/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8080840
i don't remember anyone shitting on sonic adventure 2 for the
>dark
story line at all.

Humanoid robots are easier to take seriously than cartoon animals.

>>8080846
SA2's Last Story is the darkest Sonic has been to date.

>>8080850
the storyline with robotnik's grandfather is on par with some kojima shit

>>8080848
Is it really just as simple as this? It crossed my mind but I figured there had to be something more to it.

>>8080921
>Is it really just as simple as this?
No. People take Maus seriously, and that's cartoon animals as well. It's more a presentation thing.

>>8080936
Seems a lot of people don't have a problem taking Kingdom Hearts seriously as well, and that's conceptually even more juvenile than Sonic.

The first problem is simply that Shadow is ridiculous. Black and red edgy Sonic with rocket boots and time control? It's so bad it's good.

The second thing is that Megaman Zero is not the same Megaman, but Sonic and Tails are the same Sonic and Tails. They try make them act serious, but they're still basically the same people. You got rad dude power of friendship vibrant blue blur, his innocent tech geek friend, and doe-eyed toddler-brained lovestruck tag-along in the middle of this.

>>8080942
Kingdom Hearts isn't supposed to work and it's hard to explain why it does.

>>8080957
Let's be honest, Kingdom Hearts only works because of Disney stuff in it
The whole storyline is some incredibly confusing jrpg shit with little to no sense.

BUT WHAT IF WE ADD MIKE WAZOWSKI

>>8080840
The reason Sonic the Hedgehog was mocked for being dark and edgy, wasn't because of Sonic Adventure 2, but because you got stuff like Shadow The Hedgehog with the guns, the whole edge for edge sakes. Then you had Sonic 06, with the hyperrealism, the awful story, the weird ElisexSonic romance thing.

Its execution, and the fact that Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06 weren't good games didn't help.

>>8080957
it doesn't work

>>8080942
Kingdom Hearts embraces its chuuniness, Sonic, for the most part, doesn’t.

>>8080957
Disney stuff can get pretty fucking dark and still work. It's never really had that "silly cartoon characterss" vibe Sonic did.

>>8080840
It helped that Mega Man Zero didn't have voice acting.

>>8080840
Megaman felt more like it grew up with its audience. With Sonic it's dark series came a mere 7 years after the character's conception and a fast turn from the lighthearted Genesis sonic. MMX was 6 years in but the games progressively added more story and the series didn't really get deeper until later X entries.

Like in your pic alone Zero is what, 16 years into Megaman? Versus SA2's 10.

>>8080992
Which was always the mistake.
Storybook games did it right.

>>8081041
SA is honestly more on X or Legends level, not Zero.
Except Sonic was less lighthearted than classic Mega Man from the very beginning.

>>8080840
Well personally I thought that everything past the first few MMX games was pushing it

>>8080840
>>8080994
This is a big one, people still make fun of X4 and X5 stories because of the dub.

>>8081148
SA voice acting was fitting to characters though and people still enjoyed X4 story.

>>8081176
>SA voice acting was fitting to characters though
Yeah and it was still bad.

>>8080993
Is this Danish or Norwegian?

>>8081472
it disney

>>8081176
What am I fighting FOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

>>8080840
in mega man it was gradual. the classic series introduced morally ambiguous characters like proto man and dr cossack. X took it a step up where there was no dr wily behind the scenes and the robots rebelled because they were sentient creatures forced into a working class. the PSX mmx games got absurdly dark with mass swathes of humanity getting wiped out and X questioning whether he's actually on the "right" side. mega man zero just takes those things to their logical conclusion.
sonic was like a bugs bunny cartoon for years then suddenly CHILD MURDER

>>8081201
Says who? You? A nobody clown that played the game 10 years after release?

>>8081521
This is a /vr/ board man, a lot of us were teenagers or older when Adventure came out. Old internet was shitting on SA when they were new.

>>8081563
Remember the BBS on the official website? Man that was the shit.

>>8080840
It's just the bad luck of ending up a running joke, people take it without really knowing the material. To be fair, there are some bad Sonic games, but it's really more just a thing people repeat because it shows them as part of an in-group, rather then them often having really developed opinions on the matter. MMZ was less popular and isn't part of a rivalry with the worst fanbase in gaming, and so it went below the radar and doesn't have this status.

Saying "Sonic sucks" and saying "the cake is a lie" are both shibboleths for a certain type of game culture.

It's possibly because Mega Man never really had a "kid's game" phase, even on the NES, and that its games were just better. When a MM series went to shit it'd just hop over to a different spinoff.

I actually like it when Sonic goes dark. It hits that Kingdom Hearts sweet spot of being genuinely emotionally affecting while also being hilarious camp

>>8081514
>the robots rebelled because they were sentient creatures forced into a working class
So Megaman and the red guy are based cops fighting antifa? Do the trannies know this? I bet we could trigger them hard, they love Megaman.

>>8081472
The language is Norwegian, but the comic itelf is Danish.

>>8081474
No, just drawn in Italian-inspired style. The artist is Spanish I believe.

Shadow the Hedgehog was a fun game

>>8081635
it flip flops because every X game retcons the previous. eventually there was some retarded virus that dr wily created that made them all evil
but yes, the basic concept is that reploids rebel because they want to be treated as equal instead of being used for slave labour
reploids who do this are branded maverick (or "irregular" in japanese)
x and zero are maverick hunters, literally meaning they hunt down ("retire") anti-state groups

>>8081649
So they hunt you down if you have "irregular" thoughts.

Do they ever kill a degenerate that wants to change his factory-given body into something unsuitable for his function?

>>8081659
No, but you're clearly unhealthily fixated on trannies, so I guess you could write a fanfiction if you want to work out some of those obsessions.

>>8080840
>whereas Sonic the Hedgehog was roundly mocked for doing the same thing?
It’s a mix of warranted criticism, nostalgia, and parroting the popular opinion. It’s mostly the latter. Nobody wants to have the “wrong” opinion so they’ll say that Sonic doesn’t need a story or whatever without having played the games. I’m fine with Sonic having a simple story, but I don’t mind one that’s a bit more complex if done right. Sonic Adventure 2 wasn’t even that dark until the end. Of course, most Sonic stories aren’t that well-written but SA2 hit most of the right notes.

>>8081760
Sonic Adventure 2 was shocking from minute one and it comes off tasting like Loonatics Unleashed a lot of the time
The beginning of the Hero Story is Sonic getting arrested by the army and destroying a shit ton of military equipment while fleeing. Crime, rebellion against the government and casting the military as evil
The existence of a Dark story period is edgy and that one starts with Eggman breaking *into* a military base to steal an all-powerful weapon
Later scenes of course involve assassination attempts on the US president, several threats of mass genocide, the military shooting a child to death inciting a decades long revenge plot...
It's markedly edgier than anything up to that point. Nowadays it looks quaint because we can compare it to dogshit like Shadow the Hedgehog but it was clearly an attempt to tell a darker science-fiction plotline in a series about a giant blue talking rodent

>>8081785
>a giant blue talking rodent
>blue talking rodent
>talking rodent
>rodent
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/rodentia/rodentia.html
>Shrews, moles, and hedgehogs are also not rodents; they are classified in the Mammal order Eulipotyphla.

>>8081793
nobody asked

>>8081796
You don't have to ask to be wrong.

>>8081514
>sonic was like a bugs bunny cartoon for years then suddenly CHILD MURDER
Eh, Tails died in Sonic 2 8-bit if you don't get all the Emeralds. Games themselves were moody and had animal exploitation and enviromental damage themes in them, especially in Sonic 1 and CD.
And then US and UK media made shit like SatAM, Archie and Fleetway.
I really think that the series up to Sonic Adventure 1 at least developed pretty organically. SA2 was a leap, but not as big as some claim it to be.

>>8080840
Because sonic was for furry homosexuals. MegaMan is for Chad robosexuals

>>8081841
Medarot is for robosexuals
Megaman is for lolifags
Get it right

>>8081041
>MMX was 6 years in but the games progressively added more story and the series didn't really get deeper until later X entries.
MMX had people dying horrifically from day one.

>>8081854
I am a lolifag robosexual though.

>>8081881
Fair enough.

>>8081841
MegaMan is for robo homosexuals. Especially X and Zero.

>>8080840
It's not the same thing. Zero pulls it off really well because it's a worthless handheld entry so Inti could get away with making something all by themselves. SA2 pulls it off well, but then ShtH happened and its all downhill from there.

Mega Man X and Sonic Adventure are a better parallel for Mega Man and Classic Sonic, because people do have problems with MMX being too edgy and still too classic

mm always had the potential to go darker especially when you toss in timeskips and a topic of sentient robots. It's a bit jarring for sonic when the not CIA starts killing little girls in a series about a blue hedgehog chasing some comedic idiot genius

>>8081563
Post proof

Sonic Adventure 2 is only jarring for people who don't know how Japanese entertainment for kids is.

>>8080840
Because one of them did it well and the other did it poorly.
Same reason Heath Ledger Joker was successful while Jared Leto Joker was made fun of.

>>8082023
If we'll set MMZ as Ledger's Joker, SA2 would be closer to Nicholson's Joker by that analogy, really.

>>8080840
Because Mega Man is based and Sonic is for fags
Not gonna bother reading any other post in this thread
/thread
based

>>8082040
D-Did you just call your own post based? You don't get to do that.

>>8081521
I played them in 2002 and 2003 you fucking chode. Or whenever they released on the Gamecube because I didn't own a Dreamcast. SA2 had decent voice acting but still had some groaners, bad lip-synching, and abysmal voice direction. And the first game was a million times worse in those regards. A lot of this contributed to the darker story coming off as unintentionally funny. It's not like Mega Man has a perfect track record either, but we're talking about Zero and the Adventure series.

There are things people still like about these games. Gamma is probably the most sophisticated thing Sonic Team has successfully written. But it's really easy to see why Sonic got mocked for trying to be serious. I'm sure a story about government conspiracies, assassinations, and the moon exploding would be much more engaging if it wasn't a game about a cartoon hedgehog and his cool new rival SHADOW

>>8082053
It was plenty engaging for me when I was a kid.
It's also engaging for adults who see it for what it is.

>>8082053
Speaking of, isn't it retarded to compare Adventure to Zero and not to more direct analogues like Legends or Battle Network?

>>8082060
>Just turn your brain off bro

>>8080990
Well that's the last file I expected to open on /vr/.

nobody shat on it until game "journalists", YouTube reviewers who's complaints basically boil down to "WHY IS IT NOT MARIO???", and people with reddit accounts started bitching about the franchise they don't play being "too dark" because "he's just a silly cartoon hedgehog"

>>8080840
Because people blindly hate on Sonic. Sega btfo Nintendo in all their commercials and nintenbabies couldn't handle it.

>>8081695
Savage. I never expected to see a murder in fucking /vr/ of all places.

>samefagging tranny
lmao @ ur life

>>8081971
Maybe I'll dig thought he wayback machine to find old forum posts making fun of it, but here's a link from 2006 making fun of the sonic fandom and franchise as it was back then.

https://www.somethingawful.com/weekend-web/fox-tales-times/11/

>>8082913
>from 2006
Completely irrelevant.
Find posts from 1999 or 2000 and from those who aren't console warring faggots.

>>8080950
Shadow was great in SA2, that "Shadow the Hedgehog" game ruined his image forever

>>8080840
mega man did it way better. which isn't it to say the games had good plots but at least its darker plots were natural extensions of the series' premise, robots rebelling against humanity
sa2 is not only a tonal shift but had nothing to do with the series premise of humanity exploiting animals and the environment. later games just double downed on that featuring shit like alien invasions & satanic themes
people are generally more forgiving of sa1 and i think its because it still tried to connect with the themes of the genesis games, with chaos being the embodiment of nature's wrath as well as gamma's entire arc

The weird hard shift in the adventure games is best exemplified by Gerald Robotnik. He's basically eggman but slightly skinnier. Robotnik is a character we associate with goofball antics like having his inventions get blown up in his face by sonic with comical results. Sure the cartoon had him a bit darker, but overall he's a funny, jokey character.

