If Sonic hadn't gone 3d

[Nitro Vordex]

In full honesty what do you think would have happened if Sonic hadn't gone 3d?

I'd thought that Sonic would start out with the Sonic Advance-esque games, but on platforms. With highly detailed sprites(GG, SF),consoles and their power and memory, it could have been great gaming.

On the other hand, people who say 2d is dead, well, might have ignored the blue blur. He might not had gone down the crapper, but he might not have lasted this long either. Sonic could have been scrapped, if not introduced into 3d. Although, SFIV has a great idea:
The linear gameplay of Sonic, with "mind blowing" graphics. Although, I suppose it's supposedly already going to happen, with that funky game that he's a werewolf or whatever.

You know what's funny about that? There is actually a flash movie with such a concept, if a little different.

So, what do you guys think?

[ABDUR101]

I'm from the 2D-era of gaming, clear back to Atari so I'm biased. I think there are always going to be games that are relentlessly fun in 2D, that would never work in 3D. Hell, I love sprite-based games. Even a 2D game with 3D graphics has to be done damn well before I like it, but I'd rather see a nice 2D game with animated sprites.

I think people are too eager to jump to the 'next best thing' and they lose alot of potentially awesome things along the way.

[UnderscoreX]

I agree companies always trying to do something new with their franchises often fucks it up, innovation does not equal entertainment. On the other hand however, Final Fantasy wouldn't be anywhere near as popular as it is today if VII didn't make the jump to 3D.

It's a gamble and I guess it depends on the company, I mean you'd have thought Sonic would be great in 3D after seeing how well Mario 64 turned out but what can you do.

[Toadthroat]

Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were great.
3D is not the reason sonic sucks. Sonic Team is the reason sonic sucks.

[Shadowpawn]

On 2008-04-29 19:32, Toadthroat wrote:
Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were great.
3D is not the reason sonic sucks. Sonic Team is the reason sonic sucks.

Agreed. I don't know what happened after SA2 but ST has totally screwed up the sonic universe.

[Monochrome]

I loved SA 1, 2 and Heroes. It's after that I tuned out. Except the Rush series. Those are still fun. I still go back to Sonic Adventure 1 all the time, it's still a blast ...

*cough*

the 2D sonic's had glitches too... I have several times fallen through the floor or walls from running too fast in Sonic 2 (especially Chemical Plant Zone)

...got 'blast processed' right outta there

That doesn't make it any less a classic in my opinion, however -- I'm not bashing

[Frana]

Mabey if we took the "sonic" out of "Sonic Team" we would get a good game.
Seriously, adveture 1 and 2 were good, 2 a little more so. Heroes was OK, it was just different. After that, it just seemed like they were trying to just use gimmicks. I honestly quit being a hardcore sonic fan back in 2005...

[rogue_robot]

Heh. My brother mentioned something along these lines not too long ago - how he'd really like to see a good, new game (any action/adventure/RPG, not necessarily a Sonic game) released in 2D.

There's just too much pressure to make games in "awesome, realistic" 3D within the industry, though. I guess most developers feel that a 2D game would be far too niche, and that they'd have to sell it for much less than the usual cost of a new 3D game if they even hoped to push more than a handful of units off the shelves.

[Nitro Vordex]

I have kind of a side question: Are 2d games cheaper to produce than 3d games?



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Nitro_Vordex on 2008-04-30 08:25 ]</font>

[ABDUR101]

On 2008-04-30 08:25, Nitro_Vordex wrote:
I have kind of a side question: Are 2d games cheaper to produce than 3d games?

The cost of a game comes down to how far you're pushing with the details in the graphics. 3D games you have to decide how decently animated all the characters are, their texture resolutions, view-distance vs better rendering, etc.

2D games have better leeway in that regard, since you're basically painting a 2D 'picture' of what the player is looking at for any given scene(i.e. overhead, isometric, or any directional scrolling[side-scrolling, etc]).

Also, there's this notion amongst 'new' gamers and certain Devs/Publishers that think they need to keep raising the bar for what games should look like. Thus why when a new 'blockbuster' title comes out, much like Crysis, sure it looked awesome and so on, but do you know how few people really bought that game? A title like Crysis was really a niche title because of the hardware requirements, so you're cutting it down to this:

FPS + high-end requirements to get the most out of the game = niche of FPS gamers who have the hardware or are willing to buy the hardware to play it.

Whereas if you make a fun game, whether its 3D or 2D that everyone can play right now, without really needing to go out and buy afew extra gygs of ram or the latest 3D card with shader 3.0 you're obviously going to hit a much larger demographic.

Look at Sins of a Solar Empire, a 4X game. Some people might say that it being a 4X rts set in space, it'd be a niche title but that game was outselling so many 'major blockbuster' games for quite a while, hell it was at the top of Amazon's sell list. It sold so well because the graphics were kept realistic so everyone could play the game, you could bump the graphics way up if you had a decent computer, and if you had a computer from five years ago you'd still have the graphics settings to which it did'nt look like ass, but it was still very playable.

It's not that we don't have already kickass methods of making games look great and still play decent on 'standard' machines, its that Devs/Publishers feel the need to feed a very niche group of gamers who are willing to toss acouple hundred out to upgrade their computers to play the next best thing.

I think it really comes down to bragging rights for both the Dev/Publisher and the gamer. It's like a circle jerk.

"Yeah I'm very sure all the fans will enjoy what we've done with this game, its really cutting edge technology(i.e. you'll have to upgrade if you want to play), we've spent alot of time making it as great as we could(rather than making it playable for most of the fanbase, tweaking the engine and fine-tuning for standard machines, we went all out like children in a candy store with pushing the graphics to the point that your system needs to be next-gen ready to play it decently)." And yeah, I won't deny that alot of games look fucking awesome, but thats pretty much all they'll really have going for them until years down the line when the requirements they needed to be played are considered 'current standard'.

Then you have the people who buy all the latest hardware, are entirely up to date; and thats a-ok its their money and if thats what they want to spend it on, feel free. I used to aswell, I'd drop $400 for a 3D card, acouple hundred for afew sticks of RAM, etc. But its more so again just a circle-jerk and stroke of ones e-peen; it reminds me of someone who loves their car alittle too much.

There it is anyway.