Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed...!

[Ethan Thomas]

Yeah, I really hope we get a few Sonic levels... I'd go with Hydrocity, Mission Street, and Aquarium Park personally if I were in charge. I don't think I want any more than 3 + 1 (with the extra being the Death Egg Hangar, of course) Sonic stages though.

I hope we get something from Space Channel 5 this time, too. With

music.

I'm just picture all of the people dancing with space michael and about a dozen cheer leaders shouting "HEY HEY HEY HEY GO GO MOVE MOVE" at certain segments of the race track. A space channel 5 race track has a LOT of potential.

[PsychoJosh]

Where abouts does he say that? Not watching 36 minutes just for context of one line. Did he explicitly say each track is a unique IP? Because that doesn't mean we can't have multiple "different" Sonic tracks like we got last time with the three different flavours of Sonic track (just that it would be 1 track per flavour this time).

He says it at 27:38 . He compares it to the last game where there were three tracks based around one theme. During his gameplay of the golden axe stage he mentions that the 16 levels are completely different IP. So yes, only one new Sonic track. Not three or five or some other ridiculous number. You're getting ONE and that's it.

He specifically says "16 totally different tracks from totally different games". And he means different IP, not "different games" in that Sonic 3 & Knuckles is "different" from Sonic Unleashed.

Edited July 28, 2012 by PsychoJosh

[Marcello]

S0L or SumoRex have said here that that means for example Green Hill and Casino Night from Sonic would count as seperate things. It just won't be 3x Green Hill.

[Blue Blood]

He specifically says "16 totally different tracks from totally different games". And he means different IP, not "different games" in that Sonic 3 & Knuckles is "different" from Sonic Unleashed.

As Marcello said above, it simply means their wont be any clone tracks. ASR had three Sonic IPs spread across nine stages- Seaside Hill, Casino Park and Final Fortress. There's every reason to believe that Sonic will have multiple track representation here.

[PsychoJosh]

As Marcello said above, it simply means their wont be any clone tracks.

[Blue Blood]

And that statement has since been officially clarified on this very board, specifying that each track is a different IP and that in the context of this game "IP" does not necessarily mean "individual series".

And hey, guess what? This isn't the track topic anyway.

[PsychoJosh]

I think you're just twisting the meaning of his words to suit your own personal desires. I don't care what bizarro universe you live in, Sonic Adventure is not a "separate IP" from Sonic 2, CD, or Unleashed. All of those games are the same IP.

In any case, we shall see. I have a feeling I'm going to be in a position to say "I told you so" just like I have been before.

Edited July 28, 2012 by PsychoJosh

[Blue Blood]

I think you're just twisting the meaning of his words to suit your own personal desires.

We shall see. I still see no reason why I'm wrong.

[DaN]

do u think we'll see something at Gamescom? I hope so... and mostly, what would u like to see??

I put my hopes on:

a newcomer and a veteran revealed - Bayonetta and Ryo Hazuki

Shinobi track revealed, as well as clear footages of Graffiti City, the re-mastered Sunshine Tour and the NiGHTS stage

a glimp to the All Stars move, maybe showig the Sonic one

[S0L]

Lets' mop some up then!

What is this I just read? Now if I want to play as all chars I'll have to buy EVERY SINGLE VIDEOGAME EXISTING? I can tolerate exclusive Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo IPs, but NOT SEGA'S, they're the main meal, seriously, I lost basically all my fate on this game. If awesome characthers I'm waiting like Ristar, Toejam & Earl or Vectorman are Xbox 360 or 3DS exclusive, well fuck, I'm not buying any version of the game. Sorry, really sorry Sumo, I like you guys, but that was a bad, really BAD idea, period.

You are of course inferring it is our decision. Relax, calm down, wait and see. It will all become clear with time. However, one reason I posted about that particular point on the SEGA forums is to manage some expectations. Quite a few people were getting a little carried away with what they're expecting!

He says it at 27:38 . He compares it to the last game where there were three tracks based around one theme. During his gameplay of the golden axe stage he mentions that the 16 levels are completely different IP. So yes, only one new Sonic track. Not three or five or some other ridiculous number. You're getting ONE and that's it.

He specifically says "16 totally different tracks from totally different games". And he means different IP, not "different games" in that Sonic 3 & Knuckles is "different" from Sonic Unleashed.

You're being way too literal. All 16 of the new tracks come from different games, but that doesn't mean we couldn't have more than one Sonic themed one. I think we've been quite clear on this point, bear in mind in that interview I'm explaining that there is more variety since everyone moaned last time, and I'm wasn't going to spend time explaining the different between IP's and games on camera (as it would get really boring!). Wait and see. Patience!

do u think we'll see something at Gamescom? I hope so... and mostly, what would u like to see??

