Meant to Appeal to Those with No Sonic Experience
Silly rabbit–Sonic is for kids.
In an interview Friday with CasualGaming.biz that is sure to alienate veteran Sonic fans even more, Sonic Team’s Tetsu Katano went on the record with how they and Sega determined the direction of the upcoming Sonic and the Black Knight. In short–they had to, in his words, “think like children.”
That was done, according to Katano, to appeal to kids with no prior experience playing Sonic games of past or present. This, according to the article, is the target audience for SBK.
Katano added this:
Sonic and the Black Knight is aimed at a younger, more casual audience. We’ve changed a lot of things, essentially. It’s thinking as children; approaching things from their point of view, thinking what they want to see. [....] Sonic is kind of a cheeky, edgy character, and so we like seeing Sonic challenge new things all the time. The Wii is a big part of it, because it appeals to a wider range of people who maybe have not played a Sonic game before.
The article notes that Katano was quick to point out Sonic Team does respect the old canons and traits of the blue hedgehog.
How do you feel about Katano’s comments? Will knowing that SBK is a game targeted towards young children change your decision to purchase the game? Let us know in the comments below.
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I will admit…that was a good stab at 4Chan Okami-san.
@TailstheHedgehog: Sonic can be epic. Watching the opening cinematic for Unleashed proves that the hedgehog still has some epicness in him.
But Sonic 06 failed because not only was the game a technical abomination, but it tried to portray itself as super serious. The world’s ending, the future is an apocalyptic waste. This is Sonic we’re talking about. I can’t take a blue hedgehog seriously.
Unleashed’s plot tried to be more lighthearted. For that I salute Sonic Team, shame in the end it kind of followed the same cookie-cutter plot (Robotnik has a plan, Sonic says no, Sonic fights Robotnik, evil monster that Robotnik tries to harness goes wrong, Sonic goes super to fight evil monster, the end). Either way at the end of the day Unleashed wins because it’s fun.
SA2 is the right kind of epic for Sonic. The plot is substantial but easy to understand, the characters are complex enough to have motives but not angsty, the ending was genuinely a surprise, and the game had so many pure comedic gold.
’06 was epic in scope but not execution…the humor was lacking, the characters were one dimensional(except for Silver the angsthog). To be fair, the story tied together well enough. If ’06 had the writing of SA2 , we might have enjoyed it more. It’s too bad we’ll never see Mephiles again, he was the standout of the game imo.
Oh, and something’s wrong when Shadow was the most emotionally secure hedgehog in ’06. He was badass, I really liked his story.
Just because Wii appeals to people who haven’t played Sonic before doesn’t mean those people are kids.
Ever thought of appealing to the MAJORITY of Wii players? Casual adults?
I have a few points to make:
1. SEGA makes games for money. There’s money to be made in retro fans such as myself. Therefore, SEGA should attempt to cater to the retro fans’ likes. Besides, it seems like the little kiddies will buy anything if it’s labeled “SONIC THE HEDGEHOG.” Why not make EVERYONE like it?
2. I love the kids that think retro fans are so old and should be raising families. PJMan (assuming you’re Dark Sonic?) is a high school student iirc, and I’m even younger than him. Getting married in your early 20′s isn’t the best idea…
3. SEGA doesn’t really pay attention to the retro fans as much, because they can put less work into a game and the “OMG IT HAS SONIC” fans will buy it anyway. They probably can save money by making cheaper games and selling less copies.
Done ranting now I think…
I could easily go off on a tangent like the others, but I think I’ll keep this short and sweet.
First, hedgehog with guns and vehicles…..LAME.
Fastest thing alive riding an air board? RETARDED.
Fastest thing alive riding an air board AND defying gravity because of a little braclet? UTTER (bleep)
Were-hog…..stupid.
Hedgehog who has stated he hates weapons, yet wields a sword? WTF?!
Sonic producer who thinks this is a great idea? Flat out stupid.
…………………………………ok, I’m going to go play Halo 3 for a while. Call me when Sega releases another Sonic game that has good speed like Unleashed for the 360.
