Retronauts - 510: Sonic Frontiers

Episode Date: January 31, 2023

Chaos Emerald novice Diamond Feit seeks the counsel of enlightened echidna experts Stuart Gipp and Dave Bulmer to discuss the recent Sonic Frontiers and its place amongst the hyper hedgehog’s history

This week in Retronauts, would you like to try? I'll let you borrow Rod. Welcome to Retronauts. Happy New Year, you lucky people. We're recording this in the year of 2022, but you're experiencing it in the year, 2023. We have no idea what's going on there. Perhaps society is crumbled and all that's left is some small acorn-sized people with memories of the past. We don't know. But here in the now, we're talking about Sonic Frontiers, a relatively recent game, but I think we're going to discuss it and we're put into context of this Sonic Hedgehog

who has been around for over 30 years in general and I think this game plays with some of that canonicity but I don't really know because I'm not really a big Sonic person but we're getting ahead of ourselves

first of all who am I who am I with this person daring to host a Sonic podcast and admitting they're not a big Sonic person my name is Diamond Fight and I hate real fishing but as this game is shown I kind of like the fake fishing

I'm a fake fishing fan and I'm therefore a fake fishing fan the other way if you say it. Yeah. I'm making total sense here. Let's go to our first guest who also has an S starting off their name. Oh, that's, hang on, let me just check. Do I have, that's me, right? Yes. Oh, thank God. Okay, I was so worried. Hello, I'm Stuart Chip, and it feels weird that I'm not doing this episode, like as the host. It seems like the sort of thing I would do, but apparently not. And also joining us from the UK, but without any S's at all in their name, my goodness.

Um, is that true? No, you're right. There's no S's anywhere in my name. How exciting. Let's go through it in deep, in detail. My name's Dave Ballmer. Hello. I am from a podcast called Sonic the Comic the Podcast. I am an old man Sonic fan who knows about old Sonic things from the olden days before it all got recondom was all different and weird. And exactly. That is why exactly I have turned to you to not just because you're British, but because you're both very familiar with Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Friends and Sonic the Comic and Sonic the podcast. Because when I played this game, this Sonic Frontiers game, which as of this recording only came out about six weeks ago, I was, first of all, I really liked it. And we'll talk about why. But I also really took myself, I was getting caught up in this game. wondering, well, I haven't really played a lot of Sonic 3D games, and this game is giving me a lot to think about, and it's given me a lot of characters to meet, and just so much things are happening. And when I started tweeting about it, people on the internet were like,

oh, yeah, this is what happens? This is what happens? I'm like, what do you mean? This is what happens? This is this normal? So I thought, what better than to pair my relative ignorance with your two indisputable expertise? And then somewhere in the middle, we're going to get a line that's going to be just like the perfect average sonic conversation. That's our goal today. It'd be perfectly average sonic conversation. I don't know. I mean,

great. I think that given the criteria that you've suggested and the standards that you're holding us to, I think this could end up being probably the best sonic conversation ever held. Ever recorded? No, it must be average. I must insist on average. Oh, okay.

We're going to Harrison Berger on this. Anytime me and Stu start to really sparkle, we'll just dial back a little bit. And we'll be left anything. If your anecdote is too engaging, you're like, whoa. Yeah. But let's start.

Let's start with some anecdotes. And let me start with you. Because I don't think, because we really, we don't really talk a lot about Sonic specifically on retronauts. We talk about him more in the context for the things. So why don't you, too, and let's start with you, Stu, give me your Sonic origin story. What's happening with your Sonic origin story?

Where did you meet the hedgehog? As a baby, I was dropped on my head quite hard. That's not true, sorry. I played the first, I think the first video game that I saw was Sonic, Master System, Sonic, because I saw someone else playing it. I had a little go on it, run into the first enemy and just cried, because I was too young to understand what was happening. Following that, had a Master System, came with Sonic, played it on there,

got, found out about Sonic the comic, found out about Mega Drive Sonic, got, became quite a big fan of it. I would say mostly down to Sonic the comic, the UK comic, because it just characterised him as much more interesting and the stories were much better and the art was excellent, as Dave will attest to. So that kind of kept me interested in across the years when the games themselves into going into the Saturn era

started to not exist or flag heavily. There was just a very big wilderness period for Sonic that some would argue isn't actually over. Um, but then, you know, I kept playing the games because I kept liking the character. I got into some of the online communities and stuff, uh, just a bunch of degenerates, to be honest, but, uh, you know, they stuck it out. Um, got involved in the Sonic the Comic Online continuation thing, uh, just a bunch of degenerates, to be honest, but I stuck that out as well. Um, no, I'm kidding, they're wonderful people, and only slightly degenerate. Um, apart from the ones

who are massively degenerate, which is all of them, but never mind. Um, God, it's really hard to give the history because, uh, all it is is just me playing Sonic games when they come out. Yeah. Like, I just play all of them and barely missed any of them and kind of liked all the 2D ones and it kind of didn't like the 3D ones except for like adventure, which is quite, um, good, still. It holds up quite well because it's so slapdash and unusual. And, you know, every year Sonic come out would come out and it would be just enough good Sonic game to keep me going.

like Sonic Advance would make up for all the 3D ones and Sonic 4 to some extent even made up for whatever 3D ones they were pushing out at that time even though it wasn't such a great game I was just like yeah love this 2D gameplay this is kind of a peerless thing there's nothing else out there that's like this to this day it took Sonic Mania to come out to get another sort of new Sonic game that felt like a Sonic game and now I'm just a grumpy old grouch who just doesn't like Sonic anymore

more because it's so rubbish. It's I mean, it's like a disease. I'm never going to truly be shake free of it, but they've, this for me, we'll get into it, I suppose, and I'm trying not to be super negative, because I know that a lot of people really liked this new game.

And, you know, far away from me to call every single one of them wrong to their face, even though I would do that. You'd love to do that. I'd love to do that. I'd like to line them all up. Yeah. So just go, you're wrong, and you're wrong, and you're wrong, and by the way, I'm right, and you're wrong. And my ego would grow and grow and grow, and it would be the greatest day of my life, and I would just go home and there'd be nothing left to do, would that? So I'd have to just end it all by playing Sonic at the Secret Rings.

Yeah, just so I can't bear it anymore, and I just destroy himself. So, yeah, that's my history with Sonic. I hate him, and yet I love him. him. He hates that hedgehog. And the more he rants, the more his moustache grows. Yeah, it's true. Um, my history with Sonic is that I, well, I was already, you know, at least, what was I, about nine or something when the first Sonic came out. So I already had quite a robust history with games and so on. And, um, one day I saw it playing in a shop called Children's World, uh, where they had a demonstration megadrive. And I was completely, um, like, I was, hooked on it. I fell for the advertising completely. The advert at the time was once you've played Sonic the hedgehog, everything else seems a little bit slow. That was precisely the experience I had. And I find my, I actually found myself doing full laps of the shop as fast as I could run as soon as I'd finished playing like, you know, the Green Hill Zone, because life had slowed down around me and my pulse was too high and needed to be sustained in some way. And yeah, and it was a big shop. You know, it was like a, you know, Toys R Us style big shop. So there I am, running, running around and around. And I was just a fan from then on. And it really solidified when the comics started here in the UK, Sonic the comic.

And I went on to sort of have a hand in kicking off the sort of online fandom of that comic. And I was, you know, I used to run various boards and groups and things. Back in the old days, back in the 90s, this is. And then I got all grouchy about it and was like, well, I don't like this anymore. And I stopped having any kind of sonic-y internet presence until just a couple of years ago, when me and my friend Chris McVeeley off of Transformers the Basics on YouTube just went, oh do you know what,

actually this was good, let's do a podcast about it. And it feels like we're right back in again and there's all communities springing up and things are kicking off and Sonic is going through a bit of a renaissance. So that's where I am at the moment. I quite like Sonic and I quite like this game

with big asterisks that I'm going to talk about as we move forward. I didn't find asterisks. When does asterisks turn up in the game? Well, you didn't play it long enough. No, you're right, it didn't. The Third Island is gauld. Have you never figured out that big is just obelix's fur suit?

I mean, no, but now that you mention it, it's so obvious. Think about it. Think about it for more than two seconds, and you will see. My gosh. You know, Dave, I really appreciated you describing the advertising because it sounds so quaint because in America during that time when Tana came out, the advertisers were like, this is Santa the Hedgehog, he is good, everything else you thought was good sucks and you're dumb and you think it's good. Yeah, it's quite right too. My favorite, my favorite Sega advert from then was the do me a favor plug me into a safe. Sega, which was like your TV.

And I'm like, now that I think about that, that came out in what must be like 1990, maybe 89. Yeah, something like. That sounds like it's something out of the 50s, don't you think? Do me a favor. Plug me into the Sega. It sounds like the 50s to me. It was the fact, I'll tell you why, it was because it was localized.

It was the fact that it wasn't, do you know what I mean? Now you think of the advertising for a game to be the same all around the world. But in those days, the advert for the Sega Master System was, do me a fact. Which is, you know, that feels, it does feel weird, doesn't it? It feels a little anachronistic and out of... Whereas in America, it was, hey, hey, jerk off. Yeah, exactly. Shove this up your stupid TV's ass.

Yeah. You jerk, you dumb, jerk. I don't know what Americans say. You know, ding-dong. You ding-dong, you dumb. The Japanese head, I don't know, it was probably something like... Oh, what's this going to be? this console's amazing

Please buy one Yeah Although I don't know They don't seem to have really liked Sonic in Japan For the longest time So it was probably just like You might want this Probably not

Yeah maybe the advert was more like Hey check it out Space Harriet Yeah Altered Beast guys We offer our sincerest apologies For this game See if you want to play it

Well So here's the thing with me So I absolutely played the original Sonic the Hedgehog in America. We called it Genesis. I know Mega Drive is a better name, but that's fine. And I played that first game a lot. And I liked that first game. I had fun with it.

And then I remember playing Sponic. Then I remember playing Sponik. That's the best joke in the episode. Sorry, going. I'm trying to say the words Sonic Spinball, you see. Because I played Sonic Spinball. Oh, that's lovely, because your brain wanted to say pinball, so it had to alter the word Sonic to be Sponic, so it could be Sponic Pinball. That's right.

That's what happened. And I enjoyed that one, too, but I then kind of dropped off. I never played two. I never played three. I never played the Ann Knuckles. What? And when the 3D games came around, I had friends. I am hearing typical American chat right now.

Never played Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Come on. I mean, I saw the commercial. What did you play, Mario? David, David, let them speak. Sorry, sorry. So, I had friends who were into Sonic games, and I know when I got a Dreamcast, we all looked at the new Sonic game. We saw this big whale, like, oh, this is interesting.

But I just, I didn't really follow Sonic down this path. And for years, I kind of, I've followed along sort of the fandom, and I've heard all these things being said about Sonic, but never really tested it myself. And one of the things I heard over and over again is that 2D Sonic games were very, very good. And then the 3D Sonic games were as okay or very bad. And so this one's good, but that one's bad. And what I often hear is the so-called the Sonic Cycle, you know, the Sonic Cycle, where they announce a new game, people get excited. Then they announce something new with the game.

And everyone was like, oh, no, that doesn't sound a game more. Then they announced something new with the game. It's like, oh, wait, maybe it will be good. And then the game comes out, and no one's happy with it. and then six months later, it all starts over again. The secret truth of the Sonic cycle. Yes. The secret truth of the Sonic cycle is it's actually the same for every single franchise video game ever made.

It applies to all of them. They announce a new one. They announced something new. Everyone on the internet goes, hmm, and then it comes out, and it's exactly the same for everything. The Sonic cycle is only the Sonic cycle because Sonic is the subject of it. It could be the Street Fighter cycle. It could be the Mario cycle, even. It could be anything.

But crucially, that doesn't mean it's not true. Yeah, no, you've hit on something there. The reason why it isn't the Mario cycle, and it is the Sonic cycle, and it's so many things. Yeah. I think the reason why Sonic is the one that it's landed on as the thing that was canonized as the thing cycle, is that it is a surprise how many bad Sonic games there have been. Like, it is weird, because with Mario games, like, when there's a bad Mario game, Do you know what I mean? It's still, it's still competently made game and it's still good. It's a surprise to us all that something as what feels to certainly people of our generation as sort of an important gaming figure. But also I would say to the kids, because kids really are into Sonic. But, you know, often with the surrounding media and so on. It's a real surprise when a Sonic game comes out. And yet again, it's like the thing that's wrong with it, isn't wrong with any other games.

It's sort of like even fan games are better than the worst Sonic games that have come out. And so you go, well, why, how has that happened when this is a professional company that are like very good, they have control of a key IP? That is true. The thing that's wrong

is always something new, pretty much. It's like, okay, they've done, they'll bring out something like Sonic Unleashed, which is this incredible looking, very clear, like painstakingly made game like if you look at there's so much going on it's such a huge game and then they went

and also it's god of war bit shit yeah and that's the main bit we're gonna that's that yeah and also those levels are 20 minutes long yeah you're the most playing you'll be doing will be those bits the bits that shouldn't be here and nobody likes yeah they're they're real geniuses over at site team i've got to say

Yeah. And it was quite a few years of that that led to people going like, oh, this is going to happen every time. And I think that happened before it did with the realization that it's going to happen with a lot of franchise. The more radical, for me, almost another type of Sonic cycle that's emerged that makes me the most incredulous of all is when they do find something that people like and is good, they don't follow up on it. Like, they do Sonic generations and everyone went, hey, this is actually you're right. I mean, it's not amazing, but this is like solid 7-8 out of 10. And then they went, and everyone was like, this is the one Sonic game that we'd like DLC for or more of.

