Sega developer logistically explains why modern Sonic games are terrible
I have never liked the Sonic games. There is, of course, the regrettable tainting of the franchise by the seedy self-pleasuing of the furry community over its most cherished characters, which drops in dollops upon poor Tails' eponymous appendage. But even before that, I never liked the games: I largely associate them with running into an impossible-to-dodge wall of spikes at roughly one thousand miles per hour.
Apparently, though, that's what people want: in response to the release of the latest Sonic title, Sonic Unleashed, there was marked fan disapproval of the fact that Sonic spent just so little time, you know, doing his thing. Which is running into spiked walls. In response, a Sonic Team member told David Clayman something interesting. Here's the conversation David related on a recent podcast:
I was like, come on, everybody just wants Sonic running, like, what's up with the werehog? And he was like, well, here's the deal ... he runs at this miles per hour, kilometers per hour, and he laid out all of the statistics on how fast this hedgehog goes, and he was like, 'In order to make a game where Sonic is running and everybody enjoys the whole thing we'd have to design this many miles of level, and it was some ungodly number'. And he's like, 'And that would be like maybe a three-hour game'
There's actually something satisfyingly candid about that response. Sonic is a relic of the 2D era, and his defining characteristic — speed — was informed largely by Sonic Team's ability to easily build levels with block-based 2D architecture... and, of course, the majesty of "blast processing." But large levels meant to be traversed with speed are time consuming when built in three-dimensions... and only a certain number of them can fit into the game budget. This means making more levels that are meant to be traversed more slowly to pad out game time. Yet fans expect the customary Sonic experience all the same.
Still, the way this guy talks, modern Sonic games disappointing fans is some sort of logistical fact. That's quitter talk. What do you want, the furries to win? Show some ingenuity and give everyone the frenetic spiked-wall-colliding simulator they've been clamoring for! It's the Sonic experience!
Sonic Team Unleashes the Reason Sonic Doesn't Just Run Any More [Kombo via Destructoid]
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foobiebletch
#1 – 12:24 PM December 2, 2008
Sonic 2 was one of my favorite games on the Genesis. Come on, the Casino level was fun!
A New Challenger
#2 – 1:02 PM December 2, 2008
The only Sonic games I've beaten are the first one, Sonic CD, Adventure, and Adventure 2.
I actually found a lot to enjoy in the two Adventure games, but they were marred by an ornery camera, controls that could feel a bit off at times, and some spotty collision issues. Also, some of the characters were just not fun to play as, though Adventure 2 was much better in this regard since there were really only 3 distinct character sets paired off between the two storylines, though the Robotnik/Tales gameplay was still a bit lacking.
A couple weeks ago on Destructoid's RetroforceGO podcast Jim Sterling brought up some good points about the Sonic series. One was that it was never really about speed; Sonic is just another platformer, and speed is used as a reward of sorts for getting through the trickier sections. I think Chemical Zone from Sonic 2 is a great illustration of this. Jim also mentioned the werehog gameplay sections in the Unleashed demo, but in the final game were marred by frustrating technical issues.
So what it seems to come down to in my opinion is not necessarily that Sonic needs to stick solely to speed. Rather, Sonic Team needs to focus not on making 3 broken Sonic games in 2 years and use that extra time to polish 1 game that has potential but gets bogged down by frustrating technical issues.
Then again, maybe they would be better off just sticking to speed.
snej
#3 – 2:07 PM December 2, 2008
But the old 2D Sonic games *weren't* primarily about running around really fast. There were parts of the levels were you could (or had to) do that, sure, but there was also quite a lot of careful platform-jumping a la Super Mario Bros, not to mention exploration — the levels were much less linear than Mario's, with a lot of vertical dimension, and it could often be tricky to find the right path through.
Sure, an expert player could run all the way through a level at top speed (I think the record was about 30 seconds for the first level of Sonic 1), but "speed runs" are possible in any game. At that rate I think most of the original Sonic games would have lasted half an hour or less.
So in total, I don't buy that argument. Having Sonic run around really fast all the time wouldn't have improved the 3D games. Sega just never made the 3D platforming and exploration very good, and tried to compensate by adding wretched voice acting and lame secondary characters instead of fixing the level design and gameplay.
As an example of what could have been, look at Rayman 2, one of the best 3D platformers ever. There were frequent racing areas where Rayman rode/rolled/slid around pretty fast, but they didn't overwhelm the rest of the game or break the level-design bank.
Anonymous Anonymous
#4 – 2:42 PM December 2, 2008
I think he's onto something here. Remember when people stopped making racing games when the graphics started ramping up? I mean, nobody in their right mind would ever make a 3D racing game with elaborate tracks, only to have the player move to the next track after 15 minutes or so? Oh, wait..
robotrevolution
#5 – 2:50 PM December 2, 2008
There is, of course, the regrettable tainting of the franchise by the seedy self-pleasuing of the furry community over its most cherished characters, which drops in dollops upon poor Tails' eponymous appendage.
Funny and gross at the same time. But by your own logic, the Dead or Alive fighting games must be the worst on the entire planet.
Noc
#6 – 4:25 PM December 2, 2008
I disagree with the people saying that the older Sonic games were not about speed. Yes, they involved lots of traditional platforming . . . but one of the strengths of the multiple-path levels was that a mistake would, instead of killing you, simply drop you down to a less-optimal path. Or, mistakes would interrupt your speed; it was usually rather easy to recover at least a few rings after being hit, so the setback was one in terms of speed and score. After being hit you'd snag a ring, hop over the obstacle, and continue. At least, on the earlier, easier stages; things did get more difficult and fiddly as the games progressed, but that's rather more a matter of the design philosophy at the time.