SA2 gives us his grandfather and he has a grandaughter who dies from a disease and he himself is shown chained up like this and implied to be killed by firing squad. Its such a dark direction to take on such a comical character design

A lot of Sonic hate has its roots is the collapse of "mascot" platformers as that genre bottomed out right before Sonic Adventure came out. Mega Man dealt with that collapse by catering to long time fans and making Mega Man Legends and Mega Man Battle Network for new fans. Sonic sort of alienated its older fans and made juvenile edginess its selling point to new fans.

>>8080840
Mega Man Zero was a good game and lacked bad cutscenes.

>>8081841
This

>>8080942
>Seems a lot of people don't have a problem taking Kingdom Hearts seriously as well
NOT ANYMORE!

>>8081635
>>8081659
Jesus H. Jimmeny. You are NOT being subtle or funny with your shitposting, nigger. Fuck off.

>>8080848
>>8083119
I feel like there's some strange generational gap where people below a certain age are unable to comprehend serious stories with colorful/cartoonish character designs, even though those have been around forever, a major staple of animation was having seemingly silly characters getting into heavy shit. Adventure 2 and Kingdom Hearts did not have loud detractors back when they initially appeared on the scene but suddenly you had all sorts of people claiming cringe or that they can't take their stories seriously. Somewhere along the way enjoying things genuinely in general became a lost art in favor of "oh haha i wouldn't REALLY like that, it's ironic!", the two seemingly go hand in hand.

>>8083368
OKAY I BELIEVE YOU

>>8083102
>satanic themes
[citation needed]

>>8084194
You could be onto something about a generational gap, but I don't think it really has anything to do with Sonic being more cartoony, or childlike due to them being animals. I think it's because the younger crowd got to witness the True Autism and Deviantart OCs that came along with it. The more edgy Sonic became the more the fanbase followed. The Sonic cringe wasn't exclusive to those who used the internet either. I remember being in the tetherball court in middle school making fun of sonicfags with normie kids.

>>8084208
both of sonic 06's antagonists are supernatural creatures named after alternate names for the devil

>>8084208

>>8084221
>I think it's because the younger crowd got to witness the True Autism and Deviantart OCs that came along with it.
This is probably closer than the eceleb solution many come to, because the shift happened before ecelebs came into true prominence but the autism train was already full steam by the early 2000s. Then of course kids see it being accepted on the internet and are more ready to bring it into real life as well whereas they would have been more likely to keep it secret before.

Nobody mocked Adventure 2's dark themes. In fact, it's part of why it's so loved, and why people hate modern Disney sonic.

>>8084194
Absolutely. Cringe culture and ironic enjoyment really fucked up this generation. Shit like watching bad D movies to laugh at how shitty they are has been a thing for a while, but nowadays NOTHING is able to be sincere and engaging, but needs to constantly go "wink wink nod nod you're not actually unironically invested in this shit right? That would be pathetic". Modern kids are going to completely lose the ability to enjoy things.

>>8084221
>I think it's because the younger crowd got to witness the True Autism and Deviantart OCs that came along with it.
I'll never fully buy this, because Pokemon got away with it, despite being equally as bad, if not worse due to higher popularity, in that regard.
I guess that there was a multitude of factors that came into play there including Sonic games going through a shit period starting a bit before 2006 and continuing for quite a while that tanked most goodwill towards the franchise and made it an easy target for single-outing.
>I remember being in the tetherball court in middle school making fun of sonicfags with normie kids.
Pretty sure you'd make fun of anyone showing "childish" taste and it wouldn't matter if it's Sonic or something like Yu-Gi-Oh or Power Rangers

>>8084450
Pokemon got away with it because the younger crowd also got to witness more socially welladjusted older fans. Pretty much all older Sonic fans during Sonic's shit period were autistic deviantart tards.

>>8084450
>I'll never fully buy this, because Pokemon got away with it, despite being equally as bad, if not worse due to higher popularity, in that regard.

Same generation, but different age. It was more acceptable because they WERE children at that point. No one cares if a 6 year old identifies as a Vulpix. Once they are 14 and start screetching about their Edgy Dark Hedgehog OC in a trench coat and hair in their eyes then it starts to catch attention

>Pretty sure you'd make fun of anyone showing "childish" taste
Yeah we did make fun of our resident yu gi oh autists (especially this one who literally stared at his dark magician girl card all throughout P.E class on the bleachers.) I don't think it was really the childish aspect we made fun of at that point, but the weird mixture of child behaviors with adult motives. All of a sudden these childhood characters are seen as Sexy or as a means of Self Insert at a far older age. That's what made it more cringeworthy.

>>8084490
Got a chuckle out of me. Most of the older Pokemon fans are the biggest manchildren, good chunk of whom refused to move from the Gen 1 to this very day.
>>8084493
>14
>not children still
Based retard.
Also 14 is prime time for embarassing-in-hindsight edgelord phase, regardless of whether the kid is autistic or not.

>>8080840
Megaman was considered good. Sonic was considered bad. It's that simple.
Seriously, people only really started bitching about the Sonic story after Heroes, Shadow, and 06, which also coincides when Sonic games stopped being considered good and the rise of people saying shit like "was Sonic ever good?"

Also, Shadow the Hedgehog's namesake game is probably the worst nail in the coffin here -- the story is retarded on a basic level and the game sucks.
I'm genuinely tempted to say it's worse than 06, and I will consistently say that at the absolute least, 06 is a better Shadow game than Shadow's own game.

But still, SA1's story isn't terribly edgy, it's the same as before. Eggman wants to fuck shit up and build on the ruins of wherever he conquers, the end. It's corny as balls, the character animation is terrible, and the voice acting sucks in part (Eggman's VA does an amazing job at least), but edginess is not one of its faults.
SA2 is kinda edgy -- Eggman's grandfather is executed and he sought revenge, Maria is dying of disease and is murdered by police action, there's a big bioweapon that shoves the cannon up its ass so it can ram into the planet, Shadow is out to do the same until he realizes the truth of what Maria wanted, but it never felt like it was too over the top in terms of being dark. It's the Dragon Ball Z to SA1 and before's Dragon Ball, at least tonally.

And like, what do you think Eggman built the Death Egg for in S2/3/K? It's a blatant reference to the Death Star, it's not like it wasn't really obvious what was going to happen when he gets it operational. Sonic CD has the bad future all bleak, destroyed, and dystopian because Eggman is a fucking shitter who doesn't care about what he rules over and runs everything into the ground. The man literally stuffs animals inside machines to use them as batteries, etc, etc.

>>8080840
SA2 starts with Sonic skateboarding through a city.
MMZ starts with Ciel's squad getting slaughtered.
I think I simply prefer the story.
It is better executed, and Mega Man stories often have dark implications, even the early ones.

>>8084804
Actually an actually good post for once.

>>8084856
>Actually an actually
brb killing myself

Because the zero games are better.
And because nintentoddlers have a hateboner against sonic

>>8083102
I think this is a strong factor a lot of people ignore: Sonic stretched too far out of its overall context (or brought in context that didn't work), where Mega Man (I'd assume) didn't. Mind you, I'm referring to only games, since with Sega of Japan, they're so notorious in just not communicating that comics and TV shows for Sonic are firmly their own thing.

SA1 and SA2 are both still "Sonic stopping Robotnik from taking over the world" like Sonic 1-3&K, but SA1 is directly Robotnik using some ancient monster to do the dirty work. SA2 hides a good chunk of it behind government conspiracy, scheming, melodrama, and "deepest lore". SA2 pulled ideas into the story that either never existed in the franchise before, or honestly could be argued never, ever belonged in a game like Sonic. Sadly, my experience with Mega Man is limited, but what little I've seen, the seeds for the stories it tells seem to be planted as easly as possible, and then are just elaborated upon. It worked with a context that is genuinely fitting the universe they made.

>>8084865
>Because the zero games are better.
Fuck the ranking system.
I'm not fully disagreeing though.

>>8080840
Hackneyed marketing.

>>8084874
I like the ranking system but they don't explain shit nor do they let you re do missions without replaying the entire game so getting good its a pain in the ass.
Also being ranked by how quickly you go through the stage and losing points for using cyber elves really discourages exploration. Zero 3 pretty much fixes that with the satelite elves but I wouldn't have figured it out if someone hadn't explained it to me beforehand.
Shame that they settled for a collection since those games would really benefit from a simple remake

>>8084869
>where Mega Man (I'd assume) didn't
Which route do you want, Mega Man Legends lore dump that gradually started making more sense after ZX or a series about Mega Man being an electronic program AI that is actually a digitized human, but then aliens made from waves invade?
Hell, there are aliens, time travel and a lot of other insane shit even in classic Mega Man.

SA1 was completely in line with older games and just expanded on stuff planted back in S3&K. Now, SA2 brought some new stuff, but I wouldn't say that it gone too far with it yet, considering that we finally saw the world where Sonic lives properly in SA1 and it was just expanding on it.

>>8084895
I think that they just tried to make the offer as attractive as they could by bundling a ton of games and even throwing ZX in, as it probably is one of the least popular series and wouldn't sell as well as Classic and X.

>>8084194
>I feel like there's some strange generational gap where people below a certain age are unable to comprehend serious stories with colorful/cartoonish character designs, even though those have been around forever,

It really isn't that. Even adults lined up to watch Lion King and detractors of SA1/2 would agree that Lion King is a respectable movie. The thing is Sonic had a tone as a sort of fun if vapid 2D platformer that tried to reinvent itself in the late 90's after being out of the spotlight for a few years. If you were young when they came out and always knew sonic like this (which is probably all the people in this thread who weren't online back then and thought everyone loved it) it was just how the character was presented to you as is. If you were older and already going into your teens/adulthood, its like they took a childhood mascot and tried to make it more in line with the trend in more edgy/cool video games and that was odd to a lot of people. There's also something to be said of anime growing in popularity in the late 90s onward and making those sort of plots more visible int he west.

Sometime after Sonic adventure WB tried a similar thing with rebranding the Looney Tunes characters as superheroes and it got so much backlash they had to remodel the show. Once you have a tone set it becomes jarring to a lot of people to change it.

>>8085127
Terrible analogy.
Loonatics Unleashed failed for being something cooked up by a marketing team that leaned too heavily into "How do you do fellow kids?". You also have to consider that Sonic isn't a western property, but a Japanese one too.
SA1 tonally was basically classic Sonic expanded. SA2 gone much further, but even it's tone wasn't completely out of the left field.

>>8085171
But clearly you can understand how expanding classic Sonic in that way would be a hard turn for an audience that didn't grow up with that many Japanese properties, right? When Adventure came out there was a boom in anime so kids were getting more familiar with that tone of balancing more serialized storytelling with children's characters. Sonic had a couple cartoons and comics with a more dark but most people just played the games and the most story we got was pantomimed.

Remember people see Mario as the "model" platformer mascot. When it made the transition to 3D the stories didn't really get more complex in the main series so it became a nonoffensive property that didn't challenge people's preconceived ideas. When other platformers tried to make their protagonists more "cool" they got laughed at by a more cynical, older audience who saw through it. Doesn't matter if Sonic was more legitimate, its just what it came off as. And even then, he was still modellng Soap shoes in SA2.

>>8085212
>But clearly you can understand how expanding classic Sonic in that way would be a hard turn for an audience that didn't grow up with that many Japanese properties, right?
Not really.
But then again, I always considered it closer to stuff like TMNT and Biker Mice From Mars than Mario, even if it had more "toon-ey" style. It just had the attitude for it.
Also, no, I'm pretty sure that by 2001 even western fans were ready for SA2.

>>8085212
>he was still modellng Soap shoes in SA2
Unironically one of the best integrated ad.
Soap shoes>classic shoes.

>>8080840
Mega Man slowly built up to being a darker franchise. Sonic, at least from an American perspective, came off as "gritty reboot" dark and then got damn stupidly unaware with Shadow the Hedgehog.

>>8085302
>Also, no, I'm pretty sure that by 2001 even western fans were ready for SA2.

Fans under 12, sure. For people older who weren’t hardcore into sonic it was an odd shift. To the point where to this day the tonal disconnect is made fun of even if the games have become mostly simple kid stuff again for the past decade.

