#i played two sonic games this month

[ixcaliber]

April

This month I’m going to try not to lose my mind a little bit as I write this post. Fingers crossed.

1. The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog

The best kind of april fools joke is one where there is an actual thing of substance to it and it stands on its own as something that could just exist outside of the idea that it’s a funny april fools joke.

The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog is a free visual novel with platformer elements, and it’s a lot of fun. Even as someone who doesn’t know every sonic character, doesn’t get some little background references and cameos this is a fun game with a fun narrative and satisfying payoff.

The platformer elements are like abstractions, little tasks to be completed which if successful indicate the player character having successfully thought their way through to the conclusion of the argument they want to make. It’s a little abstracted but it works well enough in the game. Some of the later bits are actually quite tough but there are accessibility options for anyone who needs them.

Lot of fun. Absolute recommendation.

2. You Are Dough

A new tiny experience from npckc (a year of springs). Playable in browser. Good illustration of a concept. Exactly as long as it needs to be.

3. Gexfeld

A game about nothing.

It’s a game where you traverse awkward geography and listen to the same unfunny jokes again and again as you struggle with the awkward controls. It feels user hostile in a very intentional way and combines these two completely disparate elements in a way that works surprisingly well to showcase what feels like thinly veiled contempt of its source materials. Maybe I’m reading too much into a game about nothing but still.

4. I Want To Pursue The Mean Side Character

Very short and straightforward visual novel about girls being gay for each other. Character deisgn is cute. It’s a little too predictable and simplistic for it to really leave any lasting impression. But it I am always happy to see girls being gay and happy together.

5. Magic Mirror Hall

Short visual novel about seeing an established relationship from an outsider’s perspective. It was interesting to play through as the choices really did make me feel conflicted in how best to handle a situation I was only tangentially part of.

The game does a really good job at evoking the idea of a world with the little snippets that you learn about magic and how it relates to the psyche of an individual delivered in a naturalistic manner.

6. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

Playing this game for the first time was like the arrested development dead dove meme. I was excited to play it as I had fond memories of Assault on Dragon Keep (a Borderlands 2 DLC from which this is spun off) and it just never crossed my mind what a full game based on this concept would mean.

It feels weird to say it out loud but I think the thing that I like the most about Borderlands is the setting itself. And some of the characters also I guess. It’s not the gameplay, aesthetic, sense of humour or tone.

In this you’re playing a character playing a game of Bunkers and Badasses DMed by Tina and so instead of the borderlands worlds and their strange worlds and varied creatures you are exploring the wonderlands, a generic fantasy world with generic fantasy monsters.

It really was a case where if I’d thought about it I would have concluded that this would be what the game was but I hadn’t and so it felt a little disappointing, especially since your party for this game are two new characters who I never quite warmed to as much as you would hope given their prominence.

Frette and Valentine are supposed to be there to represent the extremes of ‘follow the rules of the game’ and ‘roleplay and do what you want’, but I never read them this way until they have an entire conversation where they explicitly state that that is their whole thing. I mean rule of comedy has them both ignoring the rules whenever they want. The vibe I initially had was that Valentine was supposed to be like the charisma character who attempts to befriend and seduce every character he meets and Frette was supposed to be playing a murderhobo.

And this reading isn’t supported by the game either but it makes more sense to me in theory at least. Then the conflict between them is more about connecting to the world and the people in it than whether or not a rule that we as the players don’t know anything about because it’s just a game mechanic - or not even a game mechanic it’s a narrative abstraction of a game mechanic - isn’t being followed.

Also the character customization kinda sucks and despite giving myself cat ears I still couldn’t really manage to make a character who looked appealing. Also I think having custom characters of set character classes is just a fundamentally worse way of doing it. It makes the character you play as feel completely hollow as they say the most generic quips.

I picked Sporemancer or whatever. I had a little mushroom buddy, which seemed cute when I was picking the class but when it got to playing the game I quickly realized that they not only weren’t cute their main thing would be farting to get enemy aggro and while useful it means that 90% of things my character said were reactions to my mushroom farting.

That said as I continued through the game there were a couple of areas (the beanstalked village, the empty ocean) that were actually pretty memorable and interesting to explore.