And Sonic team were just like, yeah, forget it. That's not happening. Sonic Mania, the most beloved Sonic game in years, like actually high-rated, sold millions and millions. Sonic team were like, yeah, you're not getting any more of that. We're not doing that again. I forget it.

Sonic Frontiers has come out and people seem to really like it. You know, it's very popular. It's been acclaimed as one of the best Sonic games ever even. I guarantee you the next Sonic game will be just some completely bollocks, nothing like it at all. Yeah, even though what this game,

to me, what characterises Sonic Frontiers is like, oh, this could work. Let's see what they do next time. And then, yes, they probably won't. But now, that being said, I'm to understand I haven't got any numbers or data for this but I've heard that it is actually

quite popular in Japan and that's a big deal because Sonic's never popular in Japan so actually they might that's the weird thing about Sonic this whole era of Sonic not being very good has been because Sega of Japan

have gone no no we make these now because the good ones were like made in or with collaboration with the American teams and stuff like there was a Sega Technical Institute

yeah even if it was the same people from the Japanese Sega, but they just flew to America. It just so happened that generally a lot of it was done with America in mind. But then in the 3D era, there was this cutoff point where Sega of Japan kind of went, now, no, none of that nonsense anymore. You will not say robotic now. We are, it's ours now and we're going to do them all. And from that point on, they've been so hit and miss and haphazard and sloppy.

And it isn't popular in Japan, but for some reason, they're like, we've got to do this, even though we don't. care about it. I don't know. It's been odd and there's been up and downs. You're not saying Robotic anymore. It actually hurt. Like, there was a huge wound that's never quite closed. I'm just

sitting there going, what? Why are they calling him Ekman? His name's Robotnik. Why are they saying Eggman? I don't understand. It's very interesting, isn't it? That has never... That happened like 20, more than 20 years ago. Nearly 20...

Is it 25 years ago? It was late age ago that that changed. A thousand years ago. And yet, people do still call him Doctor. He's Dr. Robotnik in the film. But like the, that, now, correct me if I'm wrong. He was always called Eggman in the original Japanese Mega Drive. Right. That's, that was his name, Dr. Eggman. That is his name. Was his name. Yes. And then they, they localized it to Dr. Robotnik, which is just a better name. It's a better name. There's a little more to it than that, which is that, like, well, no, there is, there's, there's an extra detail to add to that. We forgot that we're not presenting this episode. We've just gone full

bore. No, no, no, no, no. You've brought a guy from a little Sonic podcast on. Right. This is relevant. Yes, that's correct. In Japan, his name was Eggman, and that, and that is why his name is Eggman now. But in Japan, Sonic wasn't very popular. And in America and Europe, and especially Europe. He was incredibly popular. What I'm saying is they should have gone with our stuff, the stuff that was really popular and sold incredibly well, instead of the Japanese stuff that nobody liked. But whatever, it's done now. You know, I'm glad you brought this up because, yeah, I, because I played the original game, and I've, you know, I was, you know, at the time living in America and ingesting all the American media, I thought his name was Dr. Robotnik, and then, of course, you know, there was also the, his mean bean machine and so and such. So that name struck me for a very long time.

And when I played Sonic Frontier, it's kind of like, so he's, it's Eggman? Is it, is Robotnik like his first name or is one name and the other? But then I was very surprised that in deep into the game, which is something, it's a very curious feature, you don't need to do this at all. But if you fish a lot, you can spend some of your tokens on little voice logs from Dr. Eggman. and one of them he just straight up says Oh yes, Dr. Eggman That nickname Sonic gave it to me But I'm leaning into it

And he just has a whole rant about his name And I'm just like Okay, I guess they're It's canon I guess Yeah, that'll be As we'll get into Ian Flynn Who wrote this game That's one of his big things that he does

Is he likes to tie things together like that Yeah He's the man is a walking Sonic wiki And he likes to put his much of the stuff he knows into the stuff he does. You want to know the weirdest thing about all of this diamond is that when they changed his name to Eggman, which was Sonic Adventure, in Sonic Adventure 2, we meet his granddad who's called Gerald Robotnik.

Okay, well, you know, it's so like it is that his name is Ivo Robotnik or Evo Robotnik, but nobody likes that. It's Ivo. When you think about that, though, like, Sonic, as soon as Sonic went into 3D, just the rails just completely off. Like, right, okay, Sonic, here's our biggest thing. What do people like about Sonic?

Okay, this game, here's what you're going to do. You're going to talk to people. There's going to be loads of cutscenes with loads of story. And we're going to find out who Eggman's granddad is. Grandad is, yeah. Yeah, great stuff. Really cool.

Like, you've done a great job there, guys. What's the final boss? It's a giant lizard with a space station, shoved up its tract. Okay, that's interesting choice. I mean, here's the story that I want from a Sonic game because I'm quite a lot of it. Here's the story I want. Nothing. Zero.

Sonic beating up Robotnik for no reason is fine by me. I'm happy for it to be like, Robotnik's made a new thing to do ecological damage with, and Sonic stops it. Robotnik's gone to the forest and it's just hitting things with like a metal rod. He's just beating up like some bugs and stuff. And Sonic's like, come on. Yeah. Sonic. A robotnik, that's not really on, is it? What are you doing?

Yeah, and Robotnik goes, it is. It is. It is on. It is on. I'm doing it right now. And then it starts hitting more plants. And then they find, yep. The music kicks off. That's the story of Sonic, the hedgehog. Robotnik buys a Tasimo coffee machine and Sonic's chastising him for the pods and how they're not recyclable. And it's like, they are actually recyclable now. So you just got to take them to like a petrol station or something. and something's like I want station yeah perfect perfect

he's like great stuff robotic feed the machine great work buddy and sarcasticity claps him we could go on like this stop us it's okay it's just reading the original story

out of the Sonic 1 manual there this is good let's because I I do I want this I want this lore I want these opinions I want fan opinions I want all this stuff I'm because I

again I've been playing this game and I've enjoyed this game and I feel like I've wandered off a path that I'm familiar with into an area I'm not familiar with. Spoken like a captive with a gun to their head. I want people who know this land to sort of walk me through it a little bit. Because again, this is a new game, but I want to talk about its history and where it comes from.

So let's talk a little bit about who made this game, the Sonic Frontiers. And since you already dropped his name, let's talk about, yes, because the story of this game, Sonic Frontiers, and I guess probably all the dialogue too written by a man named Ian Flynn and very notably he wrote he's the original script is from him

it was he wrote it first and they localized it in a Japanese not the other way around so this game originally came from from his mind in the sense do we know do we know how much say he had like if he made something up would the game makers make it or was he just on dialogue

I actually don't know I think he's talked about it that he's had quite relatively route free reign because there has been quite a big push in Sonic and Sega to have a consistent story. They've been hiring people to do the law lately and stuff.

Yeah. Well, he's got a long history with Sonic. He's been writing he started writing for the Archie Comics Sonic book back in 2006. And he stayed there until 2017. So he spent more than a decade on that book. He also wrote Sonic Universe

for about nine years, 2009. to 2017. He wrote, he spent a year of Sonic Boom. He spent two years on Sonic X. He wrote a Sonic Mega Man crossover. He wrote the Sonic Mega Drive Limited series. He wrote two Sonic Mega Man Crossovers. Okay. I want to say at this point, just, I know, I don't mean to button, but he didn't, it's not, it's not inaccurate to say that he began writing for Archie Sonic in 2006, but it does it a slight disservice because what he did is he fixed it. And he did that with about two straight years of concerted ending and reversing of terrible decisions that had been made by previous writers, including the notorious Ken Pandas, who I hate to even invoke. But for two years, straight up, there are just a stream of stories in that comic with almost every other panel that's a little box out saying which previous issue is referring to, because he is clearing the table out and setting the same.

to tell actual decent stories with actual decent comics, because that was stinking before he came on port. That was in the absolute doldrums. And it was issue 160. He jumped in, and immediately it's like a breath of fresh air. It's just instantly better. So I just want to credit him for doing that. Absolutely.

What he did two and four Archie was absolutely wonderful. And so, of course, loads of real hardcore readers hated it. And they're still cross around it now. And they're wrong because he was great. Right. Yeah. I mean, I don't love his writing, but compared to what was in there before, my God, it was bad. All right. That's, that's, this is the kind of backstory I need. So beyond the comic books, he was also right. Well, he wrote a quote unquote motion comic, which was included with Sonic and the Secret Rings. He also had comics included with Sonic Boom, shattered crystals, Sonic forces, and Sonic Frontiers. He says he wrote the animated scenes for Sonic Origins He is the story consultant for the recent release Sonic Prime

I guess that's the animated show on Netflix I think Correct Yeah, that just came out like Friday Yeah, it's very, very recent And we have a quote here from Well, we'll get to his, we'll get more about him before there But Takashi Isoka who's the producer of Sonic Frontiers He's quoted in Game Reformers saying of Ian Flynn

He knows the characters well So he brought a great improvement to the character's emotion and dialogue. See, what fascinates me about that, and this is not to goshizuoka's fault, I imagine, had no hand in this. Having taken over Archie as a writer, he was writing these genuinely quite,

like he would bring in emotion and some sort of ideas that weren't seen in Sonic before, or from Sonic before, and he got to a point where not only due to this ongoing lawsuit, did he have to erase about 95% of the extended cast from the comic and essentially reboot it.

They also had to massively dial back what Sonic could say, do, which emotions he could show, because Sega would be in super weird about it. That's why most of the games, the characterisation of Sonic, is just, hey guys, run fast, I'm cool. All right. Well, he definitely has some more depth in Sonic Frontiers than that. He does. Yes, sorry. I should have probably added that. They've brought it back around with this new focus on a story they want to do. Because it was stifling the comics. The currently running IGW comic that Ian Flynn was writing. I'm not sure if he still is. I think he kind of comes on and off. they were stifling it and the fact that they seem to finally be

relaxing some of these ridiculously strict things that are, I have to say they are alleged, but it's pretty much known to be true. The stuff they can and can't show who they can and can't reference or say the fact that they are relaxing it, they're listening to fans, are listening to Ian, and they're going okay, well we'll have a Sonic

who can be a bit more than just, hey guys, I'm cool, cheerie dogs, yum, yum. Well, the thing is now and then, this is a franchise that the people who own and run Sonic have for a long time been not really like creative people but like business people.

Do you know what I mean? Over in Japan, the people who run it are businessy. So they've run it like a property. And so now and then that fluctuate, it used to happen in the olden days. There was a time on the Sonic comic in the 90s where they were suddenly told, you know,

that they're not allowed to ever show Sonic gritting his teeth. because they can't show his teeth. Just now and then there'll be just control over the IP that comes in and it'll just be like, well, what am I supposed to do then? And yeah, we've had a phase of that where they were very particular and fussy about, you know, how to represent the characters in a way that is a perfectly fine style guide for if you are, you know, distributing images of the character to go on, you know,

party paper plates and merchandise and so on, but not very useful if you're trying to write stories about them. But that's interesting about the teeth gritting Because Sonic the comic STC Like Sonic was always written in his teeth It was like he was on fettomins or something Well maybe that's one

They made a decision to stop them from doing it then Yeah that's what he said Dear STC Sonic no longer takes amphetamins So we remove that aspect from his characterisation But Ian Ian is someone who He loves this stuff

Like before, you know Before Archie He was writing Sonic stories online and stuff I don't know Is that fair Is that dobing someone in to say like Oh yeah I believe they used to write fan comics

I don't know But yeah It always sounds There's nothing wrong with writing fan fiction There's nothing wrong with that But it always sounds like you're being rude When you accuse someone Yeah that's it

It's great and I approve of it I just don't I don't want to speak for someone else In case they done But he's someone who cares and has always cared about these characters So here's what he brings to the table Is like

He is not just going to write this robotic set of characteristics he wants these to be people and with frontiers it really is a small revelation that these characters are able to talk as if they're people for the first time in a game really it's actually weird to me I actually I mean I think the writing might be the best thing about the game but I still find it weird to see these characters and hear them say things that are more sort of empathetic and I mean it's not we're not talking like we're still talking like kids like cartoon level of good here. And that's not a bad thing. I just mean on that level. I don't mean that it's negative. I don't mean kids cartoons are badly written. I just mean it's on that kind of level. But to see these characters who for so long have basically just been like McDonald's Happy Meal Toys to suddenly say something vaguely interesting is actually quite jarring for me.

No, that's right. This is this is the game in which you have a scene where Tales says to Sonic, am I a burden to you? Good. Yeah. Sonic says, yeah, shut up. And it's an actual like serious. conversation. Yes, that's the sort of thing that goes on in this game, and it is new. I'm so glad you mentioned that, Dave. I'm so glad you mentioned that, Dave, because that was one of the things I wanted to mention during the show is that, yes, when I was playing this game, you know, first, I was, first of all, I was surprised at how much talking there is in Sonic Frontier, because, you know, to me, again, I, from my limited perspective, when I play, when I played this game, I'm kind of, in my back of my head, I'm comparing it to

to Mario games that I've played. And so right off the bat, these characters are saying so much, and they're saying so much, and they're also alluding to things they've done before, which is very complicated, you know, they're making offhand references to islands that have existed, and foes they fought in the past. And to me, I'm like, is that real? I guess probably real, but I don't know what that means. And then, yeah, then you have this scene where, like, two people sit down, and yeah, and suddenly this guy's like, you know, the characters that's now existed, you know, Sonic 2 turned 30, the early this year, so Tails has been around for 30 years. Tails just like, Sonic, am I a burden? And I'm like, wait, what? This is, where's

this came going with this. And it's just, it's all, but it's all so straight face and it's all so sincere. I found it, I found it really charming and appealing and just how, how earnest it was, you know, and I, that really, I think, helped, it helped draw me in. And I feel like, you know, there was a little bit, I definitely think at one point, Sonic did the, well, that happened kind of line, but more often than not, these people were, you know, they were talking, they're a bunch of animals, really, or anthropomorphic animals, but they're, they talk to each other about what's actually happening in their lives. I'm like, it's, it's, it's, it is, it is, it is, it is, it's, to the series. They did not do that before, ever.

