SEGA Wants Sonic to "Catch Up And Surpass Mario" - Out of Respect, Of Course

2 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Some of us have been here since ShTH-Sonic 06, and we’ve heard similar statements only for them to crash and burn (Sonic Boom). So it’s understandable that people are overly skeptical.

Not all of us are used to these statements after riding a small tide of actual good reception. We’re not in the dark ages anymore, but it’s not easy to overcome that skepticism when you’ve seen it before.

I still like to keep an open-mind with some healthy skepticism in the event I’m surprised or disappointed.

I agree, I just don't like it people just completely write stuff like this off with incredible flippancy.

Reach for the stars, I guess.

3 hours ago, Knight Terror said:

I agree, I just don't like it people just completely write stuff like this off with incredible flippancy.

It can be frustrating seeing a lot of negativity around SEGA, but as some people pointed out, SEGA has always messed up whenever it comes to the Sonic franchise.  So, it's going to take a lot more from SEGA for anyone to really trust their word again.  Like, maybe make at least 5 good Sonic games in a row?

GOOD LUCK SONIC YOU CAN DO THIS NEVER GIVE UP YOU CAN GOOOOO EVEN FASTER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!!!!!

On 11/1/2023 at 5:26 PM, azoo said:

They better get it together if they want it. Their flagship studio is about to get outplayed by an Apple Arcade ™ Exclusive

I don't know about that, we've barely seen anything on the game proper and it is a mobile game at the end of the day. (Plus it lacks Illumina so far but I understand thats a nitpick that only me and few others will have)

Onto the the topic I'm conflicted about this, unlike other people here I honestly do think SEGA has the potential to gradually but eventually rival Mario once again. As Sonic offers more than just a solid platformer, aside from the Meta Era, the stories, lore and characterization in Sonic games matter. Plus Sonic will actively use its cast, (even if just in cutscenes) unlike Mario who for the most part will only drag them out for spinoffs. (Yes Wonder has Daisy, but she is more the exception than the rule, otherwise Wonder would also have the Toad instead of generic toads) While Kirby is similar but hasn't seen the same amount of success, Sonic has one more trick up his sleeve. His success in multimedia, where he is notably is still beating Mario in the amount of presence.

The issue however, is of course SEGA themselves. The pursuit of this goal is nothing new, they said the same at the start of the Meta Era and purposely rid Sonic of what I consider his strengths and even changed the level design to make him more like Mario and to please people who didn't like the franchise in the first place. (cough Arin Hanson cough) While the era had a successful start with Colors and Generations, aside from Mania, this failed spectacularly. So hopefully SEGA has learned that making Sonic more Mario like is not the answer. Furthermore, SEGA's biggest weakness is their tendency to not work upon a working foundation, hard course correct and actively ignore good elements because they were in a bad game, despite coming from a earlier good title. (Though this might be changing with Frontiers)

20 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Some of us have been here since ShTH-Sonic 06, and we’ve heard similar statements only for them to crash and burn (Sonic Boom). So it’s understandable that people are overly skeptical.

Not all of us are used to these statements after riding a small tide of actual good reception. We’re not in the dark ages anymore, but it’s not easy to overcome that skepticism when you’ve seen it before.

I still like to keep an open-mind with some healthy skepticism in the event I’m surprised or disappointed.

And I have been here since the Genesis days, if you want to do that tired song and dance. There is a difference between healthy skepticism and just outright flippant pessimism.

5 hours ago, The Swordsman said:

I don't know about that, we've barely seen anything on the game proper and it is a mobile game at the end of the day. (Plus it lacks Illumina so far but I understand thats a nitpick that only me and few others will have)

Onto the the topic I'm conflicted about this, unlike other people here I honestly do think SEGA has the potential to gradually but eventually rival Mario once again. As Sonic offers more than just a solid platformer, aside from the Meta Era, the stories, lore and characterization in Sonic games matter. Plus Sonic will actively use its cast, (even if just in cutscenes) unlike Mario who for the most part will only drag them out for spinoffs. (Yes Wonder has Daisy, but she is more the exception than the rule, otherwise Wonder would also have the Toad instead of generic toads) While Kirby is similar but hasn't seen the same amount of success, Sonic has one more trick up his sleeve. His success in multimedia, where he is notably is still beating Mario in the amount of presence.

The issue however, is of course SEGA themselves. The pursuit of this goal is nothing new, they said the same at the start of the Meta Era and purposely rid Sonic of what I consider his strengths and even changed the level design to make him more like Mario and to please people who didn't like the franchise in the first place. (cough Arin Hanson cough) While the era had a successful start with Colors and Generations, aside from Mania, this failed spectacularly. So hopefully SEGA has learned that making Sonic more Mario like is not the answer. Furthermore, SEGA's biggest weakness is their tendency to not work upon a working foundation, hard course correct and actively ignore good elements because they were in a bad game, despite coming from a earlier good title. (Though this might be changing with Frontiers)

 

And I have been here since the Genesis days, if you want to do that tired song and dance. There is a difference between healthy skepticism and just outright flippant pessimism.

