Do you still want the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise to go on?

[Rabbitearsblog]

So, this might seem like a strange question, but do you guys still want the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise to still continue?

For me personally, OF COURSE I DO!  I loved this franchise ever since I was a kid and I still care about this franchise to this very day.  However, I am aware of how many times this franchise was brought through the wringer, in terms of the games, and I do get a bit frustrated with this franchise when it comes to the games.  But all in all, all I want is for the franchise to improve itself and I just hope that day will come eventually on the game side of things.

[TangleTangerine]

I do want to see the franchise go on. As sonic has always stuck out and Sega took a completely new approach with their IP compared to other companies back in the day. As if Sega completely switched strategies and went down the Nintendo route heavily moderating what happened Sonic would of died.

Absolutely granted if anyone is annoyed at the slop we get served (looking at you sonic '06) but we make fun of it. We treasure it in an unintended way than intended and I think that's what makes Sonic fun.

Also kinda happy that they have been focusing alot more on characters and character development. Amy is no longer just a groupie and has been head of the resistance and the restoration now developing her own individuality more deeply for an example.

[Promethean0416]

Sure, as long as they keep it interesting and also throw in a little nostalgia on occasion (Sonic Mania and Superstars being good examples).

Also, and most importantly, to make sure the controls and graphics are better refined.

[Rabbitearsblog]

14 minutes ago, Promethean0416 said:

Sure, as long as they keep it interesting and also throw in a little nostalgia on occasion (Sonic Mania and Superstars being good examples).

Also, and most importantly, to make sure the controls and graphics are better refined.

Yeah.  Even though I do get very frustrated whenever they keep messing up on the game controls, I always have the comics, the TV shows and the movies to keep me interested in this franchise and they do occasionally put out a good game every once in a while.

[Zoomzeta]

Silly fox. You know we don't have much of a choice in the matter. :p

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

It’s not a strange question, it’s a pretty redundant one. I’m definitely showing my age given what I’m about to say, but are we going to ask this question for Sonic every time something hits a misstep?

Put simply, if the double whammy of bad reception that was ShTH and Sonic 06 couldn’t put this franchise down, and Rise of Lyric after that, and the mid reception that was Forces, it’s safe to say that Sonic isn’t going anywhere until he manages to top all of those failures with a colossal fuck up that would bankrupt Sega outright.

People have been cynically suggesting that Sonic be put down like Old Yeller for years, but after all the above it’s he’s gonna be going for a long time. 

[Rabbitearsblog]

16 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

It’s not a strange question, it’s a pretty redundant one. I’m definitely showing my age given what I’m about to say, but are we going to ask this question for Sonic every time something hits a misstep?

Put simply, if the double whammy of bad reception that was ShTH and Sonic 06 couldn’t put this franchise down, and Rise of Lyric after that, and the mid reception that was Forces, it’s safe to say that Sonic isn’t going anywhere until he manages to top all of those failures with a colossal fuck up that would bankrupt Sega outright.

People have been cynically suggesting that Sonic be put down like Old Yeller for years, but after all the above it’s he’s gonna be going for a long time. 

I'm glad that the franchise is still standing, even after all of those games you mentioned that nearly put the franchise down. Although, I do wonder if we will ever get a modern Sonic game that will rival some of the best games in the AAA gaming industry.

[Conando]

Of course I do. I don't really know when or if a truly satisfying game will come again, but even so I still love the characters. There's always the IDW Comic and the Paramount stuff to look forward to in the immediate future.

[PutsitinmyBottos]

I’d really wish they’d remake Sonic 1 in 3D, that would be cool but I think they need to take a long break away from Sonic games until they can make a game that isn’t a 5/10 title like Frontiers or Forces.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Since all replies are similar, I'll try to be creative: I wouldn't cry if Sonic died. He's the most important franchise for me, but it can end.

First, I'm a kind of weirdo who really enjoys completion. Knowing I have experienced it all. That I reached some kind of climax. Sure it would be nice if Sonic ended on something concrete, not in an arbitrary moment, but right now I feel fairly complete on most ends (except Shadow. I really wish he got redeemed before the end).

Secondly, I'm just at peace with things ending. it comes for all. Most didn't have as long a run as we did. And I have seen franchises that refused to die (Simpsons) and what damage it dealt. Might as well go on a good note.

Third... well, shit. I would have so much more free time. Maybe I'd write a book. Or watch the whole One Piece.

 

Obviously, I love Sonic and I wouldn't intentionally kill it given a chance. I would just endure the aftermath of him.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

This is a completely incomprehensible scenario to even consider. Short of an actual catastrophe obliterating the parent company in a literal, physical sense, Sonic is too big to fail. It's going to trundle on whether the games are good or bad, whether I like what they're doing or not. I can't even conceive of what possibility would allow me or anyone else to "end" the series, short of a global restructuring of industry and government, in which case we're either getting infinite Sonic games from the a utopian status quo free of copyright and money, or we're getting no video games at all because everything has gone to shit (this is the more likely of the two) and I'm going to have more important things to worry about anyway.

