Rodea The Sky Soldier Is Complete, We’re Waiting For Kadokawa To Publish It

Again, you’re right. Any date they give us would likely be pushed back, but I’d at least like some kind of rough estimate.

Personally, I don’t mind if it wouldn’t be set in stone — I’d just like something to let us know about when to start keeping a lookout, y’know? I just really don’t want to miss this game.

c_c

I believe it worked this time! :’D
Although, I’m going to be heading off msn for the night (and offline in general soon). ^u^;
At first I thought we were always just on at different times, but maybe it was something with trillian or msn. Msn does act up quite a lot. 

Yea, there’s a massive divide in Sonic’s fanbase. I’m hoping that Generations can fix that, it being the best of both worlds and all. Generations’ 2D segments are even better than Sonic 4 was, so any fan of the 2D games that gives it a chance should enjoy it. In theory.

The thing about Mario, is that the divide isn’t as great. Counting main titles, you have about…3 or 4 Mario games before he moved to 3D. So he made the leap sooner than Sonic and, many would argue, more successfully.

I feel like SA was a successful leap to 3D but, as I said elsewhere, it doesn’t really hold up the same anymore. Super Mario 64 is as great today as it was then. Any fan of Super Mario 64 should like Galaxy, and any fan that hates the 3D ones…well, that just sucks for them. Then again, Nintendo actually caters to both sides — the Galaxy (and whatever succeeds it) games are for the 3D fans and the New Super Mario Bros. games are for the 2D fans.

With Sonic, Sega focuses on one at a time generally, so at any point they’re leaving some part of the fanbase out. So yea, you’re right about the divide with Sonic being more extreme. Most of the fans of the 2D games at least gave SA a try, but they won’t touch the new ones. A lot of them also hated the fact that his design changed with Adventure, so I guess the divide was a result of several things.

I can’t speak for everyone else, but I don’t hold spin-offs against a franchise. I treat the Rivals, Riders, etc. games as their own little sub-series.

Now taken on their own, and I prefer to judge a game by its own merits above all else, none of the modern Sonic titles are particularly terrible — they, sans Colors, just aren’t particularly great either. That said, in the context of the larger series, none reach the bars set by the original 3 games (save for some of those handheld titles) or the Adventure games. But that’s just my individual opinion, of course.

I don’t count the originals as perfect myself, not by a longshot, but I don’t think there’s any denying that they set a quality standard. To this day, the original 3 are the easiest games to return to IMO. I love Adventure but, after buying its PSN re-release, I’ve found that it’s controls just don’t hold up as well as I remember. There’s just a level of polish that few games in the series have matched since and that makes it tough to stack newer titles against them.

But, again, this is just one fan’s opinion here and I certainly don’t think I can speak for everyone.

Yea, the spin-offs are definitely for worse with this series lol.

I’ll have to take your word on Secret Rings as I haven’t played it, but I’d agree with your assessment of Unleashed. I certainly look at it as Colors’ prototype. Colors took the rights of Unleashed, polished them, and then evolved on them.

I also didn’t mention SA2 as I haven’t played it in some…6 or 7-odd years. Hopefully, they’ll re-release that too. So I guess, I’ll amend my statement to say that 2 and 3 are the easiest to return to. I wouldn’t necessarily say 1 is hard to return to, but I just never do it since I like 2 and 3 more lol. I’m right there with you on Colors in 10 years too. It really is among the best of the modern games, if not among the best of the whole series.

I enjoy discussing the series myself, so I try to make it a point to actually have something to say about it beyond “I like this one, I hate that one”. I find the people who just whine about the series without saying anything else annoying, so I’m definitely not about to let myself fall in with them lol.

I agree with Colors being their Galaxy as well. Easily the definitive Sonic title of this console generation. With Generations being them showing that they can do the old style as well as the new, I’m looking forward to seeing where they go from there. Do they return to the modern style? Do they try to evolve upon the classic style? Give us more hybrids of the 2 (styles, not necessarily the actual physical representation of each)? Sega is certainly back on the right path with Sonic, so I’m hoping they can stay on it.

@mikanko:disqus  Lol, well, Secret Rings and Black Knight are the only two I’ve played at all. Well, and the racing games. I thought all four were fun, though one of the racing games and Secret Rings significantly better than the other two. But I hear some bad stuff about Heroes and Rivals, and I really don’t doubt any of it. But I won’t say anything certain until I’ve had a little gameplay of them myself. To me though, it isn’t that there isn’t so much personal care, but just the aim is changed. Of course, aiming too far gets you too far from the mark, and so how much personal care doesn’t matter if you overshoot anyway.