I agree with you that the main issue here is SEGA themselves.  Despite all the controversy going on with this franchise, it's clear that many people do care about this franchise and this franchise has proven that it can be one of the best video game franchises out there when the games are actually handled properly.  But with SEGA, it's a bit hard to trust them to do better for this franchise because of their constant goof ups with this franchise.  Also, they never seem to want to just improve on the game mechanics that they already set up and they just want to move on to the next big thing instead of taking the time to just clean up whatever bugs that had established in previous games.  Like for example, even though Sonic 06 is regarded as the worst Sonic game in the franchise, many people do like Shadow's story in that game and they could have easily taken Shadow's story from that game and incorporate it into another Sonic game and improve upon that story.  But nope.  Because Sonic 06 is a "bad" game, SEGA doesn't want anything to do with it, even refusing to look at the positives within that game.  If only SEGA just focus more on putting out quality content for the Sonic games and learn to fix the mistakes in previous games instead of abandoning those mistakes and not bothering with fixing them, then maybe SEGA has a chance to catch up to Nintendo or Mario.

6 hours ago, The Swordsman said:

And I have been here since the Genesis days, if you want to do that tired song and dance. There is a difference between healthy skepticism and just outright flippant pessimism.

Fam, no you haven’t. And I would know—this site was first created in 2000, which is 10 years after the first Sonic game was released in 1991. I joined in 2004-05, and stayed here after at least 2 sever wipes killed off the previous forums we’ve had.

Now if you want to make a contest over who’s been a Sonic fan for the longest before the internet took off, you immediately lost by virtue of the fact that so have I and plenty of others who are here today. My first gaming console was a Sega Genesis with Sonic 1, 2, & Knuckles. (I got 3 later on)
 

You don’t have any seniority here, and there are plenty of people on the Retro forums who would also like to speak with you on that front too.

7 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Fam, this site was first created in 2000, which is 10 years after the first Sonic game was released in 1991. I joined in 2004-05, 

If you want to have a contest over who’s been a Sonic fan for the longest, you immediately lost by virtue of the fact that so have I and plenty of others who are here today. You don’t have any seniority here.

You've clearly missed the point of my reply, I was basically saying the same thing you are right now. Its why I the called the attempt to appeal to seniority tired.

10 minutes ago, The Swordsman said:

You've clearly missed the point of my reply, I was basically saying the same thing you are. Its why I the called the attempt to appeal to seniority tired.

No, you missed mine. I was talking about the pessimists in this topic who’ve been on these forums who, for better or worst, have plenty of reasons to be pessimistic and skeptical. Not who’s been playing Sonic in general for the longest—these same pessimists have also played Sonic back in the Genesis days, dude. No one is special on that front.

Edit: And I’m not really appealing to seniority than I am pointing out how many times these pessimists have heard this idea of Sonic trying to get his footing back to the level of competing with Mario. I get it’s tiring as hell—it’s not any different to hearing “Sonic’s shitty friends” or “Sonic doesn’t work in 3D” or “Sonic shouldn’t have a story” among many other things. But put yourself in these folks shoes and it’s not hard to see where they’re coming from even if you or I don’t agree with the attitude.

On 11/2/2023 at 4:10 PM, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Some of us have been here since ShTH-Sonic 06, and we’ve heard similar statements only for them to crash and burn (Sonic Boom). So it’s understandable that people are overly skeptical.

Is this or is this not a appeal to seniority to help justify their posts? Though it seems we at least come to agreement that they are being pessimistic.

EDIT: Sorry the site doesn't notify you on edits to posts, I have but its the posts that border on actively wanting the franchise to fail that get to me.

30 minutes ago, The Swordsman said:

Is this or is this not a appeal to seniority to help justify their posts? Though it seems we at least come to agreement that they are being pessimistic.

It isn't.

An appeal to senority would be me saying "they've been here longer than you, therefore, they know better than you." And given how these same people were skeptical of Frontiers before it became successful, I clearly don't think they know better than anyone.

I'm justifying how skeptical they are, because they've been around long enough to hear this before only to see it crash and burn multiple times enough to be skeptical and pessmistic. I can understand that, even if I don't agree with it.

Quote

EDIT: Sorry the site doesn't notify you on edits to posts, I have but its the posts that border on actively wanting the franchise to fail that get to me.

Yeah, don't let it get to you. This franchise has survived things that would kill other franchises, so they can keep dreaming on this franchise failing all they want. XD

EDIT: Also, I have to say that it is a shocking breath of fresh air to hear someone say they've played Sonic since the Genesis era complaining about people being pessimistic, because usually people that do that are the ones being pessimistic.