I put my hopes on:

a newcomer and a veteran revealed - Bayonetta and Ryo Hazuki

Shinobi track revealed, as well as clear footages of Graffiti City, the re-mastered Sunshine Tour and the NiGHTS stage

a glimp to the All Stars move, maybe showig the Sonic one

All I can say to this, is we will likely reveal some new things at GamesCom. It's quite a few sleeps away though!

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S0L

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Edited July 29, 2012 by S0L

[PSI Wind]

Hey S0L. I'm curious about something. Will you fix the Restart in this game? In Grand Prixs and Missions with cups, you could restart on the exact course and keep your points. It makes the game too easy. Will you make sure the Restart makes you restart the whole cup?

[Djawed]

Oh well thanks for the clarification SOL, but it does get kind of confusing when you keep hearing somethign different everytime. I had settled for 2 sonic tracks, so now it's supposed to be more. It wouldn't have bothered me so much if the message was clear from the beginning so that is basically what makes me a bit disappointed.

As i've said it's the inconsistent message which starts to become anoying, because beside that it makes sense with "sonic" in the title and the game having mostly sonic characters.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Djawed

[PsychoJosh]

Okay, fine, there can be two tracks from the same IP in the game. But I don't really see you doing this, because as I've stated before, the tracks in this game all seem to be themed on the general idea of the games they're from rather than being specific locations from the games themselves. So I don't see you doing a Sonic 2-based track and then a Sonic Adventure-based track, since almost all Sonic games are thematically similar. I could be wrong but this is my working hypothesis, corroborated by all the tracks shown thus far.

Actually rather than picking a stage from any game in particular what you might just do is have a green Sonic stage and then an Eggman factory stage as has been guessed earlier.

Edited July 30, 2012 by PsychoJosh

[Jango]

Ok S0L, I'll keep calm, wait and see, I won't read anymore, I wanna see the stuff in action, videos, then I MAY properly hit my face on the desk xD

[JezMM]

Okay, fine, there can be two tracks from the same IP in the game. But I don't really see you doing this, because as I've stated before, the tracks in this game all seem to be themed on the general idea of the games they're from rather than being specific locations from the games themselves. So I don't see you doing a Sonic 2-based track and then a Sonic Adventure-based track, since almost all Sonic games are thematically similar. I could be wrong but this is my working hypothesis, corroborated by all the tracks shown thus far.

*insert side-by-side screenshots of Sonic 1, Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic Colours here I imagine you can use your imagination etc*

Actually rather than picking a stage from any game in particular what you might just do is have a green Sonic stage and then an Eggman factory stage as has been guessed earlier.

Alright I can stand back and let you continue hoping for next to no Sonic tracks, but seriously? You want Sonic not only to have the bare minimum number of tracks, but you also think they should use the exact same tropes from the previous ASR?

Just... what.

[PsychoJosh]

*insert side-by-side screenshots of Sonic 1, Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow The Hedgehog and Sonic Colours here I imagine you can use your imagination etc*

I love how you had to hand pick a bunch of games that are more divergent while forgetting the games in between that ARE similar. How about instead we show side by side screenshots of Sonic 1, 2, CD, Adventure, and Heroes? Or are you going to hand select stages as well to show me the spots where they AREN'T similar?

Alright I can stand back and let you continue hoping for next to no Sonic tracks, but seriously? You want Sonic not only to have the bare minimum number of tracks, but you also think they should use the exact same tropes from the previous ASR?

Um, yes? I don't see why you're so surprised by this. Going by what you're saying, if I don't care about Sonic's tracks then why is it surprising that I also don't care about what their themes are?

Edited July 30, 2012 by PsychoJosh

[#EndyGate]

I love how you had to hand pick a bunch of games that are more divergent while forgetting the games in between that ARE similar. How about instead we show side by side screenshots of Sonic 1, 2, CD, Adventure, and Heroes? Or are you going to hand select stages as well to show me the spots where they AREN'T similar?

I don't see any problem with this, taking unique yet key levels from a few games would be pretty cool

[Xenos]

1, 2, CD, Adventure, and Heroes?

To be fair, 2 is a sequel of 1 so that should be obvious, CD is radically different in theme and level aesthetics compared to any of the Classics, Adventure mixes in realism with fantastical elements from the Classics to differentiate it enough, and Heroes was trying to go back to the roots after Adventure 2 got so far away from that.

