Among video games, it’s hard to find a franchise more controversial than Sonic the Hedgehog. People often talk about the poor quality of the games in the series and the good first games on SEGA GENESIS. But, as practice shows, few people have played subsequent games about the hedgehog and judge by reviews of bloggers or by the evaluation of Sonic Mania or Sonic Generations against the background of other games. The following is funny. Part of the fanbase criticizes Sonic Lost World, one of the later games in the series, for cloning Mario, but does not see the same in Sonic Colors. And I asked myself a question. Why is one of them praised and the other scolded?? But that’s not the only thing that worries me. I want to talk about Sonic Team’s mistakes and understand why the developers made them.

Before we start about Mario. I completed all the main games in the series, from Super Mario Bros. before Super Mario Odyssey. And in the analysis I will refer to it. But first, about the place of a plumber in the industry. Mario is the most popular platformer ever released. What makes him like this? First of all, the history of the series. In the eighties, quality and gameplay made Super Mario Bros. mega hit. But it’s not just the success of the first part. Castlevania, Rock Man were also hits and appeared at the same time as him, but they did not become as popular. It’s also about the people and the company that owns the series. Nintendo not only protected its mascot all these years, but to this day maintains the level of quality set then. Even the weakest game in the series is made without serious technical or design problems. In addition to quality, Mario games are easy to learn and full of design solutions. And Nintendo is playing on this when promoting the plumber. All this translates into high sales in the genre. For example, sales of two parts of Super Mario Galaxy 12 and 6 million copies. And Super Mario Odyssey – 15 million. Compared to Sonic, which sells an average of 2-3 million or 5 million copies, these are very high figures.

That’s why many developers look to Mario when creating their platformer. Even later representatives of the genre: Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro and others took the plumber’s gameplay as a basis. They differ from the “parent” in several design solutions. For examples, look at Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. Although the Aussie Fox is influenced by Mario, Sonic and Dunky Kong, his base is very close to 2D Mario. Naughty Dog’s brick blocks and springs have been replaced with boxes, mushrooms with a Voodoo mask, and the levels are just as linear. Only in some levels the camera is from the side, in others from the back of the bandicoot. Spyro the Dragon is an example of games based on Super Mario 64. Insomniac Games replaced levels with open areas. The player does not go to point B from point A, but explores the world around him and collects items to open new areas. Such games, in my opinion, are more interesting than ordinary 2D platformers. Each item is a spatial puzzle, which the developers have thought out according to the abilities of their character.

I would say the main differences between Crash and Spyro and Mario are a different pace of games, a greater focus on mini-games with each new part and additional levels. Spyro has flying levels, and Crash has mount levels. I would also add to Crash the borrowing of the series development model. Bandicoot spin-offs, Crash Team Racing and Crash Bash, copy Mario Kart and Mario Party. Crash Team Racing took the foundation of Mario Kart and made a new and interesting game with additional mechanics. SEGA tried to do the same thing at one time. Sonic Shuffle, Sonic R, Sonic and SEGA All-Stars and Sonic Drift came from Mario spin-offs. However, SEGA did not implement the ideas at the same level as Crash. Sonic Drift simplified Mario Kart for the portable console SEGA GAME GEAR. In Sonic R, the developers from Traveler’s Tales complicated the tracks with unnecessary elements and implemented little content. And Sonic Shuffle’s mini-games turned out to be unclear and complicated compared to Mario Party. Sonic Shuffle surprised me the most. This game was made by the same company that made Mario Party. SEGA made Sonic and SEGA All-Stars, but this game is for fans of SEGA games, not Sonic.

