Sonic fans: A Broken Base

I like Sonic the Hedgehog.  I'll admit it.  I love the Genesis originals but there are a few more recent games that I like such as Sonic Heroes, Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations along with some of the handheld installments but it's hard to admit to being a Sonic fan without getting weird looks or someone assuming you're a furry and I can't blame people for thinking like that. Go to any Sonic related forum and it seems to be full of crazy people, whether it's an obsession over certain characters' relationships, screams of bias from critics claiming that every game is a flawless masterpiece or worse, getting upset when a game gets good reviews.  Remember when Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations were getting good reviews from critics?  You'd think the jaded Sonic fans would be happy about this but nope, they wanted their bad furry anime melodrama games back with their forced playable friends and gimmicks.  It's easy to see why the Sonic fan base is considered the worst of video game fan bases.

A Broken Base.

So how did this happen?  The Sonic fan base is what is described by TV Tropes as a "Broken Base."  This has come about namely because Sega hasn't kept a consistent tone or gameplay style throughout the series' life.  Originally Sonic was a simple 2D platformer about a blue hedgehog saving his animal friends from an evil egg shaped scientist.  It was huge, helped Sega sell consoles and spawned cartoons and comic books. This might have been when problems first arose.  When you look at the Mario series, even as TV and other media is concerned (minus that God awful live action movie) it's always kept a consistent tone.  It's always been about a plumber, in a mushroom world saving a princess from an evil turtle king. Some will complain that this is tired and cliché but when you compare this to the crazy tangents the Sonic series has gone on, it's kept the fan base in check.

The Sonic fans first got split when Sonic Adventure debuted on the Dreamcast.  All of a sudden, US and European audiences were told that the backstory they were used to that involved Sonic fighting Dr. Robotnick on planet Mobius was gone and from here on, we had to accept the Japanese origins that had Sonic on an alternate reality Earth fighting Dr. Eggman.  This game also ditched the fun, wacky art deco lands of the old games for more "realistic" stages.  Sonic was now wondering around a city hub with humans and Dr. Eggman instead of just making evil robots was now enlisting the help of god monsters he kept digging up. Seriously since Sonic Adventure we've seen Eggman get hijacked by whatever creature he lost control of and this leading to Sonic turning super to save his sorry ass in the meantime, getting to play as extraneous furry sidekicks some whose storyline's have no bearing on the main plot. Seriously, all of you who act like Sonic Adventure was some pinnacle of Sonic stories, ever notice Amy and Big's storyline has no bearing on the Chaos plot.

But now the fan base was divided.  During the post Dreamcast era, Sega focused on "Adventure Sonic" though old school fans at least got some good classic 2D outings on the GBA and DS, but in the Dreamcast fallout, Sega needed money so they started whoring out Sonic.  He got the Sonic X anime which, for better or worse introduced a new generation to Sonic. This generation would grow up on the PS2/Xbox and Gamecube thus being brought up on the Adventure games leading to head butting of classic and modern fans.

Silly fanboy. Sonic's for kids.

When it comes right now to it, like Mario and Pokémon, Sonic's primary audience is kids.  Doesn't  mean older gamers can't enjoy it, but I do find it funny listening to overgrown man children in their 20s nitpick about a series that involves colorful cartoon animals fighting an egg shaped scientist not being "serious" enough.  Some fans get downright outraged when you point out that it's geared towards kids.  Some also blame the kids for the series being bad because as we've learned with all forms of entertainment is that "kids are stupid and they'll buy anything" and this pisses me off because we all know Sega was taking the easy money route making half assed games because "who cares if it's crappy, it's just for kids."  Just because it's made for kids isn't an excuse to not try and when you look at the current gaming landscape for about the last decade, finding a good quality kid friendly game not made by Nintendo is hard.  Playstation and Xbox owning parents are usually limited to Lego games, dropping a fortune on Skylanders, licensed crap or Sonic.  Now in fairness Sony's made at least some effort to make some kid friendly stuff like Sly Cooper and Little Big Planet but the number of grim and gritty M rated games way outnumbers good family friendly games.  No wonder kids are so enthralled with Minecraft, someone finally made a good, deep game that kids can play and their parents approve of.  This also shows the flaw of Sega taking the half assed "it's for kids" approach in that, if it doesn't hold their attention long enough, they'll move on to something else.  But older fans still hang onto the notion that Sonic is more "mature" than Mario because of it's "deep stories" which I found amusing because saying you play Sonic for it's story is like saying you go to McDonalds for world class cuisine.  I remember when Sonic Colors came out and the series decided to stop taking itself so seriously and even poke some fun at its own clichés over the years and yet the "serious" Sonic fans were suddenly insulted that the series dared try to have a sense of humor such as Sonic being a bit cocky and over confident and Tails no longer just kissing his ass.  I found it a breath of fresh air after years of what I called "bad Dragonball Z fanfiction as written by furries."  Also making Sonic more cocky actually gave him more depth as opposed to the previous "I'm the hero and must do what's right because I'm awesome" personality.  I'd rather Sonic act more like Spiderman than Superman.