Seeing these comments reminds me why I can't stand the nerd community. Here's a question, if Mario is so great, why couldn't he save the Wii U, and why was the original Xbox and PS2 able to outsell the GameCube? Mario's not God, you don't know what the future will hold. Mario and Nintendo handhelds may become irrelevant in the near future with the rise of free-to-play mobile gaming, or Sega may get bought out by Microsoft and make Sonic their company mascot making him a 1st-party IP to compete against Mario again like in the 90s, not to mention all the powerhouse devs like Bethesda and Blizzard now under their belt. If Mario is so great, why didn't Nintendo buy Bethesda and Blizzard? I'm not trying to say that either of those things will happen, I just can't stand people praising Mario/Nintendo like they're perfect and pretend Sonic/Sega was never relevant. Nintendo held an illegal monopoly over the console market before Sonic came on to the scene. Sonic deserves more credit than what he's given, where are all these other gaming icons from the 80s and 90s such as Gex, Spyro, Earthworm Jim, Bubsy, etc. The fact that Sonic is a cartoony platform franchise, not owned by Nintendo, and still sells MILLIONS goes to show that the Sonic brand is still a force to be reckoned with. And at least Sega treats their fans with respect, unlike Nintendo always hunting down fan-games and whatnot. Nintendo doesn't care about you, the likes of Etika proves that, so stop worshipping them!

15 hours ago, Mephiles' Disciple said:

Seeing these comments reminds me why I can't stand the nerd community. Here's a question, if Mario is so great, why couldn't he save the Wii U, and why was the original Xbox and PS2 able to outsell the GameCube? Mario's not God, you don't know what the future will hold. Mario and Nintendo handhelds may become irrelevant in the near future with the rise of free-to-play mobile gaming, or Sega may get bought out by Microsoft and make Sonic their company mascot making him a 1st-party IP to compete against Mario again like in the 90s, not to mention all the powerhouse devs like Bethesda and Blizzard now under their belt. If Mario is so great, why didn't Nintendo buy Bethesda and Blizzard? I'm not trying to say that either of those things will happen, I just can't stand people praising Mario/Nintendo like they're perfect and pretend Sonic/Sega was never relevant. Nintendo held an illegal monopoly over the console market before Sonic came on to the scene. Sonic deserves more credit than what he's given, where are all these other gaming icons from the 80s and 90s such as Gex, Spyro, Earthworm Jim, Bubsy, etc. The fact that Sonic is a cartoony platform franchise, not owned by Nintendo, and still sells MILLIONS goes to show that the Sonic brand is still a force to be reckoned with. And at least Sega treats their fans with respect, unlike Nintendo always hunting down fan-games and whatnot. Nintendo doesn't care about you, the likes of Etika proves that, so stop worshipping them!

Man, shut up.

Mario is more than Nintendo, he is literally gaming's Mickey Mouse and SEGA isn't even close to making Sonic the Bugs Bunny. It was there for a bit, but they lost the knack after all the in-fighting and the failure that was the Saturn.

For all its worth, I do hope that we are proven wrong and that Sonic will eventually surpass Mario in the future (although personally, I'm getting sick and tired of the whole "Sonic vs Mario" thing. That rivalry had sailed years ago and these two franchises should be celebrated by their own merits).  But until then, SEGA seriously needs to change up how they run things in order to get back on top in the video game industry. Sure, Nintendo is not perfect itself, but SEGA has made a lot of mistakes that they still need to clean up first if they want to get back on the top of the video game industry.

16 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Man, shut up.

Hmm, make me. Freedom of Speech protects me to say whatever I want. I’ve been bullied nearly to death by Mario fanboys, I’ve been called racial slurs by Mario fanboys, I’ve been told to *self-delete* by Mario fanboys, I’ve been told that my YouTube Channel is garbage and that I have a “serious mental problem” by Mario fanboys. Despite all that, I have a college degree and won scholarships to study abroad in Japan. I’ve been to the country that Nintendo originated from! And all of this crap was said just because I said that I believe that Sonic should have beaten Mario in the 2018 Death Battle. You can tell me to shut up and call me stupid and say whatever the F you want behind your computer screen, after all the crap I’ve been put through, there’s nothing that needs online can say to hurt me anymore. And for the record, I would rather be a brainless sonic follower than a heartless Nintendo worshiper. I’m not trying to put Nintendo down or anything I’m just so annoyed that people worship Nintendo to know end despite their flaws, and they instantly believe that all sonic fans are stupid and toxic. And again, if Nintendo so great, why did the Wii U fail and why did the N64 and GameCube lose to the PS1 and PS2? You don’t know what the future will hold, and the fact that the sonic franchise is still selling millions despite the cartoon platforming genre, being dead (Nintendo IPs aside) says a lot.

Guys, keep it civil please...

5 hours ago, Mephiles' Disciple said:

Hmm, make me. Freedom of Speech protects me to say whatever I want.

Sorry to say this, but this is a British-hosted forum. The American Bill of Rights doesn't really apply here.

