AHC/WI: Sonic does better in the 3D Era

[Emperor Norton I]

The Sonic the Hedgehog video game franchise is notorious for it's inability to release good games, and for games which properly capture the sort of quality the franchise had before the advent of 3D gaming. This is a far cry from an era when the Sonic and Mario franchises were neck and neck, and the former was a legitimate contender to the latter. Sonic never had it's "Mario 64".

The challenge here is to get the Sonic game series to properly and successfully transition into the era of 3D gaming, and to manage to have a comparable quality to the Mario franchise during the 3D era. And what if that had happened?

 

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

The Sonic the Hedgehog video game franchise is notorious for it's inability to release good games, and for games which properly capture the sort of quality the franchise had before the advent of 3D gaming. This is a far cry from an era when the Sonic and Mario franchises were neck and neck, and the former was a legitimate contender to the latter. Sonic never had it's "Mario 64".

The challenge here is to get the Sonic game series to properly and successfully transition into the era of 3D gaming, and to manage to have a comparable quality to the Mario franchise during the 3D era. And what if that had happened?

Hey, I like the Sonic Adventure series and Sonic Colors!

Sonic 06 is also one of the funniest games you'll ever play.

The trick is to have different people running Sega's marketing department than the idiots of OTL. The mid-90s gave them some very dumb moves like the Saturn launch alienating retailers like Wal-Mart, and trying to maintain two consoles at once (32x and Saturn). The Dreamcast gave Sega a shot in the arm, but it was released at a weird time. It was stronger than the 32-bit systems, but inferior to the insanely popular PS2, which ultimately doomed the Dreamcast.

 

[AudieonAHCom]

Release Sonic Xtreme,take out R.

 

[nooblet]

Translating Sonic's gameplay to a 3D plane is a lot harder than an exploration-focused game like Mario or Zelda, at least until the Dreamcast. Anything less than 60 fps is going to be very problematic, so the game would have to take a huge visual hit to be playable on older consoles.
A controller setup like the PS2's dualshock with dual analog sticks that can double as action buttons would work pretty well, since Sonic only uses one action button for jumping and charging acceleration iirc.

I would think that the best approach would be to operate the camera similar to 3D racing games of the era, except that the stages are more free-form.

Of course that would require Sega to not make boneheaded marketing decisions and not bother with the 32X silliness, or Sega CD for that matter.

 

[Nivek]

Nooblet mention the main problem but again even the prototype of Sonic X-treme show potential(even if 30fps) and Nights intro dream show how play a 2.5D esque sonic game.

The main problem who Sonic have with his 3d jump is that not only was to late but much of the original level design and planning leave sega at that point and Naka and the rest of Sonic Team even if pretty good, fail under pressure and debates about gameplay.

yes the Saturn should be butterfly high and having a decent Sonic X-treme/lost world esque game would help, it will ne be the same league as 3D Mario but as least much better that OTL

 

[MalcontentRex]

Thought this was gonna be about the drive-thru franchise.

 

[FDW]

There was actually a documentary on Youtube about this. One of things they talked about as to why Sonic had so many problems in the 3D era relates to the issue of speed. Sonic wasn't initially built entirely around the idea of speed, but it came to be advertised as such. Eventually SEGA bought into their own hype around Speed, which led to them transforming Sonic into completely different type of game once the 3D era started.

 

[Urcea]

I was under the opinion that Sonic Adventure 2 was pretty critically good and also well received!

 

[FDW]

I was under the opinion that Sonic Adventure 2 was pretty critically good and also well received!

Yes, but it also had many of the problems plaguing the early 3D Sonic games that ultimately came to a head in Sonic '06.