This is not normal, what you're saying? No. This is not the norm of everything. I'm hoping it's the new normal, but it was not normal. I mean, there were more intense, like, storylines like Sonic Adventure, too. You'd have the occasional interesting line, but mostly they talked bobbins in those games. Like, really unusual, like constantly, everything's cherry all the time. I mean, Tales has a story in that game where it's sort of about him being in Sonic Shadow and then, you know, getting better, but it's all presented of the most earnest like hyper earnest kind of way

that it doesn't carry off in any way naturalistic. I have to say it did make me laugh when you said Diamond that you were sort of in your head comparing it to Mario because like the idea of there being a Mario came where Luigi is like, oh Mario, am I a burden to you?

Oh no, you're not a burden to me, yeah. Woo-hoo! Oh, the coin! I love those. Yeah, but then but then, though, that That's also sort of true of Sonic up until recently. It is unusual for this to be able to happen.

And, yeah, it came as a real surprise. But the difference is that Sonic has always been about the characters in a way that's more than in Mario. Like, in Mario games, no matter how involved they get, you know, even beloved characters like Luigi are still essentially the roster of characters in a Mario Kart game or Smash or something. Even in the RPGs, they're not their blank slates, essentially, yeah. Yeah, they're just sort of different coloured characters who are there. And, well, obviously the exception of things like Paper Mario, where they really go into it. But, like, even there, Mario is not, like, just a guy who's there. Like, he's not built on and developed in any way.

No, it's all jokes and so on. Thankfully, the upcoming Super Mario Brothers movie starring Chris Pratt from Illumination will definitely change that. Yeah, it will change the way we think about Mario forever. Yeah, for example, we used to think he was good. Quite good. But Sonic, though, has always been about... As soon as they started introducing characters, kids got really interested in, oh, who's that then?

And there was always... There's never been an era of Sonic where there wasn't some cartoon series or something to flesh out these characters. And right now, what's really interesting about right now is that the comic that's fleshing them out and the games that have actually started to flesh out, flesh them out. And the TV series

and all this stuff have this writer in common. And they, and I think this stuff about, I don't know this, this is just guessing, but this stuff about how there's now this law team and they've hired like a manager for that or whatever it is. I suspect that's just like someone

went, oh, do you know what? Let's let him. Let's let Ian do this and it does seem to be making things better and people seem to be liking it. Will you stop with the emails if we just let you do this? I mean, Listen, I wouldn't be surprised to be honest. But that's who Ian is.

He is, if I can say this in polite, like, I mean this in a good way. He's a disruptor of the series who's come in and gone, can you not? Can you settle down? All you've got to do is make any of this make sense. Here's how I've come up with this, this and this. Do this. And they're doing it finally. And so now we have Sonic Frontiers comes in and sort of makes a certain amount of sense and ties together stuff that they idly.

brought into the series 20 years ago and have never mentioned again since even though really it ought to have changed everything and he's going no let's keep it let's have remember chaos what if we keep that what if we keep this what if it's all he's essentially the grant Morrison's Batman run of the

Sonic series I respect that yeah seems so it's all counted and it all happened yeah it was like that a bit where Sonic was running around in the Sonic Frontiers and then he stops and he suddenly says like I remember that time I had those cement shoes and it was in that labyrinth

and it was on the game gear that was weird I don't know if he ever actually acknowledges that The one I liked was the one where Tails says that was almost as bad as Dark Gaia and I went I have to admit I don't know what that is This is just like that time

that Tails got chased by that witch in a mine cart and it was only released in Japan This is like that time Sonic that you were just a little decoration dangling off a card Your wind car mirror, remember that Just about that was a long time ago Yeah, that was really rad.

Mabiel. Ha. We shouldn't give him all the credit because one man did not make this game by himself. Let's give him all the credit. Well, I want to talk with some other people here. Let's talk about who directed this game. The director is a Mario Kishimoto, and he used to work for Sammy. He worked for Sammy in the arcade division.

He had some credits on one of the Guilty Gear games, and when Sammy and Sega merged together, he jumped from Sammy into Sega in 2005, and as soon as he got the game, there, he really wanted to, he really wanted to make a video game and he was really eager to make a Sonic video game. And we have this amazing quote from circa 2007. They asked Kishimoto, what does Sonic mean to you? And is this the answer? He's like an old classmate. We both win our separate ways. But we've made it this far. This time, I got to meet him and work with him. But he hasn't changed at all. I've gotten old, though. And I just, I love that. I love You get the sense that he thinks of Sonic as a real person,

but an ageless person that he has to somehow cope with, which I just find fascinating. That is a very good description of a Sonic fan's relationship to Sonic. He's something we've got to cope with. So as far as Kishimoto goes, so all his credits, they're all Sonic games. So he was the lead game designer of Sonic Secret Rings. He was lead game designer of Sonic the Black Knight. he was director and lead designer of Sonic Colors

He was director of Sonic Lost World He was director and lead designer of Sonic Forces And I get the impression that Sonic Forces is essentially The most recent game before this one As far as like 3D games goes Is that correct? And I think as far as any games go, isn't it? Any games, there have been other games released besides Sonic Forces

So there's nonsense, Eldering came up this shit Shut up, I mean Sonic games Because mania was just before Force Or was it just after? Yeah, I think it was. And then forces and then nothing because they were like, right, well, we're going to make the next one. But then they made this decision, how's a boutsy, what si, ifsy, we start releasing games when they're ready. And yet they still haven't. Funny that. So this one took a long time to make. Yes, according to Kishimoto, they started working on this project, the Frontiers project, shortly after forces came out, and that was 2017. So they've been spending the better part of five years making Frontiers. We have a quote from Izaka.

We'll get to Isaac who Isaac is, but just we have another quote from Isika here. Usually when we're making a Sonic game, we're going to make something based off the previous format, so we can just roll right in production. We know what we're going to make. But it's this iteration that we need to get an open zone. And the style and format, this took a couple of years. years. And we'll explain what that open zone thing is. We'll get into that later. But yeah, they allegedly, they spent years in this. Apparently, they said at one point they started over, like Resident Evil style. They had what they wanted. They didn't like it. And like, oh, we're just

starting it over. Kishimoto also said that, I really respect that. He also says that because they spent so long making this game, they were frequently playtesting it. He said they had, they had people playtesting it every three or four months, as opposed to the usual thing where they would playtest one version, the alpha, and then playtest the beta version, and then they would just like, it'd just be finished. And this time, no. So over this years, they were having people constantly play it and play it and play it and get, they're getting feedback and feedback.

So at least according to Kishimoto, they spent a lot of time working with the playtesters and getting a sense of what's working and what doesn't work. I don't know much about how games are made, but that sounds to me like what you should be doing, right? Like, do they, are you telling me that normally the way that they make a game is they just make a game and nobody has a go on it? And then they deliver that to the playtest and they go, oh, this doesn't work. And then they make the game again and nobody ever plays it during this. Maybe that's the way that Sonic Team does things.

I mean, I'm sure that can't be standard practice to just only playtest two bills. If that is what they've been doing at Sonic Team, it answers some questions about the last 20 years. Well, speak of Sonic Team, let's talk about it. about the producer of Frontiers, Takashi Izooka. He has been working at Sega since 1992. He's been there for three decades. Also recently, of note, is he, many years ago, he designed a game for the Genesis Mega Drive called Debbie Topi, which is short for Devil and P, like the sound, I guess, which was

never released until the recently released Mega Drive Mini 2. So his unreleased baby from many, many years ago is just on that system. You can buy it and play it if you want to play that his little pet project. It's kind of a weird little puzzle game. Pretty, pretty great system. I'd recommend it 21. He joined Sonic Team in 1984. He was working on Sonic 3.

Izuka is credited as the sole designer on Knights into Dreams. Ah, so it's his fault. He's credited as director and designer of Sonic Adventure 1 and 2. Oh. And as far as we know, he's been the head of Sonic Team since 2008. So he's had a, he's had a long history with Sega. He's had a long history of Sonic, and he's been, he's been deeply embedded in Sonic team for, well, for, you know, for over a decade now. I was about to say he's the only person on this list who I have met, but he's not.

I met him in Flynn and forgot. Oh, okay. I hope you were nice to In Flint. Yeah, Inflin's lovely. Okay. To Hashizuku, I was so dehydrated and standing in a really long cue to meet him in the convicted criminal. that I don't remember it that well there is a picture of me with him and the only thing I remember about it is this

nightmarish like acid trip thing that happened that I still am not 100% sure really happened which was I think I've told this before so I don't want to repeat myself but someone I knew was there and they had a Sonic and my little pony cross over t-shirt which was Sonic sitting on the back of Rainbow Dash the pony and she was in the front of me in the queue and I I remember witnessing Sonnet Yujunaka ask her what it was and then confusedly ask Tagashi Zuka what rainbow dashes. And then Tagashi Zuka kind of did this shrug.

I don't know what that is. And I remember thinking at the time, that's it. My brain is dying. It's shutting down. What I'm witnessing is so completely beyond comprehension that this Gep can't possibly be happening. You know, there were no windows and the only food available was chili dogs because of Sonic. I don't know what they were thinking.

It's, Stuart, you have so many stories about when you meet the people involved in the games we talk about. And none of them are just like, yeah, I met them. And it went without a hitch. Well, I've made a lot of enemies. Speaking of enemies, I really think we should, for legal verses, we should stress that at this time, Yuzinaka has not been convicted of any crimes. He's been arrested. Polities.

I'm not, okay, arrested. The arrested, Eugenaka, I apologize. I thought he'd been convicted. It's all right. Confirmal. Japan is very strict laws about slander. So I don't want to step on any tails. He's been arrested, but there's been no trial yet.

There won't be one for a long time. That's the way Japanese system works. They arrest you and they can sit on you for many weeks and then they can arrest you again for a different crime and then just recess the clock. So I don't know. He may not see the sun until 20, 23. We don't know. damn well is he is he currently sat in a cell then i believe so yes oh god yeah it's it's it's very

the system here is very harsh i do not want to get arrested for any reason uh not alone uh financial reasons and i'll state again uh i was wrong he has not been convicted i apologize i genuinely didn't realize it's okay let's go back to what i wanted to say for isica because uh i have a quote here from 2004 i think it's really speak uh says a lot this is from 2004 We want to keep surprising players with things that go a step beyond their expectations. Sonic and the universe that surrounds him contains infinite possibilities. Our task is to choose among those what will really wow players. A Sonic that doesn't impress or surprise you in some way isn't Sonic, in my opinion.

Well, nasty surprises are still surprises, so technically they've nailed it every time, I think. I mean, looking, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but Kishimoto's CV there, no disrespect intended, but I wouldn't put those on my CV They're awful games Secret Rings is like the worst Sonic game Like for me it's just horrible Like it's horrible You can put your controller down

And it doesn't affect what's happening In any level basically It's just a rubbish game And I know they should be ashamed of themselves For having released it So Stu From your perspective Secret Rings, Black Knight, Colors

Lost World Forces These are five games Are these all five of these just, are these all thumbs down for you? I mean, they're pretty much. I mean, forces is okay because it's so short and it doesn't really do anything. It's just like, here are some Sonic levels.

And on that level, I find it kind of works. But all these other games have some enormous problem with them from my perspective. Like, Lost World is just awful, incomprehensible, like, barely controllable. I couldn't stand that game. They'd be like, we should make Sonic be Mario Galaxy, except we don't have that. kind of talent. So it's just going to be this facsimile. And Sonic Colors is quite well liked, but Sonic feels like he's floaty as hell. It's just kind of not great, I don't think. Those of really small levels, but in a less interesting kind of presentation, loads of gimmicky

transformations and things. It's not for me. Black Knight was just, I mean, it was better than Secret Rings. And swinging a wee remote that's a sword. Yeah, you know what? That's probably my favourite one of these, because you get to run around and swing a sword, that's kind of fun. Seeing all the Sonic characters in, like, night armour and being, like, Sir Percival instead of Knuckles or whatever. I don't know who Sheppersonal is. Sonic friends, don't get mad that I got that

wrong. I don't care, okay? That was probably my favourite of that lot, because it's just running around, but the sword is just kind of funny. Seeing Sonic with a massive sword is just inherently hilarious. It's like seeing Shadow with a gun, it's like, what are they thinking? Full-on, angry video game nerd, like, what are they thinking?

awful. I'm sorry for being so negative. I did like all the 2D ones. I literally asked you what you thought. So please. It's okay. And I can't really comment because I skipped most of the ones that I just mentioned there. Clever man. Clever. Yeah. So secret rings, black night colors, lost world forces. None of these clicked for you, Dave. You're like, nope, no thank you. I quite like colors. I don't really see what the big problem with colors is. But then also, I didn't get very far into it. I was never passionate about it. I played it and I was like, oh, there we are. That, that, there we go. And then forces I have never got into because I keep, I've tried, I've started the game several times and there's just something it's front loaded with, which I can't even remember what it is now, that just makes me, just ejects me.