That being said, I can't rightly name any intellectual property that I want to simply stop having new material entirely, except those which I have some moral objection to. Which still isn't often, and usually has more to do with the forces controlling the work than a necessary element of the work itself. If it doesn't hurt me, who am I to stand in the way of it?

I think a better question would be how we view the soft-conclusion of a given type of Sonic media. We could, if we want, discuss the hypothetical scenario where the current canon has escalated to a point where it's worth ending that story and starting anew, or we could talk about finale scenarios for the comic, cartoon etc. continuities that never got any of their own. But a question like "would you rather Sonic continue to exist or not" with no greater context is too broad for me to answer in any way more complex than "I like Sonic".

[Diogenes]

Which Sonic? Because there's Sonics I care about and Sonics I very much don't.

[joe_schmoe99]

Let's put it this way. If I had a gun with two bullets, and I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden, and Sonic, I would shoot Sonic twice.

Jokes aside, of course I do! I genuinely don't see it going down within our lifetime, haha. Sonic as a brand has immeasurable staying power, whether it be through the games, comics, TV shows, movies, you name it. Sonic ain't going anywhere anytime soon.

In the theoretical world where it does happen, I would definitely be bummed out, Sonic's been my favorite game character since like 2007. Even then, I'd have a huge backlog of great (and some not-so-great) games to go back to any time I want. If they knew it was about to go under, I'd want SEGA/ST to go out with a bang and give Sonic a truly great game as a last hurrah. Give him a nice open-ended conclusion so we can feel like he's still out there adventuring and kicking bad guys' teeth in. Then his legacy can continue with fan-made stuff, because that will almost certainly never die. That's all I'd really want.

[Dr. Mechano]

Of course I do.

After certain developments in Frontiers, I'm more invested in this series now than I've ever been.

[Soniman]

Doesn’t matter what I think, it simply will. The amount of franchise killing games this series has had goes into the double digits yet it keeps going. Nothing short of a economic collapse in the gamming industry or Japan as a country, or a natural disaster like a tsunami, maybe a meteor strike directly at Sega HQ will stop that

[televoxica]

16 hours ago, Soniman said:

The amount of franchise killing games this sets has had goes into the double digits yet it keeps going.

Let’s see… 

06, Forces (maybe), Lost World,  the three Boom entries… that’s 6. Even if you included Secret Rings and Black Knight, that’s 8. “Double digits” my rear end.

[Rabbitearsblog]

17 hours ago, Soniman said:

Doesn’t matter what I think, it simply will. The amount of franchise killing games this sets has had goes into the double digits yet it keeps going. Nothing short of a economic collapse in the gamming industry or Japan as a country, or a natural disaster like a tsunami, maybe a meteor strike directly at Sega HQ will stop that

Yeah, I'm surprised with how many missteps this franchise had and yet, it's still going to this very day (which I'm happy about, by the way)!

[Technically Inept]

The question is not will it, but do I want it to.

And man….

I really hate that this is how I feel about this series at this point. But it’s the truth. Personally, no.

I don’t like where the series is. I don’t like the trajectory it is on. And I don’t see any reason for confidence that things will improve to where I want them to be in the foreseeable future, if ever.

And rather than keeping up with something that continues to disappoint me and lower my expectations of it far past the negatives, due to me deep down desperately clinging to some hope that “Maybe it will be different this time…?” I’d rather it just stop.

i don’t like how they are writing the characters. In fact, I prefer the OCs in IDW to the entire canon cast there with maybe the exception of Omega. The characters either constantly bore me or annoy me.

The actual story in both IDW and the games is also boring and not doing much interesting at this time.

The “Classic” Sonic games can only really catch my interest so much if they’re going to cling to certain traditions as far as how they are designed. For one thing, I’d really welcome some legitimate difficulty. But even if they added that, I recently bought Freedom Planet 2 and realized that pretty much everything I actually care about when it comes to 2D Sonic gameplay is there plus a whole bunch of other great stuff….

….So Classic Sonic is basically obsolete to me at this point.

The state “‘modern” Sonic games are in is honestly pitiable.

I put the quotes around Sonic when describing the “Sonic” movies for reasons I feel should be pretty evident, though the second one at least tried to be a Sonic movie in tbe elements it introduced. Even if the tone, characterization, portrayal of the casts’ abilities, score, general aesthetic, and themes are not really doing much much for me.

i mean, I guess I kind of enjoy Prime? To an extent?

I don’t know, man.

I think I’m pretty close to done

 

[Rabbitearsblog]

14 hours ago, Technically Inept said:

The question is not will it, but do I want it to.

And man….

I really hate that this is how I feel about this series at this point. But it’s the truth. Personally, no.