The thing that got me interested was how the villain of the setting The Dragon Lord always talked about Tina and seemed to bear a personal grudge against her and it got me thinking about Spec Ops The Line. Spec Ops The Line is the game I hold emblematic of the brief trend to make a game that makes you do a bunch of bad things and then calls you out for it and while I do like that specific game I did always used to think, ‘if we’re bad for playing it what does it say about the people making it’. 

There are some pretty good moments with The Dragon Lord, where he points out for example that you’re just a pawn in Tina’s game as well. Despite the conceit of the game (you’re the fatemaker the one person in the wonderlands with free will) you don’t actually have free will, you can’t reject the main story to kill the Dragon Lord you can only either do it or ignore it.

He mentions that you’re essentially interchangable, an unremarkable cipher just to play the role of hero so the other characters can exist and do things and brings up that nobody has ever said your name, and it’s true. I mean it’s partially true because you’re given a free prompt to enter whatever name you want (I chose Piss because I was annoyed at the time or something. Look sometimes I just do things and there are no reasons) but it does touch something true about the experience.

Of course we could never have Valentine advocating trying to talk things out, befriending or seducing people because as ever the only verb that Borderlands has is kill. It would be incongrous if he said anything that made you try to connect to the Wonderlands as a world because by the very mechanics of the game you never can and never will be able to do so.

The end was a let down. All this stuff about the nature of the game that I’ve been enjoying for the last few paragraphs, I think it got in the game on accident because they definitely don’t seem to want you to agree with the Dragon Knight. If I’d have been writing this game I would have done some absolutely wonderful bullshit at the end. It could have been so good. I’m seriously considering writing fanfic of it.

7. Sonic Frontiers

It would be difficult to make a sonic game worse than Sonic 06 but they certainly tried.

I wanted to like it and conceptually I don’t think it’s unsalvageable. But the problems are significant and numerous including the aesthetic, the jank, whether or not this is a 3d sonic game or a 2d sonic game in a trenchcoat, the basic act of navigation, sonic’s deathwish, the combat, the characterization and the fucking pinball.

Chapter One: The Aesthetic

Its awful. That’s it. That’s the end of this chapter. You all have eyes you can see for yourself how it clashes with Sonic, how it looks like the kind of premade assets you’d see in an asset store with a bunch of sonic objects just thrown in at random.

I still think it could have worked, with just some attempt at bridging the gap between Sonic and the world he is inhabiting. A more colourful world, even with the same exact scattershot design would look more coherant. I watched The French Dispatch this month and that’s a great movie, I didn’t think I’d be mentioning it in this post. But there’s a line from that, a quote from the editor of the magazine along the lines of ‘whatever you write make sure it looks like you did it on purpose’ and the aesthetic of Sonic Frontiers looks like an accident. Looks as though the designers spilled a huge box of sonic objects over a pubg map and called it a day.

Or alternately a more muted colour pallete for sonic when he’s in the open world areas. I really think that if he could just match the world he’s in it would feel substantially different.

Chapter Two: The Jank

It’s not as bad as Sonic 06. Which is like the lowest bar I could possibly imagine. I just wanted to say that quickly because like... this isn’t the worst of the problems with Sonic Frontiers. When I talk about the jank I’m talking about glitchy behaviour like when you run up the arm of one of the big enemies and half the time you get to land where you need to and half the time you just get launched off in some other direction. Or phasing through the flippers in the Fucking Pinball section.

It’s definitely there and definitely irritating, but it is one of the lesser problems of the game simply because if the game was running perfectly then none of this stuff would be happening. All of the rest of the problems are fully intended aspects of the game.

Chapter Three: Whether Or Not This Is A 3D Game Or A 2D Game In A Trenchcoat

In the game you have cyberspace levels which are essentially 2d levels that you access them from portals in the 3d world. You might think I’m about to make an argument that these are the real content of Sonic Frontiers but fuck that I hated playing those as well. No my argument is that the 3d is actually an enormous number of tiny 2d levels all jammed together.

I would have thought that the purpose of the numerous boost pads, bumpers and grind rails was to help you navigate around the world. To aid in faster movement between locations. In fact the purpose of these items is to briefly shove you into a 2d platforming sequence that can last maybe just a couple of seconds, maybe a couple of minutes. It doesn’t sound like a huge problem but like okay this is kind of trending into the navigation problem now so lets just start Chapter Four already

Chapter Four: The Basic Act of Navigation

Okay so the reason it’s a big problem is that whenever you want to get anywhere your options are to just run there in a straight line or try one of the speed boosty items around you and sometimes you’ll get lucky and you’ll do a fun little platforming section that also brings you closer to your destination. Most of the time you will do that platforming section and find yourself turned around and further away from where you wanted to go.