>anons itt
"Sonic, at least from an American perspective, came off as "gritty reboot" dark"
>the game in question
MOVING AROUND AT THE SPEED OF SOUND
GOT PLACES TO GO GOTTA FOLLOW MY RAINBOW

>>8085337
>under 12
Make it under 15-17, after which point people would either become normalfags and stop caring about games like Sonic, or would be nerdy enough to see that there wasn't that much tonal disconnect in the first place.
It wasn't exactly Adventure 2 where people started to make fun of it anyway.

>>8085341
And then 30 minutes later Eggman blows up half of the fucking moon, then an island along with entire population, holds Amy at a gunpoint and throws Sonic into fucking space.

>>8085367
Wow, almost as edgy as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, what a blunder!
It's not like there was anything to suggest Robotnik intentions in previous games or even had implications of someone dying. Oh wait, there was.

>>8085341
And that’s why it’s so strange! Because it’s a mix of upbeat rock like that and sonic being still happy and not even edgy contrasted with Shadow talking like an anime bad guy and the story being played straight. In a post DragonBall in America world it’s a typical shonen archetype.

I feel like Megaman rarely actually gets that edgy. There are implications in the worldbuilding of X and Zero, but most of the time you spend playing those games, you're still just fighting robotic animals.

>>8085380
>a mix of upbeat rock like that and sonic being still happy and not even edgy contrasted with Shadow talking like an anime bad guy
Yeah, their interactions are pretty much the highlight of the game, really.
>and the story being played straight
Does it really need to be ironic for you to accept it?
>In a post DragonBall in America world it’s a typical shonen archetype.
You might want to rephrase it.

>>8085341
Remember when GUN (a military black-ops unit attached to the UN) murdered Maria Robotnik?
Plus, SA2 is the tip of the iceberg. Shadow the Hedgehog is where things go into overdrive.

>>8085378
Serious question, how old were you when you first played these games?

>>8085409
Yes, but Shadow the Hedgehog is a whole different story.
>>8085425
SA2?
I was around 13-14 when I finally got to play it, IIRC.

Mega Man Zero specifically handles its more mature themes well and keeps them all in the background. What story there is is usually brief, but there's a lot to read between the lines.

>>8084804
> the voice acting sucks in part
Stop using English dubs

Darker plots were not the problem, it was that in Sonic's case most of them were poorly written.

>>8086592
Elaborate.

>>8086594
SA2 is alright, but Shadow and 06's plots are too ridiculous to be taken seriously

>>8085395
>I feel like Megaman rarely actually gets that edgy
Not edgy, but it gets dark fast.

>>8086612
I still like 06

>>8085443
>I was around 13-14 when I finally got to play it, IIRC.

Yeah that explains alot. When you're 12-14 I feel like you have a desire to see the kids characters you grew up with grow with you. This is why Harry Potter resonated so well with a generation. But for those who checked out between Sonic 3 and SA2 seeing stuff like Shadow was like seeing your kid brother grow up into a teenager and start cursing and wearing Hot topic clothes. You know he wants to be more grown but is not that good at it.

>>8086861
>But for those who checked out between Sonic 3 and SA2 seeing stuff like Shadow was like seeing your kid brother grow up into a teenager and start cursing and wearing Hot topic clothes.
Not like I don't get where are you coming from, but actually tripping over this is unironically autistic.
Kinda like hating Burton's Batman if you grew with Adam West's one or vice versa.

>>8085395
MMX4/5/6 are basically
>city gets another flying city dropped on it, a bunch of political scheming leads to a bunch of reploids who just wanted to fuck off and live in peace all getting killed by the good guys
>a big space colony is about to fall and fuck up the planet, now you have to try not to get everyone killed by it
>the big space colony fell and fucked up the planet, the whole world is a disaster area

they're pretty bleak

>>8087279
>Kinda like hating Burton's Batman if you grew with Adam West's one or vice versa.
This happened though. A lot of West fans weren't very happy about their fun goofy superhero getting turned into a dark edgelord.

>>8086592
I'm much more bothered by weird shit like Sonic talking to the President than I am in some vague notion of what's "too dark", and what isn't.
The real problem is that the Sonic universe very quickly stops making sense when you try to imply it's taking place on our Earth, and there are entities like the American government, and the UN all existing alongside a man sized blue hedgehog who runs at the speed of sound, and comical egg shaped scientist who builds death stars and deadly robot armadas every other week, and then you never sufficiently elaborate on how any of that fits together.

>>8087354
>a big space colony is about to fall and fuck up the planet, now you have to try not to get everyone killed by it
You should add that the space colony already has people in it and is already falling so people are going to die anyhow. You can only try to save who you can.
Not to mention X1 starts after Sigma nukes Able City (intro stage), and the questionable things Gate has done in X6 like setting up the reploid bosses to die in "accidents" (assassination) and then revive their dead bodies only to use them as puppets.

>>8087378
Yes, and the same then happened with Nolan films, but what I'm saying is that it's a silly behaviour.

>>8087409
Batman as a concept is one of those things that is easily adapted to darker interpretations. It was always inspired by noir, and is fundamentally about a man putting on a disguise and fighting criminals, which is a concept that lends itself too all kinds of interpretations, while Sonic isn't really.
I would say, if you want to do a darker Sonic, then your angle is to double down on the environmental themes, and make Oddworld, but even that maybe isn't quite right. I think SatAM is about the limit.

>>8084869
>>8084925
battle network and legends are explicit spin-offs with an entirely new cast of characters, they're not good comparisons to sonic which had the same cast of characters thrown in very out of place scenarios
>Hell, there are aliens, time travel and a lot of other insane shit even in classic Mega Man.
the aliens were still robots, and i don't think anyone here would say time travel is out of place for sonic considering it was in sonic cd

>>8087409
Its just normal, and remember people who found SA2 stupid weren’t the ones writing fanfic about it and making OCs.

Mega Man got fucking mocked for it too, it's just that no one had the balls to say Mega Man got as bad as Sonic did, or you know, Sonic just got more attention in general because it's a more consumed franchise.

>>8080840
mega man sort of became obscure around the 2000s

>>8080840

The target audiences are different. Sonics fanbase is full of edgy autismos who cant handle mature themes. Megaman, the opposite.

Its funny because in their design Sonic and Megaman have a lot of similarities but they attract completely different people.

>>8087483
>Sonic and Megaman have a lot of similarities but they attract completely different people

Not really. Everyone I know likes Sonic AND Mega Man. Me too.
They even had two crossovers in Archie comics.

>>8087464
Megaman has never really been bad for long, which I guess has helped it's reputation in the long run. You get an X7, but you also get a Zero or a Battle Network around the same time.
It's also just enough of a niche franchise that people who don't care about it, just don't care about it.

Sonic as a character is goofier than any incarnation of Megaman

>>8087396
>very quickly stops making sense when you try to imply it's taking place on our Earth
No, it implies that it's taking place on a Earth where there are other humanoid races than just good old humans.
Like, Classic Mega Man also happens on a Earth similar to ours and then there's Wily causing shit for like over 18 times and was placed in jail just once.
It's not really unlike any other properties like that, such as Transformers for example or TMNT or Power Rangers etc.
>>8087428
Enviromental themes weren't even present much in the games outside of CD, I guess, and Sonic owns a fucking plane (which he lets Tails to use) and a car which he uses for fairer races, I guess. I doubt that either are that ecofriendly.

>>8087520
>No, it implies that it's taking place on a Earth where there are other humanoid races than just good old humans.
How does that work though? What is US foreign policy regarding Angel Island? Were hedgehogs drafted to fight in Afghanistan? Did World War 2 happen in Sonic's universe? As long as the world is presented through enough of a fantastical lens, these questions don't come into focus, but as soon as you cross that line, they do.

>>8087437
Both are still feature Mega Man and you can kinda go "Huh, so that is what new Mega Man is like", without digging deeper into it.
Also aliens also had weird shit like Ra Moon and Evil Energy. And then you'll have to believe that it happens in same world as X and Legends later.
>>8087447
You're asking if they are autistic in different ways? Yep, pretty much.

>>8087539
The actual answer is that SA2 never refers to it as US and the history of that Earth (that is similar to ours) might be completely different for all you know.
Should you actually care about all that? No, not really.

>>8087564
Once you introduce "Mr President" as a character, your mind kind of fills the blanks there.

>>8087545
if you're the type to not dig deep into things then you likely don't care about what gets changed or not unless its a visibly drastic departure like bomberman act zero
>Also aliens also had weird shit like Ra Moon and Evil Energy.
ra moon is still a sentient computer, close enough to robot
as for evil energy, i admit i forgot about that. but a minor element from a couple obscure mega man games isn't comparable to sonic doubling down on stuff like shadow.

Mega Man has always gotten less backlash because they create new subseries plus they whore the games out so it's hard to complain when they do something new. With Sonic, they're constantly rebooting/revamping the gameplay/scenario and abandoning the old shit. So this lends to resentment of new direction.

>>8087428
Batman was also at least SOMEWHAT dark to begin with. Here's from the first ever Batman comic.

>>8087698
That's true. Right from the get-go Adventure really ought to have been an RPG hyrbid spinoff, which is I think what it was meant to be initially.

>>8087539
>What is US foreign policy regarding Angel Island? Were hedgehogs drafted to fight in Afghanistan?
my sides

>>8087539
I bet you don't know that the CIA....I mean GUN were the real people behind the destabilization of angel island and the echidna genocide. They even filled the emeralds with propaganda

>>8080848
This. Seeing a hedgehog with a gun will always be cringe.

>>8088191
No, it's radical.

>>8088191
Yep. Should be a weasel in a cowboy hat.

I do wonder, if they made a Sonic game with legitimately good shooting mechanics, would I care that he had a gun? Probably not.

>>8088320
You mean Jazz Jackrabbit?

>>8088191
And what exactly makes it so called "cringe"?

>>8088378
Tribal tattoos.

>>8088390
Where?

>>8088378
If a big eyed cartoon hedgehog with mickey mouse gloves shooting a machine gun isn't cringe then i don't know what is.

>>8088396
in the logo

>>8088397
Nah, if it was legitimate 1930's era Micky Mouse with a gun, that would be cool. It's just that the game is leaning really hard into the angsty teen aesthetics of the 00's, and none of that was ever cool.
Ratchet and Clank is kind of like Sonic with a gun.

>>8088397
It's cute, in all honesty.
The hedgehog at least. The gun looks kinda awful. MP5 would be pretty much perfect.
>>8088403
Is it what that was supposed to be?
Meh, never thought about it, but from the visual standpoint the logo is fitting, so it works.

>>8088409
Fuck yeah.

>>8088447
See, that's a game I'd play.

>>8088378
It looks like a scene kid from 2006 trying to be edgy.

>>8088378
This is like trying to explain humor to a robot.

>>8080840
Well, for starters, the story of the original Mega Man, a game about robots with thoughts and feelings being brainwashed into turning evil and having to be put down by what was effectively a civilian robot that volunteered to become a soldier, lends itself to deep storytelling more easily than a game about a cartoon rat stopping a Teddy Roosevelt caricature from imprisoning woodland creatures, even factoring in the JP manual's lore about an ancient civilization being destroyed by the Chaos Emeralds.

When Mega Man X was released, they established from the start that X was a separate character from the original Mega Man. Even if the whole series does officially exist within a single connected timeline, a decision which I personally consider retarded, the classic games and Legends are so far removed from the others in terms of tone and visual style that they can be considered their own little isolated continuities without any real effect on the rest of the series. All you need to know going into X is that there was a good doctor named Light, a bad doctor named Wily, they fought using robots, and Wily's little pet project with a virus is now causing havoc hundreds of years later. This is rather similar to how the Genesis era Sonic games are completely disconnected from the events of any console game past Adventure 1, and outside of shit like Generations and them going "OH MAN, THE DEATH EGG IS BACK?!?" in Forces, may as well exist in a completely separate universe. Only difference is, Mega Man would continue to keep the tone of the games distinct when they eventually had like 3 or 4 branches of the franchise running concurrently and even started making shit like Mega Man 9, rather than trying to mix and match and go from serious X to cartoony classic to serious X.