The Apex of Sonic fan stupidity.

The Sonic fans reached the ultimate level of stupidity when Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 was revealed.  After a trailer that showed only seconds of gameplay, fans raged.  Where to start?  Some were mad it didn't go the Megaman 9 route and use old Genesis graphics. There were fans who hated using the modern, green eyed Sonic instead of the older design and outrage over Sonic Rush developers Dimps were working on it. Suddenly Dimps was awful and horrible now despite years of people saying how they were the only ones making decent Sonic games.  It made my head hurt. When Episode 1 did debut, it was clear to see this wasn't a true successor to the Genesis games, rather we got a mobile game ported to consoles with a number tacked on to generate hype.  By the time the second episode came out, while it did improve the physics, most fans were apathetic and it's easy to see why no more episodes were made.  This also began Sega's love affair with the mobile market and snubbing of console owners.  Hey Sega, why can't console owners get that special version of Sonic 2 with the Hidden Place stage? Some of us like playing Sonic with actual buttons.

Trying to make everyone happy.

A couple years ago, Sega did something smart for a change.  Instead of trying to crank out 4 or 5 mediocre Sonic games, they decided on a "quality over quantity" approach working on one main Sonic game that's more polished.  Fans still got spinoffs in between like rereleases of classics on download services, and spinoffs like the surprisingly good Sonic and Sega All Star Racing series which could easily hold it's own against Mario Kart.  This was the time we saw games like Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations, both games had a lot of polish, good controls and got fairly good reviews namely because instead of trying to pad out their games with werehogs, fetch quests or replaying the same levels as friends, they focused on being speed based platformers and it paid off for Sega. The games sold fairly well and got good reviews and of course the old school fans were pleased but as I proved the fans that came up in the "Adventure" era were all mad their bad anime furry melodrama was gone.  Heaven forbid Sega focus on making solid gameplay as opposed to a bloated story and tossing in friends just for fan service.   Despite it actually coming out in 2006 under the name Sonic the Hedgehog, fans to this day still demand a Sonic Adventure 3 which is as futile as demanding a Valve game with a three in the title. 

We don't know what we're doing anymore.

After Colors and Generations seemed to finally get how a modern Sonic game should play, you'd think Sega would finally learn and say "ok this works, let's build on this."  Use the gameplay formulas established and make, say a good 2D Sonic game from the classic gameplay of Generations for the old school fans and use the modern gameplay to make either a Sonic Adventure 3 or I even wanted to see a Sonic Colors 2 that implemented more 3D area gameplay maybe even have the friends be optional or multiplayer but nope, Sega said "well we're tired of that.  Instead of were going to make Sonic Pakour Galaxy.  This confused all the fans.  Some were already annoyed that Sega signed a three game exclusive deal with Nintendo but Sonic Lost World was just a weird direction for Sega anyway.  Some fans declared it was Sega finally making Sonic Xtreme, the cancelled Saturn game, but the creator flat out said his team were not familiar with Sonic Xtreme and that some of the team had worked on the two Mario Galaxy games.  Sonic Lost World was ok at best with some nice free DLC based around Yoshi's Island and Legend of Zelda.  Though I found it amusing the fans who declared it was Nintendo's fault that SEGAs game sucked. Then again you see this with any third party game on a Nintendo console and yet had the exact same game been on PS3 and 360,  it would've played exactly the same as Lost World didn't do much with the gamepad (especially once the patch came out that got rid of the pointless gyroscopic controls).  But it's easy to see with Lost World that Sega takes the approach of "throw it to the wall and see if it sticks" and Lost World was a game no one asked for.  Old school fans either want a good 2D game or a game that played like Colors or the modern sections of Generations. Modern fans wanted another Sonic Adventure.  Instead Sega tries making a game that switches from 2D to 3D to make everyone happy and making no one happy.

Sonic Boom breaks the base again.

So after Sonic Lost World many wondered what Sega third and final Nintendo exclusive would be.  Many were hoping to finally get a crossover with Mario that didn't involve the Olympics but instead we're introduced to Sonic Boom where Sega handed Sonic over to another US studio who decided to reboot the series, redesign the characters and even got a tie in cartoon show to go with it.  Already the fans' reactions are all over the place.  First of course was the reimagined jacked up version of Knuckles which sent Knuckles fans into fits of rage though not as bad as fans throwing a fit over Sonic wearing a scarf and his arms being blue.  Though others are hopeful. BigRedButton studio has a good pedigree working with some of the great platformers of the Playstation like Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter.  Other fans are pleased to see the option of playable pals return.  And others want to sit this one out in the hopes that the next Sonic game, which we assume will be available for the PS4 and Xbox One will be amazing.  With Sonic Boom, at the time of this writing, it's too soon to tell what this will do to the Sonic fan base.  If it's good and the TV series is good, then we'll have yet another facet of Sonic fans defending this and butting heads with both the classic and modern fans over what Sonic should be.

