Sonic Revisionism

The biggest mistake the Sega made in regards to Sonic 4 Episode I was in naming it.  They should have named it Sonic HD, Sonic Retro, or something like that.  The game is classic Sonic on today’s consoles, but the name doesn’t convey that.

It’s a minor mistake, but given the amount of complaining about it not being original and rehashing the levels form the Genesis games, a different name could have pre-empted some of that criticism.

And how ridiculous that kind of criticism is.  It’s pretty clear that the point of the game is to give us a modern-day version of the Sega Genesis Sonic games.  Of course there’s going to be a Green Hill Zone and other levels from the original games.  That’s what people wanted.  Sonic 3 for the Sega Genesis came out 16 years ago.  The original Sonic came out 20 years ago.  With all of the re-releases of old games, what’s wrong with giving fans a modern version of a beloved 20-year old game?

Of course, people mainly wanted Sonic to go back to his roots because they’re dissatisfied with recent 3D Sonic games.  I have to plead ignorance here, because the last Sonic game I had played prior to Sonic 4 was Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast, which was great game.  Wikipedia says, “The reception at the time of original Dreamcast version was overwhelmingly positive.”  Sonic Adventure 2 was also well-received.  The idea that the 3D Sonic games were terrible is just mythology.  Now, I understand that some of the more recent Sonic games were not well-received.  But that doesn’t justify asserting that the last good Sonic game was Sonic CD.

So while I like Sonic 4, I’m sad that Sega is making 2D Sonic games their main focus because of the popular (but incorrect) perception that the 3D Sonic games were bad.  I’m still excited about future episodes of Sonic 4 (especially if they add more playable characters), but I would really like to see a new Sonic Adventure-type 3D game.

As to the quality of Sonic 4 itself, I think it does what it sets out to do admirably.  I think the graphics, sound, and controls are all excellent.  It’s definitely one of the best-looking 2D games that I’ve seen.  (By 2D, I’m only referring to the fact that the game takes place on a 2D plane.  The characters are rotoscoped 3D-models, of course).

Speaking of which, I was part of baffling discussion of this topic on the XBox 360 forums.  The original poster asked, “Anyone else wish Sega just went back to using good old fashioned sprites?”  I asked what that advantage of that would be.  In Sonic 4, the characters look great, their animation is smooth – so what’s the problem?  Many people wouldn’t even be able to tell that the underlying models are 3D.  The main reason I can tell is because of their fluidity.  If you read the discussion, you’ll notice that no one answered my question.  I can understand nostalgia, but if you don’t want improvements, what’s the point of remaking the game anyway?  Just play the original.  It’s even available on on XBox Live.

Another piece of backlash against the game that I don’t understand is Kotaku.com’s “Did Sonic Fans Just Release A Better Sonic the Hedgehog HD?”, which talks about the fan-made demo, Sonic Fan Remix.  While that game does look good, with its developers deserving a lot of credit, I think people are succumbing to the power of suggestion when they say things like, “Yeah, that’s so much better than Sonic 4!  Sega should hire those guys.”  If Sonic Fan Remix was the product that Sega released and some fans made Sonic 4, I think you’d have people talking about how clean, simple, and smooth Sonic 4 is in comparison.

Sonic Fan Remix:

Sonic 4:

In any case, my main point is that the backlash against Sonic 4 has gotten out-of-hand.  It’s a good game, and future episodes should make it every better.

That being said, I do have a few minor complaints about the game.  The first is that the camera is too close for my tastes  Back in March I suggested that Sega move the camera back a little when Sonic is at high speeds.  Needless to say my advice was not heeded.  There is one boss fight in the Casio Night zone where the camera does zoom out.  So we know the game engine supports it.  I would just like it to happen more often.

Secondly, there is no local multiplayer.  I would really have liked a split screen mode, or even a mode where a second controller can control Tails, even if Tails isn’t on the screen or has trouble keeping up with Sonic.  It was a fun thing that you could do in most other Sonic games, beginning with Sonic 2.  I had to explain to my son that the new Sonic game was not 2-player, even though the old ones were.  It doesn’t make sense to a 4-year-old and it doesn’t make sense to me.  Sega, please -- put Tails in Episode 2 and let him be controllable by the second player.

There is a graphical level selector, which I was worried might not be in the game.  I’m sure Sega mainly included that feature for the purposes of the leaderboards, but I’ll still take credit for it.

Bring on episode 2, Sega.

Sick of Playing Level 1

I’m too lazy and unqualified to critique the video game canon list created by video game scholars.  Everyone’s going to have their own ideas about what should and shouldn’t be on a list like that, but few people were continuously up-to-speed on developments in both the PC and console gaming worlds throughout the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s.   I have more gaming experience than most people, but I wouldn’t pretend to have enough perspective to be able to assess how important any particular game is.  It sure seems like a game like Doom is important, but didn’t Wolfenstein 3D pave the way for Doom?  How do you include Doom on the list but not Wolfenstein?  The list doesn’t seem important enough to put time or effort into researching and arguing for or against a game’s inclusion.  It would be a different story if I was getting paid to do that.