I don’t like where the series is. I don’t like the trajectory it is on. And I don’t see any reason for confidence that things will improve to where I want them to be in the foreseeable future, if ever.

And rather than keeping up with something that continues to disappoint me and lower my expectations of it far past the negatives, due to me deep down desperately clinging to some hope that “Maybe it will be different this time…?” I’d rather it just stop.

i don’t like how they are writing the characters. In fact, I prefer the OCs in IDW to the entire canon cast there with maybe the exception of Omega. The characters either constantly bore me or annoy me.

The actual story in both IDW and the games is also boring and not doing much interesting at this time.

The “Classic” Sonic games can only really catch my interest so much if they’re going to cling to certain traditions as far as how they are designed. For one thing, I’d really welcome some legitimate difficulty. But even if they added that, I recently bought Freedom Planet 2 and realized that pretty much everything I actually care about when it comes to 2D Sonic gameplay is there plus a whole bunch of other great stuff….

….So Classic Sonic is basically obsolete to me at this point.

The state “‘modern” Sonic games are in is honestly pitiable.

I put the quotes around Sonic when describing the “Sonic” movies for reasons I feel should be pretty evident, though the second one at least tried to be a Sonic movie in tbe elements it introduced. Even if the tone, characterization, portrayal of the casts’ abilities, score, general aesthetic, and themes are not really doing much much for me.

i mean, I guess I kind of enjoy Prime? To an extent?

I don’t know, man.

I think I’m pretty close to done

 

Sorry you aren't enjoying the franchise right now.  Personally, I just take whatever happens in the franchise in strides, as long as it's handled well.  The reason why I didn't care much for the 2010s era of Sonic the Hedgehog (aside from Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania) is because I felt that most of the games from that decade were poorly handled and I nearly left the franchise around 2017 when Sonic Forces turned out to be a disappointment.  Thankfully though, the Sonic movie in 2020 brought me back to the franchise.

[Dreadknux]

Man, I can totally understand why people might be bummed out at the state of Sonic right now but... at least you weren't living through the 2005-2009 era! That was real depressing.

The problem that Sonic kind of has right now goes way back to 2014, I suspect. SEGA had moved their entire Sonic franchise team over to the US, in order to reinvent the franchise with Sonic Boom. A series that was clearly intended to replace all that came before it... and it completely bombed.

When it bombed, SEGA was on the back foot to regroup and fix the situation. I fully believe that is the main cause of the doldrums we faced during the 2010s. Five years to develop and release Sonic Forces, a game that could have been a DLC expansion for Sonic Generations? I don't buy it. Not unless the studio was in complete disarray (and they obviously were).

Sonic Mania was likely not green-lit out of the goodness of SEGA's heart (Iizuka has been pretty on record during that time to express that Mania was a one-off, that Classic Sonic wasn't going to come back and that he didn't want other Classic characters to even be referenced post-Mighty and Ray)... they needed to get content out there to swerve from the chaos of Boom, and luckily Taxman, Stealth and PagodaWest were there to pick up the pieces.

So, while I can see why people might not like the current situation with Sonic, I believe that the franchise is still in something of a holding pattern right now, trying to find its footing after a decade's worth of fallout from utterly poor branding. We have Superstars purely because Mania worked so well, and Mania only exists because SEGA needed a quick win... as cynical as that sounds, I'll definitely take it!

Especially seeings as Superstars is largely on the right track in terms of understanding what makes Sonic games so good/fun in the first place. Give Sonic Team/Arzest another couple of tries/sequels at it, and they may just totally nail it!

As for modern Sonic, I mentioned in my review that Frontiers shows a lot of ~potential~ as well. I think if Sonic Team focused on blue skies, classic SEGA aesthetics, better physics and found a way to transform the open zone concept into smaller action stage missions (ala Sonic Adventure) while retaining the larger open zones as a hub world, we may have something really special there too.

All this to say, I do obviously want the franchise to continue... but not because of the state it's currently in, but for what it could be in the future. You also have to remember now that there is life in the franchise beyond the games - Sonic is arguably a more successful movie cartoon character now, so if Sonic Team does end up getting completely wiped out (which I don't think will ever happen on Sega's current trajectory) Sonic can still continue through other media.

[Ratchet25tx]

I thought most fans liked Frontiers and Superstars. Although, they could tone down the seriousness of the modern franchise(to me we don't need a cartoon character fighting a world-eater thingamabob, but its kind of cool, y'know?). Classic is perfect the way it is; not a lot of story to it. to be fair, I DO want the franchise to continue because it's nostalgic to veteran fans and newer/older ones kind of like me.

[Rabbitearsblog]

I'm actually okay with the direction that the series is in now.  It seems like the series is slowly trying to get out of the slump they were put in during the 2010s and while they still have a lot of work to do to get the series back on the right track, I like the fact that the series is doing a bit better now than it did before (for now, anyway).