Fans will also remember Sonic Riders, which deserves special mention. The game moves far away from Mario Kart and shows its own vision of a racing game, unlike Crash. When I look at the critics’ ratings, I get the feeling that the game was overly panned. Among the complaints, I agree with weak training, sometimes poor course design and occasional control problems. But not with graphics and controls in general. Sonic Riders has a higher barrier to entry than other racing games. I didn’t find any serious flaws in it. If they asked me to rate it, I would give it 7-8 points. But not the 5-6 that critics awarded her. I can only explain this rating by the fact that the game is not Mario Kart, where certain rules for quality were formed, but they didn’t take a long time to figure it out and gave it an average rating. The same situation happened with Kirby Air Ride. The game was criticized for being too simple and given average ratings. The players’ assessments in this case are much closer to the real ones, in my opinion.

But let’s go back to Sonic and Mario. If you look, Mario’s roots are visible even in Sonic himself. I’m not just talking about rings that resemble Mario coins. Look at the gameplay of Rouge and Knuckles from the Sonic Adventure duology. Playing as them is most similar to 3D Mario. The gameplay is based on finding items to advance through the game. Before the start of the level, the game places three objects that the player searches for speed. The player is helped in his search by a locator and clues scattered throughout the location.

The supporting mechanics work differently in each Sonic Adventure. In the first part, the locator shows the distance between Knuckles and all objects on the level, and the hints directly show where to go. Because of this, the search took a couple of minutes, and the echidna’s story ended in 20-40 minutes. In the second part, Sonic Team made the search more difficult. The locator shows one item at a time, and text tips describe the item’s position. For each item, the player can take three clues. The locations themselves have become larger and are tied to unique mechanics. At the Aquantic Mine level, the echidna changes the water level and opens access to different parts of the location. In Security Hall, Rouge turns on the entrances to the military storage cells for hacking them. At each level, Sonic Team left small visual details that can be used to find the item from the clues. These gameplay changes made the levels more interesting and challenging.

Changes to hidden items have received huge criticism over the years. I often read on forums that the developers are stretching the game through Knuckles and Rouge and it takes longer to play through them than other characters. And players blame the new locator and tips. If you look closely at the game, Sonic Team made all the changes to the ranking system. To evaluate the player, the game looks at how he found each item and at the end gives a score based on the points received. And for every hint and lost minute, the number of points for the item decreases.

But despite all the restrictions, the changes do not in any way prevent the player from completing the level quickly and getting a high rank. For example, Knuckles’ Death Chamber. This is Eggman’s pyramid with three multi-colored sections connected by narrow corridors. Sonic Team left a map of the level in each room so that the player understands what is where. For experience, I completed Death Chamber several times and deliberately took all the clues, even if I understood where the item was. The average time it took me to complete each attempt was 4-5 minutes, which is normal by the standards of the game. And I was awarded several B ranks and a couple of times A rank. From all the passages, I received almost half of the points for evaluation during. Sonic Adventure 2 is about the speed and reaction of the player, not the number of hints or anything else. If the player gets past the hints, they can destroy enemies to make up for lost points. The main thing is to complete the level as quickly as possible.

If there’s one thing we criticize hidden object levels for, it’s Mad Space. The level is divided into 6 sections: the lower one, three planets with their own laws of physics and two upper layers. Sonic Team ensured fast movement between sections, but made a number of design mistakes. Due to different physics and camera control on some planets changes. This prevents the player from collecting the item. The developers also delved into the core of the game and made the hints more complex. They are written backwards and lie to the player. Because of this, the player first looks for an item where it is not there. Only with the last hint will the player understand that something is wrong with the level. Therefore, the first playthrough, due to physics and tips, takes most players 20-40 minutes. Mad Space is one of the most interesting levels in the game. But Sonic Team made a number of mistakes in it, which is why it became the worst level for players.

I analyzed the gameplay of https://ausclubcasino.co.uk/ Knuckles and Rouge in detail to show how it actually works, what they did right, wrong, and why, despite all the shortcomings, they did it well. Does this make Sonic Adventure 2 a bad game?? I think not. Sonic Team took an idea similar to Mario, thought it through and made a new and unusual gameplay through it.

And using the example of finding items from Sonic Adventure, Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot, I want to show that taking or sharing similar ideas with Mario is not a bad sign. After all, the main thing is not where the developers got the idea, but how they use it. So let’s go back to Sonic Colors and Sonic Lost World and see what problems these games actually have.

