The Year of Sonic is upon us! run for your lives!

[Kyanbu The Legend]

http://www.sonicstadium.org/2014/02/...comment-216809

The text on that image reads as follows…

2014 will mark a renaissance for Sonic the Hedgehog. Please join us to be the first to hear about SEGA’s exclusive announcements and plans for the Sonic brand”
“2014 is the Year of Sonic,” “Renaissance of the brand” and the image of the Sonic Boom promotional image. For those who don’t know, in it’s most basic term, renaissance means ‘rebirth.’ Now you understand why I said remain calm…

If you are doubting the authenticity of this image, to back it up, Segas entire community team, the head of marketing and several producers at Sega have recently made public that they are in New York City on a business trip. Given the huge numbers of staff in New York right now, and their roles, this is a potentially huge announcement which will have an impact over Sonic as a brand.

I can only begin to speculate what might be getting shown, but following so soon after hedgehog day which saw no announcements or even a Blog entry from Sega, the timing makes this more significant for Sonic fans.

As always, we will keep you upto date with news as and when we get it.

Thanks to SSMB member SweeCrew for the tip & screen cap.

This will either...

A. Be the breath of freash air sonic needed with a new good game to follow.

or

B. The most god awful thing Sega has ever done.

You know Sega... I'm actually in the camp of players that just wants you to drop the blue blur entirely. He had a good run, but it's clear you have no idea what your doing anymore. Sonic Generations and colors was a sign of hope... but then Lost World happened... Ehh maybe it's time to just accept that the brand will never be what it once was. Time to find his successor. And maybe focus on old brands that have potential. Like a new Jet Set game or Shenmue 3 or hell even Vector-man and virtual-On (especially Virtual-On).

Either way, it's looking like Crash all over again. -_- This is not a good year for old Sonic fans like myself.


Also good god Sega, WHAT DID YOU DO TO KNUCKLES! ;_; (you'll see what I mean in the link above)

[phil_]

Originally Posted by Kyanbu The Legend

And maybe focus on old brands that have potential. Like a new Jet Set game or Shenmue 3 or hell even Vector-man and virtual-On (especially Virtual-On).

Vector-man doesn't really have a place anymore, given that we live in a post-Halo world. The transforming is a thing, yes, but that's just a small gimmick to keep him afloat in the most over-saturated genre on the market for the past ten years.

Now, virtual-On, if they could figure out a way to put it on tablets, that could make cash. Make it so you have to wait for your robot to repair after fighting, or spend money to repair it immediately, and Sega stays a company for another fiscal quarter.

[Flarecobra]

So we just ended the "Year of Luigi", and now this...

Sorry if I don't get excited.

[Bum Bill Bee]

Ohhhhh, yes, I had heard about this like 2 or 3 months ago. I thought thye were just launching some new cartoon series?

Oh day-mn, it was back in October when I first heard it!

Well anyway Kyanbu, yes my initial reaction to the new Knuckles was identical to yours, but I'm pretty open minded and receptive when I want to be, and I say if Mario can keep active for so long on mostly party games then Sonic can still exist through bunches of hit or miss expiriments.

[Bells]

Remember the ''fairy tails project'' that gave us Arabian nights sonic and King Arthurs Sonic and the proceeded to the Colors-Generations-Unleashed trifecta of ''meh'' ?

So... what i think this is, is Sega picking a bunch of darts and shooting them anywhere to see what sticks. Specially now that Nintendo is going mobile and Mario seems to be in a lower point of a curve that still hangs miles up high above Sonic's head...

[Doc ock rokc]

Yeah I'll just hold my opinions for when it comes out.

I will say this however Sonic has lost all his charm on me. Now i don't mind some innovation every once and a while but to push sonic back up to the top you'll need a game above the quality of those around. Possibly harking back to the "classical" aspects that popularized sonic along side cutting out all the "Fuzzy friends" that keep contaminating all the games.

I don't know what to do to make sonic right but I know damn well Sega is fighting an up hill battle to win it's fans back.

[Bells]

There, you get the idea... cue in the ''Guile go Fast'' memes!

Ladies and gentlemen, the new sonic game and franchise reboot... exclusive to WiiU and 3DS

because that's not an announced death sentence....

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

I just noticed that sonic and tails' shoes are all taped up. Perhaps if the franchise wasn't so pants-on-head stupid now they could afford proper shoes.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

So far Amy isn't completely useless and the gameplay is going in a good direction. It all comes down to the execution. And rather or not they'll mess up like they did with Lost World.


What I'm saying is, it's not the train wreak I feared it be in concept. now it comes down to controls, level design, and music. And we already know Egg head's gonna be pretty damn fugly... but I can live with that. Also apparently this new designed sonic is similar to the riders Sonic. In that he's not replacing modern sonic. Just a tie in game for the CG cartoon and it's universe.

[synkr0nized]

The artwork in the announcement seemed to suggest Boom, the game and television series whose trailers were revealed today, so I just merged the two threads.

Fortunately y'all posted in them in such a way the conversation paths didn't interrupt each other.


I don't know what this means for Sonic fans. A game+show release suggests that Sega is quite serious about this, but I can't help but feel the time for video game cartoons has long passed.