Sonic the Hedgehog 4

[A Black Falcon]

Yes, that "Project Needlemouse" thing was revealed not long ago. It's episodic and download-only, for PSN, XBLA, WiiWare, and one unrevealed platform. The official site has the short reveal trailer:

http://www.sega.com/sonic4/us/index.html

Just a couple seconds of gameplay there, but it looks okay... definitely could be good. We'll see how long it is, though, considering that it's episodic, and how well it stands up to the Genesis games... they've made some attempts at 2d Sonic since then, such as Sonic Advance, Sonic Rush, etc, but while they've often been okay, they don't quite match the originals. What kind of levels will these games have, design-wise? We'll see...

Sega does have an interesting problem with Sonic games. On the one hand, many young kids like the modern Sonic games and don't mind the friends or that the games are mostly mediocre now. On the other hand, the longtime fans mostly hate the direction that the series has gone in, but considering that kids make up a big chunk of the Sonic audience, would aiming a game just at the hardcore make any sense? Probably not. This is obviously the compromise then, something trying to reach back to the originals, but clearly not on with the same kind of budget as the major Sonic titles. And while there have been a bunch of handheld Sonic games on handhelds over the past decade, there haven't been any on major consoles unless you count that Wii game... which is okay I guess, haven't played it. But anyway, check out the site, the game looks like it could be good.

[Weltall]

The 3D Sonic games have been unremittingly awful.

This may break a long trend of suck.

[Dark Jaguar]

I have Sonic 4. I call it Sonic Advance and it's on my Gameboy Advance.

[lazyfatbum]

There's a lot of ixed feelings on it. I think people were expecting 2.5-D. But i'm definitely interested. The episodic content is kinda weird to me but it all depends on how much it costs. If I can buy the original Sonic for 8 bucks, the episodes of the new Sonic should be 5 dollars or in that range. Figure the full game is 12 episodes, at 5 bucks for every 4 the game will be 15 bucks in total. That sounds right to me. If there's 16 episodes, then a 20 dollar game also fits.

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, I think a lot of it depends on if the game's actually fun, obviously, and on how much you get in each episode... will it be a full game? A few levels? What? How much will it cost, and how much gameplay will you get from that? I mean, the old Sonic games weren't that long, really, so they couldn't just take like the first quarter of a 16-bit Sonic game and ship that, you'd get two levels and it'd be over in ten minutes... :)

[Geno]

I'm interested. Though the Genesis games are obviously the best, the GBA games weren't bad. At least this promises to be more like the 2D games and not like the shitty 3D games (though I didn't think the Dreamcast ones were all that bad), and since it's episodic, you can pay a small amount for a sample of the game if you're afraid it might blow. But yeah, I'll definitely give it a look.

[Great Rumbler]

I'm cautiously optimistic, but I haven't seen anything from Sega in the past decade that suggests they have what it takes to recapture of the magic of the Genesis Sonics.

We shall see, but I fully expect to be mildly disapointed.

[A Black Falcon]

It's a Sonic game, so yeah, "mildly disappointed" is probably a given. The only question is, will it be worse than that or not... hopefully not. :)

[Great Rumbler]

I meant "at least mildly disappointed", by the way.

[A Black Falcon]

Ah. Then yes.

[Geno]

I wouldn't expect perfection from a WiiWare game anyhow. That's not to say that WiiWare games are necessarily bad, but that seems to be where less important games go now. But hey, one of my favorite fanservice games came from WiiWare, so I'm still open to future titles. My expectation is for StH4 to be a mildly fun yet mediocre game.

[A Black Falcon]

Some new shots, of the 360 version I believe...

[Great Rumbler]

Looks pretty nice in still shots, but it'll be in motion where this game fails or succeeds.

[Geno]

Yeah, it looks pretty cool. We shall see.