And I’ll start with Sonic Colors. For the reader to understand my complaints about the game, let’s look at the 2D Mario level design. Mario has several types of levels that alternate with each other, haunted houses, castles, underwater levels. Each of them has its own characteristics. And they’re all made straight. Unlike Sonic’s maze acts, Mario’s levels do not have branching paths or complex level design. They have secrets, but their task is not to shorten the passage of the level, but to give Mario extra coins or life.

Sonic Team uses this straightforward approach to creating levels in Sonic Colors. Let’s look at the fourth act of Tropical Resort. This is a straight level without forks, but with a couple of secrets. In the level, a hedgehog is chased by a flying can. Mario fans will quickly recognize her as Lakita from Super Mario. Lakitu is a koopa turtle on a cloud. She chases Mario around the level, scatters spiky-shelled turtles, and encourages the player not to stay in one place for too long. In later games, if the level design allows it, Mario can steal the cloud. This is how the plumber discovers new secrets or flies through a difficult part of the level. But why is this enemy needed in Sonic Colors?? “Lakitu” does not reveal secrets and does not encourage you to complete the level faster. Instead of enemies, the jar throws spiked balls around the level that will disappear after landing. If it was set for careful passage, then there are even more questions. Unlike Mario, Sonic has almost unlimited health due to his rings. In games, hedgehogs are killed not by collisions with enemies, but by traps and abysses in the levels. There is another option that in this way the developers encourage the player to save more rings for rank. But the game, as I will demonstrate later, calculates rank using a different criterion.

Let’s look at the fifth act of Sweet Mountain. I’ll omit the beginning of the level since it’s a short 3D segment with a bonus at the beginning. The developers took almost all of these segments from Sonic Unleashed, and they rarely offer new routes to complete the level. So Act 5 is formally a 2D level. At the “beginning” of the level, the player sees a blue wisp on the screen if it is open. Before the next checkpoint, wisp is used in several places and, according to the logic of the games in the series, these are forks. But their passage takes longer than the player’s usual route. As an experiment, I went through the fifth act at speed and through places for wisps. My fastest playthrough took me less than a minute and a half and the game gave me a “C” rank for it. In these playthroughs I sped up some wisps. When I used the Wisps for their intended purpose, it took longer to complete, but I received an “A” rank. Wisp spots are not shortcuts, but segments for collecting points. And for them the game gives more points than for the bonus to time or rings. Therefore, in the previous example, “lakitu” does not work. Why play carefully if the game evaluates not time, but how many points you got on wisps?

Now let’s compare Sonic Colors with the gameplay of Sonic and Shadow from the Sonic Adventure duology. At first glance, in the first Sonic Adventure the developers made the levels linear and without forks. But let’s look at the Twinkle Park level. After the car race, the game takes Sonic on a roller coaster. At the end of the path, an attentive player will notice a small platform. Through it the player will move to another part of the level and reduce the passage time. Further on the level leaves another detour through the roof of the amusement park castle. Using such shortcuts in the first Sonic Adventure, the player skips difficult parts of the level and completes it faster. But due to the curve of the camera, players will not always notice them.

In the second part, the developers did not make such large omissions, but made small workarounds and accelerating elements. Let’s look at City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2. Correct jumping from springboards and ladders, sliding along rails speeds up the passage of levels, makes it more beautiful and gives the player extra points. And this approach to creating levels comes from classic games. It can be easily seen in Chemical Plants from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Angel Island from Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Reaction and speed determine how the player progresses through the game, along a fast and safe path or along a long path full of traps. It’s clear from the level design alone that Sonic Colors deviates greatly from Sonic’s ideas.

