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Remember the Sonic Storybook games? The spinoff series dropped just as soon as it was created?

Kalmakov

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The Sonic Storybook series began in 2007 with "Sonic and the Secret Rings," and promptly concluded with "Sonic and the Black Knight" in 2009

sonicstorybook.png

The games both put Sonic in two of the world's most famous stories, The 1001 Arabian Nights and King Arthur respectively. The series was meant to kickstart a number of games that intended to do the same thing with several different stories throughout history. However, this plan never came to light as both games were unsuccessful.

Given that it's been a decade since Black Knight, I don't think we're gonna be seeing a return anytime soon. However, had the series continued, where would it go? Sonic and the Journey to the West? Sonic and the Divine Comedy? Sonic and the Call of Cthulhu? Sonic and the Lord of the Flies?
 
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Ogodei

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Secret Rings was moderately successful, it was Black Knight's poor performance that killed things stone dead.
 
Android Sophia

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Sonic and the Secret Rings is the poster child for how one mechanic (The "skills" system) can absolutely ruin an entire game.
 
Lant_War

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Both games bombed critically and the Sonic Team is allergic to criticism.
 
Rhete

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I thought Secret Rings was fine. Never played Black Knight after the awful reception. The Wii got Sonic Colors pretty soon afterwards anyways
 
SmokedSalmon

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I only played Secret Rings, didn't care for it too much though. Darkspine Sonic was cool.

This is actually where I tapped out for a super long time with Sonic until very recently.

I think I'll try out Black Knight one day, just to know.
 
KillstealWolf

KillstealWolf

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I dunno what's up with Secret Rings Soundtrack. It's not that good.

Black Knight though has one banger of a soundtrack and an amazing final boss theme though.

 
Unknownlight

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I think that Black Knight had my favorite story out of all the Sonic games. In fact, I remember when the Game Grumps played the game they were really disappointed once when a cutscene ended because right when they were getting into the story, they had to go back to playing the terrible game.
 
ThatMeanScene

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I played Secret Rings one evening and never touched it again. I never bothered to play Black Knight because of how bad Secret Rings was. Good riddance.
 
louisacommie

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Oct 25, 2017
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I like black knight

normal gameplay sonic with the gimmick of the story and levels being based on literature. would be good

only problem is we get a normal sonic game once evrey 4 years now
and not once a year like last decade

no more b team for 3d sonic
 
SmokedSalmon

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louisacommie said:
I like black knight

normal gameplay sonic with the gimmick of the story and levels being based on literature. would be good

only problem is we get a normal sonic game once evrey 4 years now
and not once a year like last decade

no more b team for 3d sonic
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I kind of miss when we were getting tons of Sonic games. I really liked how Advanced 1, 2, Battle, and 3 felt like a little story arc, or how the Rush games had its ulternate dimension.
 
Vidiot

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Oct 27, 2017
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I will admit the tone of the story of the story book games was much better than anything we've got since then. Sonic's been written annoying since Colors. He has a ton of lame dad jokes and is way too goody two shoes.

Gameplay was trash though.
 
Htown

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Sophia said:
Sonic and the Secret Rings is the poster child for how one mechanic (The "skills" system) can absolutely ruin an entire game.
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agreed

Secret Rings was eventually fun if you stuck with it, but you had to unlock decent controls

no real reason to go back to it now though
 
Android Sophia

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Htown said:
agreed

Secret Rings was eventually fun if you stuck with it, but you had to unlock decent controls

no real reason to go back to it now though
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The concept in theory (Sonic always on rails) is solid. But you can't design a fundamentally tight controlled game when literally dozens of skills exist for the purpose of making Sonic control poorly.
 
Etrian Darkness

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They were some hot trash. Though I barely remember Secret Rings, but I remember Black Knight way too vividly than that game deserves.
 
Hero of Legend

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Oct 26, 2017
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Massive missed opportunity to keep it alive on Wii U and Switch. Sonic Colors made huge sense, same with Sonic Lost World (but not in the way it turned out) with both being Nintendo-exclusive mainline Sonic games. Still, the Storybook series allowed for something out of the box to be done with Sonic and maybe even the other characters had they continued with more Nintendo-exclusives.

I always wanted a Tails-themed pilot game, like Tails vs the Red Baron or something or 'nother. And a Knuckles-themed Indiana Jones treasure hunting "thrill of the adventure" kind of game.

Sega's been slacking regarding Switch-exclusive Sonic games bar Tokyo 2020 but that doesn't count since it's part Mario game, so it'd happen regardless. Dimps has also been missing since Lost World 3DS which is a huge shame. They were huge with the Advance trilogy and at least Rush 1. How they never made a 3DS successor series I will never know.

Hopefully Sonic Team use the engine from Tokyo 2020 (some speculate it is still Hedgehog Engine 2) and just go ham on a ground-up Switch-exclusive Sonic game to really (and SMARTLY) take advantage of the hardware.
 
Future Gazer

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Hero of Legend said:
Massive missed opportunity to keep it alive on Wii U and Switch. Sonic Colors made huge sense, same with Sonic Lost World (but not in the way it turned out) with both being Nintendo-exclusive mainline Sonic games. Still, the Storybook series allowed for something out of the box to be done with Sonic and maybe even the other characters had they continued with more Nintendo-exclusives.

I always wanted a Tails-themed pilot game, like Tails vs the Red Baron or something or 'nother. And a Knuckles-themed Indiana Jones treasure hunting "thrill of the adventure" kind of game.

Sega's been slacking regarding Switch-exclusive Sonic games bar Tokyo 2020 but that doesn't count since it's part Mario game, so it'd happen regardless. Dimps has also been missing since Lost World 3DS which is a huge shame. They were huge with the Advance trilogy and at least Rush 1. How they never made a 3DS successor series I will never know.

Hopefully Sonic Team use the engine from Tokyo 2020 (some speculate it is still Hedgehog Engine 2) and just go ham on a ground-up Switch-exclusive Sonic game to really (and SMARTLY) take advantage of the hardware.
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Console exclusivity is the last thing the series needs right now. Why would you even hope for that?
 
Hero of Legend

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Future Gazer said:
Console exclusivity is the last thing the series needs right now. Why would you even hope for that?
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For one I would think Sega actually focusing on one hardware would actually allow them to zero in and focus on making the game better than just making 4 versions and splitting budget, resources, and employees potentially. Hell Iizuka said as such when developing NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams for Wii. Plus Switch is by far the largest market for Sonic (goes without saying), and I don't think Switch getting poor downports of PS4 games (ala Forces) is a good idea.

Not to mention Nintendo would likely happily help out with marketing. Nintendo won't do much otherwise unless it's a big AAA port ala Overwatch, and even then it wouldn't be as certain.
 
Joe

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Oct 25, 2017
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Man, I just remembered the one where he turned into a werewolf, but apparently there were two other garbage Sonic games around the same time? Crazy.
 
Berordn

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I had fun going back to a completed Secret Rings file to do replay some stuff, but it's a dreadful experience until you get the "controls suck less" skills. Black Knight is somehow hotter garbage even without that or motion controls, so it's probably good that they ditched the formula.
Joe said:
Man, I just remembered the one where he turned into a werewolf, but apparently there were two other garbage Sonic games around the same time? Crazy.
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just to make it weirder:
the werewolf game was the good one.
 
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