Or maybe you’ll notice partway through and want to quickly exit from this diversion and get back to what you were doing. That’s not always an option. If your up high in the air there might be safe gaps you can drop through, but this can also happen on just narrow strips of land which still exist in the open 3d world. It feels so silly when you’re standing in a wide open field but still diligently working along a single line of obstacles instead of just stepping to the side of them even though you should be able to.

The other major problem with navigation is that okay for example the plot needs you to now go and interact with a chaos emerald and it’s over here on the edge of like a peninsula so you work your way along the cliffs to reach it but when you get anywhere near it’s all cliffs too high to possibly go up or maybe the area you need to go to is just way up in the fucking sky. At that point you need to step back look at the exact spot you’re trying to go to and then follow back all the loops and rails and bumpers back to the one spot where you can go to to start the actual trek to the place you want to be. It’s just completely antithetical to open world design. It’s like why is this game open world in the first place anyway.

Chapter Five: Sonic’s Death Wish

This is how I’ve chosen to label the chapter where I talk about how Sonic controls. It’s so strange because like, his turning is somehow both too responsive and too sluggish. It’s most noticeable in the cyberspace levels. I think it’s that he has a surprisingly wide turning circle. He’s responsive at turning but even at walking speed he has to veer around in a wide arc it makes it a real pain if you’re trying to do anything precise.

Attempting to use the boost button in cyberspace levels is more or less a guarantee that Sonic will just shoot off into the void, but there are also places where it feels necessary, where you just need that extra distance that comes from mid-air boosting and the unpredictability of it is so frustrating.

Chapter Six: The Combat

The new combat sort of works sometimes but also doesn’t really work at all. In theory having enemies that take more than just a homing bounce or whatever it is called is a good idea, and the cyloop is an interesting way to add movement to combat. In practice fuck fighting any of these enemies.

Early on the second island I fought a group of about four of the most basic trivial enemies that kept shielding themselves and it’s not as though I was struggling but it felt fiddly and annoying. They made the combat more time consuming, more awkward, but not necessarily more engaging.

The game tries to give you all these skills to unlock to try to engage you with the combat mechanics. But like it’s just buttons to press to initiate a different animation while you’re doing homing bounce combos on an enemy. It even gives you a skill to automate that so you don’t even have to engage with these new skills. That’s how little faith it has in these things. Not to mention a couple of times where I would trigger one of them by accident while trying to evade a fight and then sonic would do this whole wind up and go flying at a enemy who always seemed to be in the middle of an attack animation when sonic got there and you lose so many rings when you get hit. Just an ungodly amount. You can hold up to 400 and that’s about 2 hits most of the time. The combat fucking sucks.

Which is to say nothing of the big titan fights. They have cool soundtracks but god the super sonic mode is almost worse than regular mode. Sonic can’t get hurt in this mode. All the enemies can do is knock you back, force you to watch a little animation of Sonic getting knocked away and then regaining his composure for a couple of seconds. The only thing they can do against you is waste your time. And thats exactly what the fights feel like, a complete waste of time. Sit there with the parry buttons held down until the enemies do an attack then button mash until it gets ready to attack again and do that over and over again and then add in some quicktime events and you’re done.

The second titan fight is when I think I went from thinking this was a bad game to thinking this was absolutely abysmal. Second titan fight has you climbing up a tower in the open world, jumping onto a magic ribbon that runs parralel to the titan, running along this to keep up for an inordinately long amount of time, until you can get to its head. Then you get the chaos emerald and enter the fight proper. You fly around after the thing, dodging missiles, parrying attacks and attacking when you can. Around and around this island and then when it was down to 25% health it did some kind of qte attack on me and I start button mashing the appropriate button just like in the last titan fight only to die instantly. This was a new type of qte the game hadn’t shown me before, introduced five minutes (i timed how long the fight took on my next attempt and five minutes is a conservative estimate) into this boss fight. And the kicker is that it puts you right back there at the beginning in the open world to do everything I just listed above again. 