[Blacklightning]

I love how you had to hand pick a bunch of games that are more divergent while forgetting the games in between that ARE similar. How about instead we show side by side screenshots of Sonic 1, 2, CD, Adventure, and Heroes? Or are you going to hand select stages as well to show me the spots where they AREN'T similar?

I believe your argument was originally "almost all Sonic games are themematically identical", correct? I don't really see how "hand picking" examples is an especially bad thing when it was for the explicit purpose of pointing out that this isn't necessarily true, unless you honestly expected a complete and indepth analysis of theming in the complete history of Sonic games and the comparisons between them. Even then, the only real comparison you can make most of the time is "start with grass level, end with mechanical level, kill Eggman because he's a dick", and you'd only be kidding yourself if you claimed it was really that simple or consistent for the overwhelming majority of the series.

More to the point though, didn't it feel incredibly hypocritical to call someone out for such "hand picking", and then throw out a counter-argument that consists of... exactly the same hand picking you were calling JezMM out for? Come on man, that's just plain silly.

[PsychoJosh]

The games I chose followed each other closely and I was just illustrating a point how you can make anything look dissimilar when you arbitrarily hand-pick them from completely different eras instead of following them sequentially. And almost all Sonic games ARE thematically similar, especially when compared to other Sega games (unless you'd care to tell me how Monkey Ball is anything even remotely similar to Skies of Arcadia, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter or Shinobi). I'm saying that since the tracks are all "themed" on games instead of being specific locations from those games, how would you theme a track around, say, Heroes, and make it completely different from a track themed on Sonic Adventure, WITHOUT borrowing locations from either of those games?

Or perhaps theme a track around Sonic 1 and then theme another track around Sonic 2? They'd be mostly the same and thus it would be pointless to theme tracks around two separate games in the series. The way I see them doing it is by doing a "general" Sonic green-area stage and then a "general" Eggman robotics facility stage, if there is indeed more than one Sonic track in the game. What I don't see them doing is theming tracks around different entries in the Sonic series since they're mostly the same in theme.

[Blacklightning]

I'm saying that since the tracks are all "themed" on games instead of being specific locations from those games, how would you theme a track around, say, Heroes, and make it completely different from a track themed on Sonic Adventure, WITHOUT borrowing locations from either of those games?

Simple distribution of tropes, and nothing more. Hell, I'll do you one better and point out Sumo already did exactly that in the previous game - and they all originated from the same game to boot.

Not to mention the game before that, where again they were both from the same game and shared nothing beyond their link to the franchise.

I honestly don't get your logic here. It's like saying Jet Grind Radio levels will be generic and samey just on the basis they're all set in cities. Baseless sweeping statements like that aren't going to get you anywhere.

Edited July 30, 2012 by The Cheese

[PsychoJosh]

I just don't see why they'd theme two tracks around two separate games in the series when they could instead borrow the staple level tropes from the series. Using specific areas from games doesn't seem to be what they're doing. The Sonic tracks in the previous games weren't generalizations on a theme, they were very specifically pulled from Heroes. The tracks are unmistakably Seaside Hill, Casino Park and Final Fortress. They're not doing that here, instead the tracks are more vague areas this time that could be anything.

To be fair maybe I'm not using my imagination enough. Perhaps there is a way to theme tracks around different games in the series that I'm just not seeing. But I thought the idea behind the track design in this game was going after what people remember about the games instead of directly pulling stuff from them. In that case they would need to base tracks around what makes Sonic "Sonic", which is the prevalence of green waterfront areas followed by industrial laboratory areas.

[S0L]

We have a track discussion topic for a reason you know

Whilst we always attempt to create tracks 'how you remember them' a lot of effort goes into making sure they are reminiscent of their donor games. It's harder with something like Golden Axe as we want to replicate the classic games (not Beast Rider) so I'm sure that's not how some people saw it in 3D. Likewise for Panzer, it's really hard to get that classic look (we wanted to evoke Panzer 1/2 not Orta) since the original is relatively low-poly.

But when you see some of the other levels, they should be no different to how close we got with the Sonic tracks last time, so please don't upset my art team saying we're not trying to do that, especially as Rex does come and read this stuff

And a little bit more understanding in here won't hurt. I get not everyone cares about Sonic - or the older SEGA IP - but bear in mind we're trying to do something for everyone. It'll always be more Sonic biased in here for sure, if you're not keen on that, go lurk in the SEGA forums, we do talk over there too!

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S0L

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[PickleBrows]

Let's play a game (taken from the sonic facebook). Spot 5 differences (btw no i haven't copied the same image twice)

[Blacklightning]

I cheated on the slight offchance that it might reveal something relevant to ASRT. It didn't.

Well, so much for that. What's next?