Not that I'm telling you to shut up, but this isn't the place to bring up First Amendment rights here. (I live in the red state of Texas, mind you)

5 hours ago, Mephiles' Disciple said:

I’m not trying to put Nintendo down or anything I’m just so annoyed that people worship Nintendo to know end despite their flaws, and they instantly believe that all sonic fans are stupid and toxic. And again, if Nintendo so great, why did the Wii U fail and why did the N64 and GameCube lose to the PS1 and PS2? You don’t know what the future will hold, and the fact that the sonic franchise is still selling millions despite the cartoon platforming genre, being dead (Nintendo IPs aside) says a lot.

To be fair, Sonic fans are responsible for that perception of being stupid and toxic.

What metrics are we making this sucess? You're comparing Nintendo to Sony a lot, but we're mainly focused on Sonic catching up to Mario. And to be fair, Mario is still outpacing Sonic a lot, hence the topic.

You're right that we don't know what the future will hold--in the past, we didn't know we'd have a Live Action Sonic movie, much less one that would actually become a massive success after it's initial reveal. But again, Mario beat that even with his own move and became one of the top five films of the year. Frontiers suffered from a lot of skepticism due to shaky history only for it to turn out to be a wide-reaching success.

That's not to say that Nintendo is all that great, but their failures haven't hit as hard as the failures that have hit Sonic have, historically speaking. Nintendo have a much easier time bouncing back that Sonic does, which probably explains their perception. Sonic still has a long way to catch up to that.

1 hour ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

That's not to say that Nintendo is all that great, but their failures haven't hit as hard as the failures that have hit Sonic have, historically speaking. Nintendo have a much easier time bouncing back that Sonic does, which probably explains their perception. Sonic still has a long way to catch up to that.

Also, SEGA is still struggling with learning from their mistakes.  If SEGA or Sonic Team or whoever, just learn to improve on the game mechanics of the Sonic games instead of abandoning said mechanics when something doesn't go right, then maybe they could keep up with Nintendo and Mario in that regards.

On 11/5/2023 at 1:10 PM, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Sorry to say this, but this is a British-hosted forum. The American Bill of Rights doesn't really apply here.

Not that I'm telling you to shut up, but this isn't the place to bring up First Amendment rights here. (I live in the red state of Texas, mind you)

To be fair, Sonic fans are responsible for that perception of being stupid and toxic.

What metrics are we making this sucess? You're comparing Nintendo to Sony a lot, but we're mainly focused on Sonic catching up to Mario. And to be fair, Mario is still outpacing Sonic a lot, hence the topic.

You're right that we don't know what the future will hold--in the past, we didn't know we'd have a Live Action Sonic movie, much less one that would actually become a massive success after it's initial reveal. But again, Mario beat that even with his own move and became one of the top five films of the year. Frontiers suffered from a lot of skepticism due to shaky history only for it to turn out to be a wide-reaching success.

That's not to say that Nintendo is all that great, but their failures haven't hit as hard as the failures that have hit Sonic have, historically speaking. Nintendo have a much easier time bouncing back that Sonic does, which probably explains their perception. Sonic still has a long way to catch up to that.

-Alright I'll try to keep this short (but that's impossible). I brought up freedom of speech because I was annoyed that Kuzu told me to "shut up" just because I was simply stating facts and am not on my knees pretending like Mario and Nintendo are the best thing since sliced bread. And for the record, like you said, this is a British-hosted forum, keyword being FORUM, I have the right to express my opinion. People can tell me to "shut up" all they want but as long as I'm not violating any rules then I can say whatever I want. But that's the nature of the Nintendo community. You cannot give any criticism towards Nintendo otherwise the Nintendo Elitists will grab their torches and pitch-forks because Nintendo is their religion. And I should know, I received death threats and racial slurs from stupid teenagers just for saying that I believe Sonic should have beaten Mario in the 2018 Death Battle.

-As for "To be fair, Sonic fans are responsible for that perception of being stupid and toxic." That is a complete farce and an disgustingly ignorant one at that. This is why I can't stand the elitism within the nerd community, people online have this mentality that if you like Sonic, then you're stupid, but in reality, these clowns are just suffering from a superiority complex due to the garbage going on in their lives resulting in their low self-esteem. Then they take it out on Sonic fans online because we're an easy target due to the likes of "influencers" like the Game Grumps and Black Buster Critic, but in their pitiful minds it makes them feel powerful. I only come across this anti-Sonic BS when I'm online. If I'm out and about wearing a Sonic shirt, I'll often get complements from normies saying "Oh you like Sonic, I remember that game on the Sega Genesis! I spent so many hours playing that game!" But if I'm on social media with a Sonic avatar, I'll often get a comment from some nerd saying "What you like Sonic? Sonic sucks! He hasn't had a good game since 1994! And the fandom is toxic so that makes you toxic you Sonic fanboy!" 