Chapter Seven: The Characterization

Maybe I got spoiled by The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog. I didn’t like any of the characterization in this one. Every little conversation between Sonic and his friends felt weirdly stilted and unnatural. I wasn’t given any impression that these people willingly hang out with Sonic even once. And it’s kind of funny that like each of the first three islands is about giving one of Sonic’s friends a moment of reflection, to consider what they want to do with their lives and let them express their interiority, and each one of them expresses the desire to go and do something else away from Sonic. About the only plot beats I could actually agree with.

Which is to say nothing of Sage and Robotnik. Every time they had a cutscene it was essentially the same cutscene. Robotnik says ‘let me out of this accursed cyber dimension’ and Sage says ‘no it’s too dangerous but i won’t tell you what the dangerous thing actually is and you won’t even consider asking me about it’ and Robotnik says ‘nevermind that let me out of this accursed cyber dimension’. Repeat for most of the game. Except for that one cutscene where a bunch of helicopters attack Robotnik for some reason and Sage blows them all up really easily and nothing of any consequence actually happens why does this cutscene even exist.

The funniest part of this whole relationship is that Robotnik spends the entirety of the game not showing the slightest acknowledgement of Sage as a person, he talks to her like he’s talking to Amazon Alexa or whatever and then when she gets blown up in space he’s suddenly like ‘my dearest daughter i’m so incredibly sad about your death’.

And don’t get me wrong when I say these things are funny they’re not really actually funny in the moment. Everything is too slow and clumsy to land as a joke. The game never really becomes so bad that it’s good.

Like this isn’t a characterization point but I’m not going back and creating a new chapter now, but all that stuff I was saying earlier about getting stuck in a faux-2d level every time you hit a bumper or whatever. It’s a problem if you’re trying to navigate the world as quickly as possible, but hypothetically if you’re just running around for the fun of it or trying to collect the collectibles then surely having lots of platforming challenges to stumble into is good.

And I’m not going to argue that that isn’t good. Its just that as the game went on I started to notice more and more how long the game would go without needing any input from me, as it bounced sonic around and through loop de loops and all kinds of cool spectacle, i’d notice that I could take my hands off the controller for like ten/twenty seconds, sometimes more and it started to feel empty like I’d have more or less the same experience just watching the game autoplay through these segments.

I got to the point where everything about the game had worn out its welcome; the story, the combat, the platforming, the open world, the cyberspace worlds, basic navigation, just getting collectibles. Nothing felt good. Nothing was what I wanted. That’s when it was time to play the fucking pinball.

Chapter Eight: The Fucking Pinball

At the end of the third island right before the titan your last task is to play pinball and score five million points. Honestly I could make a number list of all the ways in which this pinball minigame is fucking abysmal but I’m going to try to restrain myself, which means making all the same complaints but without the extra bit of unnecessary structuring I suppose.

The score you need to hit is so fucking high. You very quickly notice you’re not wracking up points in the thousands. You need to hit the red coins that appear to get a x2 multiplier and then a x4 and so on up until you get a x255 multipler whereupon you’re actually getting some decent points. The multiplier will reset to zero if your ball... falls down the pinball hole. I don’t know the pinball terminology you know what I mean. The length of time you have to play this pinball minigame, which by the way is completely mandatory you cannot proceed with the game until you reach this absurdly high score in this stupid minigame, is just unconscionable.

It does not help matters that the board is so basic. There are just some bumpers up at the top, a pair of paddles and little bouncy things in most of the walls. No switches to flick on for combos. No little holes to go into. I don’t know pinball terminology but anyone who has played a decent pinball table knows you need more than this, especially if you’re going to be forcing people to spend like five to ten or longer minutes playing this horrible pinball.

It doesn’t help that when you do finally hit this high score the pinball continues and the game declines to give you any more instruction. At this point you need to hit the pinball to a small hole that has opened at the top of the board which is the real win condition. If you gutter at this point, or just quit out because you think you’re done, then it’s time to start the entire thing over again.

This was the breaking point where I decided this was one of the worst games I’d ever played. I made a post comparing it to We Happy Few, and yeah it has less abhorrent sexual abuse victim blaming than that game does but moment to moment I had less fun playing this. It was more difficult to get me to want to sit and play this video game than WHF. I hated this game. Good fucking god.

8. The Birdcage

A little puzzle game I played on my tablet. It consists of about 25 different little birdcages each one has a bunch of little mechanical puzzles to solve which will eventually grant you a key you use to open the cage and free the bird.