What I honestly think Sega should do is stop trying to please all their fans with one game.  It's not going to happen instead focus on a Sonic game that will sell to the masses. Selling to Sonic fans and kids is easy but as production costs rise and kids, particularly are more drawn to play on tablets and smartphones, it's not enough to make something half assed say "well fans and kids will buy it" and expect to make easy money.  Things haven't been good for Sega in recent years.  Last year they only released four major titles, one of which was Aliens Colonial Marines and we all know how THAT went over. Whenever I hear that "Nintendo should go third party." I simply say "yeah because that worked out so well for Sega."

As for the Sonic fan base, the damage has been done.  There's no one game, well, maybe Generations that all the fans will love and Sega would be better to focus on simply making a good game instead of trying to please fans.  As Yahtzee said "fans are clingy, complaining dipsh*ts who are never EVER satisfied no matter how many concessions you make. And the moment you drown out their shrill tremulous cries, the better off you are."

Xbox One doing another 180?

So the buzz from the game industry now is that Microsoft caved to the peer pressure and not only is going to release an Xbox One without Kinect, but remove the pay wall that required Xbox Live to access things like Netflix and Hulu.

It's funny when considering less than a year ago, Microsoft was trying to sell us a system that wasn't going to allow you to play used games and force Kinect to be on all the time leading to theories of the government using Kinect for government spying and after being made a fool at E3 by Sony who decided to focus on making the PS4 a game console rather than some multimedia entertainment hub that punishes gamers who buy a used game or borrow one from a friend.

So basically now the Xbox One and the PS4 are pretty much identical in terms of price and features. Both will cost $400. Both play Blu Ray movies and can stream entertainment, so many gamers are looking at this "console war" wondering what's the difference now.

It comes down to one thing GAMES.  And I am happy about this.  As someone who grew up in the 90s of the Sega/Nintendo wars, console wars were about what games each system had, not which generic FPS ran in 1080p.  Listening to overgrown man children discuss polygon counts and resolution crap is annoying.  I want to know which system has games that make me want to buy it and so far aside from a couple exclusives like Knack, Killzone and Titanfall, the only console that had exclusives I was actually interested in was the WiiU namely because I like Mario and Zelda and that's the only way I'm going to get to play Mario and Zelda.  I will say if Microsoft wants me to buy an Xbox One, then make a real Banjo Kazooie sequel.  None of this car building nonsense.  If Kinect is not mandatory anymore, maybe whatever is left of Rare can finally get a shot at making traditional games again.  But so far I have yet to see an exclusive must have game for either system that makes me want to rush out and drop $400 on a big plastic box with no backwards compatibility.  As for third party games, I have a good gaming PC for now and given these new systems are basically dumbed down PCs, it comes down to their console specific exclusives to sell me.

What's more amusing is the gamers mad that Xbox "sold out."  I find this amusing because all I heard since last year's Xbox 180 was how many would consider the system if they dropped the Kinect and the price by $100. Then again given how many Xbox execs were dead set on Kinect being a part of the system and how it was going to revolutionize everything. But it's clear what happened.  PS4 was outselling the Xbox One, even after Titanfall's strong launch.  MS knows they're not going to be able to sell much better outside the US.  As popular as the 360 was in the states, it bombed in Japan and didn't fare better in other countries so they had to put the Xbox One on par with the PS4.  The 360 benefited from Sony making the mistake of thinking people would pay $600 for a Blu Ray player and I often wonder how last gen would've been had the PS3 launched at the same price as the 360.

I also roll my eyes at the Xbox fanboys saying how gamers are against "innovation."  Huh, that's funny because many of these same whiners slammed Nintendo last gen for being gimmicky despite the Wii introducing a new way to play and introducing many non gamers to fun, accessible games that appealed to them.  So to get this straight: introducing a new control scheme and bringing gaming to the masses is gimmicky but restrictive DRM is "innovation."  It's easy to see why I stopped being a hardcore gamer.

So what does this mean for this eight generation of consoles?  Well, as I said earlier, it is going to come down to the games now.  Unlike last gen, Microsoft is really pushing exclusive titles now realizing they can't just coast by with Call of Duty and Madden like they did during the later half of the 360's life cycle and I want MS to have more going on than just online FPSes.  I want somebody,  ANYBODY to make fun, lighthearted open world platformer with a wacky mascot again.  It's been ages since I've played a good one.  Sly Cooper 4 was the last that came close to that.  I want another game like Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie or Jak and Daxter.  First one of you to make something like that, then you'll get my money.