Sonic Mania 2 is obvious so I don't need to go into why that should exist.
The only question is whether you stick with the theme of old remixed and new, or you go fully new.
However the other crime is the lack of a Sonic Maker game.
Sonic is the original rom hack wunderkind.
Christ Sega did it themselves with Knuckles in Sonic 2 back in the day.
Given how Sonic works it could be a truly fantastic project.
Laying out a Sonic course is a mix of exploration, risk/reward, playful use of physics, skill testing and speedrun optimisation.
Green Hill Zone act 1 from Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
Green Hill zone Act 1 from Sonic Mania (2017)
Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2 from Sonic & Knuckles (1994)
"How do you even play Sonic?"
The perfect question for a Sonic maker game.
The obvious answer is get from left to right without losing 3 lives.
And that's a perfectly fine gameplay goal.
But we could also do more:
There's so many variables you could add in.
Boss design:
All the classic Dr. Robotnic eggmobile variations, with multi stage elements, pinch mode etc
Control the hit points.
As it's modular allow a ton of customisation and logic. The devs would need to create a lot of attachments but also allow the use of stage elements and most importantly allow interactions (again customisable) to allow the community to inovate.
Tile sets:
Of course all the classics from the Mega Drive.
Include a Pallet editors.
What would be really sick would be a full tile editor so stage aesthics could be designed from scratch for those who would want to put in the enormous time to make something half decent.
And there is so much more you can do.
You might be thinking oh this is just a shitty rip off of Mario Maker.
There's very little footage but Sega had a Sonic level creator on PlaySega.co.uk a decade ago.
And it featured a brand new tile set.
And of course if you input Up+C Down+C Left+C Right+C Start+C you got the original level editor, debug mode.
The only question is whether you stick with the theme of old remixed and new, or you go fully new.
However the other crime is the lack of a Sonic Maker game.
Sonic is the original rom hack wunderkind.
Christ Sega did it themselves with Knuckles in Sonic 2 back in the day.
Given how Sonic works it could be a truly fantastic project.
Laying out a Sonic course is a mix of exploration, risk/reward, playful use of physics, skill testing and speedrun optimisation.
Green Hill Zone act 1 from Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
Green Hill zone Act 1 from Sonic Mania (2017)
Mushroom Hill Zone Act 2 from Sonic & Knuckles (1994)
"How do you even play Sonic?"
The perfect question for a Sonic maker game.
The obvious answer is get from left to right without losing 3 lives.
And that's a perfectly fine gameplay goal.
But we could also do more:
- Focus on Speed with time trial leaderboards.
- Collect all Rings in a stage.
- Or both? Now that's a real challenge
- Kill all the enemies?
- Hit all the special stages
- Find all the item boxes.
- 2 player competition mode?
- No rings mode? Touching a ring is instant death
There's so many variables you could add in.
Boss design:
All the classic Dr. Robotnic eggmobile variations, with multi stage elements, pinch mode etc
Control the hit points.
As it's modular allow a ton of customisation and logic. The devs would need to create a lot of attachments but also allow the use of stage elements and most importantly allow interactions (again customisable) to allow the community to inovate.
Tile sets:
Of course all the classics from the Mega Drive.
Include a Pallet editors.
What would be really sick would be a full tile editor so stage aesthics could be designed from scratch for those who would want to put in the enormous time to make something half decent.
And there is so much more you can do.
You might be thinking oh this is just a shitty rip off of Mario Maker.
There's very little footage but Sega had a Sonic level creator on PlaySega.co.uk a decade ago.
And it featured a brand new tile set.
And of course if you input Up+C Down+C Left+C Right+C Start+C you got the original level editor, debug mode.