And I'm just like, no, I can't play this. So, but now that I've played through Sonic Frontiers, I'm actually feeling as if I might go back to it and see what all the fuss was about. Because my co-host on the Sonic podcast, Chris, insists there's nothing wrong with that game at all. And we were all just being sort of joining in on Angry Bandwax. for not liking it, but I didn't like it. The response to that game was really unfair, because it's fine. I mean, to say that it's like, people are comparing it to, like, Sonic 2006 and stuff, and it's just like, shut up.

Yeah. You've got this game that runs, I'm not a frame rate police guy, but it's this game that looks beautiful, and it runs at 60 frames per second, like, locked all the time. Well, yeah. And it's just 30 small Sonic levels. There's no rubbish. There's no, like, okay, now you're going to have to play cards or some crap. Like, you know, now you're going to have to play with a stupid crane machine.

There has no challenge and just takes ages to do anything. None of that. Yeah, there's some of that in frontiers. But no, there's none of that. It's just here is 30 something levels. The end. There's nothing to complain about apart from the price tag. That sounds very appealing.

Yes, all right. I will go back to it. I think the thing that it was front-loaded with was very awkward 2D sections. But, of course, now, having played through Frontiers, I'm quite used to those. I might go back to it more on this as we talk about the game. Yes, so I guess why don't we talk about frontiers a little bit and sort of let people know. In case, in case people listen to this, haven't tried Frontiers yet, why don't we describe what the Frontiers flow is like?

Because there's a pattern. There's a pattern that happens when you play Sonic Frontiers. And I would say, what happens is you arrive on this island. It's this big open space. There's a lot of rocks. And what you immediately start doing, you start exploring because you've got stuff you've got to collect. There are memory tokens. There are portal gears.

There are keys. There are seeds. And there are coros. And I'm going to explain all these things for the listeners. Do you mean Coco's? Is it Cocoa or is Coro? It's K-O-C-O. Okay.

And then I apologize. I think I was, maybe I took too much Japanese. I thought of Koro-K-Koro, like things that roll around in Japanese to say Koro. Corro. I'm sorry. My apologies. All right. The way I remember it is I remember the phrase, I'd rather have a ball of cocoa pops. Okay. Thank you.

That's right, because they look a bit like Cocoa Pops in a way. They couldn't have called them Coros because they're quite like the ones in Breath of the Wild, aren't they? Oh, they're not called Corrox. What are they called? They're called Corrox. They're called Corrox. They are called Corrox. Right. Yeah. They couldn't directly name them the same thing.

I mean, if they could have, they would have done, you know, they would have lifted it without changing it. That explains why I mix them up in my head. That explains a lot. I think that's a completely reasonable explanation. For a long time, I thought that the main character was called Link, but no, he's called Sonic. That's not his name. Let me break these down.

The memory tokens, when you get those, when you get memory tokens, that unlocks access to one of Sonic's friends. Each island is a different Sonic friend who is sort of trapped in quote-unquote cyberspace. They're in like this little red sort of jail cell. Yeah, it doesn't seem to bother them in any way, and it isn't explained very well. but by getting memory tokens you can unlock access to them

and you need to share the tokens with them and I guess like you you sort of bond with them a little bit each also actually each friend has their own kind of sonic token which is very interesting so Amy has hearts I guess because she talks about love a lot

and Tails gets a wrench because I guess he's good at fixing things and Knuckles has a bunch of medals so is Knuckles like a war criminal or what's happening with Knuckles? I don't know it's ridiculous I don't know what they were thinking It medals because he's now, some reason, like, an army general or something.

I don't know. Yeah, I genuinely don't know. They should have... I don't know what they could have been. I don't know. Probably, like, what can you associate with an echidna? Well, I would have said... Penises.

Yeah? Well, I don't know what you associate with the Kidna, Stuart. But I would have said moons, like the one that is on his chest. Yeah, that could work, yeah. Maybe just like some, I don't know, cards, football stickers or something. Or little... Little chaos emerald shapes, because he guards them. Yeah.

Or maybe some gloves, because he's a big fan of gloves, isn't he? Yeah. Little tiny Rouge the bats. He's got pretty big myths on him, I think. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Anyway, so on each island, as you meet with your friends, they offer tips, they offer side quests, and then, yeah, every once a while you have a thing where, you know,

one of them just walks up to you and it has this deep conversation about, like, what they've always been afraid of in their life. which is quite a lot. So, that's the memory token. Portal gears unlock what they call the cyberspace levels. What are cyberspace levels? Well, that's sort of their interpretation of classic Sonic platforming sages. I would describe it as a 2.5D situation in that it's all clearly modeled in 3D,

but the camera is generally locked and you can't move the camera, and Sonic is generally running on one single plane. And, you know, he might be bouncing around from thing to thing or jumping on rails or going looped loops, but essentially it's a 2D-style stage, even though it's all done 3D. The vast majority of the cyberspace stages are directly taken from previous games. Oh, okay. The visuals have been changed up, but the layouts are levels from old games, which has a kind of a plot reason, but I think that's a Bobbin's excuse for not making new levels,

to be honest. It's an odd decision. I didn't know because I was playing one, and then suddenly I was like, hey, this is really similar to this other Sonic level. Hey, this is the other Sonic level. Yeah, luckily, I'm personally incapable of committing these things to memory,

so I didn't notice that, but I'm aware that it is the case. And yes, it's an odd decision, isn't it? It is really odd. It feels, I hate saying this, because I don't like using this word to describe developers, but it actually does kind of feel a bit lazy. It feels like something you would do if you didn't have all of five years

to make your game. Well, maybe because they restarted, they didn't have five years. Maybe they worked for four and a half years. Restarted and had to make the whole thing six months. It's a food fight situation. Yeah. Well, when you play these stages, each one has, there are four potential keys you can unlock by playing the stage. You can play them over and over again. And indeed, I would say it encourages you to play them more than once because, at least for me personally, I found that the first

time I played the stage, I just played things very, very slowly and tried to collect all the little things in those stages. And then if I played it again, I would try to maybe like get a better time because I think unless you get, unless you are very good at these stages, I think you probably need to practice a couple rounds before you get for that S level time because wow, some of those stages. And I stress, of course, if you look at, if you were watching speed runs of this game, which are on there, people have already figured out ways to like beat every stage in like, you know, 12 seconds. It's, it's incredible. Oh, brilliant. Well, this is classic.

Well, actually, I hesitate to use the word classic. This is what we call like, boost Sonic gameplay. They've been doing this for absolute years. In fact, they've been doing it without the boosting element back to

Sonic Adventure. Like, you play a level or is it, no, Sonic Adventure 2, I think they brought this in. You play a level. And now you've played it.

See if you can get that S rank. Yeah, it was Adventure 2 that brought it in, yeah. That's right, yeah. What it usually means is like, make no mistakes at all is how to get an S rank. Be absolutely perfect at the level.

Yeah, and get as many points as possible. And in this, you'll get, that will give you another, key, and the keys are one of the things you need to progress. Exactly, yes. I found it inconsistent. I'd get S-Ranks on my first try with quite a lot of them, and then some of the other ones were more difficult. And then I stopped doing them because they were boring. Well, it's interesting. The way the game is set up, you don't actually have to,

you don't have to play these levels at all, but we'll get into that in a bit later. So if you do play them, you can get up to four keys. The keys unlock access to the Chaos Emeralds, which you want the Chaos Emeralds because they're very important. But And again, for me, I played the original Sonic the Hedgehog, and the Sonic, the Chaos Emeralds, whereas these things you played in Super Secret stages to get them all. And if you got them all, I don't remember anything happening at all. Not in the first one, no. In this game, when you get seven Chaos Emeralds, you transform into a super, excuse me, it's not a super cygene, it's a super sonic, even though it's blonde and his hair goes up.

So maybe can you enlighten me, how long has this been the norm? for Sonic. He gets the seven things that he's really... Is this really happening? Does this... Have you not heard of supersonic before this game? I've heard of it. I've heard of... I've heard the expression before but I didn't realize how very literally

Dragon Ball it was. From Sonic the Hedgehog 2 onwards very... Well, relatively consistently. Yeah. If you get all of the seven emeral's like 2 by clearing the 3D 2 special stages, once you get 50 rings jump and then press jump again in the air. I think you might actually just have to jump in the first one.

you'll become supersonic who's invincible is permanently got the power that you get from the speed choose and make you faster so he's invincible and super fast and has new animations and visuals where rather than run he flies across the ground sort of

like he go-he go-kos he full goos basically yeah and it is it is a dragon ball reference like they're not they're not there's no secret to that that is what it is no and you know it's an and the downside is as you're doing that your rings will tick down

one and per second until once you have none you'll go back to normal again and while it makes you invincible makes the game very easy if you do misjudge it and run out of rings you will then find yourself with zero rings and possibly quite vulnerable

plus you can still be destroyed by falling off the bottom of the screen or being squashed which is quite easy to do in some stages if you're going very quickly so it's not entirely easy mode I guess yeah but it's a start it's an interesting shakeup of gameplay in the old games yeah

the later games didn't really do that because the emeralds were more part of the story like they are in frontiers. But, of course, in frontiers, you sort of get them over and over again, which I think is actually quite an interesting way to do it. I think it's quite a smart way to do it. And it ties the story into these very familiar objects, makes them important without being elusive, I guess. So I think it's quite smart.

It's one of the things that I think the game does quite well. Yeah, because the emeralds are basically baked into the story quite directly. The more emeralds you get, the more of the story advances, uh, quite frequent. when you get an emerald or two or something, you might meet the boss of the stage, you might have a conversation with someone, you might have to perform a daring escape. But yeah, as Sonic gets these emeralds, he gets six on each island. That unlocks access to the Titan, who is the final boss of the island, and each Titan always has the seventh emerald, usually on their head somewhere.

So you have to do this big, complicated, you know, action sequence where you get the seventh Emerald, and then you become Super Sonic, and then, like you say, you fly around, you're basically indestructible, but your rings are eventually slowing down, but each boss battle is sort of different, and these sort of have different sequences you go through, some of them have QTEs, and you have to do some of them are very specific, which I found a little frustrating, but in general, these battles play out completely differently than the rest of the game where you're sort of running around and just sort of doing, you know, little stages. But now, like, you're, you're fighting something that's like the size of a size scraper, and Sonic doesn't care about that because he's, He's supersonic now, so he can, like, catch giant swords, and he can bounce, you know, frisbee's away, and he just, he just straight up flies through one guy, like, just goes in the gut and comes out the other side. Like, he's, he's pretty, he's pretty brutal in this. How of those things? I reckon I could bounce a frisbee away, so now I'm feeling pretty smug about myself. I could go into somebody's guts and come out of the side, I reckon. I don't think I could.

That's beyond me, but I can do the frisbee one. Yeah, I've thought about it for a few seconds and thought about the logistics, and I've been. decided yeah i agree i couldn't do the guts thing uh well i think i could get in but coming out of the side is the real problem yeah well he's so fast i think it's what makes it easy if which i was fast Beyond. Beyond those crucial elements, There are also the seeds and the cocos The seeds Ray's Sonic's attack and defense

The Coco's raise Sonic speed And his ring level This is one thing that I found very confusing So the seeds All you do You go to this little hermit cocoa guy And he's like Oh you got some seeds

Let me unlock that for you And you push a button And a flashlight And you just get stronger With the cocos You have to do this One level at a time And each level

your speed level and your ring level can go up to 99. So that is an incredible amount of time spent in a tiny menu mashing a button like, yes, I want to do this. Yes, I want to do this. Yes, I want to do this. And I just, that to me is a real head scratcher. That one of these upgrade systems is very smooth and easy. And the other one is incredibly time consuming.

There's bits like this all the way through it. The one that I found the most egregious, because I did engage with the action stages. and I didn't stop playing them after having got bored and I was trying to S-rank sort of every stage that I played and the way that that works because you have to be so perfect you can know one second into the level

that you've done it wrong like if you just press the wrong boost at the wrong time or whatever in which case what you want to do is immediately reset the level and that you used to in previous Sonic games that's what you did but in this they have this

menu set up where you have to open the menu and then you have to press a button again to like put a cursor in the menu like to be in the menu having opened it. Yes, I know this. I know this. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Sometimes that's immediate but sometimes it gets a bit fussy even though it plays the button, the jingle to register that you've pressed the button. So you can be like bling, bling. And you have to press it one time or two times. It seems a bit random. And so you can end up going back into the stage by mistake.

It's an odd level, odd menu design. one of the first mods that sprung up for the PC version of Frontiers was the Elder Cocoa Instant Level Up Fix thing Oh, that's good So yeah They also made it so that you could play with the Inagami Coronee DLC Which made me really happy But yeah well that's the whole other thing

Yes he's tried to explain this to me before but I didn't understand it Feetubers Let's talk about this for a second because here in Japan And I guess thanks to moders you can now get it on PC at least outside of Japan, they had a whole pre-order special for the, you know, the adorable, you know, V-tuber, I do, I doogami, I know, I dogum, excuse me, Iugami, who is, I guess, yeah, kind of a dog girl, right? She's kind of a dog girl. She's a dog, dog, dog, dog, God. Yes. And, yeah, so in this special DLC, the sound of collecting a ring, which is, you know,

iconic, it's been there for, you know, 31 years now, is replaced with just noises by her, right? She speaks noises, like, brr. When you collect a ring, I won't do the noises, but when you collect a ring, it's her going, like, ring, ring. When you bounce over the spring, it's her going, pion, like that. Uh-huh, that sounds annoying. It's her setting her signature battle cry, which is, what Iyo. That sounds annoying, but I bet it's incredibly annoying. I bet I'm just old.

I love Coronet. I'm a big fan of Coronet, and I had to turn that off quite quickly. And the cocos have been replaced by little faces? Can you explain that part? Yeah, Listener son. It's her, she drew it. It's her representation of her listeners. It's like a little sideways, Charlie Brown-looking face.