I’m mainly interested in the scholars’ defense of Super Mario Bros 3’s inclusion.  The article says it was included because, “its nonlinear play, a mainstay of contemporary games, and new features like the ability to move both backward and forward.”  I’ve got to agree with that reasoning and emphasize how cool a feature like that was and is.

In case anyone isn’t clear on what nonlinearity means, think of the first Super Mario Bros game.  The game always starts on level 1-1.  You beat the level and go to level 1-2.  At certain points you can warp ahead, skipping some levels.  But you can never go back, and never avoid starting the game on level 1-1.

Most of the games of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras are like that – certainly the majority of side-scrolling action/platform games.  Players just accepted that, but we were all secretly and not-so-secretly sick of playing level 1 every time we to played the game.

Super Mario 3 featured an overworld that meant the gamer didn’t have to always start the game at the first level.  He could play any level he previously passed.  This was unheard of at the time.

Super Mario 3 was not the first game to implement this.  Bionic Commando did have an overworld, but it’s wasn’t as nice.  In addition to the interface being clunky and unattractive, the lack of progress saving limited its usefulness.

Progress-saving combined with the overworld really put SMB3 ahead of its time.

I was an early adopter of the Genesis, and although I owned an NES, I was contemptuous of the NES, Nintendo, and gamers who only owned an NES (yes, I was a gaming elitist).  The 16-bit era had arrived, but Nintendo continued to milk the NES.  I realized that it made good business sense for Nintendo to do that, but I wished consumers would forsake their 8-bit consoles for the superior graphics and sound of the Genesis (or the TurboGrafx-16 – yeah right).  In any case, SMB3 is the one NES game that I was envious of.  I wished that game developers for the Genesis would have put some of those features in the 16-bit games.  But they didn’t get it, and some of them still haven’t gotten it.

The funny thing is, making a game non-linear would have been easy to do.  The overworlds themselves don’t have to be graphically impressive.  SMB3’s definitely was not beautiful.  They just have to work.  They’re basically graphical level selection screens.  That’s all they have to be.

Sonic the Hedgehog was released in 1991 – three years after the Japanese release of SMB3.  The developers would have know about the innovations of SMB3.  And while Sonic blew the Super Mario games out of the water in terms of graphics and sound (including Super Mario World for the SNES), its lack of an overworld and progress saving hurt its overall quality and in particular its replayablity.

Sega didn’t learn this until Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast.  As far as I know, that was the first Sonic game to have an overworld (which, at that point in gaming, had evolved into an immersive 3D environment with the same controls and graphical quality as the particular levels).  The Genesis Sonic games – Sonic 2, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic 3 – all lacked an overworld and progress saving.  I’m not even convinced that the upcoming Sonic 4 will have a an overworld or more importantly, level selection.

Why didn’t more developers in the 80’s and 90’s see that as an important feature?  I’m guessing that it’s because nonlinearity does not sell games – at least not back then.  Gamers mainly wanted better graphics and sound.  We wanted screen shots of games showing the best the games had to offer graphically.  If a game had nice graphics, that was 75% of the sale.

Take a look at these screens:

These are from James 'Buster' Douglas Knockout Boxing and Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf, respectively.  At the time, those graphics were unbelievable.  When a person would come across an ad featuring those screens in a magazine, the only reaction was “wow!”  The games themselves were bad, but they were effective marketing for the Genesis.  They’re colorful, exciting, detailed, and beyond what was possible on the NES.

So the motivation for developers to put “deep” features like nonlinearity and progress saving in games was not as high as it was for them to load up games with cutting-edge graphics and sound.  That’s still the case.  Overworlds are not particularly exciting.  But as I said, they add to replayability, they make games less linear, and they make games feel more substantial.

The main lesson here is that the best features of games – the features that become standard in later generations of games – are often the small things that seem inconsequential.  Whereas the graphics will look less impressive over time, innovative and substantive features tend to stand out even when looking back at a game 20 years later.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 - One Piece of Advice for Sega

If these Sonic the Hedgehog 4 videos are legitimate, the game looks good and about what I'd expect from a 2D Sonic on a current generation console.  Since it will be an XBox Live Arcade game, I'm sure I'll be willing to shell out $10-$15 for it.

But I would suggest this to Sega -- zoom the camera out at times.  Perhaps you could have it zoom out in proportion to how fast Sonic is moving.  Capcom used a variable zoom level in Bionic Commando:Rearmed to great affect. I actually think anyone releasing an updated version of an old school game should look closely at all the things done right in Bionic Commando:Rearmed. The way it handles 2 players would also be a good model for Sonic. The camera zooms out as the players get further away from each other. When they get too far about, the screen splits. I don't know if Sega plans to make Sonic 4 two players, but if they do they should use the Bionic Commando system or one like it.