-And what's really annoying is all this crap the Sonic fandom gets for the same things in other fandoms. "Sonic fans are whiney" What about Zelda fans? They sent Jim Sterling death threats and DDoS'd his website just for giving Zelda BotW a 7/10 which isn't even a bad score. "Sonic fans are furries" What about Pokemon fans? The Pokemon community is the KING of NSFW art involving animals/monsters. "Sonic fans cry when their games get bad scores" what about the Smash Community? The threw a temper tantrum like little whiney toddlers when Smash lost GOTY and even claimed the Game Awards were rigged against Nintendo despite Zelda BotW winning in 2017. Same with the Mario fans in response to the 7/10 IGN gave Mario 3D World Bowser's Fury (which again isn't even a bad score). "Sonic fans make cringe fan art" do people really not believe that you can't Google search cringe Mario fan art? "Sonic fans are autistic weirdoes, just look at Chris-Chan!" The funny thing is, there are plenty of successful and brilliant people on the spectrum, myself included, along with Elon Musk, who is one of the most successful and richest people on this planet. He's even more successful that the suits at Nintendo will ever be! Honestly, anyone who says that Sonic fans are weird and toxic have obviously never met a Sonic fan in their life outside of the internet because they're stuck living in their mother's basement bullying Sonic fans and praising their "better games" to make themselves feel better. The Sonic Community is so passionate and creative and Sega embraces this fandom, meanwhile Nintendo fears their fandom, their removal of fan games proves that!

-You know, the sad thing is, if I said that Sony/Microsoft doesn't care about you, I wouldn't have gotten so much negativity. But because I mentioned Nintendo, then people grab their torches and pitch-forks. I personally did not grow up with Nintendo, I have no nostalgic bias towards Mario or any Nintendo IP. I grew up with the PS1, Sega Dreamcast, and a PC running Windows 95, so my gaming heroes growing up were the likes of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro The Dragon, and Sonic The Hedgehog, along with other cartoony IPs on the PS1 who have faded out. What a lot of these younger gamers don't understand is that there was a time when Nintendo didn't hold a monopoly over the cartoony platform market. There are plenty of gaming icons that I grew up with who have faded out and are mocked by the Nintendo community and it's incredibly frustrating seeing these stupid teenagers praising Nintendo and acting like all other gaming companies produce nothing but "Mindless Shooters" and "Interactive movies".

Anyway, I'm getting off topic here. I'll close with this. I know that I got hate for my previous comments because (unfortunately) most of the people in the Sonic Community are Nintendo fans as most Sonic fans commuted to Nintendo consoles after the Dreamcast died in 2001. A lot of people may have forgotten this, but there was a civil war in the community when Sonic 06 was in development. Some Nintendo elitists in the Sonic community were calling Sega traitors for "abandoning Nintendo" and some even wanted the Sega corporation to burn for not making Sonic 06 for the Wii. What they didn't realize is that Sonic Team was split in half to work on Sonic 06 and Secret Rings simultaneously, but that wasn't enough for the Nintendo Elitists. A lot of them hoped that Sonic 06 would fail and that Secret Rings would succeed. Well in the end, they got their wish and the Sonic franchise entered the 'Dark Age'. But the unfortunate truth is the Dark Age probably would not have happened if Sega would have not sucked up to Nintendo and just let Sonic Team to make Sonic 06 be the best game that it can be. And then nearly a decade later, history repeated itself. Sega sucking up to Nintendo screwed Sonic over again with Rise of Lyric for the Wii U! That game was originally in development for the PS4 and Xbox One, but Sega partnered with Nintendo to make the game exclusive for the Wii U which couldn't run CryEngine 3 very well and we all know how that story ended. Nintendo may be able to bounce back easier from their failures than Sonic, but the truth is, if Sega would stop sucking up to Nintendo (much like the people in this thread) Sonic would not have had such a rough history these past 2 decades.

1 hour ago, Mephiles' Disciple said:

-Alright I'll try to keep this short (but that's impossible). I brought up freedom of speech because I was annoyed that Kuzu told me to "shut up" just because I was simply stating facts and am not on my knees pretending like Mario and Nintendo are the best thing since sliced bread. And for the record, like you said, this is a British-hosted forum, keyword being FORUM, I have the right to express my opinion. People can tell me to "shut up" all they want but as long as I'm not violating any rules then I can say whatever I want. But that's the nature of the Nintendo community. You cannot give any criticism towards Nintendo otherwise the Nintendo N**** will grab their torches and pitch-forks because Nintendo is their religion. And I should know, I received death threats and racial slurs from stupid teenagers just for saying that I believe Sonic should have beaten Mario in the 2018 Death Battle.

-As for "To be fair, Sonic fans are responsible for that perception of being stupid and toxic." That is a complete farce and an disgustingly ignorant one at that. This is why I can't stand the elitism within the nerd community, people online have this mentality that if you like Sonic, then you're stupid, but in reality, these clowns are just suffering from a superiority complex due to the garbage going on in their lives resulting in their low self-esteem. Then they take it out on Sonic fans online because we're an easy target due to the likes of "influencers" like the Game Grumps and Black Buster Critic, but in their pitiful minds it makes them feel powerful. I only come across this anti-Sonic BS when I'm online. If I'm out and about wearing a Sonic shirt, I'll often get complements from normies saying "Oh you like Sonic, I remember that game on the Sega Genesis! I spent so many hours playing that game!" But if I'm on social media with a Sonic avatar, I'll often get a comment from some nerd saying "What you like Sonic? Sonic sucks! He hasn't had a good game since 1994! And the fandom is toxic so that makes you toxic you Sonic fanboy!" 