>>8084804
>Also, Shadow the Hedgehog's namesake game is probably the worst nail in the coffin here -- the story is retarded on a basic level and the game sucks.
>I'm genuinely tempted to say it's worse than 06, and I will consistently say that at the absolute least, 06 is a better Shadow game than Shadow's own game.
no
not gonna bother typing out an argument
just no

>>8084236
that was literally just because they thought it sounded badass though, that's not really satanic

>>8084524
>Also 14 is prime
based

>>8083084
This

>>8080840
because sonic is fucking gay. there's a ton of voice acting that is awkward as shit and sonic fans are corny faggots who erp and larp and draw shitty comics and they're usually fucking twelve.do not fucking argue with me about this shit. "but why?" i just told you why. i just fucking told you. if you disagree then fucking die on that mountain. i don't care to invest any more time into explaining why gay ass shadow the hedgehog is a joke.

>>8080921
>>8080840
Tokusatsu, the japanese genre Mega Man largely borrows from, tends to do darker themes and be taken seriously (see: Guyver, Garo, Kamen Rider 555, Hakkaider). They go balls deep with their sci-fi and/or magitek themes as a serious element.

Sonic is entirely cartoony animals based on the design philosophy of Felix and Cat and Mickey Mouse. You can't take that seriously.

>>8089071
It sounds badass because of the satanic edge to it. If no one thought there was edgy imagery and ideas tied to it no one would consider it cool.

>>8080840
Cyborgs were always allowed to go the extra mile. They changed Women to Cyborgs for Console ports of Arcade games. Can't beat up a woman, but you can sure as fuck beat up a cyborg.
Cyborgs, Communists, andTrannies are pretty much all the same thing.

>>8089776
It doesn't borrow from toku, it borrows from classic superhero anime, Casshern and Time Bokan in particular.

The X games were also pretty dark. Anyway I hope you fags played the jap rom of megaman zero games with english setting on in options so you see blood when you cut enemies unlike in the western versions.

>>8089808
Akira Kitamura did mention a Sentai-like show where the Rangers had different helmets as an a basis for the weapon change mechanic, that originally Mega Man would change helmets and not colors, but storage on the NES was too tight. Honestly, Mega Man is a melting pot of a lot of Japanese scifi shit. Casshern, Cyborg 009, Astro Boy, even Gundam (the colony drop). But it also contains plenty of tokusatsu tropes and gimmicks, to it's advantage.

Regardless, it's easier to take "robot paramilitary man X takes over bald dictator/computer virus" than "cartoon rodent with gun".

>>8089817
Oh, the Japanese releases have an English text option?

Is the DS collection also censored?

>>8089817
What english setting? The JP ROMs are in, well, Japanese.
Unless you mean the Japanese Legacy Collection (the "Double Hero" Collection) contains the blood regardless of text language.

If you're comparing the Zero games to SA2, it's because Megaman literally had an entire 6 entry series in between the Classic games and Zero to set the stage for darker stories. It slowly went from "It's the future, Megaman's successor has doubts about fighting" to "humanity is close to perishing following a successful attack on the ecosystem, Megaman and Zero question if they'll ever break the heritage of two dead scientists' feud". THEN we got the Zero games.

Sonic jumped from "Robotnik found a water monster who was only mad because we hurt its babies" to "Robotnik has a semi justified reason to wipe out civilization after finding out about the murder of his grandfather and cousin, but the world is saved by the ultimate lifeform sacrificing its life to honour said cousin's memory" instantly.

>>8087718
The Joker was originally fat and bald?

>>8089975
>Megaman and Zero question if they'll ever break the heritage of two dead scientists' feud".
Not really, but Wily's one sided feud clearly still drives the series, since Dr. Light's AI outright lies to Zero every time Zero asks about the "old man in his dreams" and when Zero tells Dr. Light in X6 he has no idea how he regained his body, Dr. Light dances around the issue telling him to not think too much about it and accept the "miracle" at face value.

But you're right, while classic Mega Man is a saturday morning cartoon in the vein of G.I. Joe, it had the 6 entries in the X series to build up how bad things are going, culminating on the colony drop, while spinoffs in the classic series like Power Fighters were slowly touching on the X series' origins by having Wily show Bass the schematics plans for Zero.

Sonic just went from "haha funny environmental message with parodies of sci fi and anime" to "CRAWLING IN MY SKIN but still got Mickey Mouse gloves".

>>8084194
The problem is those other "silly characters getting into heavy shit" don't wait until after 6 main entries and dozens of spin-off before it happens. They didn't wait until Land Before Time VII to kill Littlefoot's mom; that happens in the first 20 minutes of the first movie.

But you are correct in the generation gap; you just have it backwards. A bulk of the kids who played SA2 and the original Kingdom Hearts were the millennials who had grown up with the "Classic" Sonic games and the first 10 Final Fantasy games. But KH2 and SA2 are the breaking off point for the old kids (who were the first ones to mock Sonic and KH) and the kids who played them as some of their first gaming experiences.

This is the most autistic tZHXNhread on /vr/

>>8087520
>No, it implies that it's taking place on a Earth where there are other humanoid races than just good old humans.
I don't mind that. It's just weird that Sonic and his friends seem to be the ONLY animal people who exist in the Sonic Adventure games (besides Kunckles' extinct tribe, I guess). I think it would be a bit easier to swallow if there were a couple of random animal people NPCs roaming around Station Square to establish that animal people are a normal thing.

>>8089990
That's not the Joker, the Joker origin story is from the 50s. Falling into vats of acid was common at the time.

>>8090036
>The original Red Hood story has the Joker just being shocked and realizing that he has a cool new crime gimmick
>Killing Joke and everything that ripped it off made it to where this was the moment where he went so crazy that he because a being of pure chaos

I think this is what people are meaning when they say that Sonic Adventure 2 is suddenly too edgy. There was nothing wrong with "Guy who puts laughing gas in pies to rob a bank by having a pie fight", but everyone insists that we have to take "I literally cut my face off to wear as a mask to mock Batman" 100% serious.

>>8090057
>There was nothing wrong with "Guy who puts laughing gas in pies to rob a bank by having a pie fight"
That wasn't the original Joker concept, the original Joker concept was "thief who also psychologically tortures and murders his robbery victims for shits and giggles". He was always meant to be fucked up and creepy.

>>8089776
I'd argue that if you can take fruit samurais, doctor gamers, two riders combining into a pink dino and all the goofy shit from modern Sentai seriously, you should be able to do the same with Sonic, especially when it was pretty moody since the first game.
But then again, some /m/fags do tend to have double standards, like disregarding SD Gundam entirely, for example.
>>8089808
It borrows from both.
Or more accurately, they are one and the same.
It's geniunely impressive how much you could track back to Tezuka, Ishinomori, Nagai and Tsuburaya if you wanted too. Not saying that Tatsunoko stuff didn't help it to move forward though.

>>8081176
X4's story was dumb as hell. What people liked is the meme acting.

>>8090112
I see how you left out the actual serious Kamen Rider series.

>>8090163
What was dumb about X4's plot? Sigma was literally trying to get more Reploids to go Maverick by "proving" that even wanting independence will get you killed by the Maverick Hunters with a false flag attack.

When Capcom wanted the Megaman games to have dark themes, they made a new series (Megaman X) which had a serious tone from the start, instead of putting classic Rockman into a gritty bosnian genocide-esque situation all of a sudden after 7 cutesy games.

SEGA took Sonic's cast, which was a lighthearted series since its inception (don't even try to argue this), and put them in such a situation, but they couldn't make it too gritty because it was still Sonic. So you have this weird shit where Robotnik blows up the moon and Shadow shoots people with guns, but you can't take any of that seriously when you have unfitting upbeat music and a protagonist that goes "nyeh heh heh, something buggin' you?" as if it was inconsequential. It didn't have the tone needed to be dark from the beginning, nor did it have a secondary series branching off that begins with a dark tone, so trying to be dark all of a sudden just doesn't work.

>>8090163
>>8090204
It wasn't as dumb as you think, it was just presented badly. The voice acting also didn't work. I can explain it if you care enough to listen.

>>8090209
X4 is an excellent example of "great idea, awful excecution", the story in paper is about a political controversy and the term Maverick/Irregular being used as both "Red Scare" and "opinions reploids may hold we con't agree with" for human politicans in charge rather than a term used in it's original intent, a reploid that is malfunctioning and turning dangerous as a result.

Fuck the execution of a perfectly good story concept, maybe they needed a bit more cutscenes to land the concept well like MMZ or Gunvolt do.

>>8090183
>Gaim and Ex-Aid
>not serious
Huh?
I mean, I'm sure that you love mature series, like Kiva, Wizard, Ghost and Amazons.

>>8090219
so what you’re saying is that leftists are fucking irregulars and should be terminated asap, huh. yeah… yeah! good point anon

>>8090235
this isn't the place for a kamen rider discussion, but it's recognized that den-o was a massive leap in stupid, and its success affected the rest of the series then on. the ones before that would be "serious".
something like gaim is an attempt at a serious story because it's by a ryuki fanboy who loves grimdark murder fests. still, he had to write a show about breakdancing fruit ninjas because that's the toy gimmick they settled on.

>>8090163
This may shock you, but the game was popular in Japan as well, where they actually got good acting.

because sonic is a tubular fucking hedgehog

>>8090329
Yeah, I agree, V3, X, Skyrider, Super-1 and Black RX were all great and mature shows. And Urobutcher must've hated working with all the goofy shit. Sure.
And Ryuki, Hibiki, Blade and Kabuto all were very smart and serious unlike Den-O.
While this isn't a place for a Kamen Rider specific discussion, it's relevant to the topic of themes and tropes in Japanese children entertainment media, which includes Mega Man and Sonic as well.

>>8081148
>X5
>dub
???

>>8081834
>Eh, Tails died in Sonic 2 8-bit if you don't get all the Emeralds.
fan interpretation

>>8081148
>people
>dub

>>8090450
I mean, you can say this, but it's pretty much what everyone who looked at it thought.
Sonic looking at starry sky and seeing Tails combined with moody music, the word E N D and then Game Over is more or less image powerful enough to convey something like that.

>>8080848
The comics say otherwise.

>>8090219
Yeah, X4 had some good ideas but the execution's still bad without the dub. Everyone's an idiot in that game, and it all comes down to Sigma being the bad guy behind the antagonists for the third time in a row.

>>8090529
Yeah, amount of serious comics about with humanoid robots is smaller, I guess.

>>8090580
>>8090529
Both MMX manga series released in Japan are brutal from the get go.

>>8090587
There are more than just two though.
Also Megamix is better.

>>8090507
But again, subtext,on top of being a game not many people played compared to the Genesis versions

>>8090219
It also doesn't help that we call it "Maverick". By saying that a Reploid has become "Irregular", it's far more believable for X to heavily doubt what he's doing. "Irregular" is perfectly reasonable for describing a machine that is malfunctioning and hurting people, but when it starts getting used to describe "Reploids who don't WANT to follow the rules", then it becomes an ethics issue. "Maverick" always implies choice, so it lessens the series sting of "What am I fighting for". If the Maverick Hunters are just suppose to kill Reploids criminals, X knows what he's there for. If the Irregular Hunters start killing Reploids because they express controversial opinions or have extremist ideas, NOW we have reason to believe that X struggles with the whole "kill over discuss" thing.

>>8090992
>>8090219
>NOW we have reason to believe that X struggles with the whole "kill over discuss" thing
X was stuck in a simulation for 100 years being trained to save people. He's always had a reason to doubt if killing everyone who disagrees is the way to go, since that's the Maverick Hunters' motto, which they ask him to follow. The bosses from X1 went maverick on their own accord, convinced by Sigma to start a rebellion. The whole "malfunction thing" was also there but malfunctioning reploids don't organize into a belligerent faction.
In actuality, X4 raises the question of "should reploids who disobey the Maverick Hunters be slated for destruction without due process?" rather than "should reploids be allowed to have free will?"

>>8090794
I keep hearing this nearly every time someone brings up Game Gear, but fair enough.
The point is, it's still was a part of the franchise vision to include stuff like that even back in the first half of 90s.

>>8089035
>cartoon rat
Hedgehogs are not rodents.

