 1993. Sonic worked with Mighty the Armadillo and the often overlooked Ray the Squirrel in a title that has never been rereleased since despite two efforts by Sega. On release it was well received though Sega never made a direct sequel.







A title worth Sega finally giving to modern audiences?

[wakka]

Never seen it in the wild but it looks like it was a game that was developed and then had Sonic and Robotnik shoved into it. I didn't know there were traffic police on Mobius, for one thing.

EDIT: Also I would add that for a young child this looks like a fun game.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 46 - Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car
One of the earliest tie-in games was this arcade machine for younger kids which tasked Sonic as a police officer protecting the streets from Robotnik. The car shaped cabinet was large enough to house two adults and button controls allowed the player to make Sonic jump and use the siren.











Ever see this in the wild?

[Asura]

Game 45 - Team Sonic Racing
The excitement of Sumo getting a third crack at the whip was quickly splurted out all over the floor when it emerged that Sega had made the decision to strip the franchise back and to make it purely focused on road racing with just Sonic characters. The game focused on team based racing and packed it with 21 tracks, some of which returnees from the prior two entries. The game arrived as a smooth package but fell immediately foul of fans who felt it was a wholesale step backward from Transformed, taking the series in the wrong direction though sales were decent.

This was a weird one. This emerged in a very strange era for gaming that has already been somewhat forgotten about; when everyone was trying to make "The Overwatch of xxxxx" or "The MOBA of xxxxx". To be clear, what was meant by that was having games that did for each genre what bringing in some aspects of MOBAs did for Overwatch, i.e. very character-based, team-centric gameplay, where character abilities are a strong aspect of the game. It shows up in all sorts of places, even games like Starlink, where the characters each have an "ultimate" ability you can only use once every 4-5 minutes.

But both this and OnRush had a similar issue, in that racing games rarely mesh well with more abstract, esoteric mechanics. IIRC it's possible to cross the finish like first in Team Sonic Racing and not actually win the race, because you win on points, or something? It's been literally years since I last played it so I'm on shaky ground but I remember it had some weirdness going for it.

Talk about ****ting the bed, frankly. I would've totally went for a third game in the series.

[Dogg Thang]

I never played this. After the two previous games, it seemed utterly nuts to me to focus on just Sonic. The draw of the others was that wider Sega universe.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 45 - Team Sonic Racing
The excitement of Sumo getting a third crack at the whip was quickly splurted out all over the floor when it emerged that Sega had made the decision to strip the franchise back and to make it purely focused on road racing with just Sonic characters. The game focused on team based racing and packed it with 21 tracks, some of which returnees from the prior two entries. The game arrived as a smooth package but fell immediately foul of fans who felt it was a wholesale step backward from Transformed, taking the series in the wrong direction though sales were decent.






A worthy member of the Team?

[wakka]

Yeah I kinda associate the machine with bad framerates honestly. Wipeout 2048's DLC, which added all the stuff from HD and Fury, was really really ridiculously bad in particular. Such a shame.

[Asura]

One thing I would say is that Vita was probably not the best choice of platform, though.

The Vita had a few games like that, unfortunately. One I remember was the Borderlands title, which could've been great, but it had huge framerate issues. Pretty sure it got patched but that was long after I parted ways with it.

[wakka]

Transformed was a fun game. I got on better with this one since I played it on Vita, and so I was focused on the single player rather than multiplayer aspects. There were some really awesome moments, I remember a level involving an aircraft carrier that was particularly impressive.

One thing I would say is that Vita was probably not the best choice of platform, though. There were a lot of framerate issues, unfortunately, which took the edge off my enjoyment. Probably wouldn't have been an issue at all on PS3 or 360.

[Dogg Thang]

Transformed was absolutely superb. Some incredible tracks. I love this game.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Wow, are these sonic games still going on in here? They really pump them out.

[Neon Ignition]

Game 44 - Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing Transformed
The Sumo version of the racing arm of Sonic returned and this time widened the track and character count, delving deeper into the wider Sega fan service whilst also having the racing action turn to the air and water as well even if the mechanics of the game remained largely the same between the three modes. The resulting game was seen as a great step forward for the franchise and a big hit ensuring that a clear and obvious path for future Sonic racers had been established...








Was this entry Transformative?

[Asura]

Yep, I tried it in a shop and found no fun in it. I don't think I ever found a game Kinect did make fun

I played nearly the entire catalogue of Kinect games on Xbox 360 (don't ask), only missing some of those very late in the system's life, and I can confirm, very few of them were any good.

Dance Central was okay, but ultimately, Just Dance was a much better game for most people. The dance bit of the Star Wars game was playable because that was a reskin of Dance Central. The Kinect Sports games were reasonable but again, generally worse than the equivalent on the Wii. The rest, wow, so many of them were unplayable trash, and I say that without hyperbole; they straight up did not work.

The only Kinect game I would recommend is Child of Eden. Due to a boring series of events I once got the chance to play that for four hours on a cinema projector with cinema-quality surround sound, standing close to the screen, using a Kinect set up just on front of me on the floor, meaning the game filled my peripheral vision - and in that context, it was absolutely magnificent (but the "snap" motion to fire still made my wrist hurt the next day).

This is partially because Microsoft slashed the budget on the Kinect during development. The earlier units had internal processors that did much of the work, running custom hardware that I believe Microsoft bought from an Israeli company? But they were too expensive to mass-produce so the final version was a much simpler device. Ultimately though even the original is flawed, because you can't do full-body camera tracking from a single vantage point (the geometry of it, it would never work).

[Neon Ignition]

Yep, I tried it in a shop and found no fun in it. I don't think I ever found a game Kinect did make fun

[Asura]

Game 43 - Sonic Free Riders
The legacy of Kinect, summed up like so many reinterpretations of game types with the third and final hoverboard entry. The game is a sequel to the prior two entries but uses body movement to control character movement which represented the main change here. It failed hard, killing this run of entries with a poor reaction to the game.

Free to Walk Away?

I remember seeing a video of the American games journo Jeff Gerstmann trying to play this on Kinect prior to release, and it was an absolute joke. For all intents and purposes, the game didn't work (like practically all Kinect games).