A ‘true Sonic fan’, reading The Sonic Stadium yesterday. Like, chill out man. Walk outside for a bit.
Looks like a few people want Sonic to go all ‘Legend of Zelda’ on us after all. Since our (note) not-news-story broke of the new Wii game, we have had a few comments of complaint. It’s nice when people don’t bother to use the ‘Contact’ form to inform us of new Sonic happenings, but it’s used up the wazoo when a BLOG states its opinion on a new title. Guess all people can do is complain.
But we thought we’d address each comment directly, and provide a broad generalisation as to just why we reacted the way we did. So here goes.
dude seriously i dont think you are a sonic fan i mean seriously mario had to travel through space to find a freaking princess its the same story line over and over again, so what if sonic makes a game about sub characters it just adds to the story line, at least sega is trying unlike nintendo, or YOU, they have great ideas, u can take this feed back anyway u want, seriously just let sonic be the way he is, and stop bitching about something new about him,
yous sincerely a true sonic fan
We’re not Sonic fans at all, no. Oh sorry, for a second there I thought we were on the Mario Stadium and not the Sonic Stadium. OK, so Super Mario has to repeat the same basic storyline ad nauseum. But think about it. Do you play a Sonic game for its gripping storyline? If you do, you’re probably better off grabbing an RPG and playing that – recent attempts to add a ‘serious’ tone to the Sonic games have been poor, and it shows it’s just not possible in the realm of Sonic. When you consider we’ve had seven years of poor console Sonic titles you’d think Sonic Team would drop the whole ‘plot’ thing by now.
Funnily enough, if we wanted to bitch about Sonic, we would really be having a go at Sonic Unleashed right now. But we’re not, because 50% of that game is looking absolutely fantastic. There’s this weird perception at the moment that, because a game concept is totally rubbish (Sonic with a sword? Really?) and we say it is, that means we’re automatically ‘bitching’.
You like the idea of Sonic and the Black Knight. Good for you. Seriously. Have a brownie. But don’t tell us where to get off because a lot of other people are facepalming themselves right now. Consider: Sonic Rush Adventure, the Sonic side of Sonic Unleashed. Now consider: Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 2006. The latter two games sucked – you might love Shadow or Sonic 2006, but no opinion will get around the fact that they are poor, misprogrammed, rubbish-concept games.
What is a ‘true Sonic fan’ anyway?
Next:
What’s up with the news post about the Black Knight? Not only do you slate something you know next to nothing about, you attack a guy guilty only of providing us with this information. Really, that’s poor journalism and an insult to members of the Sonic Stadium.
I’m sorry if it looked like we were attacking the awesome guy who provided the scan – obviously light-hearted irony is beyond most people. Perhaps some shouldn’t have the ability to read if they jump to such conclusions. That last sentence was another one, see? Not a slight against you. Honestly, if you’ve been reading The Sonic Stadium for this long and not noticed the dry sense of humour we have, I feel sorry for you. We weren’t attacking the guy – in fact, in protecting his name and address, we’re the only source on the Internet that’s backing him up!
I guess we could be attributed to slating something we know nothing about. In all reality though, we were simply posting our first, most initial reactions to such news. We thought it would be quite fun, but obviously the “Defend Sonic!!11!!” brigade have come to stop us all. Thanks. Again, if you have been reading TSS lately, you’ll know this is not how we usually roll. We don’t usually post massive “NO” letters across the screen, and are usually a bit better than that.
But you know, what we can take from even that magazine scan, is an idea of the concept of the game, and that is a very concerning thing indeed. We do know something about the game – the cover tells us more than what it doesn’t. While Sonic wouldn’t be caught dead with a gun in Shadow the Hedgehog, he’s more than happy to grab a sword for some reason. The game might be great, but the concept stinks, and if people can’t agree on that then I don’t know what to say to them.
Finally:
I’ve not used this before, mainly because I’ve not had any problems with Sonic News items, however when I read the latest article I felt embarassed in all honesty.
In my opinion, this news item entitled “Sonic & The Black Knight!? Oh. God.” should be removed and a more professional one should be made.