>>8091064
>In actuality, X4 raises the question of "should reploids who disobey the Maverick Hunters be slated for destruction without due process?" rather than "should reploids be allowed to have free will?"
I'm actually glad Inti-Creates' Makoto Yabe used this poorly set up drama by X4 to fuel the entire purpose behind Dr. Weil, how he knows legally during his youth (before the organization of X's government era) a Maverick refered to a Reploid that was malfunctioning, whereas Weil was always uneasy about the implications of giving a machine free will.

He was also an asshole who wanted complete control over the world, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

>>8089035
>Legends
I wouldn't consider Legends to be "it's own thing" like classic Mega Man, instead it's like Turn-A Gundam... Sure you COULD play it without the context of the rest of the series, but knowing makes everything better.

In particular the Japanese version, how the Maverick Hunters went from a paramilitary unit into an actual body of government divided in positions such as Third Class Municipal Unit (what Juno is called in the Japanese version), First Class Purge Officer (what the english dub calls Purifier Unit) and that the Carbons/Decoys' way of living as if they were real humans is something to be considered "aberrant" behavor... or as the Japanese version puts it, Irregular behavor. It makes the narrative of Legends so much much better because it puts into perspective how absolutely fucked up it all went, how Dr. Light's life job and Dr. Cain's decision to create replicas based on X's data and to form the Maverick Hunters during the early days of the Reploid era snowballed into an absolute clusterfuck of horror.

>>8089035
>even started making shit like Mega Man 9
Although this was only in the Japanese site for "Rockman Zero Collection" on the Nintendo DS, I think starting to add a bit more themeing into 9 and 10 was a smart way to implement the reasons why Dr. Light would both consider putting X into ethical tests rather than to trust him blindly like he trusted his past creations, and why X has much more elaborate anti viral measures than the latter Reploids after the Roboenza incident.

mega man has such good lore, in sonic here's what you get:
>robotnik is a feminist
>sonic's real name is ogilvie
>rouge is not a hooker
smbz was abap btw

>>8091678
humans ruin everything

>>8091803
So good we still don't know what happened to Rock and the rest of his friends.

>smbz was abap btw

Get out.

>>8091838
smbz is older than you faggot

>>8091803
>robotnik is a feminist
Actually that part was mistranslated. He's a womanizer, not a feminist.

>>8091881
He just watched a Grumps playthrough and is willing to repeat his favorite eceleb's hate for Sonic, you can tell by the Sonic name part.

>>8091930
schizo
do game grumps fans know what a mega man zero is?

>>8080840
Because at that point nobody gave a shit about Mega Man outside of hardcore fans

>>8093901
yeah that's why they put out three mega man games a year. because it was unpopular.

>>8093915
And every time any new game was released anyone outside of fans would complain how there's too much of these games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeqW0KXP1tE

>>8080840

>>8091838
We kno, thanks to the book Chou Hyakka Rockman X that was published by Kodansha and made by Capcom staff, it's a precursor to Complete Works.

Basically, Wily's shit got bad enough the government decided to ban robots with a programmed personality and Dr. Light's research altogether and go back to "robot as a tool", the Mechaniloids. All Master-grade robots (for the sake of giving them a name, since Robot Master isn't a term known in Japan until recently) were dismantled.

This includes Roll and Rock. Hence Dr. Light "having no one else to look after X".

On the other hand, Dr. Wily died before he even finished building Zero, hence him missing the shoulderpads and stuff.

I wish Chou Hyakka had an international release, it's full of good shit.

>>8091989
He meant the opposite, Arin Hanson is a known Sonic hater as far back as his days on Newgrounds.

>>8093939
I fucking hate this review, it was fucking unfair. Critics always shat on BN because it wasn't the usual jump and shoot, but this is flat out unfair because 6 was the best entry in the BN series.

>>8094614
>Critics always shat on BN
good. I want gameplay from my video games.

>>8094690
BN isn't a turn-based RPG though, it's a real time action combat game, you don't even level up or grind, you just customize MegaMan.EXE as you see fit.

I love both BN and Zero, I don't think tribalism within the same series is a good idea. Look at Metroidfags cannibalizing each other.

>>8094690
You should give Network Transmission a shot. It's BN's characters and concepts (collecting battle chips off enemies to serve as your special weapons, for example) with some solid fucking platforming.
The graphics and controls take a little getting used to, but it's pretty kickass otherwise.

>>8094801
Don't bother responding to him in good faith, many people have tried to explain BN to him and he just doesn't get it.

>>8094690
>you can compete in BN
>you can't compete in other /vr/ related Megaman series (except for irrelevant classic spin-offs)
Seems to me that BN got the most gameplay out of all Megaman, buddy.

Because Sonic as a concept is way fucking goofier than Mega Man. And that's not factoring in the fact that using furries in any kind of serious story will instantly take most people out of it.

>>8080840
adventure 2 is the best 3d sonic game. The chao garden was legitimately addicting and had serious depth in terms of raising and breeding chao, creating a God chao or finding out about chao such as the tails chao was mindblowing. The gameplay is fun, and the story culminates in a satisfying and epic third act.

>>8080840
He had a mysterious past, bunch of friends and few big bad foes. Sonic was your typical late 90s/early 2000s American skater boy archetype hidden in plain sight which made people feel connected to him. Introducing a school shooter wasn't a good idea. And I'm not even talking about 06 because devs definitely fucked something up there (at least by NPCs standards).

Best thread on /vr/

Megaman is like Astro Boy, while he may be cartoony, he does lend himself well to darker stories.

>>8095553
>Sonic was your typical late 90s/early 2000s American skater boy archetype
Sonic Hawk Pro Skater when?

>>8095656
Mega Man was supposed to be Astro Boy game. Capcom lost the license and just made their own version.
Konami made real Astro Boy game for Famicom instead and it was shit

>>8080992
honestly, I hate dead serious chuuni bullshit. The Fate series being one of them

>"N-OOOO YOU CANT HAVE SERIOUS STORIES WITH A CARTOON HEDGEHOG! NOOOOO!"
Anyone who says this demonstrates a serious lack of awareness of children's literature and storytelling throughout history. Asserting that putting mature themes in a children's story is wrong or misguided is basically at odds with most storytelling throughout human culture in almost any other time period and is probably the perspective of a sanitized person brought up on junk television and media, or whatever their excuse might be, ignorant of culture.
>"B-but Maria dies, that's so edgy!!"
Uh-huh. And? That’s bad because….cartoon game characters are escapist fantasy stories that shouldn’t deal with anything beyond the most basic power struggles? Again, totally unlike fairy tales throughout history over thousands of years where animals and children were killed or murdered or eaten etc etc, right? But video game characters must be pure because, why, exactly?
Sonic Adventure 2 is far more thematically and tonally similar to a traditional children's story than what passes for kids entertainment in mass media today.
Essentially there's no fucking way that these people would ever appreciate or recommend to a child Hans Christian Andersen, Liaozhai zhiyi, Brothers Grimm, Ozaki's "Japanese Fairy Tales", and so on. They admire a sanitized, simplistic world and consider the introduction of any supposedly "mature" themes a tonal intrusion. What they don't recognize is that this position is genuinely a 20th/21st-century sheltered-kid puritanical position that goes against the entire history of children's storytelling. Their criticism of Sonic Adventure 2 is focused solely on the fact that depression and grief has no place in a cartoonish world, but when cute animals dealt with these things in stories all over the world for centuries, I have to wonder how many other works in how many other cultures would be considered to be shit by their standards.

>>8095854
It's just a facet of life worth dealing with in art like anything else. Kids are human beings not some other creature, they've been able to experience and appreciate fairy tales with so-called "mature" themes for centuries in cultures all over the world. Coddled westerners raised on corporation-created dopamine-delivery-vehicles are the anomaly here. You ask them why these things can't happen? The answer is of course: none, because these people are almost certainly culturally illiterate and their only other point of comparison for children's stories is other children's video games like Super Mario.

>>8095790
This story has been debunked many times. Mega Man wasn't a cancelled Astro Boy game, however, Astro Boy was an inspiration source alongside Casshern and other old children's media.

>>8090208
It wasn't lighthearted since inception. You're a flat out fucking liar. Look at the Japanese game manuals for Sonic 3 and Sonic CD if you want more proof of that.

>>8095854
>>8095862
I overall agree, but it fails to address the point of how it tried to appear more cool and modern with introducing a rival like Shadow, which apparently irked a lot of people including ones itt.
Majority of people also started to feel that it goes the wrong way with Shadow and 06 specifically and SA2 is being blamed for starting all of this. And for going a more realistic route than every Sonic game before.

>>8095897
>An edgy shounen rival in a series that consistently takes from 90s action tropes.
Sounds perfect for Sonic.

>>8095854
i agree
the point of children's storytelling is to make a theme or themes digestible to children

>>8095901
Yes, to which the common counter itt was that going by classic design Sonic is inspired by western cartoons, such as Mickey Mouse, which isn't incorrect. Thus the audience felt that it strayed too far from its roots (though things like Sonic going Super Saiyan and Knuckles already being a jackass shounen rival are fine with them).

>>8080840
Robots aren't inherently silly and kiddish and have long been used to explore all kinds of darker / more serious themes. Meanwhile Sonic is a cartoon hedgehog whose main character trait is that he's sassy and can run fast.
IF you can't see the difference between the two then idk what there is to say really. It's a (you) issue at that point.

>>8095965
See
>>8095854

>>8095965
>And have long been used to explore mature and dark themes
And so have cartoon animals like Sonic.

>>8095854
Look man, there has to be some balance. People around here love pushing this false dichotomy of "Sonic MUST be either Looney Tunes or Evangelion." It's not a matter of having story vs. not having story, it's a matter of having a story that fits Sonic. They can make a game that takes itself seriously, that's okay. The first Adventure game was a fine example, I entirely bought into the whole backstory with Chaos and the echidna tribe, which was just expanding off of what was already hinted at in 3&K, as well as Gamma and such. Sonic CD also was much grimmer than usual, showing you firsthand the dire consequences should Sonic fail to stop Eggman, no matter how silly he acts sometimes. But there's a line that was clearly crossed with SA2 to the point where it was just fucking retarded. Just saying the premise out loud sounds like some sort of horrific fanfiction.
>United Nations covers up their attempts to achieve immortality through biological experimentation, as well as their raid on the space colony where the experiments occurred, which resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians (including a child) and the unjust arrest and execution of Eggman's grandpa, who went insane after the murder of his granddaughter and vowed genocide against humanity in retaliation
What about that sounds like it has anything at all to do with anything that came before it? It wouldn't have been in the games, it wouldn't have been in the DIC cartoons, it wouldn't have been in any of the Jap mangas. If anything it sounds like it came directly out of the fucking Archie comic, especially Penders and his attempts at "political intrigue," and is that really the kind of storytelling you think belongs in the games?

>>8095982
>All that text just to say it looks dumb
Not an argument

>>8095982
>"It just looks and sounds dumb bro. That's it."
Seriously?

>>8095987
>It just looks and sounds like it has literally nothing at all to do with Sonic the Hedgehog.

>>8095998
You could literally read out the plot for any game and decide that it has nothing to do with the previous games in the series. Your point being?

>>8095979
The problem is that Sonic is inherently a silly character like that's part of his design from the get go. He's not on the same tier as something like that nazi mice book or whatever or animal farm.
Megaman on the other hand isn't inherently silly. He's just a robot.

>>8096017
>T. Never played Sonic 3, CD, watched Satam or read the archie comics, or the Japanese game manuals of Sonic 2, 3, and CD.

>>8096024
The archie comics are stupid and CD and Sonic 3 are still very silly.
Also no one cares about manuals, anon. Sonic is a sassy hedgehog with attitude and that's what he's always been billed as and it's what people think and frankly want from him. Not a dark exploration about the themes of humanity like Megamaon X and Zero dabble in from time to time.

>>8096026
You being retarded, ignorant and blind doesn't make me wrong in any way. Sonic always dealt with serious themes, 3 is literally about the genocide of an entire group of Echidna

>>8096026
https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_3/Manuals

https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_CD/Manuals

Looks like you've got some reading to do my friend.

>>8096030
No it literally isn't, it literally is about Eggman capturing animals and launching a Death Star with a mustache on it.