It feels reminscent of something like The Room, but in a much more simplified form. There was only one or two puzzles that were complicated enough that I had to stop and think and not just operate on first instinct. But its neat enough if you just enjoy the tactile feel of operating a machine, opening compartments and pulling levers etc. I feel like I’m damning this game with faint praise but I did enjoy my time with it.

9. Pizza Tower

Pizza Tower is an incredible indie platformer with an emphasis on speed and precision imputs. I’m sort of bad at both of those aspects but even so there’s still so much here to appreciate. For one thing the character designs and the animations are incredible in their expressiveness and exaggeration. There’s nothing I can say about that that can’t be better conveyed by just watching this man start running and build up to top speed.

The design of the levels is also really neat. Each level has a main phase and then at a certain point you will encounter a John Pillar (i still wonder if John Pillar is a pun or a joke i just don’t get somehow) you will have to break which starts the escape phase. Everything ramps up in intensity and a countdown timer starts ticking down. It’s such a good design, with enough leniency in timing to allow those who aren’t as good at the mechanics time enough to get to the exit, but those who have mastered Peppino’s robust controls to complete an entire second lap.

The variety present in the levels is really good. Each level has some kind of gimmick. Either some element not present in others, some transformation for Peppino or maybe the presence an ally such as Gustavo and his enormous rattie friend Brick, or Mort the Chicken from the video game of the same name. Every level feels fun and unique in some way.

The boss fights are mostly very fun. I kind of struggled the most with Pepperman (the first boss) because of the one phase where you have to hit him while he’s in the air and I never quite worked out the timing to do so with any regularity. Every boss in this game has at least one hidden health bar and this is probably the first game I’ve played where I don’t think of that as a negative.

The first phase of every boss fight is fairly simple and mostly there to acclimatize you to the mechanics of the fight before the second phase really goes wild with it. The fourth boss (who I will not name for spoilers) was the most enjoyable in the whole game for me. I realized with every new attack I was surviving to that I was laughing out loud as I dodged and weaved through this incredibly chaotic battle.

I had heard about how good a game Pizza Tower was and I had sort of held off on it because a lot of the discussion seemed to fixate around like the speed tech of the game and the mastery of the controls. And that’s not something I really find compelling. I’m super glad I gave it a chance though, as there’s a lot to love here that isn’t just in mastery of the systems. Fully expect this to be on my end of the year best games of the year list.

10. I Commissioned Some Bees 3

I played another one of these. As usual my only complaint is that the levels don’t feel arranged in order of increasing difficulty. In fact I got stuck and needed a hint for the last bees on the first three scenes and then had no problem at all locating them on all the rest of the scenes. Remains fun and chill with nice artwork.

11. Pixross

A little picross game I got from a bundle I think. It’s picross but by solving it you also create a little pixel art object or creature or something. My first issue is simple: there’s an animals category and it doesn’t have a foxie in it.

My second issue is less simple. I don’t have to explain picross do I? Well just in case it’s a grid you have numbers at the top and left of each of the rows and columns which tell you how many filled cells there are in each row/column, but more specifically they tell you how many filled cells in a row there are. Like 3,1,3 would be three cells in a line, then one cell on its own, then three cells all with at least one space between them. Yeah I know you’ve played picross before, sorry for overexplaining.

So as an example if I have a row labelled 1, 1, 3. And I have filled a single cell in the row. Lets say its dead in the middle. There’s enough space to the right that that cell could be the first one indicated by the label. If I were doing this manually I’d have to get more information before I could ascertain which of these blocks that cell belonged to. In pixross if a block is complete then it gets crossed off. So if this was one of the two solitary blocks that one would be crossed off automatically and I would be given more information that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to glean through just looking at the board.

It felt like cheating to use this aspect of the way the mechanics worked as a clue. I tried to avoid doing so for the most part, but you kind of can’t help but notice that and it colours how you would proceed even if you try to only proceed using logic that is apparent. 

12. Plastic Tape

A very short narrative game by npckc. I’ve mentioned them before. In fact I played a little game of theirs back up at the top of this post. This is one of my favourite of their little games. It’s about a series of phone calls across a number of years and it uses a really neat little framing device and it is playable in browser.

13. Aka

Aka is a cute game that deals with a surprisingly serious topic. It is about a red panda who returns home after war. Its main narrative isn’t immediately apparent, but is primarily about helping ghosts move on.