Yes. And it's called Listener's Son. And it's just constantly being abused by her. So that's the Cocoes now. I see. That's the Cocos now. Ah, all right. Well, do we want to talk about the Cocos?

Because at one point, they explode? like two of them like Amy wants to get two of them together because they're deeply in love and then two of them embrace and then there's like a nuclear bomb that was definitely a moment where I was like where is this game going

because that's in the first island yeah that's faded from my memory I remember them I remember them being brought together I don't remember a huge bomb going off well yeah they that's definitely two of cocos that long for each other

and they explode. Other cocos just seem to drop dead. Like when their wishes are fulfilled, they just dropped dead. That's what I remember, yeah. But two of them exploded. And, yeah, I don't know if it's really spoilers because I don't quite understand the nuts and bolts of it myself. But the entire, these islands have been created by, or occupied by ancients. And the ancients created the cocos to sort of contain their memories.

And you see the cocos walking around and they're sort of piloting ancients, much like Krang pilots. Yeah, I don't know if that's it. The thing about what they create to house their memories is the cyberspace place and the, you know, the things you go into to go to action stages. I'm not entirely sure what the cocos are. It's like the ancients have to have a stone to be their heart. And what I was expecting was for there to be a mention of the fact that you won't know this diamond, but in Sonic Adventure 1, chaos, that the, the,

these ancients resemble for the first time. It's the first time they brought this design back. So that was a big, like, ooh, moment. Well, he grew and changed shape, depending on how many chaos emeralds he had in him, much in the way that the ancients have these cocos in them. So they appear to be an alien race that needs a stone in them, and that's them. That determines what and who they'll be or something. But it's never fully explained.

Right. So, yeah, you see, there are scenes where the cocos are inside the ancients, but there are also cocos who are sort of like bounce around and don't, and, you know, they make little chirping sounds that your friends understand, but Sonic. The cocos now aren't in ancients. That's what's changed, yeah. In the present day, they're just these little stone things. But they move around a little bit, and they talk in a way that we don't understand,

but Sonic's friends understand them. Yes. Yeah, they lean, they can't understand what you're saying. I think he's saying, by our merch. I was going to ask, basically they're the voices of children and they're speaking in a language that I don't understand. But of course,

I didn't know whether or not that language was Japanese. But it sounded like it was... I think it was just made up language. I really do. It didn't sound, I mean, I was playing it here in Japan in English, but when the ancient spoke,

it just sounded like, just make believe, you know, what is it? Like the furry language in Starfog. You know, I've already forgotten. That was fairly clear to me when it's the, you know, the full-blown ancients. But with the Cocoes themselves, with their sort of babbling child voice, I wasn't sure if there was any real words in there or not.

If so, I didn't make them out. Yeah, probably not then. So why don't we talk about, because we touched on it briefly with the Titans and these big boss battles, Super Sonic, this game has a lot of combat in it, which I really did not expect, and I'd love for you, for one or both of you to edify me as far as, like, how is combat evolved in Sonic games? Because in this game, it is, it's fairly straightforward and that you're primarily here. getting one button, but the actions of Sonic takes are quite, um, spectacular. Like, he's doing a lot. He's doing a lot of, he's working, he's doing a lot of work. So again, for me as the, you know, let's, you know, if you're by the meme standard, as the Virgin Mario fan, I'm used to games where combat is like, I push a button and maybe

Mario spins around and he knocks away a Gumba or he's, he jumps in their head. Well, quite, yes. Sonic, Sonic the hedgehog, his whole design and reason for being a hedgehog, is that hedgehogs curl into balls. And Sonic can do two things with that. One, he can roll down a hill into someone, which, since I'm talking to someone who will have played a lot more Mario than Sonic, is like in, you know, Mario 3 and World where you slide down a hill and you go drop it up into some goobos.

That's what Sonic's rolling is like. And then his jump, he does a spin attack, and he bops into people, and it's perfect, and it's basically lovely and perfect. And then since then they've decided to put brawl mechanics in, haven't they? Well, this is the first Sonic game. that's had combat, really, isn't it? Like, I mean, are taking aside, like, spin-offs, like Sonic Battle.

Sonic 3D is homing attacks and Sonic Wind and Sonic Heroes, which was quite a good addition, I thought. I was surprised they got rid of that. But all that was, was you do a homing attack with an enemy with a shield, you hit the X button to do Sonic Wind, the shield flies off, then you can do the homing attack on them again. I think there's been some way you have

sort of some punching moves, but they didn't really amount to anything. It came in with, well, no, what I was going to say just then was that it came in with the Weirhog in Unleashed. Yes, that rubbish, yeah. But I don't think it did. It was in heroes, wasn't it? There was, there was a, in heroes, because you're switching characters, you can have punches with knuckles, but it's not, it's, I think it's.

Right, what I've remembered, what came in with heroes, and I objected to this at the time, was health bars on enemies. Oh, God, that was ridiculous, yeah. Well, one of the things that makes Sonic fun is that you've actually just bop off things, right? You just bop off things and now you've exploded a robot, yeah. And you're done with it, its life is finished. You've done with it.

But, yes, but the health bars in heroes and the brawl in brawling sections in Weirhog and so on have led to what we have here, which is that, yeah, Sonic can't just bop someone now. He can't just go into a robot and they explode. So now he has to have quite an extended punch-up with them. I know he's got to draw a circle around them I thought

I quite like that idea and to be honest I didn't dislike the fights in this really part of me objected to them just like well you don't need to do this because you've got Sonic for Hedgehog here but they were fun enough

The main issue I had for the combat wasn't so much with themselves was the fact that it pulled the focus away so often like you'd be going somewhere you'd run past an enemy that would then the game would be like look yeah look there's a ban here

I think you should beat him up And I'm like, I don't want to be him up I'm running over here But now the camera's locked onto this guy He's up in the air And now I've got to do this fun homing attack puzzle To get up there and I don't want to I think we're now, right

We've got to the point where we need to like Describe what this game wants to be And what it's got in it and what its general state is Because this is a game which And everyone said this from the first trailer Oh, they're doing Breath of the Wild And they've sort of Actually, playing the game, it's a bit different than that.

But they've taken a lot of cues from Bethlehild. Actually, what they've done is they've taken a lot of cues from all sorts of different things. And the idea that they've had and the sort of platonic ideal version of that idea, I'm actually really, really on board with. And when it works in this game, I think it's an elegant solution to bringing Sonic games into the modern day. But sometimes they haven't worked hard enough to make it work. And in those moments, the frustration is so. high that it can make you forget you ever liked it. And then I'll go back to liking it again and going

like, oh, what was my problem there? So what it is, is that imagine Breath of the Wild, except instead of just being able to sort of plod about or glide, you're sonic. So you can rock it around really fast, and there are all over the place, springs and grind-rails and things to homing attack, and so on. And these little obstacle courses, you hit a spring on the ground, you get shot up into the air. Now you're on a grind rail. Now you've been flung into the sky. Well, what's that over there? There's a balloon. Homing attack. That takes you to. There's another spring in the air. On to that. Sploying. Now I'm over there. Here's a line of rings. I've got a button that lets me air dash along any line of rings. So now I'm over here. Now I'm in this. Now I'm in this.

And you are spinning and looping and flinging and whirling around in the sky. And that would be great. Because what they are trying to do with that isn't Breath of the Wild. It's Spider-Man. It's the PlayStation Spider-Man game. where you're in the air and you're flying around and you never have to stop. And eventually, when you touch down, there's this feeling like, oh, this, this, like, kind of disappointment. Like, your, your pulse has to go somewhere now because you were just flying around in the air. So when that works, it is good.

The problem is that so often they haven't put enough thought into keeping that flow going. So a lot of the time, you'll be up on one of the time. you'll be up on one of those obstacle courses assuming that's all gone smoothly you're up on one of these obstacle courses and suddenly you're faced with something where you don't know what the next button press is

and the camera won't let you look and find out what the next button press is because it's all locked into cool like the coolest way to show the scene whizzing around this is the problem they've had since the Dreamcast that while the camera's shooting around everywhere you might want to do something you've thought of

and it's very difficult to do that because you're being guided a certain way but aside from even that can you even get up there do you want to be up there is what I'm trying to say because a lot of the time you're going like oh I'll go over there there's something I want over there and suddenly you'll be flung off by a spring

and you go no no I was going that way but it's like three more grind rails and four more springs before Sonic will listen to you again just today I was playing it again because I wanted to be fresh on how I felt about it because I think it's pretty obvious that I don't really like it that much but I'm going to be reasonable about it and I'm going to be truthful about it which is that I really liked it for about two hours I was thinking on the first island I was thinking holy crap this is really fun I'm having enormous fun and it was only when I got to the second island and it was

effectively exactly the same only it was a bit more yellow Yes, I... And I was like, oh, oh, it only has this. This is the only thing I'll be doing in this game, isn't it? I will only be running around big flat areas with nothing in them, really. I don't count some robots as a thing that you can easily be up, you know. Yeah, the fight's in this... All of the content is in the air.

All of the content is on the rails things in the air. Like I was playing earlier and I got into a section where the area I needed to go next was on a mesa that was in the distance, sort of, you know, just ahead of Sonic if you were facing forward. But I couldn't get there because I was locked into 2D. Yep. The game would not let me just face the direction. I mean, there's nothing

stopping me. There's no force field. The game just wouldn't let me do it. And that's how I characterize Sonic Frontiers. It's an open world, but it won't let you do anything. Yeah. Sometimes you'll occasionally get these moments that are, like, you almost breaking out and you're like,

I'm running really fast. I don't think I'm supposed to have here, but I've managed it anyway. And that feels quite good. I mean, when you game starts and you're collecting those hearts and you're like springing around, you're like, oh my God, I'm tidying up the map, I'm doing all this course of, I'm getting all these hearts. But when you realize that getting those things is next to no effort, you don't need to be doing what you're doing.

You don't need to be trying. The game's going to just like basically fart them at you. You're constantly, you'll get to Amy. It's like, I'll reach Amy. By the time you reach Amy, you'll always have everything you need. It's the same with Knuckles, the same. with tails. You never think of finding yourself, like, wanting, because the game is constantly pranging you in neglectables anyway. Yes. And if that doesn't, then I feel sort of like, well,

then what's the point of any of this? Like, what's the focus here? Because running around in this world of what looks to me just like a realistic desert with nothing particularly interesting in it, other than things that are flying in the sky, which thanks to the pop-in aren't normally visible to you're quite near them anyway. Okay. Let me talk about the pop-in. because, and I'm hearing that So all of this stuff we've just been talking about that's all in the sky, there's such egregious pop-in

that you can only see it when you're very near to it and I'm hearing it's in the next-gen version of the game because everything has made to have parity, they all have to be the same and so it all has to be the Switch version basically. And now, what I will say, it's by itself the pop-in wasn't something that bothered me moment to moment,

Maybe because I'm from the past, so it's just part of like my native gaming language, things popping in. But what it does is it makes it perish and difficult to get your bearings and play the game the way you're supposed to. Because if you look up into the sky, right, and you can see a memory token up there. Those are the things you have to collect as talk to tales and progress the story, whoever the character is on this island. You can see one up there so you want it. You can see a line of rings leading up to it, so you'll follow that rings into it. You can see a boost ring that will throw you through those rings and into the memory token. Right? You can see all that stuff. And then you can't see anything beyond that because

of draw distance. So you follow it round to where logically the start of the run ought to be. Yes. And it isn't there because it's more interesting than that. Okay, good. That's good. So now you're looking around going, okay, where is the start of this little obstacle course? And when you find it, the memory token, the line of rings, the boost ring, they're gone now because they're out of draw distance range, even though they're well within what would have been the draw distance in any other 3D game at all. I feel like we've got a stress though because, I mean, it's not that you haven't made it clear, but I think we've really got to nail this home.

We're talking bad, like, pop in here. The kind of thing you don't see anymore. Even in, like, something, like a huge open world game like, Assassin's Creed, something. You don't get this. I haven't seen this. We're not talking about vegetation when we're talking about the actual game that you're supposed to be playing. Like, the platforms you need to be jumping on. You will be doing a string of the stupid zip line to spring to balloon.

And the rail you need to land on, you can't see it until you've done. on the previous move. So you don't know where you're going. It's just, it's almost like QTE. And that's not good. That's not good gameplay. I'm sorry. That's what the whole gameplay is.

Sometimes it can be good. Sometimes when you get into a state and you're like, yes, bang, bang, bang, zip so, zoom, but so often something will go, yeah, but how about this? And you go, okay, well, I've got no way of coping with that. And that is the moment at which, if you ever, thing, if you ever get confused and you're just wrong about what it wants, the penalty for that is so high, comparative to how much information it gave you to be able to make the decision.

So you'll be on, you'll be in a flow state homing into things and zipping around in the air. And then suddenly it'll be like, oh no, this one was, instead of homing attack, this one was, I don't know, you click the left stick in and that makes him shoot along a line of rings or something like that. And not only, and theoretically, the controls are actually better in this game than they are in previous 3D Sonic games. Not they're fantastic. They're really good. Yeah. So, and, customizable from the menu, which is a revelation. Like, it's a PC game level of customization of that particular thing. So a lot of the time, you can actually, if you're falling through the air and you've failed and you've fallen off one of these things, you can often get back on it. If you

can just get in the right, you know, if you can line up with a grind rail that you were on previously or something, you can land on it. You can be right. The problem is that when you start trying to do that, it goes, what? But you're not doing the perfect run that the whole camera was designed for. So the camera is whizzing around everywhere. It's getting in under you. It's going up Sonic's arse. You never know what's happening.