>>8096030
>3 is literally about the genocide of an entire group of Echidna
Have you fucking played 3? What the shit.
>>8096035
I already addressed the manuals. I'm sorry you got invested in some fake 'Sonic is deep and dark' thing but you're wrong. Grow up enough to accept it.

>>8095982
>their attempts to achieve immortality through biological experimentation
It was getting cure for diseases.
>is that really the kind of storytelling you think belongs in the games?
Why not? Expanding isn't always bad. And despite some of this stuff, it mostly comes up just a few times, while the game itself is playful in tone.
Also, to both you and >>8095854 , what did you think about storybook games: Secret Rings and Black Knight, if you ever saw or tried them? And I'm not asking about the gameplay.

>>8096035
it doesn't come across in the game. how many people do you think played Sonic 3 and thought it was about genocide?

>>8096036
>>8096047
>>8096062
>"I never saw it or learned the context of it playing it as a coddled 90s kid in America, therefore it doesn't exist."
Seriously? When you have to reach this hard and flat out disregard evidence because it doesn't fit your ultra reductionist world view, you've already lost the argument. Sonic is far more similar to a Tezuka style anime than Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse.

>>8096086
Look retard, if something is only address in bonus material and not the product itself then it doesn't count for it. By your logic you can have a game about a cartoon pony shooting rainbows and as long as the manual comes up with some dark and deep asspull then the game is now dark and deep.
You're an idiot.

>>8088378

>>8096090
>Not the product itself
It's literally addressed in SA1 retard. The product itself acknowledges that it happened.

>>8096094
You mean the start of when people started bitching about the games being stupid and overly dark? Wow anon...

>>8096086
Mickey Mouse is far closer to Tezuka than to Bugs Bunny. >>8088447 >>8080993

>>8096096
>"T-that doesn't count!"
Cope. Your view on Sonic is wrong.

>>8096101
You're an idiot. You can't use the game where people started bitching about the tone compared to past games to claim the tone was always there. That's not how this works.

>>8096107
How doesn't it work? The tone was always there. Just because you don't want to see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. All of this just sounds like some stupid nostalgia driven post hoc rationalization.

>>8096096
No, that happened farther down the line.
>>8096098
And Sonic is further away from Bugs than from Mickey.

>>8096090
>>8096096
You're starting to remind me of the juxtafag shitting up Mother 3 threads.

>>8095895
>Save the poor little animals from Robotnik before he gets all the shiny emeralds
Kiddie shit. Rayman 2 does this so much better, too.

>>8096170
>The fireball that was the Death Egg crashed into the "floating island." The mountains crumbled, the woods torn down. The tremendous impact caused the "floating island" to tilt and its altitude to decrease.
Yeah, I'm thinking that some of them are past saving.

>>8094602
All the edge and depressed

>>8096107
When did people complain about the tone of SA1

>>8096047
>I already addressed the manuals
Lmao, nigga what? All you said was "No one cares durrr!!"

>>8080840
it was only so retroactively, when they were released people found it so fucking bizarre and out of place it circled back around and made it weirdly endearing. I'm fully convinced the impact of Sonic Adventure's intro cutscene is the only reason Sonic is still around today

>>8080957
even Nomura himself shits on KH's ridiculously obtuse overarching story

>>8080840
Sonic being such a hilariously fucking callous prick in the ending for that shitty Wii game that the whole series is forever based in my eyes

>>8097198
Which one?

>>8097201
the one with the genie girl who loses her lover, and he wishes for a lifetime supply of tissues. for her to cry into.

>>8080840
megaman is a bit more niche than sonic, at least as far as 2D Japanese platformers go

SMBZ is how you tell a dark Sonic story

>>8080840
It couldn't, Zero set off the slow, agonizing death of the entire franchise by coddling existing spastics and bringing new ones in.

>>8080840
Because Mega Man is about robots that look like people, and Sonic is about large-headed furries.

>>8097769
>existing spastics
filtered because no X
> new ones in.
filtered by the difficulty

you need minimum 150 iq to appreciate mm zero

>>8095527
Based SA2 enjoyer. I love all playstyles as well (Tails' stages suck but Eggman's more than make up for it) and will always see its story as genuinely amazing and the best plot the franchise ever saw.

>>8097821
>Megaman with no megaman in it
Gay. No wonder the character design is so homoerotic.

>>8097836
the title tells you how many Mega Man are in it

>>8097836
>>8097847
Mega Man X, Copy-X, the Four Guardians, Omega, and Dr. Weil are all known as "Mega Man" or become a "Mega Man" in the future. There's actually more Mega Men here than in Classic or X.

>>8080840
It did? Mega Man literally died by the fanbase by the Zero arc, so you're full of fucking shit
Also cartoons cannot be taken serious. Noticed the character on the left is a human. Humans are taken seriously.

>>8080942
>Seems a lot of people don't have a problem taking Kingdom Hearts seriously as well

>>8080957
>and it's hard to explain why it does.
Why do you think Modern Sonic even exist with fans?

>>8097858
>Mega Man literally died by the fanbase by the Zero arc, so you're full of fucking shit
OP's not saying MMZ outsold the Adventure games. I think he's saying that Mega Man's use of edge was more accepted than when Sonic used it.

>>8081834
>Eh, Tails died in Sonic 2 8-bit if you don't get all the Emeralds
Who the fuck played that game? No one knew about this shit until Youtube era faggot.

And it's not graphically explicitly stated he died. It was "implied" but never show. Maria got shot in every depiction they shown her death, in SA2, stated, in Sonic X, stated and somewhat shown in dub and likely more in the Jap version (I recall actual gunshots from automatic rifies when Gerald ended his death wish recording), and shown in Shadow, even more blenent in the beta version before it got censored for the final release

Sonic Team tried to make fucking Resident Evil with cartoon characters. DMC with animals. CoD with kids media. Even GoW, literally, but with furries. Look, the problem isn't really that people don't like non humans being taken seriously, but Sonic did NOT start like this. It's making a brand then sabotaging the expectation. Literally every single person that said " I like dark Sonic" are not original fans from 91. They are zoomers from 2000s onward. Even late 90s you either started with the 2D games, palyed SA1, and stopped there like most people claim to for those that still prefer SA1, or never played the 3D games and just the classic ones, or never played the 2D games and just the 3D ones, never a point do these cross.

And don't go "muh Mega Collection" because that did jack shit towards making people take the redpill and realize quality when they see it because zoomers are zoomers for a reason, they GREW UP with 3D. There life was "3D was real gaming" because it was forced during their time that 3D was the FUTURE and 2D was just handheld baby Nintendo shit. Which is sad, but true. But the point is, the tone of Sonic just "split" with SA1/2. You were either 10 years into classic's tone, or just got into Sonic with SA1/2. It's like saying people will like the classics/adventure era of Sonic if the started with Colors. Or even the Sonic movie. They are just too different.

>>8082060
>It's also engaging for adults who see it for what it is.
Actually prove this without "nostalgia" being part of it. Because no 30+ year old adult, aka boomer+, thinks SA2 is good.

>>8084490
>Pretty much all older Sonic fans during Sonic's shott period were autistic deviantart tards.
Pretty much you're full of shit, the other fans were Sonic Retrofags making millions of Sonic 1 romhacks.

>>8097937
Zoomers grew up with classic and 3D, your mega collection thing doesn't debunk shit. Not to mention we had sonic advance, emulators, all the sprite animations and comics online showing us the old school side of sonic. We saw both and said dark sonic was badarse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-279WY54YnI

>>8097951
>Because no 30+ year old adult, aka boomer+, thinks SA2 is good.
I am a 33 years old who really thinks Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog (05) are enjoyable train wrecks.

>>8084804
>And like, what do you think Eggman built the Death Egg for in S2/3/K?
Just like Super Saiyan Sonic, just another example of Naka's autism. Like, even if it was SoA that just wanted a popular US reference in Sonic, everything "serious" is all Naka's doing reference wise. Even when you say "muh CD", the bad future isn't the POINT of Sonic, it's the "DON'T" in Sonic. You're suppose to STOP this from happening, you stupid fuckwad. Meanwhile the Echinda massacre in SA1 is unavoidable, Maria and the rest of Ark's death is UNavoidable, and the events and damage done in Shadow/06 is UNAVOIDABLE

Want to know why Unleashed, fanbase wise and non fanbase wise, was the game at the time the most "middle ground" to people? Because the story had the right mixture for a Sonic tone. Nothing's too graphic, Sonic has the power to stop the problem, even if he struggles he had a god friend to help, and all the damage was FIXED by the end of the game, and nothing was "2deep4u" with lore drama like with Shadow. The entire game was a direction Sonic should have took, had they not fucked up the most obvious correctly Sonic needed at the time
>Pic related
Why the fuck would you try to unedge Sonic by making him a WEREWOLF. WHY? Who the fuck asked for this?

>>8098019
>Inb4 Muh TP
A lot of people thought that was dumb too but it also wasn't that big of a deal and not advertise on the box like it's the best idea ever, it just exists and you moved on. The stark difference being the gameplay people wanted and GoW was just retarded on a fundimental level and just sabotaged the game. It's the only raeson Colors was praised overly so because it just didn't have the retarded Sonic on the box art. Just Sonic. That's what boomers casual audiences wanted. Sonic. Nothing else.

And of cours SEGA ran that concept into the ground by this point but the point is, Sonic just goes too far, too much, for no fucking reason. One minute Eggman bombs a forest in S3K, then it's fixed by the end of the game. But by SA1, you can't save Knuckle's race from being GENOCIDED or some 12 year old girl from being shot cold in a kids game. And of course the US goverment just HAS to be the bad guys here. It's fucking FICTION, you're suppose to make IRL polotics NOT be a thing and make a better world for people to project in, I don't want kids dying in a Sonic game? Why the fuck would SEGA think people wanted this? Do people want this in Mickey fucking Mouse?
>Kingdom Hearts
I stand corrected, I should have said non ZOOMER people don't want this shit. Basically, they tried to expand their audiene by killing off their original one. And it's fucking clear that audience was to pander to the Japanese because before SA2, no one cared about Sonic over there. And the funny part is, they STILL fucking don't, and now you pissed off the west for no reason and split the fanbase thanks to Gamecubetendies playing Sonic for the first time and thinking he was something entirely different.

>>8098019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4Z9IVU0qRI

>>8098032
>SA1 and 2 come out
>Sonic gameplay fun, everything else less fun
>the meme that playing as Sonic's friends is shit starts, which was never really true of course, everyone liked Knuckles in the original games, but Knuckles' gameplay in Adventure was shit, and that's what stuck in people's minds in the 00's
>after the disasters of Shadow the Hedgehog and 06, Sega finally "listens to the fans" and makes a game where you don't play as Sonic's dumb friends
>but of course they completely miss the point of what the problem is and just invent a new character who is technically Sonic, but who also sucks to play as
And that's why Unleashed happened the way it did.
They're weirdly married to this idea that you need at least two core gameplay styles in a Sonic game. I don't know why. They're still doing it in the newer games. They just use concepts like Wisps to get around it now,

>>8085127
Lion King isn't cartoon lions, it's stylized real life animals just given context of human language to understand. They acted like lions, they lived and died like lions, they had prides and factions like lions, those WERE real life lions. The only reason the "live action" version sucked was because the charm of the original is gone with the lack of colorful, fluid animations. If anything, nothing in lion king was "cartoonish", it's what could happen in real life with real animals, just more "cinematic". The stuff Sonic can do naturally in the classic games just reachs the type of logic you see in any other platformer at the time, non-logical. Floating landmasses/platformers, floating rings, power ups in CRT monitors, speedy gonzales/road runner physics (look at his feet when he runs ffs), animals in animal styled robots?. I mean, why would you take this stuff seriously in the same way you look at a capeshit film? Sure you have "batman" or "spiderman" but they are just humans in cringy costumes. Sonic is a cartoon like Felix. We expect that logic with Sonic, and before SA1, that was what WAS jus there. No genocides, no realistic death (Sonic literally goes O.O when he dies as he flies off-screen instead of getting impaled Mortal Kombat styled on spikes), no drama, everything bad that could happen (bombed forest in S3K, Death Egg in Sonic 2, Bad Future in CD, all fixed by the end of the game. Sonic stoped the edginess, that was the theme. in 3D, Sonic WAS the edginess, it just happens, it can't be stopped and you're supposed to LOVE this?