-And what's really annoying is all this crap the Sonic fandom gets for the same things in other fandoms. "Sonic fans are whiney" What about Zelda fans? They sent Jim Sterling death threats and DDoS'd his website just for giving Zelda BotW a 7/10 which isn't even a bad score. "Sonic fans are furries" What about Pokemon fans? The Pokemon community is the KING of NSFW art involving animals/monsters. "Sonic fans cry when their games get bad scores" what about the Smash Community? The threw a temper tantrum like little whiney toddlers when Smash lost GOTY and even claimed the Game Awards were rigged against Nintendo despite Zelda BotW winning in 2017. Same with the Mario fans in response to the 7/10 IGN gave Mario 3D World Bowser's Fury (which again isn't even a bad score). "Sonic fans make cringe fan art" do people really not believe that you can't Google search cringe Mario fan art? "Sonic fans are autistic weirdoes, just look at Chris-Chan!" The funny thing is, there are plenty of successful and brilliant people on the spectrum, myself included, along with Elon Musk, who is one of the most successful and richest people on this planet. He's even more successful that the suits at Nintendo will ever be! Honestly, anyone who says that Sonic fans are weird and toxic have obviously never met a Sonic fan in their life outside of the internet because they're stuck living in their mother's basement bullying Sonic fans and praising their "better games" to make themselves feel better. The Sonic Community is so passionate and creative and Sega embraces this fandom, meanwhile Nintendo fears their fandom, their removal of fan games proves that!

-You know, the sad thing is, if I said that Sony/Microsoft doesn't care about you, I wouldn't have gotten so much negativity. But because I mentioned Nintendo, then people grab their torches and pitch-forks. I personally did not grow up with Nintendo, I have no nostalgic bias towards Mario or any Nintendo IP. I grew up with the PS1 and a PC running Windows 95, so my gaming heroes growing up were the likes of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro The Dragon, and Sonic The Hedgehog, along with other cartoony IPs on the PS1 who have faded out. What a lot of these younger gamers don't understand is that there was a time when Nintendo didn't hold a monopoly over the cartoony platform market. There are plenty of gaming icons that I grew up with who have faded out and are mocked by the Nintendo community and it's incredibly frustrating seeing these stupid teenagers praising Nintendo and acting like all other gaming companies produce nothing but "Mindless Shooters" and "Interactive movies".

Anyway, I'm getting off topic here. I'll close with this. I know that I got hate for my previous comments because (unfortunately) most of the people in the Sonic Community are Nintendo fans as most Sonic fans commuted to Nintendo consoles after the Dreamcast died in 2001. A lot of people may have forgotten this, but there was a civil war in the community when Sonic 06 was in development. Some Nintendo elitists in the Sonic community were calling Sega traitors for "abandoning Nintendo" and some even wanted the Sega corporation to burn for not making Sonic 06 for the Wii. What they didn't realize is that Sonic Team was split in half to work on Sonic 06 and Secret Rings simultaneously, but that wasn't enough for the Nintendo N****. A lot of them hoped that Sonic 06 would fail and that Secret Rings would succeed. Well in the end, they got their wish and the Sonic franchise entered the 'Dark Age'. But the unfortunate truth is the Dark Age probably would not have happened if Sega would have not sucked up to Nintendo and just let Sonic Team to make Sonic 06 be the best game that it can be. And then nearly a decade later, history repeated itself. Sega sucking up to Nintendo screwed Sonic over again with Rise of Lyric for the Wii U! That game was originally in development for the PS4 and Xbox One, but Sega partnered with Nintendo to make the game exclusive for the Wii U which couldn't run CryEngine 3 very well and we all know how that story ended. Nintendo may be able to bounce back easier from their failures than Sonic, but the truth is, if Sega would stop sucking up to Nintendo (much like the people in this thread) Sonic would not have had such a rough history these past 2 decades.

Okay, there's a whole lot going on here that I think probably deserves a whole different discussion? Seems like there's a lot on your mind, buddy, that isn't really relevant to any of this. Kuzu may have been a bit of a dick with his short reply, but I'm not sure it really warrants a wall of text like this, especially the bit about 'freedom of speech', come on.

You're of course allowed the freedom to express an opinion. And to be honest, nothing you've really said has been extremely antagonistic, just... disagreeable (I'd have not exactly put Elon Musk in any realms of 'success', but hey), but that's okay. That's the whole point of freedom of speech, right? 'Freedom of Speech' is about expressing ideas without getting arrested, it doesn't mean "freedom to say whatever you want without challenge" (although I don't think "shut up" counts as a polite counter to whatever you're saying - Kuzu!). And on privately-owned spaces like this forum, such freedom of speech only extends to the confines of the community rules. Without rules, there'd be chaos.