There are things to like about this one. The design of Aka is great, the design of the big capy is great. The world is pleasant to explore, the characters fun to meet and assist. In theory I like the main thrust of its narrative, though I think it has missteps in how it communicates and unlocks that narrative.

The main gameplay is all about gardening, collecting resources and crafting items, and that isn’t a gameplay style that personally resonates strongly with me. It also in my opinion doesn’t feel like it fits cohesively with what the game is and it quickly feels like you run out of crops to plant and objects to make. The game feels too short to really engage with these mechanics in any meaningful way, and there isn’t really enough things to make and plant to keep someone who was here for these mechanics engaged.

It also felt a little janky to me. Just something about the way it controlled that made it feel a little unpolished. And there were a couple of parts where the game offered me a minigame (the marble run minigame and one of the rhythm minigames) where it just didn’t load no matter what I did.

14. Riven: The Sequel To Myst

I have had a weird relationship with the Myst games. I have played all of them when I was too young to really even be able to solve the puzzles. I have a distinct memory of playing one of the later Myst games and all I was doing was looking up the answers in a walkthrough or hint book or something and then carrying them out. And I wasn’t even really following the story. I distinctly remember thinking something along the lines of ‘why am i playing this I’m not engaging with it on any level’ and giving up.

In 2021 I decided to replay Myst and had a great time (except for the fucking underground maze sequence). I remembered the shape of the island but not any puzzle solutions. I think I maybe also remember trying to fill a real life notebook with all the fireplace panel combinations. I hope that I didn’t actually do that and somebody stopped me.

Anyway so this month I saw the hbomberguy patreon video about Myst and my brain went, oh yeah Riven. I had about the same experience that I had with Myst where as I played it I began to remember the shape of the island but no concrete puzzle solutions. I remember being absolutely convinced that there was a secret area under the lake, under the big rock with the spyglass, that you just needed to find the right combination of levers in the control tower and then the submarine would go into there somehow. I mostly have memories of being stuck, wandering around the island trying to work out what I was supposed to be doing next.

The thing about Riven is its openness is its best feature and also its biggest problem. Like the first couple of hours is fun as you explore the various locations. It’s also a little annoying as each place that you come to you find yourself blocked somehow (a bridge that needs to be extended from the other side, a panel with buttons but no clues as to what to do with it, levers that control things on walkways you can’t reach, a number of eyes that clearly allude to something but what). Its like having a roll of sellotape and you just can’t find the edge to let you start peeling it away. And the most annoying thing about it is that the big puzzle here is you need to close a specific pair of doors behind you and finally you can actually make progress with the rest of the game. It was that simple.

The worst part is being stuck in that part of the game and you’re still learning about how the game works, how the machines you encounter work and what they do and sometimes you just don’t have enough information. If you see a puzzle its really hard to know if you have the knowledge you need and you just need to work out how to apply it or if you just need to close some more doors till you find the rest of the game.

Once you’re going though, the way the game gradually unfolds out and all of the things that you’ve been seeing throughout your playthrough finally become apparent. That’s great. Very few games made me feel as excited to solve a puzzle as when I first arrived at the plateau island and realized what I was looking at. I believe everyone hates the fire marble puzzle but I loved it. It turned the whole geography of the video game into an enormous multilayered puzzle.

Riven kind of is a masterpiece but I wish it was a smoother transition into the complicated puzzles. I will admit that the second time an important location was hidden behind an open door and I struggled and struggled to figure it out was on me though.

[avoidmint]

I haven't played Forces yet but this is basically how it goes, right? I want him to bully me.

[ya-know-nothing-yet]

"Did you think I’d easily forgive you after this was all said and done? You have hurt the ones I cared about most. And I cannot forget it."

[shima-draws]

Oh man Sonic Frontiers was so good. Especially with Eggman and Sage. Did you read the logs you get from fishing? Seeing him talk about Maria and come to see Sage as his daughter. Just so good.

YEAH YEAH YEAH I’ve been meaning to put together a post with all my thoughts since I finished the game two days ago but I just haven’t gotten the chance yet. But god. It’s SO good. I’m not a super big critic to begin with so I probably would have enjoyed it regardless but yes it was amazing

And yes I did get all the Egg Memos!!! I mentioned in an earlier post how emotional I got when Eggman mentioned Sage’s pronouns and how he should refer to her. And just the general change of Eggman’s feelings towards her over time…the further you get through the logs the more you can tell he’s getting attached and is starting to think of her as his daughter and I just 😭 UGH my kokoro

AND Eggman’s acknowledgment of Maria too—I never really thought about how he’d feel towards her but there’s definitely resentment there and he has every reason to feel that way honestly. I deadass forgot they were cousins until I heard that memo and I was like OH SHIT YEAH I guess they would be huh??