What about Wisps then?? Maybe they’re bringing something new to the series?? What is this anyway?? Wisps are little aliens. Eggman has taken over their home worlds and is using the babies to fuel his amusement park. Each type of wisp gives Sonic temporary upgrades, like Mario’s costumes from 3D games. For example, pink wisps turn a hedgehog into a sharp ball that rolls along the ceiling and walls. And turquoise ones turn the hedgehog into a beam of energy. These two types of wisps are the most useful when passing the game at speed. They help the player skip long climbs in levels or through mirrors and wires to reflect the hedgehog to a short path. White wisps are also useful. They provide energy for the dash, mechanics from Sonic Rush.

But as with level design, some of the wisps are reminiscent of Mario mechanics. Said blue wisp works as switches and POW block in plumber games. In Sonic Colors levels the player encounters blue rings. While Wisp is in effect, Sonic freezes in the air for a second and plops down on the ground. After landing, blue rings become blocks and vice versa. The switch in Mario works on the same principle. It turns brick blocks into coins and coins into brick blocks. The difference between a wisp and a switch is only the ability to change the state of the blue rings while the wisp is active.

Another Mario-like Wisp turns Sonic into a huge dog. She devours everything in the level and works faster with each item she eats. This reminds me of the Mega Mushroom from New Super Mario. Under the Mega Mushroom, Mario turns into a giant and destroys all objects in the level upon impact. And, as with the blue wisp, there are few places in the game where this wisp is needed in the passage. Most dog segments are designed to collect secrets and points.

And with such borrowing, I can’t call Sonic Colors a bad game. This is a good game. But it’s good not because of Sonic, but because of other people’s decisions, which Sonic Team almost didn’t change. If it were not for elements from Sonic Unleashed, some of the levels where the developers retained the basis of the hedgehog, and small details, Sonic Colors could be renamed Super Mario Colors. In a 2010 interview with IGN, Takashi Iizuka, series producer and head of Sonic Team, admitted that the game was inspired by Nintendo games and to showcase Sonic to the Mario audience. And, as I wrote earlier, there is nothing wrong with borrowing other ideas, but it must be done thoughtfully and wisely. In Sonic Colors Sonic Team almost lost the line between Mario and Sonic. If a developer takes something from another game, he must think about how to fit it into the gameplay of his series. This is what they did when creating Sonic Colors for Nintendo DS. In the DS version, Dimps studio kept Sonic’s ideas, integrated wisps into his gameplay and didn’t break anything. With less content, Sonic Colors for DS remains Sonic. Even though the game replaced the acrobatics from Sonic Rush with wisps, it still turned out to be a good game. And if no one criticized the older Sonic Colors for copying Mario, then why don’t fans like Sonic Lost World?

I found part of the answer in Sonic Unleashed. The game was released three years before Colors and is considered one of the most controversial games in the series. Sonic Unleashed was praised for bringing Sonic Rush gameplay to 3D, but was criticized for God of War’s were-hedgehog gameplay.

The basis of the Kratos games Sonic Team was transferred without problems. The developers thought through Sonic’s combo moves and controls, but failed with the level design. Sonic Team wanted to keep the platforming roots of the game as a werehedgehog and added many of the acrobatics and platforming segments from the first Kratos game. In God of War, acrobatics, platforming and puzzles give the player a break before battles and dilute the gameplay. But due to Kratos’ harsh controls, the platforming there is awkward and creates more problems than combat. Therefore, in the second and third parts it was reduced to a minimum. In Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Team gave platforming more time than combat.

Let’s take a look at the Skyscaper Scamper level. In two places, Sonic crosses between the roofs of skyscrapers on thin boards. These segments take up the most time from players and are small in size. Sonic Team did not give the player any room for error and covered the boards with spikes. If Sonic makes the wrong move, he will fall off the platform. The boards are collapsing in places. This makes segments even more difficult. But, even if the player completes the level perfectly, it will take him 15 minutes to complete. And a maximum of 5 minutes are devoted to battles from this time. Compared to the 5-10 minute levels of regular Sonic, this creates a contrast that I described using the example of Mad Space.