Like it was said before, Sonic just wasn't like SA1/2 in the 8 years before it. Call it "growing up" but in 8 years of being something else to the west for so long you might as well just call Ben 10 and Omniverse the same exact show when the stakes and direction got far more serious over time compared to the more action fun time show the original was like. The change is just notable. It's like TT 03 to TTGo, inversed

>>8085341
Yes, that's called "cherry picking". You can't put GHZ in Forces in a game where a DA OC kills half the furry population with green screen illusions or a sun that's "real enough" to kill everyone including Eggman himself with his retarded ass.

Just having the first level bait faggots like you into thinking it's a properly toned game does not make it a properly toned game. You also got arrested by the government before that point, faggot.

>>8085380
>Because it’s a mix of upbeat rock like that and sonic being still happ
Remember when SA1/2faggots seethed over Sonic not getting depressed/mopey in Forces for being "tortured" for 6 months because he still made dad jokes to keep his mood up? Yet this is completely fine in SA2 because rock music = nostalgia.
Hypocrites.

>>8098158
Getting tortured for 6 months and telling lame jokes is different from being escorted via helicopter and saying fuck this shit is boring and doing something about it

>>8080840
Well its easy, all main megaman classic, megaman x and megaman zero games are amazing
Sonic only has like five great main games (1, 2, 3, &K, and CD, the rest is hideous shit

>>8098205
Hey now, let's not give X that much credit. X5 and X7 are hot garbage. Not as bad as 06 or Boom, but still bad.

>>8087428
Sonic should just have a more movie Sonic design if they want darker stories. Most of the accepted dark furry content has them more furry than anything.

>>8088409
>Ratchet and Clank is kind of like Sonic with a gun.
He actively was Crash with attitude then they Mariofied him since the second game faggot
Even his devs hated Ratchet 1.

>>8088447
And yet Disney don't even remember this. Not an argument
It's like saying slavery is still good just because "they used to do it". And boy did Disney use to do that a lot.

>>8089975
>"Robotnik found a water monster who was only mad because we hurt its babies"
See just saying this right here is why Sonic can never be serious. This is literally what happened, and this is somehow "mature".

>>8098221
The point is that an animal with a gun isn't an inherently unworkable concept. There's also Jazz Jackrabbit.

>>8080840
the mega man games were seperated into different series, each with their own level of darkness. sure, they might be in the same timeline, but they're meant for increasingly older audiences as the stories continue, so that the games can grow along with the children who play them. i don't really know what sonic is doing, he's kinda all over the place

>>8095854
Maybe because in "human culture" the plague and living pass 20 was not possible. So why paint the story that we could live happily ever after if just tripping on a puddle could end you just like that? You faggots literally always do this, NEVER UNDERSTAND CONTEXT. You NEVER understand WHY shit was different back then and just think: IT USE TO BE, THEREFORE IT ALWAYS SHOULD BE!

I was raised in a world that wanted to have happy endings and positivity. Note how the 2010s introduced the most anti 2000s era of entertainment we've seen in over 50 years? Because my era enjoyed the 70s/80s content of "WOAH FUN IS AWESOME DUDE" while the 2000s kids just got a wift of anime for the first time, and the 60s fags grew up from fucking WW2 and stock market crashing. Of course kids stories back then were mentally ill, they had NO HOPE back then. So they painted shit as realistic as possible. The kids didn't LIKE that and grow up not doing what their parents did and made the RADICAL era Sonic STARTED with. The dark era was just a reflex from the boomers using what THEY grew up with, which was dark stories, hence why shit like SatAM happened. But then anime became popular, so combine that with boomers of the mid 1900s and viola, SA2 was born.

That does NOT mean this is what Sonic "always was". Sonic 1 was NEVER like this. Sonic 2 was NEVER like this. CD made it clear NOT to let that shit happen for a GOOD future. S3K had stakes, you FIXED them and got a GOOD ending. SA2 to Black Knight was just boomers lamenting shittier times and zoomers like yourself growing up thinking that was life. Despite life in the 1990s-2000s was the best it's been for humanity in all of humanity at that point. Now your kind and the boomers in their 80s have shat it all up again with your edge culture by bringing so much political shit into EVERYTHING no one can have fun anymore. Why do you think evenyone memes now? Because we are tired of things being shitty for no reason. Just liven up ffs.

>>8098258
Are you having a stroke?

>>8096005
>Sonic 2
>Eggman from Sonic 1 is continuing to cause shit, stop him

>Sonic CD
>Eggman from Sonic 1 is continuing to cause shit, stop him. If you don't you will see the end of your world with his reign

>Sonic 3K
>Eggman from Sonic 2, CD and 1 is continuing to cause shit, stop him. He tricks this red rat into thinking your evil, knock some sense out of him. Oh and there's this shine thing and mural that "might" matter in the future, more on that later. (Literally has nothing to do with S3K itself, just forshadowing for the sake of a sequel)

>SA1
>Eggman from Sonic 2, CD and 1 is continuing to cause shit, stop him. He tricks this red rat into thinking your evil, knock some sense out of him... Again. But before that he summoned a mook to stop you, stop him too. Oh wait he's actually a... god??? That did WHAT to Knuckle's relatives eons ago? And he's also that creature from the mural of S3K? All because he was enraged by tribal feuds and corruption? Well that's a lot to take i-
>Oh wait, there's also 3 other characters with random plot points that barely matter. Except it does just because a Chaos Emerald is involved...Ok then.

>SA2
>>8095982
>... What the fuck does any of this have t odo with a platforming series again?

Again, you can clearly see where the series split focus, like this anon goes into like the rest of the thread went into. They should have just made Heroes by SA1's time, and made SA1 into Sonic Chronicles. But the problem is, they had no budget or time to do this since SEGA was dying as a console company. Had they just "played it safe" like Mario unti they got their shit back in order Sonic wouldn't be cancer to this day.

>>8098264
This whole thread's subject is giving me a stoke.

>>8096052
>It was getting cure for diseases.
Is this not immortality to you retard?

>>8098229
Yes, but Sonic didn't start like this. Global expectation overrides.

>>8098264
Zoomer culture always make me want to die.

I don't have a problem with Sonic being "dark" as much as I have a problem with it being aggressively stupid.
As corny as it often was in execution, I'm fine with the basic premise of the Archie universe, where Robotnik is a Darth Vader tier villain who's scary and treated with dead seriousness, and Sonic and his friends fighting for the liberation of their planet.
I'm not really okay with Mephiles the Dark, or Sonic interacting with the US government.

>>8098275
>Oh and there's this shine thing and mural that "might" matter in the future, more on that later.
I thought the mural was that Hyper Sonic fighting Eggman in Doomsday Zone was something propheticed by the Echidnas.

>>8098228
I doubt Sonic Team ever meant Sonic to be "mature," I think it's just how filtered burgers interpreted typical increased stakes shonenshit plots, which is probably even more stupid depending on how you look at it..

Shadow the Hedgehog(game) is a good game

>>8098224
>And yet Disney don't even remember this.
That panel is from a collection Dissney released in 2011 you turbo retard.

>>8081854
There are megaman medarots now

>>8083119
>Its such a dark direction to take on such a comical character design


I recently watched the 2001 adaptation of Cyborg 009 (from the 60s originally) and Japan is just fucking like that. It can be cartoony but serious at the same time in a way that's hard to explain. Here's the main scientist who helped the Cyborgs escape in the first episode and becomes like their dad and he has the goofiest fucking design ever. But its about people being kidnapped and operated on to become cyborg weapons of war against their will. Later on there's a story about another goofy ass scientist who made his infant son a cyborg because he was dying of a disease. Tragedy played straight but with cartoons. Its weies but Sonic Adventure 2's gerald maria thing wasnt that different.

Even classicegaman too, cause its based on Astroboy which has goofy as shit characters but its about a man who lost his child basically. Tezuka ended up soing stuff like Phoenix which had cartoony characters but also a man and woman who got trapped in a cave for years and had to feed their newborns to wolves and eat the wolves newborns to live...

>>8098679
Fuck posted the wrong picture

>>8080942
I constantly see people joke about Kingdom Hearts, even people who like it for it's gameplay will sometimes make fun of it's tone.

>>8090034
>I think it would be a bit easier to swallow if there were a couple of random animal people NPCs roaming around Station Square to establish that animal people are a normal thing.


I remember the Sonic X anime was going to be like this at first before they made everyone else a human and it's such a shame they didn't stick with it.

>>8094731
>love both BN and Zero, I don't think tribalism within the same series is a good idea. Look at Metroidfags cannibalizing each other.


When I was a kid I connected a Battle Network and Zero game together and unlocked cyberspace in Zero with BN enemies and Zero's sword in BN and I thought it was the coolest shit ever.

>>8097876
I've always thought that Kingdom Hearts' appeal was like Smash's, the humorous contrast between the character designs was the appeal.

>>8095982
>What about that sounds like it has anything at all to do with anything that came before it?

So my memory is a bit hazy but the last boss of Sonic Adventure 2 was the bioweapon. A biomechanical perversion of nature created from humans fusing nature and technology into an abomination that is going to crash into earth due to the governments greed that resulted in the loss of innocent life and started a personal vendetta for Eggman's blood line.

The space station itself is inspired by the Death Egg from older games. The bioweapon and circumstances continues the themes of environmentalism and greed ruining the earth. But with another kaiju like chaos. (Incidentally, GUN actually copied Chaos and made Chaos robots too.)

Sonic's rebellion against the govenrment makes sense since he was always anti authoritarian. Its just he's been falsely accused and killing military shit not just mad scientist.

Also Pumpkin Hill was fucking great.

>>8098280
Same but I cant stop reading it

>>8098275
>Oh wait he's actually a... god??? That did WHAT to Knuckle's relatives eons ago? And he's also that creature from the mural of S3K?


Wait what was Chaos really in Sonic 3 and Knuckles?

>>8098686
The tone of Kingdom Hearts is actually amazing to me but I have a hard time explaining why. It starts a surreal opening and dream sequence that's ao atmospheric. Then you're with regular kids playing on the beach yearning for a world beyond their own. Then everything is destroyed, monsters you saw in your own dreams appear, and you end up in the coziest town in the world and meet donald and goody. Im just going to stop myself. If you play it and get it you just get it. Dreamy, atmospheric, light hearted and fun in the Disney worlds but ethereal near the last few levels. A lot of mystery. I loved it.

>>8098771
>>8098686

Yeah I think it's this but it's extremely sincere. A lot of people who joke about its even fans, seem to just be those ironic people who cant actually enjoy things on a sincere level people were complaining about at the start of this thread, which is sad.

It was always a post war post apocalyptic story where the light of the children brought back Disney worlds. So in that context the tone should make a little more sense. A lot of it is meant to be funny, like Donald and Goofy' comedy relief. But I think its supposed to evoke a sense of childhood wonder. Or feelings of hope. It might sound weird to non fans though. Its definitively cheesey.

I also love this movie so contrasting shit with cartoons is always fun for me

>>8098796
No, he confused the mural from SA1 with mural from S&K.
On S&K mural there was Super Sonic battling Eggman in Space, like in the final boss fight.
That said, pretty much all that Echidna lore was in S3&K manuals already.

>>8098258
You can make a work be both fun and serious.
Why is it always either one or the other with you faggots?

>>8097937
>>8098275
>>8097937
Holy fucking kek, the amount of seething and coping. Sonic was always dark and anime esque and there's nothing you can do about it.

>>8098258
The 90s positivity bullshit is what has been killing genuine storytelling. It was always dumb and idealistic drivel. The 2000s edge brought it back down to reality. Life is always going to suck, but you do what you can and make the best of it.

>>8080840
Sonic 06 happened and gaming journalists decided to forever mock the series.
Throw in youtubers parroting said reviews for years and you're left with a franchise that's overly criticized.

For real people look for any excuse to shit on the Sonic series, I don't see this level of autistic hatred for other series.