I loved all the little things they put into the game that reference other characters and past experiences they’ve had. Definitely makes it feel more connected to the series as a whole and shows that YEAH they’ve been through some shit together, the good AND the bad

[sonknuxadow]

idk how mcu fans actually watch all that stuff and keep up with it all i would not survive. and i say this as a very dedicated sonic fan who watches/plays/reads most new sonic stuff that comes out

[three-bunnies-in-a-trenchcoat]

PLAYSTATION 2? FUCK

[sleepy-crypt1d]

i love sonic adventure so much this game is so insane and makes no sense i adore it with my whole heart

[mizgnomer]

Behind the Scenes of The Giggle - Part Six Excerpt from Benjamin Cook's DWM #597 Interview with Catherine Tate (with guest appearance by David Tennant)

"Do you know, we went to an escape room with Neil? He loves them. It was his birthday while we were here…” [ Neil Patrick Harris ] celebrated his 49th while filming Doctor Who in Bristol last month. By day, he donned the Toymaker’s tux and shimmied gleefully on the streets. By night, he took David and Catherine out to dinner, then on to Worlds Collide, Bristol’s best – and only – Doctor Who-themed escape room. Players are given 60 minutes to work out how to close a tear in the fabric of spacetime, before the Cybermen break through (the Toymaker has fought the Cybermen!!). “He’d booked it out,” says Catherine. “He’d shut down the whole place [for the night] and they let us in.” “Proper Hollywood,” says David. “Innit, though! That’s old money, that is,” she laughs. “And Jodie [Whittaker’s Doctor] turns up,” says David. “She was on a PA. As if –” “– as if she’s calling you. And there was a scarf. And a sonic screwdriver.” “And a Cyberman.” “A Cyberman head, yeah.” Aren’t Catherine and David… you know, overqualified for a Doctor Who escape room? “I was quite hopeful,” he says. “I thought, these are puzzles I’m going to be able to solve. But then–” “There were chess pieces,” says Catherine, in much the same tone of voice in which Donna once informed the Doctor that Santa’s a robot. “I mean, oh my God! Sorry, but how the hell –?” Neil was brilliant at it, though. “He was annoyingly good.” The Toymaker and his games are quite notorious. “Yes, because then he went, ‘Let’s do another one! We’re gonna do the World War Two room.’ That’s when I came to life.” “It’s true,” says David. “I loved that one. It was great. We were spies and we’d infiltrated a Nazi bunker.” “It involved a bit more role play, didn’t it? Very Toymaker. And zome outrageous ack-sents!” “But after the Doctor Who one,” says Catherine, “it was clear that Neil and David were better at it. There was a clear division between the coulds and the could-nots. So Neil and David went into one room, and me, [executive producer] Phil Collinson, and Charlie [De Melo], who plays… is it Charles Banerjee? [glimpsed in last year’s Christmas Day trailer, rushing through the rain towards Mr Emporium’s toyshop] – went in another room. I’d said to Phil and Charlie, ‘Let’s cut the deadwood and go into a room on our own.’ You do it against each other, and see who gets out first. “So me, Charlie and Phil had a right old laugh,” recalls Catherine, cracking up, “while David and Neil went off and… got out much quicker. Midway through ours, they’d already finished and were watching us scrabble around trying to get out of our German bunker.” She chuckles at the memory. “Then suddenly through the PA comes: ‘DONNAAA!!!’” David says nothing, but he looks very pleased with himself.

Also, from Charlie De Melo's Instagram:

I'm struggling to think of a stranger evening than one, last June, doing a @bbcdoctorwho themed escape room, with The Doctor, Donna and the Toymaker. David and Neil, it turns out, are *very* good at escape rooms. The rest of us, less so. They rushed around the room, picking up clues and turning switches and all manner of other things, whilst the rest of us looked on, utterly bemused (& a little tooty in my case). So on they powered. Leaving us scratching our heads in a room full of disembodied Cybermen ones. Before confusion could give way to frustration, the tannoy crackled. It was David. They'd somehow managed to finish the entire thing whilst we all had stood still where we'd been left. Although he'd lost his lilting, melodic, Scottish brogue. He was now The Doctor. And in the Doctor's voice he began barking orders at us, talking us through the puzzles and guiding us out of whatever wibbly wobbly mess we were in and back to the safety of Bristol. "Donna! Quick! You have to get them out of there, the Cybermen are coming!"

