Megathread IDW's Sonic the Hedgehog - Megathread

[Duelistic Nature]

I dont think there'd be that much backlash honestly. Just people explaining how Shadow would kick Tails' butt by Chaos-splaining things.

I'm all for Tails winning a battle on his own merrits, but I'm on the other side of the fence of favoritism of character so not unbiased assumption.

Would still enforce Shadow's title as The Ultimate Lifeform if he'd overcome Tails gauntlet.

[Kuzu]

11 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

They can suck it up and deal with it, lest they become a meme for how whiny they are.

It’s just one lost fight, not the end of the world.

Fanbases bitching is exactly why Sonic is the only playable nowadays. Never underestimate peer pressure from a whiny fanbase.

[Duelistic Nature]

8 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Fanbases bitching is exactly why Sonic is the only playable nowadays. Never underestimate peer pressure from a whiny fanbase.

Fair enough given how the fanbase reacted to the first sonic design of the movie.

But that is an extremely low bar to clear... I apologize.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Duelistic Nature

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

12 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Fanbases bitching is exactly why Sonic is the only playable nowadays. Never underestimate peer pressure from a whiny fanbase.

Funny how that isn’t working the other way around given how it’s gone the other way over the years.

[Kuzu]

The only way people would accept Shadow losing to someone like Tails is if he returned the favor or one upped him later.

1 minute ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Funny how that isn’t working the other way around given how it’s gone the other way over the years.

Because only Sonic fans care about having more playable characters. Whereas even people outside the Sonic fanbase were getting tired of playing as the others after a point.

 

At this point, selling other characters besides Sonic is tough.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

8 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

The only way people would accept Shadow losing to someone like Tails is if he returned the favor or one upped him later.

Because only Sonic fans care about having more playable characters. Whereas even people outside the Sonic fanbase were getting tired of playing as the others after a point.

At this point, selling other characters besides Sonic is tough.

Sounds like they need a change of business model if you ask me. Because I can see a lot of moolah coming their way if they ignored all petty “criticisms” of characters so much as existing if they focused on a fun character-based title that players can play who they want after buying them.

Not a fucking gacha game, mind you, I hate that model. One sort of like a mix of what they’re doing with Frontiers but mixed with a character select of the characters that you can play in a open world/zone.

Or kinda like Mighty Gunvolt Burst with its 9 playable characters.

[Duelistic Nature]

5 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

The only way people would accept Shadow losing to someone like Tails is if he returned the favor or one upped him later.

I mean, Turnabout is fairplay in my book.

6 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Because only Sonic fans care about having more playable characters. Whereas even people outside the Sonic fanbase were getting tired of playing as the others after a point.

At this point, selling other characters besides Sonic is tough.

I watched the recent video of Antdude and from that I got the impression from transitioning from dark age to unleashed people were tired of seeing more sidecharacters added.

Not necessarily playing them. Heck, right now it's been quite a while since we had a different playstyle. But I digress this is a comic thread not a game thread.

[Kuzu]

6 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Sounds like they need a change of business model if you ask me. Because I can see a lot of moolah coming their way if they ignored all petty “criticisms” of characters so much as existing if they focused on a fun character-based title that players can play who they want after buying them.

Not a fucking gacha game, mind you, I hate that model. One sort of like a mix of what they’re doing with Frontiers but mixed with a character select of the characters that you can play in a open world/zone.

Or kinda like Mighty Gunvolt Burst with its 9 playable characters.

Sonic Forces Speed battle is exactly that. Everyone is playable there. You can hate gacha all you want, but its proven to work as exploitative as it is. Businesses wouldn't use it otherwise.

 

Biggest hurdle Sonic characters have is that many of them do not function like Sonic characters and generally come saddled with a gimmick that dilutes the Sonic gameplay people want. One of the main reasons Shadow and Blaze were (and continue to be) so popular is because they functioned similarly to Sonic.

 

The movies are in a better position though since they're more mainstream and don't have to rely on gameplay. But the problem stands.

[Zaysho]

The characters were not an issue in themselves, but Sonic Team's handling of them. The games were escalating in their scope since the Dreamcast days and just throwing the cast in for padding in the gameplay (and were often the weakest elements) and barely attached to the stories they were in beyond running their mouths with the most annoying voice actors Sega could find for cheap. Sonic Unleashed, at the time, was mostly a breath of fresh air in that regard because of its more conservative usage of them in the story (despite a globetrotting adventure is pretty much THE kind of story to have those sorts of cameos but Sega always goes from one extreme to the other with this series) even though it had its own padding issues because of the Werehog/Nighttime gameplay.

[Kuzu]

Which makes me think introducing so many major characters in such a short amount of time wasn't the smartest business decision.

[MGA_Gamer]

All this talk about whether or not other characters should be playable really should be its own topic. I mean, this is supposed to be about the IDW Comics am I right?

[WanderingBleats]

Quote

The only way people would accept Shadow losing to someone like Tails is if he returned the favor or one upped him later.

I feel like it would need to be the other way around. Tails is already the underdog in the matchup. A weaker character beating a stronger character and then the stronger character beating them later doesn't serve much purpose.

Edit:

Quote

All this talk about whether or not other characters should be playable really should be its own topic. I mean, this is supposed to be about the IDW Comics am I right?

Actually, yeah, good point.