And it can be incredibly difficult. It can be incredibly difficult. So it's always interrupting your flow state with silly biz. Yeah. I feel like creating an open world or what is essentially an open world and then what it's max to me of is again I'm trying not to be super because I can run right now about this game

and I'm trying not to because you don't want that Yes they do It's max of It's it's my It feels like they They went in really confident Yeah

But then they got cold feet That's how it feels to me They went right We're making this huge Totally different new thing Oh Jesus what We need to put some stupid linear shit in here Um

We need to put these grind rails everywhere because otherwise there's nothing to do. We don't know what to put in this world. Oh, I know, I know exactly what happened there. And this is what I'm convinced happened there, is that they went, okay, we've got to make this new game. Breath of the Wild is the thing now. People are making Breath of the Wild clones.

And they are, like Phoenix was a really fun game and stuff. Yeah. This has been happening. Thank you. Thank you for liking the game that I like. Thank you. So they're like, right, we'll do that. But here's the thing.

It's got to be Sonic. You've got to be really fast. and it's got to have Sonic stuff. So what do we do? And what they've done is they've taken all of the stuff that over the last sort of, let's say, about 10 years, you could say 20, Sonic games have been filling up with. The sort of things that we've been getting used to from them,

like homing attack balloons and, you know, using homing in on robots to get across big gaps and that sort of thing and grind rails and all that. And they've gone right, what can we do to make that go into an open world environment? and what's so interesting about it is that the dual result of that is that number one I actually think they've found a very elegant answer to that

is to make all of these that lobster courses but also it's a lot of that stuff is like stuff I didn't think was good anyway and I was looking forward to them iterating away from and instead what they've done is they've kept it and gone well what if it was like this and yeah okay that is much better and I like it now

and let me be clear I also sound negative about this game but having finished it I deliberately worked hard to finish it for this so that I could do this recording so I've finished the game and I miss it I do like when it's working I really like it

I really like that feeling of flinging through the air and just pishish but so often it doesn't an easy way to explain it is when you're on one of those wouldn't it be nice if being hitting the final spring

from one of them wouldn't it be lovely if you could land on the next one and just stay in the air all the time or failing that, when you land on the ground, wouldn't it be lovely if that had now delivered you to somewhere that it's interesting to be or somewhere or the next place you want to be. What you're asking for is a linear sonic stage. That's the problem. Because the thing is, a lot of the time they did do it. There are loads of instances where you'll be flung off an obstacle course and now you're in the

vicinity of the next puzzle. You go, oh, interesting. I'll do that. Like how in Breath of the wild, wherever you look and wherever you go, you'll find something there that's interesting. That's what I'm asking for, really. Yeah, right, right, right. And a lot of the time they do that, but here's the main problem. You talked about the desert level. Yeah. As the game goes on, you can see which bits they polished less.

So the first level, the first level, and like, there are five islands altogether, and the first one and the last sort of two are quite well polished. But the second one is the desert. And yes, as Stuart said, it's just the same stuff as in the first one. But with something that really focuses your eye on the real... It's almost like getting in under the hood and seeing what's really there because the decoration of the first island, your trees and rocks and grass and things, are now gone.

It's just flat sand. So now you can see that these obstacle courses are really very separate pieces to one another, when really it'd be better if they weren't. And then the third island, it just falls apart. Nobody likes the Third Island. It's an absolute mess because that's the one where they go, well, here's an idea. Like, you know the two and a half D stuff that we did some of in Frontiers and some of in generations and some of in colours?

And you know how it's like always the worst bit? Because the jumping suddenly feels like it doesn't work anymore because we designed a character's control method for 3D. And for whatever reason, we're doing 2D bits and it doesn't quite work. Well, what if most of the obstacle courses on Island 3? are locked into 2D like that. And the camera, you can just, you start to be afraid to go near a spring or a boost pad because you know you'll have your camera removed. And if you're trying to get somewhere, the whole process on Island 3 is like,

oh, I'm trying to get over there. It's hard to get over there. I don't know how to do it. But I'll head in that direction and see if I can do it. And then no, sprying, you're off in another direction. And then the camera goes to 2D. So now you don't even have the vague. sense of which direction this 2D represents in terms of the 3D space you were exploring and

trying to go a certain way in. So you're just lost. I've got to chime in. This could be the longest podcast in all of recorded history, by the way. Sorry. If we're complaining about 3D. No, if we can, no, I mean me. If we're complaining about 3D Sonic, like, here's the thing. Okay, I've played all of these games, like, for my sense.

Sonic Adventure 2 which is a game I don't particularly like grinding was the coolest thing ever grinding on rails as a 2D character and not as Tony Hawk was a really really cool thing and now I hate grind rails I don't want to grind on rails anymore

and Sonic Frontiers is grind rails the game like you spend more time grinding on rails than you do running around and grinding on rails is boring it's just literally something you could play over the phone on live and kicking it's rubbish Sorry, Diamond, that's an incredibly obtuse reference to drop on an American podcast.

I apologize for that. But what they're leaning into here, and with the combat as well, to me, as like I said, it feels like they got cold feet because they haven't created interesting challenges that exist in the world. They have gone, okay, well, for this fight, you're in the sky now, and it's just a mini-game, essentially. Like, you're now in a Sumo Arena, and it's another mini-game doing a mechanic that doesn't exist anywhere else. Because we made everything as a minigame. because we couldn't think of a way to integrate our systems into the world.

When you play Breath of the Wild, you get a screen transition when you go into a shrine, but everything you're doing that shrine is built around those five things you can do. Yeah. In this game, it's like, yeah, you can do all this stuff, but none of that actually matters because this is just another mini game. Yeah. Now you're going to play with this crane machine again, and it's rubbish, and there's no challenge. Some of the mini games in this, I'm angry about them.

Yeah? You're angie. No talk me, I'm angry. Oh, if you saw me play it on stream Like, Abby was falling about laughing at how cross I was getting Like, so, because the puzzles in, so we're good, we haven't even described this really You unlock, you unlock, you know, you unlock, and there's not very many of them. It's, you know, it's almost like getting a tower in Assassin's Creed.

Do one puzzle and you get loads of map alonged, right? Yeah, yeah, no, oh my God, no, save it for the end. Tell me when it's the end so I can do my big run, okay, because I'm saving it's the end. You mean the end of the whole thing or me talking about the puzzle? The end of the podcast or the end of this bit because that nails down why this game bothers me. The puzzles that you do are, they can, a lot of them are nothing. They're so simple.

So it's like a square's going to light up, go left or right to go on that. You know, you've got a line of squares, they're going to light up in sequence, go left or right to step up. Yes. Puzzles like that. Some of them are, and I quite like these ones, are, a big grid of squares a load of them

are going to light up you've got to go over them without ever leaving you know without the without your pen leaving the paper you know you have to put one line around them to turn off quite like those

yeah I enjoyed those but then it'll be okay this one and these are these are like bigger mini games that kick off when you talk to a character and you have to like progress the story with

by doing any game mandatory mini games you have to do it yeah and some of them have no business I'm angry that they asked me to do some of them because they've no business being in a Sonic game

they've no business like assaulting me with this game at all I specifically am talking about the mirrors and the laser sorry the laser drawing game Oh yes that bollocks yeah It's ridiculous I think it's in Ireland 1 but like quite a way in They go okay here's the puzzle now And it's like a full on Professor Leighton

I don't play those because I can't do those I can play Sonic games where you just run and jump and suddenly here it's like oh no if you ever want to play Sonic again what you've got to do now is turn all of these laser towers so that the laser draws a certain line we've pre-drawn out

by the way you don't know what shape you're supposed to making it doesn't tell you yeah and they turn one and you turn multiple so you like if you turn that one to the left and this other one will turn as well so you can't like set it up that's right and then go over there

and affect it because that'll turn as well and you have to and it's like I hate it I can't believe that it was allowed in the game and I don't understand why it's not been patched out like it's the end of the game

I had to get Abby to come and do it and the only way that she succeeded in doing it was just by chance like it just... Yeah, the only way to solve that is by arcing around until it works yeah and of course there's people in the chat going like well I did it first time

I don't know what you're worried about They're lying, no the thing is no I believe them because there's two kinds of people who might be saying that. Number one is like, well, this was interesting actually. In my chat, the two people who first said like, why is this problem? We're both professional programmers. So like they're people who have a brain that works really well. They can do thinking puzzles. I can't do. So clever people, that's one sort of people. And then the other one is people who, you just sit down and you press a couple of things and they happen to have been the right one. And he goes to a little learning you won. And I talk to loads of people

who that's what happened to them. So they all. also didn't realize how bad of a puzzle was. I was there for half an hour. And you can watch this. I've done this stream. And I just, I got so mad. And the thing is, there's like... It was funny. Yeah, it was quite funny.

The thing is, there's a few of these throughout the game. There's like two or three of these things where you're like, why am I having to do this? Yes, yes, yes, yes. For me, the ones that drove me crazy, there's one where you have to... Sonic gets launched into the sky. And he's got to basically fall down.

down through this sort of aerial obstacle course. That's one of them. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. And you've got to fall down to reach the other side of this bridge, and then you can open the bridge. But the problem is that Sonic's not falling fast enough for the time limit. Yeah, well, the problem is there's a time limit. There shouldn't be a time limit.

There's no reason for there to be a time limit. If you hold the R trigger, doesn't he fall faster? Yes, he does. Sonic can fall faster by something. But you still have to dodge things. Very realistic. If you take three hits, then you're out and you've to start over. Yeah.

So you've got a timer you've got to deal with. You've got obstacles we've got to deal with. And you've got to go really, really fast while you're falling. And everything's because you're falling down. It's got a weird perspective to it. And there's lots of bombs. And some of the things you bounce off will make you bounce down, but some of them make you bounce up, which means they're bad for you.

And that one, yeah, that one got me livid. I definitely got livid on that one. The most annoyed the game made me, and I've mentioned it a couple of times. And the funny thing is, this isn't particularly difficult. was the Crane game in Act 2 on the second island. And the reason that bothered me so much was because it was a pointless waste of time. You couldn't fail it.

It just takes time. There's no challenge. You're not time to do it. If you miss, you get to do it again. When you mentioned the Crane game, I've been going like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't remember it. What was this?

Well, exactly. You don't remember it because it was just a complete non-entity of a section. And it felt like just busy work. All you do is you, you see. stand on a switch and then you move a crane up and down like a gacha crane claw thing you know you have to pick up balls

that are different colours and drop them in the correct coloured slots no time limit if you miss there's no punishment it's just time wasting rubbish the cross is the game when I buy a Sonic game I don't want to do anything like that ever no exactly you know

you know what you are buying a Sonic game to do and this game's it's like in Resident Evil Thor where you have to do the sliding puzzle isn't it? It's like, what I'm at least that's optional.

The second worst one, after the laser one, was the one where the puzzle is at odds with what the controls of the game are. Right.

Imagine this, listeners. You have to, there's a load of big boxes on a load of platforms and in them are loads of pieces of machinery. And you've got your task

with collecting a certain amount of this stuff and it's loads within a certain time limit and it's short. Okay. So, easy enough so far, you break, you know what to do. I'm going to break these boxes, the bits will come out, I'll hoover them up.

Unfortunately, they don't hoover up, so you have to actually run around them and get them all. And that's perilous at the best at times because of the controls in 3D Sonic. But anyway, so you break these boxes, but actually out of the boxes comes some smaller boxes. Not a problem, because if you press the button that's, you know, your normal, like, homing attack button, say, then what Sonic will do with these boxes is he'll punch them and out will come more bits. and you collect my bits. Okay. Still fine so far.

Let's add a few things. All of this happens on small platforms over lava. Oh, okay. So now I have to be careful because I'm going to fall into the lava. Okay, I'll add something else. Once you've stepped on a small platform, there's about five seconds, maybe less, before it will fall into the lava, taking with it the bits that have come out. So you've got to get those bits quickly once you have homing attacked into the box,

broken the box, and the bits have come out and the platform is starting to fall. But wait, there's more. because I've already described that smaller boxes come out that you press the button to break to get all the bits out. Well, what happens when you press that button? Even if it's not on camera at the time, the game decides, oh, he wanted to homing attack into another box on another platform. So now the first bits are going in the lava

and you are panicking and you're jumping over to get them and you go in the lava and you die and you lose all the bits and there's a timely bit and you've got to get hundreds of these bits and this goes on up into the sky and across. this whole lava ocean. Ah, it's awful! Yeah. Well, we've lost two. You know, I I remember this, yeah, that was, that was, that was, that was, that came before the bridge.

So I think until the bridge, that was the thing I hated the most. And then the bridge is like, oh, I've reached a new level of rage with the bridge falling down the bridge thing. I also had a really big problem with the pinball segment. Yeah. Not because, what do you think? I like pinball. I like to have, I enjoyed playing the pinball thing. thing, but the whole catch is, it's not timed, but you have to score, I think, like five million

points in the pinball thing without running out of pinballs. But because it's a pinball table, there are the two, you know, death slots on the side of the game that if the ball goes down there, you can't do anything and it just falls down. Yeah. You're just not in charge of whether or not you succeed at the pinball game. I watched Dave do that on the stream, and I think you got it on the second attempt, didn't you? Well, yeah, but only because it's like the laser game. I happened to, yeah. Because it's because the thing. is I've heard a lot of people complain about that, and my issue with that is quite simple, to be honest.

It's just not a very interesting pimble table, is it? It's for bumpers, and that's it. Like, why doesn't it have some other stuff? You know, you could fix that. Easily, that issue of falling down the side. You put a ball saver in that switches sides when you switch the flippers. I mean, yeah, it would be kind of a lot easier, but it would be fair. Yes.

