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Episode 2

Game News

The Hard-To-Please Old Fans According To Iizuka

It’s been slow, so why not.

Takashi Iizuka, the long time target for everything older fans perceive wrong with the series, sat down for an interview with Official Nintendo Magazine to talk up the 3DS version of Sonic Generations. He dropped that the fans of the old Mega Drive games are very much hard to please. He hopes that Sonic Generations will fix that.

“Our team are always trying to present new gameplay innovations so it’s hard to please fans who like the gameplay from the older games,” said Iizuka.

“However, we have included the older gameplay as part of Sonic’s 20th Anniversary, so we think the fans of the older games will enjoy it [Generations] as well. We are also looking into continuing the Sonic 4 series which was released on WiiWare, and we’ll keep developing titles so more fans will enjoy the games.”

Easy on the Sonic 4: Episode 2 comments. Lord knows the fire wave it will bring with it will be enough further down the road.

It may not be necessary to keep trying to please the older fan base by trying to recreate a 1:1 variant of the Mega Drive games in a 2.5D environment, as some of the demands (and believe us when we say we are certainly no strangers to seeing some of these on this very site) border the point of just rom-hacking Sonic 1 or 2 and releasing games in that manner.

At the same time, trying to shoe horn in mechanics such as the Werehog, swords, angsty characters with guns, or even shoddily implemented team-based game play isn’t necessarily the way to go. When thinking of “gameplay innovations”, as they call it, the best strategy is to see what can work with the base gameplay instead of throwing darts at post-it notes on the wall and going with it. Knuckles taking the Werehog’s place while keeping similar play style and calling it Sonic and Knuckles 2? Bank.

If Sonic Colors was anything to go by, just release a game that’s charming and genuinely fun to play and everyone will be happy. You could even argue that the formula was within reach as early as 2002.

[Image Credit: Cyrus Parker]

Game News

First Look and Details for Sonic Generations 3DS

Don your scuba masks, because here comes one hell of a flood.

Earlier, we reported that Nintendo Power confirmed Sonic Generations on 3DS. Now, thanks to forum member Effexor, we have delicious gigantic scans of the article and images of the 3DS version for your consumption.

But for those of you who don’t want to sift through all the text to find whatever tasty morsels of information are in there, just hit the jump for the key details. You can also find the scans down below.

Continue Reading

Game News

Rumor Mill: New Sonic Game To Be Announced in Nintendo Power

As Sonic’s 20th Anniversary year chugs on, Sega has shown three titles for the franchise in a tease of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, the duel of mascots thrice over in Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games and an assault of media for the upcoming PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 Sonic Generations.

And yet, it seems that aside from a downloadable game and a collection of mini-games that Wii and 3DS owners are hardly getting any love in the form of a substantial Sonic platformer.

That may all be changing as next month’s Nintendo Power magazine includes a rather substantial teaser for the celebration of Sonic’s 20th Anniversary, featuring an edited version of teaser art for Sonic Generations. Could it mean that Sonic Generations is headed to a Nintendo console?

At the moment, it’s unlikely, but considering that Nintendo’s Project Cafe is set to be demonstrated at next month’s E3, and one of its rumored bits of design allows developers to easily port games from Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, it’s certainly a possibility.

Or it could even be a brand new title. This would go against what Sega of America Vice President of Sales and Marketing Alan Pritchard said in an interview with GameInformer last year stating that the company only had three new titles lined up for the franchise, as we already have three titles for the most part announced.

After the warm reception Sonic Colors got on both the Wii and DS in sales, a Sonic title for any of the console giant’s trinity is all but confirmed.

Game News

Sonic 4: Episode 2 in development, ‘not Sonic CD remake’

Remember Sonic 4: Episode 1? I sure hope you do.

(Looking at the post below this one is cheating. Stop that.)

Sega’s Sonic 4 Brand Manager Ken Balough confirmed today that Episode 2 of the series within a series is already in production. Naturally, we’ll have to wait for the first images and teasers of gameplay.

However, a few key points were stressed about Episode 2. According to Sega, since Episode 1 sold pretty well, Episode 2 may be allowed a bigger budget for development. A lot of elements in Episode 1 that players found problematic are also being addressed, with additional feedback from Sega of America and Sega of Europe being considered. One of these includes focusing on level elements that have never been seen before.

Lastly, the company stressed that, despite a certain teaser at the end of Episode 1 when all the Chaos Emeralds are collected, Episode 2 will not be a remake of Sonic CD. The amount of episodes Sonic 4 will hold has also been long decided by the company.

So get ready for another year of Sonic 4 goodness. Hopefully this time around, things won’t cause such a massive uproar about every minute detail under the sun. Also physics.

[Via Sonic Stadium]

Podcasts, Site News

Sonic Retro Podcast No. 2

So it’s been a while…a long while…since we’ve posted a new podcast recording. However those who pay attention to the topic post feeds for the forum might’ve noticed a topic in the staff lounge about bringing the podcast back. Well it wasn’t just a bunch of bull shit guys! We decided to actually do it!

This week we decided to look are a pretty wide range of interests in the Sonic community. In fact we hit the ground running with the discussion of Rotor’s alleged sexuality and from there, get into a pretty deep discussion about the Sonic Archie universe. We even take a look into the mind and character of Dr. Robotnik AKA Eggman to find out he might not be quite so evil and instead just a jackass.

We also talk over TSSZ News and the man who runs it, Tristan. And we say things like (EDIT – Inflamatory – T). But after all the drama, we go ahead and discuss one of the more positive aspects of the community which is the hacks! In particular, we talk about Sonic Boom and how much we both love it hate its difficulty. After that, we give Sonic 2 LD a bit of a spotlight which is a pretty cool project by Doc Eggfan.

Be sure to stick around for the next episode (within the year) where we’ll talk about Sonic 2 HD and Tom Payne’s art scans from Sonic 2’s production. And who knows what else!

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