I don’t know if you saw this.

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Sega is making Sonic the Hedgehog 4 so it appears that Sega finally got smart and is giving consumers what they want, a new 2D Sonic game and mind you there hasn’t been a decent 2D Sonic game since Sonic Rush Adventure on the DS which somewhat pales to the first Sonic Rush in that SRA tried to shoehorn 3D “adventure” elements in effort to forced the Sonic Adventure gameplay on an audience that doesn’t want it.

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While very little has been seen of it, many are happy to see 2D Sonic and the fact that you’re not playing as a ton of extreaneous characters and not getting into the stupid gimmicks of 3D games like werehogs and swords and that Sega is at least giving consumers what they want.

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Though I while I’m happy they aren’t ignoring the Wii audience in favor of HD (early rumors had fears that it would only be on the HD twins) I still can’t help but shake my  head at the fact that Sega won’t release it as a full disc, rather they’re going the Megaman 9 route of download only. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing but after seeing how well New Super Mario Bros. Wii…oh sorry, I mean Mario 5 did, Sega still seems fearful to release a 2D game as a full disc console game. Especially given that unlike Megaman 9 they’re using updated graphics.

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Also in these interviews they’re talking about the whole “episodic” thing. Seems they can’t shake all their bad industry habits in wanting to have a “story” with these.  I mean the Sonic 3 and Knuckles had some story but nothing along the lines of the overly long cutscenes populating the modern 3D games these days and my hope is Sega doesn’t ruin this old school title with tons of poorly voice acted, overly long cutscenes.

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And of course, as you’ve pointed out, it comes down to content of this.  It’s upsetting that unlike Mario 5, there’s no multiplayer that could’ve incorpated Knuckles and Tails as in Sonic 3.  But many say this comes out of years of backlash against Sega’s shoehorning all of Sonic’s friends into every game and it’s also a matter of if there will be new levels and not just revamps of old stages. The first already looks like Green Hill Zone 2010 so we’ll have to see as more info becomes available.
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Well at least they got the right idea.  Maybe this will do well and Sega will realize what the consumers want and stop being slaves to the industry.
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You covered pretty much my own thoughts on this matter. I’ve never liked the idea that just because a game is 2d that it has to be on handheld or has to be download only. That screams to consumers that they are ‘second class consumers’.

The ‘story arc’ comment about Sonic 4 really jumped out at me too. Who plays Sonic for its story?

What I really don’t like is how the game is ‘episodic’. Do they expect to string Sonic fans along? And for what? For the ‘story arc’?

I’m not jumping up for joy with Sonic 4 yet. I’m still cautious about it.

While Mario 5 isn’t a nostalgia game, I am worried that the Sonic 4 developers have nostalgia goggles on. They will be making the game as if it is in the 16-bit era rather than for today. It would be like Nintendo making Mario 5 resemble Super Mario World almost in every way.

Just because a game is old and is in 2d doesn’t mean it is easy to make. Sonic games were made by Sega during their peak. I can’t think of any game maker today that comes close to that degree of talent for side scrollers (aside from Nintendo). The developers are not just making a new Sonic game. They are competing with Sega’s past… when Sega was at its peak.

I don’t think they’ll be able to pull it off. But we’ll see.