Maybe a tilt function? You know, if I shake my controller. Yeah. Something like that. Well, here's a good idea. Just remove it. Just don't have it there. Like, here's the messed up thing about Sonic Frontiers.

Okay, I'm sorry. I'm on it. I'm on it now. No, go. It's a game that would be better with less of crap. Like, just, I'm not saying, like, change it. I'm saying, get rid of it. Like, get rid of this garbage.

No one wants to play this stuff. Nobody is sitting there thinking, playing a Sonic game. They're like, oh, sweet. I'm reflecting lasers off mirrors. I love this. No one said that. Everyone, everyone who goes into that section is thinking, can't wait for this to be over.

Every single human being who played that game hated that. They may not have outwardly hated it, but they didn't want to do it. It wasn't what they were there for. And when they were playing it, they were playing it. Who is making these decisions? Yeah. They should be the one in prison, not using it. This has been going back.

This is what the werehog was. Nobody wanted that. And of course, now there are people who enjoyed it. This is the sonic cycle. You're hearing it happen right now. Well, yeah. Like, that's the cycle. We come for a certain game and then they go,

well, we decided to pad it out. So we just put this other game in. And you're like, well, I don't want it. It's fine. That's the thing that really makes my head swim. I don't understand why they do these things. Like, oh, there's no need. But they do it anyway.

And you know what? I've got to say it. That's why I love them. Because that's why I love them. And the reason why I don't like Sonic Frontiers, man, the reason why Sonic Frontiers makes me sad and it makes me quite sincerely not want to play or like Sonic anymore is while these games were always messed up in some way,

they were always Sonic games, they were always just like, here's Sonic, and here's the thing we've done wrong. Yeah. But it was always so bonkers and so different from everything else on the shelves, always, and it still is, right? Those games, there's nothing like Sonic games, nothing.

But now, it's just Far Cry, isn't it? You go up towers, you make more of the map appear, icons appear on the map, you collect them, the map, they disappear off the map. It's now every other game, basically, ever, but with a bit of Sonic bolted onto it. And Sonic fans around the world are saying, yep, this is the way forward, this is what Sonic should be like from now on. And I'm like, okay, good luck with that. Don't include me in this, because I don't want Sonic to be like everything else. I want it to be like Sonic. That's what I want it to be.

In all its janky, crappy glory, right? What I don't want is far cry for kids plus a bit of Sonic that was reused from previous games anyway. And that makes me sad. Like a legit sad. It makes me sad that this is what it's taken for people to go, oh, a good Sonic game because it's like everything else now. It's an open world collect-a-thon tidying up game now.

Like everything else is. Like forespoken is going to be, oh, it just makes me sad that they've done this. But you know what? A site team, they'll probably throw it all in a big burning bin. Probably. Yeah, you'll never have to worry about this again. It's just a matter of time. But I hope that that comes across as not insane.

Like, you know. I hope that people will hear that and think that is an understandable perspective. And it's happening, the reason it's happening, the reason why we have all of this confusion and now they've tried this and before they tried that, like the werehog, that was the bit they did wrong in that game. But we know why. It was because otherwise it would be 30 minutes long because they had to make big. very long levels that you go through very fast. Like, the reason for all this is that Sonic the Hedgehog works in 2D and not in 3D.

So they have to keep compensating for that fact instead of just making more Sonic Mania games. That was really good. That's what everyone wants, yeah. Now, I've heard Scuttlebutt that the site team weren't particularly happy about that because they didn't like the fact that the most acclaimed Sonic gaming years wasn't really made. By then it was made by a kind of Western team. That is the exact scuttle book that I've heard as well. Yeah. And, you know, I don't think Sonic Mania is like a 10 out of 10,

but I wish, I remember saying at the time, I'm really looking forward to the sequel because, you know, of course there's going to be a sequel. I mean, it's the only Sonic game that's done well in years. And then, of course, no, they don't do it. Because it's Sonic team and they're just Sega. And they're just, you know, they don't know how to manage their most famous thing. Although Yakuz has kind of taken that over now, I think. Sonic is now a distant second.

Yeah. That's it. So let them have that. and give Sonic over to Christian Whitehead and them lot, and everything can be good and fine. Well, he's a character who is specifically designed to work in a specific type of world where he could roll and he could gain momentum and you could be in a ball and you're invincible when you're in a ball. All the classic Sonic games follow that.

And I'm not a Luddite. I like new games. Yeah, I like this game. I like Sonic Adventure. And you know, why I like Sonic Adventure is because it felt the same. Even though it was different, it felt like they'd made this character to exist in this world where you know what? You can kind of break it if you mess around.

You can find your way into place you're not supposed to go, just like the original Sonic games, and the game doesn't punish you for it. And the later Sonic games are so regimented and so linear, even in this open world, that you don't feel like Sonic anymore. There's no freewheeling, you know? Sonic Generation is one of the things that game did well,

is it did kind of let you off the leash sometimes. You could go into areas that felt like you were breaking the game, but it turns out you weren't. They planned for that. You know, this is another point that I wanted to make before we finish about... Five-hour podcast. Sorry, go on. The S-ranked system, right? I hate that. I hate that system.

I don't. I quite enjoy it. And the reason is that I was... There's two. or three levels where I was like, no, I am going to S rank this. And these are the ones that are hard. So you have to really like figure out how to do it. And while you're doing that, as you get better and you restart and you restart and you restart, you start to figure out like, no, it's a fraction faster if I do this. By the end, as you're getting really good at it, you're like, boost, shoot, boom, do you like, you learn to boost and jump and boost and jump and boost and like time this.

So they're always going incredibly blindingly fast. And you're hard. heart rate's going up and you're having an amazing time. There's one level right near the end, like on the last island, where you find out that if you just press the boost and the jump at exactly the right moments and really go wild, you can skip most of the level in this one little twist and jump and flick and it's incredible fun. Yeah. That system has made it necessary to wall speed off behind the highest level of skill in the game. So when you're playing a normal action stage,

until you've practiced a level enough to S-rank it, it is constantly making you feel really slow, by slowing you down with very odd, un-earned feeling things, like just making Sonics jump really slow and wushy and unsatisfying, or putting solid wolves in for you to hit. And then when you finally do nail it and be really fast, you don't do that level again, Because it's finished.

You've perfected it. And those skills don't apply to every level. Like they used to doing things like Sonic 3 and Knuckles where once you were good, you were good. Can I, Diamond, Dave, do you mind if I talk about why I don't like the ranking system, please? Yes. It's okay. Go ahead. Sonic, back in the day, back on the master system and Mega Drive, is a game that broadest possible appeal,

the best thing you can say about Sonic, and it's completely true, is that more or less anyone can play that game. you can play that game if you're a kid you can play that game when you're an adult to a different sort of level of skill you can play that game if you're I'm sorry if this is not the correct terminology but if you are you know disabled you can mostly still play Sonic

because it's one button and a D-pad it's very easy to understand people who are I'm not going to get into that but basically it's very popular and this is not meant to be snikers and this word gets thrown around a lot

It's very popular with autistic people Because if there's any kind of cognitive sort of impairment It's a game that a lot of people can still play Because all you need to know is that you have physics You have one jump, you can roll It's a very simple game When you collect rings, if you take a hit, it doesn't matter

Because you can get more rings and keep going It's an incredibly accessible, easy-to-finish game And that's a good thing There's a reason people latch onto it There's a reason a lot of people like this game And I feel like the modern Sonic games completely forsake that because you can play it like you should want to play a

Sonic game if you take a hit, even if you don't do so well and then the game will just give you a big E, your crap, you're rubbish. When you finish a level, what I want to be told is well done, you finish the level. What I don't want to be told is you suck. Yeah, do better next time. And that's why I don't like ranking systems. I have no problem with them being in, say,

a separate trial mode, which does actually exist in Sonic Adventure 2, where you can retry the levels and try and get a high rank. No problem with that. when I'm just playing through the story I don't want to be told her crap I am all the time I don't like that I feel the same way about things like

Bayonetta constantly being like oh you haven't learned how to do some kind of offset dodge which time combo yet therefore you are crap I don't want to be told that and I don't like Sonic games telling you that because it makes me feel like

that's not what Sonic should be it shouldn't be that the way that they tell you is by it's like it's like someone behind a desk at an office get to rob a stamp out and goes boom because it goes boom and the letter

D comes up in a big thing And a lot of people are going to say that's me saying You know, a lot of people are going to say just get good But that's fair enough People play at high level, I respect that You know, sometimes at Sonic CD back in the day Had a time trial mode where you could keep playing the levels And reduce your best time

And it would save all of them And your total game time will go down and down As you got better and better And as you pass certain thresholds You'd unlock new features that's how you do it. Yeah. You don't go...

In the Mega Drive Sonic games, if you are, quote, unquote, bad at them, you never find out, because you've had such a lovely time anyway. It wasn't until I was quite old, and someone explained, ah, yeah, no, this is how you build up speed here, flip up off that ramp,

and you can get on top of the loop. And they said it in a way, it was in a YouTube video, that was like, and of course, that's what everyone ends up finding out you can do. I was like, I never did, but I never knew I was bad at it, so I didn't mind.

Well, there are two, no, this is this, there needs to be a whole separate episode, which is just called Stu absolutely bollocks on about Sonic for four hours, because I could do it, and you all know I could. But there are two schools that come from this, which is the people who think Sonic is too easy, and the people who think Sonic is too hard, and they're both wrong. Yeah. And they're both mental. I just, it is the most overly analyzed.

I'm not saying this is a problem. There's nothing wrong with analysis. There is no series more analytical. that is less suited to being ripped apart than the Sonic series because it is a game made for all ages that anyone can play, nothing else really matters in my opinion. And the more the games move away from that, the more they're no longer about Sonic for me. They're not what it should be. So I don't really want to play a game where Sonic is constantly forced to get locked into these linear sort of pointless additional areas to gather items to give

to people where you can constantly get thrown off course by the camera wrenching away from you. You lose control of the camera and it will pull it away. You know, I did a section earlier in Sonic Frontiers where I was making my way towards an island across a little platform bit in midair in one of the open worlds. And I realized

oh, there was a higher route back there that I missed. I'm going to go and check it out. So I jumped backwards. I turned the camera around, jump back. When I landed on the platform, the camera just flipped again. It was like, what are you doing? Stop doing that. Yeah. Sonic games should not be tempted. me to stop doing things.

Yeah. That's it. That's it. That's all I've got to say on that. I'm very sorry for rambling for so long. I agree with everything you've said there, and I would add only one thing, which is that this has been my favourite 3D Sonic game in as long as I can remember. And what does that tell you about the rest of them? This is the thing.

This game makes me super salty. I liked it for about two hours, like I said. Then I stopped liking it, and now I quite impassionately dislike it. The problem is it's full. fine, and it would be completely dishonest of me to say that it wasn't, but I've done so anyway, so spin on that. Like Sonic, like a Sonic Spin, like a Sonic Spin attack. Yeah, it's fine, but for God's sake, people are saying it's like the best game ever.

Because they've come to expect so little over the years. Yes. It's a remarkable surprise when one of the most famous game developer teams in the world makes a game you can actually play because it isn't broken. What's going on over there? But this is the thing that I realized relatively recently that really threw off my whole Sonic

being a fan of Sonic thing, which is there are people who are fully grown adults who were born when the Sonic Mega Drive games didn't, it wasn't even out. Like they're not their frame of reference. So people born when Sonic Heroes is their first Sonic game and they love it to death. I know people.

Like that. Those people and me, when I say, no, actually, when these games came out, they were quite rightly criticized. They were considered bad. Yeah. Because they are bad. Because their frame of reference is completely different to mine. And it took me quite a while to realize that and realize, hang on a minute, we don't have anything in common. Yeah. The only thing we have in common is we like Sonic, but everything else is completely out of whack. The norms I'd come to understand from when I was younger, which is, Sonic, the Omega Drive game is a king. The Saturn era was a washout. The Dreamcast is good but flawed. To them, and I'm not saying they're wrong, because it's just their perspective. It's just like, I grew up with this era, therefore it's amazing. That's, you know, they're completely entitled to think that, but I can't relate to that. So I've just come out and said, like, you know what? My friend of preference for Sonic Frontiers is completely different to anyone who wasn't around when the Mega Drive was around. Yeah. They're not looking at Sonic Frontiers and going, what the hell? has happened here. They're looking at Sonic Frontiers and going, this is an incredible iteration on Sonic Heroes. Yeah, they've finally pulled it tight. Well, I'll tell you why. This is

something I've been thinking about, is that young Sonic fans, who are about the age you're talking about there, and Sega and so on, think that a Sonic game is the word for any game that has Sonic the Hedgehog as the main playable character, whereas we think that a Sonic game is a kind of game in the way that a Tetris game is a kind of game. Now imagine if, for whatever reason, in, you know, in some time in the 90s, there'd been a Tetris game that, for reasons nobody can understand, it was just what they happened to do that time, was an over-the-shoulder third-person platform 3D game where you're a Tetris block running around, right? I'd play it. And that was the basis of the next 25 years of Tetris games. They were always, okay, obviously Tetris has, Tetris, obviously.

at its core, is about a little man running around. You have to have a third-person perspective. You've got to collect stamps. That's what he does. Tetris collects stamps. That's what it always has to be. He has to be. Philatilus now, yeah.

Philatris. We're there going, no, no, no. Tetris is about the blocks going down and then you build them up. And the kids and the people who make the games are going, what are you on about? Why would that be what a Tetris game is about? Why do you want that? And we're going, shut up, you idiots.