>>8098950
90's media was famously edgy, and you probably weren't alive then.

>>8098950
90s was about extreme edge, the 2000s was about cynical edge that slowly transformed into "cooperate approved edge" which we have now.

>>8098275
>red rat
Echidnas are not rodents.

>>8098773
>Also Pumpkin Hill was fucking great.
Hunnid P had one day to do all his songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxL_r-0VC1k

>>8098950
>The 2000s edge brought it back down to reality.

90s was full of edge retard like everything on MTV, Doom, Mortak Kombat, other violent videogames, gross out toys, extreeeeme vomics, even Didney had gargoyles...

>>8080840
Nobody mocked the Sonic Adventure games when they came out

>>8098637
>ten years ago
How was this suppose to prove me wrong again bitch?

>>8098909
SEGA can't do that, retard. They are extremists.

>>8099362
Post I quoted mentioned 2 games, such as SA2 and Sonic and the Black Knight.
Both strike a good balance between fun and seriousness.

>>8099404
Sorry, but YOU aren't everyone. I literally hate those games the most next to Shitdow and 0Shit, and that's not JUST me either. Try again.

>>8099416
So, you gone through what you called SA2-Black Knight era while feeling actual hate about it instead of shrugging and thinking something like "Oh, I guess Sonic isn't for me anymore"?
Sounds like a case of autism.

>>8098127
The genocide was in Sonic 3's game manual, retard.

>>8099437
>Oh, I guess Sonic isn't for me anymore"?
I did, faggot, I having touched Sonic since 06. And if you haven't realize, this is /vR/, home of classic Sonic content. You're the outsider here that should go back to /vg/ or /v/.

Hypocritical faggots say shit like this yet you still bitch at SEGA for SA3 despite it's been near 15 years of Boost gameplay since.

>>8099572
>Not canon
Books aren't games bitch.

>>8099804
>Not Canon
Sa1 says it happened. So it happened and it's canon.

>>8099829
Nope, not in game not canon. Cope more whitie

>>8099850
It's acknowledged in the games, so it's canon. Cope.

>>8099853
Nope, not in game not canon. Cope more whitie

>>8099802
>I having touched Sonic since 06
Yet, you hate Black Knight that released after that? Based retard.
>And if you haven't realize, this is /vR/, home of classic Sonic content
And I'm primarily talking about /vR/ games like SA2 and ShTH. Mentioning some non-/vr/ ones only in context that is relevant for discussion.
Yes, I miss when /vr/ didn't include anything past Dreamcast too.
>Hypocritical faggots say shit like this yet you still bitch at SEGA for SA3 despite it's been near 15 years of Boost gameplay since.
Personally, I don't really want SA3 as they would just fuck it up. Also Boost games mostly suck and it was a shit mechanic ever since Sonic Advance 2, poisoning Dimps games first and main series soon after. Doing what they did with Lost World (which is copying Mario Galaxy) but with Odyssey (which would be much more fitting for Sonic) is pretty much the best Sonic Team can do for the franchise.
But NOW that is really getting off-topic.

>>8099337
They were getting mocked by 2002-2003 when they were getting ported. Everyone who says they weren't mocked was just too young back then.

I think that, observing how often people argue about what tone Sonic should have, that there WAS a departure in identity that stemmed from the Dreamcast titles.

No, the Genesis games were never “dark” or similar to the 2000s era games tonally. These people are conflating stakes with tone. Moments like Eggman bombing Angel Island or Sonic CD’s bad future levels aren’t indicitive of a dark game. That would be like saying Bowser’s castle in the Mario games is super dark because of the skeleton enemies or whatever. The Genesis games never dwelled on such implications.

Whether you like Adventure 2 or not, that game WAS a departure tonally. An increased focus on exposition and including themes of conspiracy, dementia, and human massacre was something Sonic had never dealt with.

Of course, that isn’t to say that this change was inherently bad. Rather, that there was a change in the first place.

Personally, I think that when discussing how and what kind of stories should be told with Sonic games, I think the series is more broad than something like Mario. Sonic can have a simple story and a more involved story. The problem is is that the execution has always been lacking. It’s clear that a more serious Sonic game like Forces will have less mass appeal than something like Mania. And you know what, that’s fine. If the story of a Sonic game is a dealbreaker for you then I don’t know what to tell you. They have failed so consistently at telling a story that part of me misses the Classic aesthetic. I don’t think the arrogant, comedic, Modern Sonic is nearly as appealing as the Classic one. Not to say the Modern Sonic direction can’t work, but that they have failed at it.

>>8099936
SADX was indeed mocked, as it's a glitched inconsistant mess of a port, but I don't think that anyone meant it and not original releases.

>>8100024
>He wants Sonic to be like Mario even though the whole point was to have more heart than Mario
Everytime

>>8098275
>literally has nothing to do with S3K itself
Are you fucking retarded? It's Robotnik in his Death Egg mech fighting Super Sonic.

>>8099884
>Yet, you hate Black Knight that released after that? Based retard.
Yes, it was more of the same shit, how is that an argument? I'm supposed to hate shit only if I play it? I'm not a cuck that buys bad games over and over.

>And I'm primarily talking about /vR/ games like SA2 and ShTH.
>ShTH
Shut the fuck up. SA2 barely counts and it doesn't because only zoomer generation likes defending those dogshit games
>Personally, blah blah blah still want SA3 if SEGA wasn't dogshit, also fuck boost because it's not like muh nostalgia

Same, fucking, shit. CLassicfags moved on, why haven't you? No one asked for Sonic 4, yet SEGA thought we did, then ruined it beyond repair, and now the fans make their own games. Why do you think you don't see fan games always called "Sonic 4"? Because the dream is dead. Meanwhile your kind keeps making "SA3"s in hopes it will impress SEGA to HIRE THIS MAN and "save Sonic".

>>8100046
>More on that until later
>Happens later only in a bonus level when you get the chaos emeralds.

>>8100024
>An increased focus on exposition and including themes of ... human massacre
That's something that started with SA1.
I mean, unless you're willing to say that Chaos fucking up the Station Square while you can still see humans on the streets something else, like a natural disaster.
I'd say that SA2 was just another step forward. At least partially it was building on what was there before, just like SA1 did.
>arrogant, comedic, Modern Sonic is nearly as appealing as the Classic one
By which you mean what Sonic?
He was to a point arrogant and to a point comedic even in classic era, like in Sonic OVA for example.
Writing team since Unleashed cerainly made him worse though.

>>8100075
Sa2 and Shth are both engaging platformers that otherwise aren't held back by anything storyline related. Parroting /v/'s opinions isn't reading reviews or playing the games.

>>8100094
>Sa2 and Shth are both engaging platformers
>Engaging
If you have shit standards. Turning your brain off isn't "engaging". Now fuck off back to /v/

>>8100106
>No actual counter argument
Kek. I'll just keep enjoying those games while you seethe and cry about it.

>>8100075
>it was more of the same shit
How so?
>I'm supposed to hate shit only if I play it?
Yes, hating things you know nothing about is unhealthy.
>Shut the fuck up.
Read the sticky.
>CLassicfags moved on
I fucking wish.
>still want SA3 if SEGA wasn't dogshit
Why yes, I do want good ideas being expanded upon, if it can be done.
>also fuck boost because it's not like muh nostalgia
No, fuck boost because it's a shit gameplay formula and every game with it plays super boring. Unleashed was the only 3D game when they tried to mitigate that with level design, but everything after was shit. It didn't do any good to 2D games either.
Also, I can count a lot of fan games being hyped as the "real Sonic 4", as well as SEGA eventually releasing Sonic Mania. I never seen any big Adventure-based fan projects (except maybe for 06 fan remake, if you count that).
>>8100094
ShTH is held back by controls and physics, just like Heroes.

>>8080840
Could you please not cast renewed scrutiny on our edgy excursions? Thanks.

t. megabro

>>8100141
>ShTH is held back by controls and physics, just like Heroes.
both are held back by dogshit level design more than anything else
westopolis is decent but you still see the sections where they expect you to stand still mashing shoot to switch paths. and that the neutral path is almost zero effort because there's so many boosters/ springs/ shadow going super saiyan and skipping half the level
after that it slowly falls apart as the developers realized they have no idea how to gel SA2 sonic levels with gun combat.

>>8100168
Don't tell me what to do.

>>8100135
>while you seethe and cry about it.
I don't care that you play shit retard, Pokemontards do the same thing and I just ignore them.

>>8100213
And what makes you engage here?

>>8100213
Sounds like you should have had more mature themes in storytelling told to you as a kid. Now you've grown up to be a horribly maladjusted manbaby.

>>8100230
Playing old games and shitposting on 4chan. Not caring what SEGA has done since DC because it doesn't matter.

>>8100247
>Sounds like you should have had more mature themes in storytelling told to you as a kid.
No, I'd just play Metal Gear Solid or GoW instead of cartoons with tone deaf edge in them.

>>8100271
Fairytales since the beginning of human history have had cutesy cartoon characters and animals go through "edgy" situations. Sounds to me like you weren't exposed to a lot of good media growing up.

>>8100279
>Cope Cope Cope
Yes, we know. I'm not underaged like you are, kid.

>>8100301
>Cope cope cope
Projection much? You're not giving any actual counter arguments. Just hopelessly seething. Try learning a bit more about art in general instead of corporately created schlock. And it's laughable you'd call me underage since it's clear how little media you've actually seen.

>>8100271
>instead of cartoons
Why are you treating not being able to feel empathy for anthropomorphic animals as something good?

>>8100301
Ever seen Watership Down?

>>8100320
Because I don't with humans either. Animals are for eating.

I think it's because MegaMan doesn't have butt rock for it's soundtrack.

You can have a death star falling on a floating talking animal island in one game or whatever, but it's quickly forgotten by the time the next game rolls around and the cast is back to their shenanigans. Where's the sequel where level 1-1 is the ruins of the island after the Death Egg crash, where the volcano is active after the impact, everything is crumbling and everyone is panicking?
Meanwhile in Megaman X and Megaman Zero, each subsequent game starts you off where the previous one left off, in worse and worse situations, playing out the consequences of the previous game's ending.
That's why no one takes Sonic seriously as something "dark and gritty". It literally does not matter.

>>8100593
>doesn't have butt rock for it's soundtrack.
The BGM in Mega Man X4-X8 are very buttrock influenced, just listen to the OP for X6 or X8.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cAHX6fxmjM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTIkZ2UPGxo

>>8100670
These are just typical anime OP songs. The actual soundtracks of the games are different (electronic + rock n roll)

>>8100043
>the whole point was "marketing buzzwords"
No one cares. The games just have to be good.

>>8100593
>literally called rockman in japan

>>8100657
Let me get things straight. You want Sonic games to get darker with each title, with deaths and tragic events being permanent until everybody die and we would be left in apocalyptic setting where protag (descendant of a long gone Sonic the Hedgehog) questions their own existence?

>>8080936
I don't.

>>8081834
I remember most of the comics seemed rather edgy

>>8091881
no, it is feminist, it's just feminist means 'sex offender' in japan

>>8101921
Which makes it a mistranslation.

You don't translate マンション as mansion, now do you?

>>8081514
>sonic was like a bugs bunny cartoon for years then suddenly CHILD MURDER
This is only true if you only played Sonic 2 and then SA2 in which case you've already skipped through 9 years worth of games.
Sonic was also never "like bugs bunny". That's a misconception made by people who grew up watching AoStH

>>8095824
Fate is an endearing type of chuuni. At least if we’re talking about Stay Night

>>8097951
>Because no 30+ year old adult, aka boomer+, thinks SA2 is good.
Because 30+ year old boomers don't like any video games besides the ones they grew up with

>>8085409
>Remember when GUN (a military black-ops unit attached to the UN) murdered Maria Robotnik?
Imagine believing shit like this doesn't happen in comic books and cartoons. Most disney movies have characters killed by either the villain or the protagonist and unlike Maria, those deaths are actually on screen

>>8102710
Micky Mouse never stumbled upon a government conspiracy where a child was shot, and he definitely didn't do this while wearing soap shoes.

>>8102701
I'm technically a 30 year old boomer at this point, and I did grow up with SA2. I don't think it holds up as a particularly good game though.