Furor Over Sonic and the Black Knight Rumors

Fan Reaction Sinks from Bad to Worse

It’s not often you see the webmaster of a top Sonic site publicly cursing Sega over something not even confirmed yet.

Then again, the Nintendo Power cover purportedly showing Sonic and the Black Knight, of which we still have no further details, comes almost overwhelming outrage from the Sonic community at large.  Further, it comes on the heels of relatively positive marks from the Sonic faithful over Sega’s unveiling of Sonic Unleashed at E3, where Sonic the Werehog was once a topic of serious concern.

The most vocal response with the largest audience were Sonic Stadium reporter Slingerland and webmaster Svend.  When posting the news, their thoughts were evident:

Words cannot express how pissed off I am right now.  This “leaked” Nintendo Power cover better be a hilarious prank. Knowing SEGA, though, I doubt that it is.

“Dear SEGA…

NO.

Yours sincerely,

Everyone”

That anger spilled onto many major community boards.  On Sonic Retro member Purity was also none too pleased:

I think I say it for all of us when I say For fucks sake.

I don’t think Sonic Team are ever going to stop this shit. I had hopes last year when I read a GM article about them halting all Sonic games, and taking a step back to think about going classic.

On the same board GHNeko wrote:

Or…HEY…A Far Fetched idea! This game, if its real, will come out, and get high ratings across the board, ala MGS4 and Brawl. And all of you will be like, “OGM SEGA SURPRISED US LOLE” and we can all laugh at this thread and have tea and crumpets.

….

Yeah. This game just smells of fail. BUT, I’d be proud to swallow my words and say I am wrong for laughing at this game IF, and ONLY IF, it doesn’t suck. I mean, a hedgehog with guns was a dumb idea. BUT WHAT ABOUT A HEDGEHOG WITH SWORDS. THE OPPOSITE OF GUNS. If they reverse the concept, the ratings will surely be reversed! Right!?

Over on SonicEatsRings.com, Piers gave the idea some second thoughts:

Have they looked at my terrible fanart of medieval Sonic and Shadow I did once?
But as mentioned before, could they just make an entirely seperate title for this stuff. You aren’t called Sonic Team because you have to make Sonic games.

[....] Thinking a moment about it, now I realize they may be doing this for the MotionPlus announced at E3.

Still, this is almost sickeningly looking like Sega’s determination to implement in Not-Sonic gimmicks to Sonic without the use of other characters. As a way of curving around fan’s desire for no additional characters – just the blue hedgehog.

The same board features Keith Hemari saying:

Remember SEGA owns Sonic and if their suits in marketing think that Sonic armed with a sword would bring in big bucks, then SEGA is gonna want Sonic to swing a sword around like Blade in a room full of undead.

Frankly, after the godawful disaster that was Sonic2K6, nothing SEGA does can really surprise me.  They released a game that wasn’t even close to ready to be put out on the market.  It’s pretty clear they’re letting their marketing division run the show.

And Redrappy over on the GHZ forums may sum up the consensus nicely:

WILLL THE PAIN NEVER END????!!!

This story has caused a virtual explosion of emotion on the boards, even in the past several hours–and even as there’s no real way to tell one way or another whether this cover is legitimate.  We are working all of our sources to get you the latest information, and as soon as we know something, we will have it here.

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