That’s a good point though. I think in general, most stuff tended to be more consistent in the earlier days of gaming because it was a smaller time and field. I do appreciate how it’s grown, and I think experimentation is good, and it isn’t actually bad to have bad titles, but the good are kind of intermittent. I don’t think it’s as bad as we actually feel at times, but with all the negativity around the franchise, it’s hard to feel otherwise. When I really looked at the numbers of titles and compared things, I realize it isn’t that bad off. But it’s easy to miss or gloss over that.

Klonoa is a touchy matter though. I really liked DtP best, because it did have a better story to it, depth and was a fantastic game. I do like some of the more recent stuff (the portable titles compared to Lunatea’s Veil), but I’m not sure I care much for the direction they’ve been trying to take Klonoa. I think that’s actually a franchise where picking up a little more of the nostalgia wouldn’t be bad. Heck, a Generations type thing might work for them too. 

But I do enjoy what the team has been doing recently. I thought the way mechanics and everything worked in Secret Rings was a lot of fun, and Unleashed’s scenery was beautiful to me and had fun things going on. And Colors is just all around fantastic on both points while being as ridiculous, quirky and imaginative yet simple as the classic stuff. And if they’re going back to some of the classic stuff, I think in the next game, it might be easier for them to channel that superb quality and meet it with some of the fantastic elements they’ve developed lately. I think Sega has the potential to surpass the classic stuff, but it’ll no doubt take a lot of work and innovation.

@mikanko:disqus  Actually, to me, I think after Adventure and Adventure 2 would probably be about where Sonic became a bit of a marketing commodity. But at the same time, I feel that they did heavily market him and for obvious reasons, but in general, they probably started marketing aggressively anyway. And Sonic being the main guy of their company, he just caught most of it (and it’s easy to look like he’s more marketing than quality).

I think at that time, it’s more that they had to “fight harder”. I mean, really, if you were challenging Mario, you had to be serious business and mean it. I think that’s a huge part of where the sincerity comes from. And of course, they probably were quite spirited since they had a cool, fun and new idea and had fun with it themselves.

To me, Sonic Team since then has just fluctuated. And it’s not that they’re less sincere, but just that they wanted to experiment more. “What else can we do with Sonic? Where can we take him? How can we expand? What new things can we try?” It was probably about trying to have a fun game and reach more people than focusing on what fun things people already enjoyed. I think Colors is the same, but a very focused version. They realize they can try these new things, but in a better way (ie, the setting).

Well, I would say more, but I literally have to run out the door and head off, so I guess I’ll just edit this or comment again. x’D

Hm…well, I’ve got a few friends with Wiis (can that even be plural? lol) so I’ll see if one of them has Secret Rings so I can check it out.

I remember SA2 being easy to get into when I originally had it for DC and Gamecube, but I’d like to see how it holds up for me now. If nothing else, I remember City Escape being really fun.

The main reason I can return to the first game is because Green Hill Zone’s music is still so awesome. I don’t return to it but, if I did, that would definitely be why. I liked Sonic 2 and 3′s level design better though. Sonic & Knuckles was awesome too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAnS19pnxfA&feature=related So. Much. Good. Music. Really, the whole series has had pretty great music with few exceptions.

Anyhow, I’d imagine that Sega will do their best to stick to this streak they’re on. Sonic 4, Colors and now Generations — they all are fun (well, Generations’ demo is) and it looks like they’re getting successively better with each, so I’d imagine that they’ll be able to top Colors more than once. Rough patches are fine, too — so long as they aren’t TOO rough.

Right now (if Generations, the re-release of Sonic CD, and the impending Sonic 4 Ep. 2 are anything to judge by), they’re intent upon keeping our faith. They’re righting the issues people had with the modern games by looking back to the classics and simultaneously continuing to evolve. So Sonic is on the right track through at least 2012 and, even if they fall again after that, I think I’d be okay with that — this is the longest streak of genuinely good games he’s had since Advance – Rush Adventure (’02-’07, though they were all portable titles).

The GC version is pretty much the same exact game. It came out a bit under a year after the original version. The biggest change had to do with Chaos, so it wasn’t anything major.

That’s pretty much how I feel about 1-3. Great music throughout, but 2 and 3′s level design was a cut above the original.

Thankfully, Unleashed was the last rough patch and even that was only half bad. So if the rough patches are Unleashed next to Colors, so to speak, then I’d be perfectly fine with that.

Well u know that fanboys that complain so much ussually does not even try the game. They just complain, complain and complain while we who enjoy the game just stay cool which is why the bad thing is always heard more.