Look up the definition of sonication and you’ll see that the guy only chose that name to troll.
yay more biased bashing
It’s only that they “catered” to children that bothers me. Sonic always has been a series aimed at pre-teens and teens though. It doesn’t bother me, it’s still one of my top two favorite series, the other being Metroid. As long as they don’t ever lose the “charm” or the “soul” that makes Sonic Sonic, I’ll continue to like the series. That, in my opinion was one of the major things wrong with Sonic ’06, the way too realistic people existing in the way too realistic world next to the cartoony/anime-ish Sonic characters. Sure Eggman, looked kinda cool, but the rest of the Sonic characters, including Sonic himself, seemed out of place. I know I would have hated Unleashed if it had those same peoples’ character models. As long as Sega continues by the “rules” of the existing Sonic games, (the Genesis era for 2D, and Adventure series and Unleashed for the 3D) as well as adding additional Sega polish, they shouldn’t need to “cater” to either newbies or veterans.
Sonic has almost always been aimed for the younger audience, that is not and has never been a problem and shouldn’t be seen as one so I fail to see what the problem is here.
@PJMan: That is true. Mayb Sega thinks it’s high time for a change in tradition too… if we’re lucky…though seriously the formula is a winner. You really can’t go wrong, going super is like a cherry on the cake (provided the cake isn’t completely breadcrumbs from the bottom up, then the cherry might as well be something boring and lame….like a grape 0.o)
Anyway the formula’s a winner and makes for an easy storyline that just about everyone can enjoy.
Except IGN of course….
dang wats with all the comments here o.0 plus the arguments…..
Well, this is like a spin-off series, so I don’t mind what’s done with it. As long as the game is fun, I don’t care who it’s aimed for. Heck, I still enjoy Mario games, which are among thr most childish-looking.
In response to the growing arguments going on in here (and forgive me if I say something one of you already said as I didn’t read through the whole thing), Why should it matter so much? If the game is good, gamers young AND old should be able to enjoy it. That’s the mark of a good game. To Sonication: while you do make some valid points particularly for marketing purposes, I’m going to have to disagree with you. If people actually put video games aside just because they were older, gaming would exist anymore. Many people who make games do so because they enjoyed them so much as a kid, they wanted the feeling to last forever. Animators do the same thing. Cartoons only exist because a bunch of “kids” wanted to be paid to doodle. And to PJ: While the games of the past were really good, they are in fact, part of the past. If sega were to put out new games that were like that on home consoles today, at first everybody would say: “IT’S THE SECOND COMING!! SONIC IS BACK!! FINANLLY THE HEDGEHOG HAS VINDICATED HIMSELF!!” This is of course assuming Sega hasn’t dug themselves so deep the response wouldn’t be “too little too late.” Anyway, after that inital reaction, people would get bored with it and hope that the next game has something new to offer.
Now imagine something else. What if Sega had been putting out games that still had the retro feeling, but they managed to translate it fairly accurately into 3D? Obviously, they’d be enjoying major success. Then, in an effort to keep things from getting stale, they’d be adding other stuff to the formula. Suddenly, it’s 2009 again and everyone is getting super excited for “Sonic and the Black Knight!” I’m willing to bet that people who, from what I can tell, both clearly love a video game series, wouldn’t be at one another’s throats just because of some off-handed comment by some game developer put on the spot. It’d be probably something like this:
Kits’Okami: “Oh man. This game has really got me psyched up! Can’t wait to play!”
Sonication: “LoL. Dude aren’t you a little old to still be playing video games?”
And that would probably be the end of it! I’m rambling at this point but what I’m trying to say is, had the games all been good to begin with, older and younger gamers wouldn’t complain anymore. Sega would probably still turn sonic into a werehog, give him a sword, clone him three times, send him into the future, have him fight pirates, date humans, go to the Olympics, and I’m willing to bet that no one care. That’s all I’m trying to say.
If I’ve offended anyone or needlessly repeated anything stated already then I apologize. Just need to get that off my chest.