/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8071560]

This was the peak of the Sonic series and it all went downhill from here.

[Anonymous No.8071564]

It started way earlier

[Anonymous No.8071565]

The adventure games were flawed but fuck, I still have a blast with them. You can like shit even if it has issues

I prefer the overall stage design of sonic stages in Adventure 1 though, they clearly went in a different direction with 2. That's when they started leaning more on the linear "stylish platformer" shtick that the boost games would push for, though I think it's a lot more fun in Adventure 2

[Anonymous No.8071571]

>>8071560
sonic and tony hawk made me expect and demand grinding and rock music in every third person game. Needless to say i was thoroughly disappointed with gaming afterward.

[Anonymous No.8071632]

>"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.

[Anonymous No.8071664]

>>8071632
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.

[Anonymous No.8071672]

>>8071560
>This was the peak of the Sonic series
3&K was peak. While SA1+2 were decent they were actually on the downside slope right before we fall off into a pit.

[Anonymous No.8071705]

>>8071560
Hi OP here I'm such a faggot that I posted the wrong image

[Anonymous No.8071707]

>>8071632
lotta words to write about a gay little hedge hog lmao

[Anonymous No.8071742]

>>8071632
I read this and I agree for the most part, the bigger issue should be how it's handled and written more than it doing certain topics in the first place. I dislike how "edgy" is an insult usually from people who want to keep everything as saccharine as possible.

[Anonymous No.8071884]

>>8071705
At least post S&K standalone. S3 isn't needed.

[Anonymous No.8071983]

>>8071664
>dopamine-delivery-vehicles
i.e. Literally video games.

[Anonymous No.8071992]

>>8071560
Definitely not the peak of Sonic but it was the last time the series was consistently decent. As others have said the Adventure games demonstrated a decline in quality but they were still fun.

[Anonymous No.8072145]

>>8071884
S3 gives it a save system and enables both the character options that involve Tails, so it's still a major upgrade to play Knuckles as part of S3 as intended.

[Anonymous No.8072759]

>>8071632
This is fucking gigabased. As a kid, I never saw anything wrong with the mature themes in Sonic. I, as the target audience, thought it was fucking awesome and the stories really captured me. Wasn't until I was older that I saw adults whining about it. Kids like that stuff, and it's media for kids, so what's the issue?

[Anonymous No.8072765]

i know dat is here i can sense it in mah feet
the great emeralds powa
allows me teh feel

[Anonymous No.8072770]

>>8071560
Sa1 was better. Only coomer like sa2

[Anonymous No.8072784]

>>8072759
SA2 story is basically a shounen anime episode. It's absurd and exaggerated to the point it becomes super cool.

And yes, I absolutely loved that as a kid. SA2 got me into Sonic to begin with, thanks to its over-the-top presentation. And I knew LOTS of kids back then which followed the same way, that's why the game was so praised.

But time passes, these kids grew up and became grumpy boomers who lost their ability to be impressed. Now they whine about how Sonic was never good.

[Anonymous No.8072814]

>>8072784
Kek. I remember having to pause the game on green forest to go to my cousin's house and the whole time I was like "I gotta go home immediately! The island's about to blow up!"
Musta been like 4 or 5

[Anonymous No.8072838]

>>8072784
>SA2 story is basically a shounen anime episode.
SA2 is shoujo

[Anonymous No.8073425]

>>8072759
Exactly

[Anonymous No.8073617]

>>8071560
The only reason that you think its good is because you were 10 when you played it.

[Anonymous No.8073620]

>>8073617
I played SA2 for the first time not long ago and it's genuinely my favorite Sonci game. Cope.

[Anonymous No.8073663]

>>8073620
Yes like I said, when you were 10.

[Anonymous No.8073695]

>>8073663
As I said, cope.

[Anonymous No.8073708]

>>8071560
>forced to change gameplay styles every level instead of playing them consecutively
>shooting and treasure hunting stages made worse for no real logical reason
no

[Anonymous No.8073760]

>>8071560
>Complementing a Sonic Adventure game
Que the verbal regurgitation of people who have never played an Adventure series Sonic game but think watching that one video from that one Tuber is all the information they need to form a valid opinion on the game. Bonus points if they bring up the "nostalgia" fallacy.

[Anonymous No.8073784]

>>8073695
>cope

Aah, the comeback of a 10 year old.

[Anonymous No.8073809]

>>8073784
This is the hill you choose to cope on, sad.

[Anonymous No.8073856]

Adventure games are awesome simply because of how they portray Eggman/Robotnik in each.

SA1: Cunning, ambitious but goofy and sometimes comical
Has a musical theme that reeks "fuck, it's this guy again" vibe

SA2: Menacing, even more ambitious, and even more swag for a musical theme
Dr. Eggman "my ego is as big as my penis because i'm alpha" Robotnik

Pick your favorite. I honestly love both.

[Anonymous No.8075390]

>>8073708
Pleb-tier opinions spoonfed by internet celebrities

[Anonymous No.8075426]

>>8071560
Is it true this was intended to be the last Sonic game? Going by the story that sure seems to be the case

[Anonymous No.8075451]

>>8075426
>Lizuka is the father to multiple children
What do you think sex with Iizuka would be like?

[Anonymous No.8075457]

>>8073784

[Anonymous No.8075554]

>>8075457
Cope

[Anonymous No.8075634]

>>8075426
It's the logical conclusion to Sonic. Eggman got so fucking mortified at his grandfather he most likely gave up on evil and now spends his days with his best bro Tails fucking robot hookers in the Space Cuba they both built while Sonic fucks up the odd ancient evil.

[Anonymous No.8075682]

>>8075426
Iizuka's words about different worlds and shit in each game finally make sense now. Adventure 2 is the end of one timeline; Heroes is a start of another (hence why Eggman is a douchebag again). Then Generations ends this timeline with both Eggmans fucked up forever.
Lost World onwards it's another timeline where Modern Sonic always was Modern and Classic is just a version of him from original timeline.

[Anonymous No.8075731]

>>8075682
But Shadow is directly linked to heroes and has references to SA2's story, as well as having stages in Prison Island and the ARK. It's one world.

[Anonymous No.8075841]

>>8075390
How the fuck could you think that the treasure and shooting stages were improved from 1

[Anonymous No.8076898]

>>8075457
Cope

[Anonymous No.8077448]

Adventure 2 was well after the descent. They never should have continued the trainwreck of Adventure's bad jumping physics and homing attacks to patch them. Implement good jumping in your fucking platformer and you won't need a shitty midair autopilot button next time Sega.

[Anonymous No.8079040]

>>8075731
Honestly, Shadow and Heroes being so closely linked straight up refutes what Iizuka said about two different worlds anyway. He just for some reason doesn't wanna admit that nobody thinks about continuity when working on a new Sonic game. Realistically, there's no way that Station Square, Westopolis, Soleanna, and the Unleashed locations would be in the same world as Grand Metropolis and the giant futuristic cities from Riders, but it makes even less sense that travel between two planets is something that frequently happens given how big a deal the space shuttle and chaos control are in SA2.

[Anonymous No.8079062]

>>8075731
Shadow's storyline contradicts with SA2's ending. President shows photo of Shadow and Sonic in front of White House after they saved the Earth. But Shadow never returned on Earth with others, he just fell into atmosphere and presumably died. It is also unlikely Eggman could save him, he was on ARK at the moment.