Anyway. I don't know what all this 'Sonic fans' this and 'Nintendo fans' that chat is all about (actually I do because I was right there in the thick of it when Sonic was announced for non-Nintendo platforms in 2002), but I'm not really caring for the aggressive 'elitism' hyperbole if I'm honest. You're free to feel that way, but I think it's a massive overreaction. It's just video games, mate.

Also, please do not use the word 'Nazi' so frivolously. It's not appropriate. We're not in high school.

Can everybody please just chill out now, eh? I think the whole discourse surrounding whether "Sonic is better than Mario" or "Sonic will never be as good as Mario" is entirely missing the point of what was actually said by this SEGA exec here.

13 hours ago, Dreadknux said:

Okay, there's a whole lot going on here that I think probably deserves a whole different discussion? Seems like there's a lot on your mind, buddy, that isn't really relevant to any of this. Kuzu may have been a bit of a dick with his short reply, but I'm not sure it really warrants a wall of text like this, especially the bit about 'freedom of speech', come on.

You're of course allowed the freedom to express an opinion. And to be honest, nothing you've really said has been extremely antagonistic, just... disagreeable (I'd have not exactly put Elon Musk in any realms of 'success', but hey), but that's okay. That's the whole point of freedom of speech, right? 'Freedom of Speech' is about expressing ideas without getting arrested, it doesn't mean "freedom to say whatever you want without challenge" (although I don't think "shut up" counts as a polite counter to whatever you're saying - Kuzu!). And on privately-owned spaces like this forum, such freedom of speech only extends to the confines of the community rules. Without rules, there'd be chaos.

Anyway. I don't know what all this 'Sonic fans' this and 'Nintendo fans' that chat is all about (actually I do because I was right there in the thick of it when Sonic was announced for non-Nintendo platforms in 2002), but I'm not really caring for the aggressive 'elitism' hyperbole if I'm honest. You're free to feel that way, but I think it's a massive overreaction. It's just video games, mate.

Also, please do not use the word 'Nazi' so frivolously. It's not appropriate. We're not in high school.

Can everybody please just chill out now, eh? I think the whole discourse surrounding whether "Sonic is better than Mario" or "Sonic will never be as good as Mario" is entirely missing the point of what was actually said by this SEGA exec here.

I appreciate you staying civil and not telling me to "shut up" unlike other people in this thread. Yes I went off on a few rants, I'm just really passionate about Sonic and have had a couple of online interactions with Nintendo fanboys that traumatized me emotionally to the point where I had to seek therapy and professional help. It's no exaggeration that Sonic has saved my life from emotional abuse and neglect stemming from my family and the education system and it breaks my heart to see the nerd community constantly hate on this character and constantly compare Sonic to Mario. But the biggest offense is when big corporations like IGN hate on not only the character but the people who like the character as well. Now that's just mean. We live in a world with grown men collecting Power Rangers toys, grown men collecting My Little Pony figures, and yes, grown men playing Mario games. Why is it such a crime for me to like Sonic?

And what hurts even more is that all this Sonic hate stemming from influencers like IGN and the Game Grumps encourages Gen Z and young kids to blindly hate on Sonic and jump on the "Sonic was never good" bandwagon when they're too young and ignorant to even realize that their was a time when Sonic overthrew Mario and was #1 not only in Gaming but in the media in general. As I'm sure you know, this was a world before PlayStation, a world before Pokémon, and a world before Social Media. And what hurts even more is that I was too young to appreciate that time-period as well since I was born in 1992. Anyway, I could go on and on ranting but I've already caused enough drama so I'll stop now. Also, I'm sorry for using a certain word relating to WWII, I was just pretty frustrated at the time.  

8 hours ago, Mephiles' Disciple said:

I appreciate you staying civil and not telling me to "shut up" unlike other people in this thread. Yes I went off on a few rants, I'm just really passionate about Sonic and have had a couple of online interactions with Nintendo fanboys that traumatized me emotionally to the point where I had to seek therapy and professional help. It's no exaggeration that Sonic has saved my life from emotional abuse and neglect stemming from my family and the education system and it breaks my heart to see the nerd community constantly hate on this character and constantly compare Sonic to Mario. But the biggest offense is when big corporations like IGN hate on not only the character but the people who like the character as well. Now that's just mean. We live in a world with grown men collecting Power Rangers toys, grown men collecting My Little Pony figures, and yes, grown men playing Mario games. Why is it such a crime for me to like Sonic?