Edited July 21, 2022 by WanderingBleats

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

52 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Sonic Forces Speed battle is exactly that. Everyone is playable there. You can hate gacha all you want, but its proven to work as exploitative as it is. Businesses wouldn't use it otherwise.

I was thinking more League of Legends-ish, but as a single player adventure game instead of a nuclear test site that is the MOBA genre

No gacha mechanics, instead you basically spend whatever the currency is you have and you can buy the character outright and play to your hearts content. And they’re always making a new character, or Champion, so that you continue to have variety—Sonic doesn’t need new characters per se for this case, as they can dig up characters from the past and sell them.

Only gacha game I can remotely stomach is Arknights, and that’s mainly because of the lore.

52 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Biggest hurdle Sonic characters have is that many of them do not function like Sonic characters and generally come saddled with a gimmick that dilutes the Sonic gameplay people want. One of the main reasons Shadow and Blaze were (and continue to be) so popular is because they functioned similarly to Sonic.

I think that’s just a lack of creativity on Sega’s part—you can make Big the car viable by making him more akin to a wrecking ball rolling that gains momentum before around the place like an unstoppable force, and characters like Silver shouldn’t be a problem given he can cheat and fly at high speeds with his telekinesis.

We could honestly make an exercise of this—take a character, any character (IDW, Archie, Fleetway, nothing is off the table) and design a viable method of making them play. If you can’t, give the idea to someone who can.

 

[Kuzu]

In any case, moving back to IDW. I wonder if this Scrapnik arc is gonna take place before or after Surge is dealt with or if she's just gonna fuck off for a while.

[Dr. Mechano]

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

God, could you imagine the backlash if that happened...

It almost did in Sonic X.

Shadow shows up to kill Cosmo. Tails pulls a bunch of tricks and genuinely surprises Shadow, blasting him out of his ship with a giant cannon. It looks like Tails is triumphant and then Shadow just chaos controls back with zero consequence and has to be talked down. 

That aside, this sort of thing would have totally been a viable "Tails beats Shadow" scenario if had ended differently.

[Kuzu]

15 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

It almost did in Sonic X.

Shadow shows up to kill Cosmo. Tails pulls a bunch of tricks and genuinely surprises Shadow, blasting him out of his ship with a giant cannon. It looks like Tails is triumphant and then Shadow just chaos controls back with zero consequence and has to be talked down. 

That aside, this sort of thing would have totally been a viable "Tails beats Shadow" scenario if had ended differently.

 

Hey, at least Tails stood his ground even if he stood no chance at that point.

Kind of reminds me when Shadow laid out Amy in Archie. Girl stood no chance lmao. A for effort tho.

 

 

[Razule]

Forget power-scaling. Have Tails 1v1 Shadow with nothing but wits and his tails, and win

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

Hey, at least Tails stood his ground even if he stood no chance at that point.

Kind of reminds me when Shadow laid out Amy in Archie. Girl stood no chance lmao. A for effort tho.

Hey. Hey!

She scored a hit off of Shadow first:

Don’t be selling pink girl short, now.

[Dr. Mechano]

4 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Hey. Hey!

She scored a hit off of Shadow first:

This is more how I'd like to see Shadow. Still strong (I mean, hey, he ultimately wins this particular fight) but not so strong that he just shrugs off damage like someone's overpowered anime OC. He still has to try, not just stand there and effortlessly beat his opponent.

[WanderingBleats]

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

In any case, moving back to IDW. I wonder if this Scrapnik arc is gonna take place before or after Surge is dealt with or if she's just gonna fuck off for a while.

I'd say even odds on whether she'll be actively involved at that point. My guess is that Surge is going to be sticking around as a looming threat, but that the immediacy of said threat will fluctuate, and it'll be hard to tell exactly when she's gonna strike. Part of the reason she was created (out-of-universe) was to expand the rogues' gallery, since most of Sonic's independent foes tend to either be Eggman or non-recurring adversaries who get permanently dealt with.

(...or the Deadly Six, but, well.)

[Kuzu]

18 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Hey. Hey!

She scored a hit off of Shadow first:

Don’t be selling pink girl short, now.

I mean to be fair, he was caught off guard. Can't dodge an attack you can't see coming. And that's probably one of the main ways to take Shadow down. Just get the jump on him and take him out before he can react.

I think Flynn said something to that effect, that Shadow is kind of hard to take out unless you either use trickery or sneak attacks, because he mostly steamrolls direct confrontations unless they can overpower or withstand him.

[Silvereyes]

After this discussion, I now want Cream to canonically beat Shadow.

[Promethean0416]

1 hour ago, Silvereyes said:

After this discussion, I now want Cream to canonically beat Shadow.

Either she will have to borrow/coerce Omega for that or she will have to go Sonic Advance 2 on him.

[Razule]

That episode in X where Shadow steamrolled Tails, Sonic, and Knuckles pissed me off as a kid. He practically one-shot them. I want the most unlikely character to take him down. Just one scene where Shadow get thoroughly obliterated..

What if Big picked him up, and threw him really far, and really hard.

[Darkvizardberrytan]

I mean shadow is literally one of the strongest characters in the series and for a majority never takes off his limiters. Imagine how broken Hyper Shadow would be honestly. I just hope see Flynn help out more in future stories for the games honestly.