There are many other bad or controversial decisions in Sonic Unleashed. Controls for an ordinary hedgehog are harsh, clumsy and ill-conceived. The dash and homing attack are on the same button, causing Sonic to waste his dash energy in the air or fly off the level if there is no enemy nearby. In early 3D games, the homing attack works by pressing the jump button again. This is more logical, because the ability is tied to the jump and fans of the series are accustomed to its implementation this way. And in this case it does not overlap with other hedgehog skills.

The opening of new levels was done like in Mario games. In the story, Sonic travels the world with a mysterious animal, whom the hedgehog named Chip. The chip unlocks new levels for Sonic if the player has collected enough medals. Due to the slow gameplay, medals are easy to collect for the werewolf, but in the regular hedgehog levels they are placed on short paths, which requires good reflexes from the player.

For all its shortcomings, Sonic Unleashed is in many ways superior to the next games in the series. Level design for an ordinary hedgehog, the epic scope of the game, bosses – Sonic Team did all this at a higher level than in subsequent games in the series. But a number of unsuccessful or controversial decisions do not allow the player to fully enjoy everything. Therefore, Sonic Colors and the Sonic Generations that came out after it were met much better. They took what the developers did with Sonic Unleashed, tweaked the controls and replaced the inconsistent gameplay with other mechanics.

But Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations do not develop the series in any way. 3D Sonic’s gameplay in Sonic Unleashed has reached its limit in the eyes of Sonic Team. Classic Sonic from Generation, the werewolf from Unleashed and partially the Wisps from Colors do not complement Sonic’s ideas, but replace them or displace them. With level designs and wisps, the dash in Sonic Colors becomes unnecessary. In Sonic Unleashed, part of the gameplay is devoted to the gameplay of the “other” Sonic. Classic Sonic in Sonic Generations is just for nostalgia.

Readers may object to me. After all, it’s the same in Sonic Adventure. There is a part of the fanbase that believes that the gameplay of other characters is crowding out Sonic’s gameplay and that’s why Sonic Adventure is a bad game. According to their logic, Super Mario 64 is the worst Mario game. Because all that remained from the original Mario was the design of the enemies and Mario. Unlike other platformers, Sonic has a different approach to level design and content. If you transfer the ideas of the first games purely into 3D, huge labyrinth levels, then it will take too many resources and effort. And the introduction of different gameplay with similar ideas brings something new to the series and saves development effort.

Hidden objects, hedgehog levels and other gameplay from Sonic Adventure demonstrate this. Unlike the werewolf, wisps and classic Sonic, Sonic Team reworked the ideas of other games and created something new based on them. In Sonic Adventure, the developers added on top of Sonic the ideas of a shooter, stealth games, platformers for collecting items, racing maps, RPGs like Pokemon and a fishing simulator. Some of these ideas fit well because Sonic Team thought about what to take and change so that it would work within Sonic or work in general. But even so, Sonic Adventure has problems. The duology has an awkward camera that sometimes doesn’t understand how to use it. And in the first part, at least two gameplays of Sonic Team were not completed. But even with all the shortcomings, the Sonic Adventure duology demonstrates something interesting and original.

The huge difference between Sonic Adventure and today’s games shows that Sonic Team now can’t build on the dash gameplay or ideas they took from third party developers or used for nostalgia. And Sonic Lost World reinforces this opinion most strongly.

In the new game, Sonic Team has “removed” the dash and brought back Spin Dash from classic games. But Spin Dash works strangely in Sonic Lost World. In older games, Spin Dash only gives a boost to the hedgehog. In classic games, Sonic gained speed not only due to level design, but due to the interaction of design with the physics of the game. In Sonic Lost World, Sonic travels a few meters and gets to his feet, and the physics and level design in the game are different from other hedgehog games. Because of this, for a long time I did not understand why Spin Dash was needed until I looked at the playthroughs of other players. After pressing and holding the Spin Dash button again, the ability lasts indefinitely. It turns out that Sonic Team disguised the dash as another ability.