And what hurts even more is that all this Sonic hate stemming from influencers like IGN and the Game Grumps encourages Gen Z and young kids to blindly hate on Sonic and jump on the "Sonic was never good" bandwagon when they're too young and ignorant to even realize that their was a time when Sonic overthrew Mario and was #1 not only in Gaming but in the media in general. As I'm sure you know, this was a world before PlayStation, a world before Pokémon, and a world before Social Media. And what hurts even more is that I was too young to appreciate that time-period as well since I was born in 1992. Anyway, I could go on and on ranting but I've already caused enough drama so I'll stop now. Also, I'm sorry for using a certain word relating to WWII, I was just pretty frustrated at the time.  

I'm sorry you had to go through all of that. It's easy to get incredibly passionate about things like this, it's important to be able to decouple from that every now and then. I know I've been through my fair share of online arguments too, haha. I like to think I'm old and wise enough now to ignore all of the noise from people I don't know (but I don't always ).

What I would say though, is that a lot of what you're saying here is pretty out of date (including IGN's stance, which was very famously recanted recently on a PlayStation podcast of theirs). I know where you're coming from, but honestly I don't see younger generations bagging on Sonic the way us old and cynical types do. In fact, there's been a lot of chat online about 'toxic positivity', which I don't know anything about but seems to be all about people getting angry the moment anyone has anything critical to say about Sonic.

I think a healthy fan relationship with a franchise is to be able to see and discuss its flaws without letting it cloud your overall enjoyment of the series (or enforcing that view onto others - let people like what they like I say, even if it is Sonic 06 ). That's one of the things I try to encourage on this forum, at the very least, and it seems difficult to be able to have a real conversation with anyone anywhere else, simply because social media has reduced discourse to the level of "I think this and I am right, you are automatically wrong". Which is just not a good basis for anything really.

I'll let this get back on topic now, but if you wanna chat more about this feel free to DM me! Thanks for being understanding.

14 hours ago, Mephiles' Disciple said:

I appreciate you staying civil and not telling me to "shut up" unlike other people in this thread. Yes I went off on a few rants, I'm just really passionate about Sonic and have had a couple of online interactions with Nintendo fanboys that traumatized me emotionally to the point where I had to seek therapy and professional help. It's no exaggeration that Sonic has saved my life from emotional abuse and neglect stemming from my family and the education system and it breaks my heart to see the nerd community constantly hate on this character and constantly compare Sonic to Mario. But the biggest offense is when big corporations like IGN hate on not only the character but the people who like the character as well. Now that's just mean. We live in a world with grown men collecting Power Rangers toys, grown men collecting My Little Pony figures, and yes, grown men playing Mario games. Why is it such a crime for me to like Sonic?

And what hurts even more is that all this Sonic hate stemming from influencers like IGN and the Game Grumps encourages Gen Z and young kids to blindly hate on Sonic and jump on the "Sonic was never good" bandwagon when they're too young and ignorant to even realize that their was a time when Sonic overthrew Mario and was #1 not only in Gaming but in the media in general. As I'm sure you know, this was a world before PlayStation, a world before Pokémon, and a world before Social Media. And what hurts even more is that I was too young to appreciate that time-period as well since I was born in 1992. Anyway, I could go on and on ranting but I've already caused enough drama so I'll stop now. Also, I'm sorry for using a certain word relating to WWII, I was just pretty frustrated at the time.  

I apologize for dismissing you before as I was not aware how personal of an issue this is for you and what it meant.

Im just personally past the point of my life of being a militant Sonic fan and coming to the franchise's defense at any opportunity. There was a time I probably felt as passionate about this series as you do, but I'm an adult with far more important things to worry about than the state of this series. It's just a video game series to me at the end of the day that I occasionally enjoy. So when I saw your initial post, I just casually dismissed it as unimportant.

If I made you feel like your feelings didn't matter then I am sorry for that too, and I hope you can work through whatever is going on in your personal life.

To go back to the topic at hand, my stance on this is about the same as it was back last year when they were talking about aiming to compete with Triple A companies again.

That is to say - to put aside the franchises, skepticism, and whatever else - I really honestly don’t see the issue here. SEGA aiming to compete with the big boys is a good thing. It’s even better when they have clearly acknowledged that Frontiers was just a step towards that, and not the end flag. SEGA should be aiming to make Sonic a big deal and to give the franchise the budgets and time to bake as it deserves.

I’d say a healthily ambitious SEGA/Sonic Team trying to reach the upper peaks of the gaming landscape is a much, much better thing than mid-2010s SEGA who decided Sonic as a franchise only appeals to children, so therefore make low budget games and there’s not much need to really care about the quality of the game or writing. They put it at a lower price point almost like an acceptance that it was nothing special, so move on.

That’s not to say anyone is wrong to not believe in their words, or wait for the proof to be in the pudding. That is very much a fair stance to take, especially within this franchise, but I’d rather a ambitious SEGA/Sonic Team that actually tries again these days, rather than the indifferent SEGA/Sonic Team that would just coast along on what they deemed the franchise identity, tried to stick to that specific brand image, and half assed a lot to fit into it. Taken by itself, it’s a good mindset to have, even if it’s heavily unlikely they’ll ever overshadow Mario as a franchise,