I don’t know if Sonic News has had a change of policy, but the present news item…
http://www.sonicstadium.org/news/sept-nintendo-power-confirms-sega-continues-to-whore-sonic
Seems to focus little on reporting the news so much as it sounds like someones personal opinion as well as a big insult to sega. The item in question contains little to no news at all, it’s just someone saying that they hate Sega and are pissed off because Sega have happened to make something that they don’t like the look of.
The item ends with the news reporter saying that everyone feels the same. Speaking personally, I do not, nor do I believe that everyone else agrees with the reporter, nor do I think it would be wise for anyone to even claim that everyone hates this concept when all thats been shown so far is the front cover of a magazine. Still, when material is shown, even then, it is still neither accurate to claim that everyone feels this way, however, especially when the item gives the impression that everyone feels the same with the following items within the news article…
tags also do nothing to help the image of the site nor it’s members. They do nothing to help with relations to sega or anyone else working with or representing them. Whilst I don’t want the main page to be nothing but high praise and fluffy bunnies, telling sega “Fuck you” is hardly the equal ballance. Nor do I think it’s good to have one of the tags telling them to “stop making Sonic games”
The news item can also be seen as breaking the new site policy as detailed in this area… http://www.sonicstadium.org/board/index.php?showtopic=33022
Just an aside here: the “new site policy” as posted in the SSMB is limited to the SSMB only, because forum goers tend to get all high and mighty with “HUR your opinion is WRONG!” and make prats out of themselves. Sort of like the response we’ve had to our Sonic and the Black Knight news story I guess. Can’t win ’em all.
I can understand your comments on ‘removing the old story and replacing with a more professional one’. But again, a professional way of saying “this game concept sucks” will still result in a news story saying “this game concept sucks”. It was probably tagged incorrectly for the context the post was in (I understand you expect more from your News posts) so I have changed the category of that particular post. I apologise for unprofessionalising the news sector with a post full of opinion.
When you think about it though, every single website is just full of opinion. The Black Knight post – as mentioned before, created in a certain style to provide entertainment and nothing more – at least makes those opinions the forefront of the post rather than foreplaying the reader with cleverly-worded guff. I guess in a way our Black Knight story is rather post-modern. TSS is avant-garde, you see. We’ll be attending art galleries next.
No, not ‘everyone’ will feel the same about Sonic and the Black Knight. You might like the sound of a blue hedgehog dressed up in cosplay saving worlds swinging a sword and looking totally out of character. Good for you. Personally, we thought Sonic Team had learned with Sonic Unleashed – there’s this air of Sonic Team just randomly picking game concepts out of a hat and using Sonic as the guinea pig for such projects. Sonic and the Black Knight just looks like one of these times, and while everybody can disagree on what the game will be like, not an awful lot can disagree that the concept of the game sound so far beyond Sonic it’s unreal.
As for tags, we have some that seriously reference every article, but we have some joke tags in there too – I apologise if the concept of light-hearted humour goes over most people’s head, but I guess that’s dry humour for you.
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In conclusion, a humour post went very wrong in the eyes of some “Sonic Defenders”. I’m sorry if it feels like there’s a rain of discontent with every new game announcement, but that’s because Sonic Team no longer know what they want out of a Sonic game. It’s easy to say “give them a chance” and it’s easy to say “you don’t know anything until you’ve played it yourself” but from this cover scan I can tell you that, with Sonic an the Secret Rings and Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Team/SEGA seem to be scrambling for whatever new concept might work, when all they needed to do was keep Ohshima and make sure they made more Sonic Adventure 1 games.
As we said elsewhere, Sonic Team are constantly looking for new ideas that may strike gold, but they had already hit gold years ago. It was only when they started thinking outside the box like this in Sonic Heroes that it all went to pot. New ideas, gimmicks (such as level gimmicks) and such as fine in a new Sonic game, but with an image like that it doesn’t really give you the biggest hope of seeing Sonic in his prime ever again.
At the end of the day, the only thing The Sonic Stadium is really guilty of (apart from putting a post in the wrong category) is loving Sonic too much to see silly game concepts like Black Knight come to pass. And does that make us Sonic fans? Hell yes.
Thanks to all who sent us comments and opened up debate, it’s really appreciated!