How Sega Ruined Sonic the Hedgehog 108
The always entertaining RetroGaming with Racketboy has a long post up railing against Sega for ruining Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue, spikey hero has had a rough time of it of late. Outings from the series like Shadow the Hedgehog, and even the next-gen title simply named Sonic the Hedgehog, have gotten simply terrible reviews. He longs for a return to simple, fun, not-creepy play. From the article: "As the new generation of platforms emerged, Sega used Sonic as a way to show off their newest graphical technologies. There is no doubt that the new Sonic the Hedgehog for the XBox 360 looks nice, but as the abysmal reviews indicate, graphics are not everything. In order to push its cutting-edge graphics to the limit, Sega, in their infinite wisdom, felt the need to bring Sonic and his friends into a more realistic world, filled with life-like humans. As you can see from this video, there is something creepy about some giant hedgehogs interacting with humans. My point is that Sega doesn't seem to know what it wants to do with Sonic. It seems like Sega assigns various quick-and-dirty development projects in order to see what ideas sticks with consumers. Unfortunately, Sega fans have had to suffer through this process."
Start the video at 00:34 (Score:5, Informative)
Start the video at 00:34 to avoid the blithering asshat.
Hope for the Wii version (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ruxm9D0p6P8 [youtube.com]
Some of the environments in the screenshots look fantastic too. The game looks just like the 2D games in 3D, which is probably what they should have done in the first place.
Re:Sonic Made the Leap to 3D in 1999... (Score:3, Informative)
SEGA died.
What we call SEGA these days is actually SEGA Sammy Holdings [segasammy.co.jp] a different, and much more unsavory beast.
Development teams were merged, staff was let go, staff left rather than be a part of the new entity.
If Sonic represents the face of SEGA, then it is no wonder that he is a shambling, grotesque abomination lacking the spark of life that the old Sonic had.
Although, honestly, I don't see how a company which is "Realizing group synergies" [segasammy.co.jp] can go wrong.