Why are you like this? This is the thing, Dave, we have become the, we are mocked. We are the figures of fun now. Yes. Because I remember, I did this article for Nintendo Life about Sonic, a history of of Sonic, and I did it very tongue-in-cheek and like little slags off of all the games that everyone knows are rubbish. Yeah.

Like Sonic Heroes, which is crap. And I got the biggest, the second biggest roasting I've ever had on Twitter over. that. And I got that whole kind of, oh, here we go again with Sonic had a rough transition into 3D. That's like a meme for them now. They'll say that as if like, oh yeah, everyone says it. Sonic had a rough transition in 3D. There it is. Here's the thing. You weren't there. I was there and I saw that transition into 3D and let me tell you, folks, it was

rough. The question, Sonic had a rough transition. Not the question, the statement. Sonic had a rough transition into 3D. Yes, I've seen that. That's a meme now. Everyone has made fun of it. Here's the thing, what is not being addressed by the fun being made of that or by the people saying it, is that he didn't need to be in 3D ever. The only reason it happened is because in 1990, I want to say 6, somebody invented a kind of chip that was slightly different, not even better. It was just a particular, it was what they came up with that year. And so it just so happened that that year, Nintendo brought out a console and they were like, we're doing, it does this, it does 3D. and everyone went, oh, we've all got to do that then, and they all did.

I don't know why that's still what we adhere to now. That was just a chance kind of technology that we had that year. It's the equivalent of if it was like, oh, Sonic had a rough transition into putting your eyes on some goggles and looking it in stereoscopic 3D and everything's red and black. It didn't, not everything has to be on the, whatever that was called, that Nintendo made and everyone agreed was bad, though. Good, virtual effects.

No. virtual boy or whatever it was. It's just that that happened to be a bit of technology people played with that year on that year's console generation. And it's never been the thing again. There's never been a console generation where it's like, oh, it's more 3D

now. No, we've done that. We've done 3D and we've done other stuff and we've tried other things and now we live in a world where everyone is perfectly comfortable playing all kinds of games, including 2D ones, including pixel 8 ones, ones that look like from the 8-bit area and 16-bit era all of these and 3D ones and everything.

And yet this one company Are the only people still going Well, I guess we've got to make A game that competes with Mario 64 No, you haven't! Make a solid game! I'm loving this. This is some deep ass sonic shit here.

I'm loving this. We're going to have a Sonic winging episode, aren't we? See, now, Diamond, this is where you made an error is you put both me and David on the episode And now it's about... I invited you on here and I wanted... I wanted Sonic Passion, and you're giving me Sonic Passion. This is perfect.

Oh, that we can give. Oh, Sonic Passion is a website. You don't want to go there. You don't want to go there. But I think, I think we're reaching an end point here because I feel like we are, no, no, no, I think, I think this is a natural endpoint. We've talked a lot about history. We've talked about, you've both given your opinions about what, what might have, what might have gone wrong, what is going wrong, what could happen. So I just, I'd like you just to wrap up here with a few thoughts about, for someone like me, I played Sonic the Hedgehog, the original Sonic the Hedgehog, I played Sonic Frontiers. I have positive memories about both these games. I enjoy both these games.

I'd like each of you to suggest something to me that I should consider trying now to see if I want to play more Sonic games. Sure. Well, first of all, if I can just say real quick, and I want to make this. because I've been very negative about Sonic Frontiers and I want to make it very clear to the listeners and I know this is a bit of a cop-out thing to say if you love Sonic Frontiers me being a crotchety old

Fogie does not take away from that like you like what you like that's just how life is I don't want to come across If I say something insane like everyone who likes this game is wrong obviously I don't actually think that that is hyperbole I need to make that clear We're doing jokes we like to be crotchety for fun

and I enjoyed the game and if you loved it we love you yeah i mean the obvious recommendation is you need to play sonic two and you need to play sonic three and knuckles like now and the fact you haven't done it yet disgust me like but once you've done that i mean honestly there's no harm in just playing sonic adventure which is an old i mean sonic adventure has charm charm out the out the ass it's a charming charming game ever made uh you'll find it's broken and dodgy but also incredibly fun so i'd really highly recommend sonic adventure uh it's a beautiful lovely

encapsulation of Sonic and I love that game and I always will love that game and I'll always go back to it. And then once you've done Sonic 3 and Knuckles, Sonic 2 and Sonic Adventure, that's it. You, a Sonic CD obviously and then you've played all of them that are worth playing so you can move on with your life and get into some other franchise like I don't know, Monster Hunter or something. Pretty much. Yeah, my answer is almost exactly the same. You've got to play, yeah, noodle about with Sonic 2. Really go deep on Sonic 3 and Knuckles. And, I mean, what about mania, Stuart? What would you say about that?

Oh, yeah, Sonic Mania. Play Sonic, Mania, play Sonic CD because Sonic City is a fascinating artifact of brilliance that a lot of people don't appreciate. You don't want to be one of those people that doesn't like Sonic CDA, do you? No, you don't. No one's to be like that. But I think you will be one if you play it too soon. I think you should play like Sonic 3 and Knuckles and Mania first, and you'd be like, yeah, these are fun. And then Sonic CD is like for when you want like a harder version of that, something you have to think about.

Play two, then play two. then play Three and Knuckles, which is the lock-on version of both games instantly, because the Sonic and Lockeles cartridge was a lock-on cartridge you could plug another cartridge into. I remember the ads. I'm sorry, yeah, I do not mean to contest to you. It's okay. But play those games, Two and Three and Knuckles, because those are pinnacle. They are Peak Sonic.

Like, Sonic 3-N-N-N-Kleges is the best Sonic game, and anyone who disagrees is wrong. That's just a fact. No, it is. And it's just one of the best games that have been made. It's a masterpiece of level design, of visuals, sound, and storytelling. without using any dialogue whatsoever, or stopping you from doing anything. It's a masterpiece. Sonic 3N, I mean, I am planning on doing episodes

that are deep dives into each individual Sonic game on the Mega Drive. And the 3Nuckles episode is just going to be essentially me drooling all over the microphone because of how much I love that game. I assume you're going to position the episodes. It plugs into another episode that you've already recorded. Absolutely, that's right. Yeah. I'm assuming going to do that very much so. So, yeah, Sonic 2, Sonic 3N, Knuckles.

Sonic Adventure is important because you need that context but Sonic Mania is very good too The only issue with Sonic Mania is it's a bit too good like it's a bit too fan like adjacent So yeah

There's a lot of stuff in there which is just kind of like Oh I'm going to put this reference in And all the people who see this are going to go Wow that guy knows about that thing That's so cool And sometimes it detracts from the focus a little bit But it is an excellent game That's true yeah

And then if you find yourself missing the specific flavour of 3D stuff from this game. Give generations ago. That was quite good. That's a good game too, yeah. Generations is very good. Again, very much embedded in bold encased within the past though.

Well, yeah, I mean, nothing but it's all flashbacks to previous games. But the thing is, we've just told you to play the best ones of those games, so you'll get those bits. And you know, if you dig it, play whatever you like, but those for me are the biggies. Two, three and knuckles, adventure, generations.

Honestly, nothing else, in my opinion, is worth playing. Doesn't mean they're terrible. Just means there's no reason to make time for them. No, if you're not a Sonic fan who's already... God, I forgot CD again. And so CD is my favorite, but CD is one of those curate egg kind of games. It's a bit confusing and weird, but it's great. Yeah.

I just wanted to point out, when Frontiers hit and it had a lot of buzz around it, I forget who it was, but someone brought my attention to this trilogy of games you can get on Steam called Spark, the Electric Jester. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's very interesting to me because the first one is a 2D game, and the second one, third game are basically 3D games. So it's sort of like a mini time capsule of, like, sonic ideas.

Because you're playing a character that runs very fast. But, of course, there's a lot of different things, like the character transforms, it's almost like a Mario thing. Have you, have either of you played the electric jester games, or? Yeah, I've played all three of them. I haven't played two or three enough to really give. a comment, I would say I liked them, but I

found myself thinking, if this was Tudia, I'd be having more fun. Spike Electric Jester is a cool Sonic clone kind of game. The problem with it, in my opinion, is without the physics kind of thing going on, or not much of it, the levels do feel a bit similar.

So when you play it, I recommend playing it maybe a level or two at a time and then taking a break. But also, the game seems long. I've had it for a long time, We've been playing it. I probably jump into it every couple of months or so and do like A-level, and it's still not finished. It's long, long-ass game, and I kind of feel like it's too long. Okay.

If you want to play a Sonic clone, Freedom Planet's very good. If you play it with the story turned off, that's the one I would recommend the most, Freedom Planet, which was originally actually a Sonic Rom hack back in its earliest stages. Freedom Planet's a game. Yes, I've heard of that one. I might even own it. I don't even, I had to look that one up. Actually, I might have it. The second one just came out a few months ago, and I haven't finished it yet, but it's just, this is better.

It's a great game. All right, then, why don't we wrap things up here? I feel like we've all, I especially have learned a lot. I hope our listeners have learned something today. I hope we've learned to be more accepting, and we've learned to expand our minds and consider games can be good and bad at the same time, and mistakes aren't necessarily deal breaking. tickers, but some mistakes can be really rage-inducing. And, you know? Anyone who was, yeah, anyone who was formally interested in reading my book is now just like,

forget that. This goes out of his mind. Why, Stuart, what book is that? Oh, I've got a book coming out next year called All Games Are Good. It's coming out on the press run. I don't know exactly when yet. I'm thinking maybe summer. And it's full of games writing that I've done.

There is quite a lot of sonic stuff in it along the lines of what's been talked about today. But I'm less like a man rambling trying to make a, point sound crazy without sounding crazy like i did today don't forget stu this podcast will go out in 2023 so when not next when people listen to this it'll be this year there yes you you need to understand listeners that uh sonic is a thing that gets me go in big time like i i really love that series so i've got a lot to say about it as you now know so you've got to understand whenever this subject comes up i'm going to go they're little bit bonkers uh yes so read my book when it comes out. You can read my stuff on Retronauts.com. And you should also read my comic

MaryHell. There's nothing to do with Sonic. But the people who have said to me that this characters are like Sonic characters. I don't get that. It's at Maryhillcomic.com. Please read it. Thanks. All right. Dave, how about you? Well, you can find me every two weeks at STCTP. Zone. At the time of recording is our website. But, oh, just look for it and you'll find it. Sonic, the comic, the podcast. Me and the friend Chris are, well, you've already heard what I'm like about Sonic and the way, the lens through which I talk about it on this Sonic podcast every two weeks is by examining another issue every episode of the British Sonic comics that came out in the 90s. Now, we're doing this for two reasons. One, you know, listen to me, I'm an English

man, right? So that's the one I read. But two, it's the only version of Sonic that really has ever come out, like an adaptation of Sonic, where the starting point is the games rather than just a load of nonsense they made up. So over in America, they had a comic that was just a load of nonsense they made up that happened to have Sonic in it.

Same with different cartoons. But this was all based on the actual Sonic games. So you're going to see him, you know, with monitors and rings and all of that stuff. And then it develops his own story as it goes on. And it's got accurate adaptations of stuff

like Sonic 3 and knuckles in it, and it's all very, very good and exciting. And we review them on it each time. But also, we use it as an opportunity to essentially try and put you in that time. And you will feel what it was like to be a child in those days reacting to Sonic the Hedgehog when it was a brand new thing. And if that means putting, you know, TV adverts that we all know and can sing along with, things like that, chatting on about what Pogs and Go-Go's and Mr. Blobby were, then that is what we will do. That is Sonic the Comic, the podcast, and you'll find it by looking. You can also find me roundabout the place, says Demon Tomato Dave, on Twitter and

Mastodon and YouTube, where I have some videos about games that I think you might quite like. I did an episode of that with Dave as a guest, and there is a bit where we extensively review an advert for Yugget. I just want to make it clear, this is a very, very entertaining podcast, and you should listen to it. Excellent I've realised I'm on Retronaut so listeners to this will like a couple of videos

I've made one of them's called Dave's first game and it's where I'd be like this is what games were like on the ZDX spectrum in the 80s when that felt

new and high tech not looked at as like oh look how old that is but like here's why this was exciting and new and flashy

you'll like that Dave's first game at Demon Tomato Dave on YouTube and another video called Learning to Settle which is about old games as well Yeah, you'll like that stuff. Off you go. You'll find that.

Wonderful. Well, we here at Retronauts are a fan-supported podcast, and we welcome your support. Thank you so much for joining us. You can catch a show. Again, Retronauts is available on every podcast service. You can go to our website, Retronauts.com. You can, but the real, the best way is to do that support bit, where I said, patreon.com slash Retronauts for three dollars a month. You get all our episodes one week early. and it's a slightly higher quality audio file but for $5 a month $2 more than the number I just said you get two bonus episodes

every month those are exclusives you get weekly exclusives from me I write them down and then I read them out loud so you get both of those the same thing same price you also Discord we have Discord access a lot of people in there are very friendly and talking about games they like

new games they like old games they like I'm sure I'm sure when this episode comes out, there will be some sonic opinions flying around that discord, and I look forward to hearing him. As for me personally, my name is Diamond Fight. You can find me around the internet using my handle Fight Club, F-E-I-T, that's my last name, C-L-U-B, that is a regular English word. So, as we wrap things up here, I invite everyone to do a big the cat impression. Go ahead, Dave. Oh, I can't remember. what he sound froggy i can't i can't remember what he sounds like it's a bit like that isn't it okay still

i didn't do the fishing very much hi sonic have you heard of pizza gate i've become a member of q and i that's an accurate one good night hey asterix i mean sonny these romans are crazy You know, I'm going to be able to be. You know, I'm going to be able to be.