And I think that while the transition to 3D was rough, it wasn't crippling. Sonic Adventure 2, for instance, was pretty good - even the speed-character stages were relatively little like their 2D counterparts in form, but they maintained the idea of fast-paced platforming characterized by quick decisions rather than careful timing. They were more linear, and didn't get nearly as fiddly, but they felt similar.
. . .
It's worth mentioning, perhaps, that maybe the Sonic series might benefit from procedural or user-generated content? Both of these are ways to dramatically increasing the amount of content available without overtaxing design teams. It might also give the franchise more credibility as a straight platformer, which may help to restore the confidence of people (like myself) who've been put off by the recent incarnations of the series.
Hmm.
spinoza
#7 – 4:49 PM December 2, 2008
Again John, you miss the mark. Your points are muddled, your tone is hubristic, and you rely too much on vocabulary to make yourself feel like a competent writer. Maybe you had a problem with constantly running into spikes in Sonic the Hedgehog. That doesn't mean that the 2D games were badly designed, just that you had a difficult time playing them. You should probably save this kind of writing for your own blog and stop taking up my time and this site's screen real estate with your poorly written opinion pieces.
HarshLanguage
#8 – 4:51 PM December 2, 2008
The penultimate paragraph really hits the nail on the head: The quintessential Sonic gameplay worked because of the limits of old-school hardware and player expectations. Especially the fact that short games were totally expected then, but are now usually relegated to Live Arcade/PSN/WiiWare as budget offerings. Anything under, say, 5 hours as a full-price game is just begging to be reviewed badly.
laser sharkbear
#9 – 6:01 PM December 2, 2008
Easy fix. Make the majority of the levels old school side-scrollers, with either hi-res sprite graphics or 3D models with 2D backgrounds. Then sonic could occasionally hit a portal or power up that switches the game into full 3D mode.
Full classic Sonic experience with a nice modern boost. No more platforming Sonic, please!
Scypher
#10 – 8:01 PM December 2, 2008
@ Spinoza
9/10, I like your style
Anonymous Anonymous
#11 – 10:45 PM December 2, 2008
@#4
while there are plenty of racing games, comparing creating a track on racing game to creating a stage on a sonic game is not a very solid argument. y? Well for one the individual tracks in a racing game don't have to be that long to give players enough playtime to get a sense of accomplishment of beating it because players are gonna be doing several laps around it so while the track may only be x miles long the players traverse on average a distance of 3x. But unlike racing games, sonic stages, for the most part, are simply getting from point A to point B so for a game developer to make a stage last as long as one track in a racing game, they would have to make one stage 3 times the length of the track on average. Which means 3 times the work, not to mention that sonic travels ALOT faster then cars so in reality, they have to make the stages EVEN MORE expansive to make a stage have the same playtime. Which is why I think that sega should just cut its losses and move away from sonic. Its a dieing series, that even in its prime was only 2nd best.
Anonymous Anonymous
#12 – 6:40 AM December 3, 2008
Well, there is the Rollcage series, the Wipeout series, the F-Zero series.. and even Star Wars: Pod Racer. All of those had long tracks with detailed backgrounds and high-speed vehicles, and on higher difficulty levels surviving a lap was a feat in itself.
photoatomic
#13 – 7:17 AM December 3, 2008
i am just glad that the comics fanboy mentality spreads out across the spectrum and i can hear baby wailing about changes to the Sonic Universe that are just like the crying i hear about how they made Blue Beetle a Mexican kid.
on top of that, the zealous defenders of change seem to hit all the same notes as their comics counterparts.
John Brownlee
#14 – 12:32 PM December 3, 2008
@Spinoza -- I would really love to just hand a friend your comment without context and enjoy basking in their guffaws. "Perhaps YOU had a problem running into spikes in Sonic the Hedgehog, BUT..." Oh, how we'd laugh and laugh and laugh. Absolutely priceless. You'll just never know why.
spinoza
#15 – 8:02 PM December 3, 2008
John -- I'm glad you're so easily entertained. It would be nice to have an inside joke, wouldn't it? You should write your next offworld.com article about it called "a new rambling exposition on a non sequitur." Make it as self referential as possible so we can enjoy it as much as your other articles.
John H.
#16 – 6:48 PM December 4, 2008
I'd say that the Sonic games are ripe for a non-traditional method of level implementation. Designing a complete 3D world is arguably too effort-intensive for a game like Sonic, so what they should do is NOT design a complete 3D world. They should investigate dynamic, algorithmic level creation techniques to construct levels on the fly out of pre-built parts. It'll probably cause some reviewers to dock it a point or two for having lots of samey terrain, but the problem can be mitigated with ingenuity, and it's definitely a workable solution to this problem.
Super Nate
#17 – 6:45 PM December 6, 2008
I saw an interview recently with a developer for Smash Brawl. He asked what the defining characteristic of Sonic was. The obvious answer was speed, but he said that it was slowness. In the early games the acceleration was painfully slow, making it rewarding when you finally reached full speed. I think that aesthetic has been lost. Oh, and also, the games suck.
Anonymous Anonymous
#18 – 7:06 PM January 19, 2009
There has to be some form of challenge, otherwise it's considerably pointless to play. Some would argue it's all about the roller coaster dynamics, but there are others who actually do enjoy that aspect of the game because it adds some variety into the game play.
Chemical Plant Zone for example. A stage like that was still insanely fast and fun to play; While adding in some hazards along the way like the bottomless pits in the Chemical that can sometimes catch you by surprise in parts of an act.