For other posts in this set, please see the #whoBtsGiggle tag. The full episode list is [ here ]

[blazehedgehog]

what is the sonic franchise's problem? why does every concept have to be stretched to death and then discarded entirely?

"What is the Sonic franchise's problem" is such a broad question these days because there's so many layers to so many different parts of the franchise but ultimately it boils down to two things:

Time and money.

The way capitalism works in creative fields is that if you prove you can do it faster and cheaper, then you have to keep doing it faster and cheaper. The more you save the company time and money, the better it is for them.

And at least in the case of Sonic games, they've had long stints where they get made dangerously quickly. Even as far back as Sonic 2, that game spent a long time in the concept phase that eventually got thrown out as they rushed the final game to completion. Sonic 3 legendarily came together in as little as 6-9 months after the original pitch (a pseudo-3D isometric game) fell apart.

Sonic Adventure 2 was made by half the people in half the time as Sonic Adventure 1. Rush and crunch on Sonic Heroes was so bad one of their level designers was hospitalized for months due to exhaustion related illness. Takashi Iizuka stepped up and basically doubled his workload to cover for that guy and has publicly said he lost over 30 pounds because of the stress.

He then worked so hard on Shadow the Hedgehog, the next game after Sonic Heroes, that he straight up burned out and left the Sonic franchise for like six years. If you check the credits for Shadow, Takashi Iizuka is attached as the director, game designer, level designer, story writer, and CG movie supervisor. The dude carried half that entire game in an era where directors did not get their hands dirty like that.

Sonic Unleashed in 2008 was a change in form in that it was a very expensive game. So expensive that people working on the game complained that they were wasting too much money on details nobody would be able to appreciate because you were always moving too fast.

So Sega changed gears. Sonic Generations looked like another big money sink, so they brought in Morio Kishimoto, a guy who came up through games like Sonic & The Secret Rings and Sonic & The Black Knight. Secret Rings in particular was a huge success story for Sega: it was immensely cheap and produced incredibly quickly, and when compared to the bomb known as Sonic 06, Secret Rings looked and played like gold.

Kishimoto was given the dying embers of a failed Wii port of Sonic Generations, which he quickly and cheaply turned around into Sonic Colors, and again, it was a runaway success compared to the very expensive and divisive Sonic Unleashed.

And so once again, Sonic games erred towards faster and cheaper and faster and cheaper and faster and cheaper. That was Kishimoto's style.

I was watching someone stream Sonic Lost World for their first time a few days ago, and in theory, the concept of the game makes sense. Kishimoto is open about saying that Sonic Colors was them trying to inject a little Mario flavor into a Sonic game, so Sonic Lost World is trying to be Sonic Colors 2, and it's a lot more overt with its Mario inspiration. And it's a lot worse, too.

That's because Mario games incubate for years and years and years, building and iterating ideas until they are perfectly cut, highly polished finished products. Sonic games are rammed through production as fast as possible, square pegs forced through round holes, exhausted developers making the best of table scraps, and they are covered in rough edges and misshapen gameplay.

Every time you play a bad Sonic game and see the twinkle of a good idea, that's a seed of greatness that was not properly cultivated and given room to grow, because cheaper and faster makes them more money.

This is why you hear people say they hope the success of Sonic Frontiers will get Sega to increase the budget for future Sonic games again, because it's REALLY clear they were making a game out of basically nothing.

(I am not holding my breath.)

[yumisilver]

Nine-Tailed Travel Guide through the Multiverse Event!:

Into the Sonicverse

As it has come to be expected, it didn’t take long for Nine to run into this universe's version of Sonic. What caught him off guard, however, was that this Sonic RECOGNIZED him almost immediately. “Did I accidentally backtrack to a universe I’ve already been to? No, that’s highly unlikely (infinite universes and all that).”

 It didn’t take much longer for Nine to realize which Sonic this is; this must be the Sonic he met in the Shatterverse event!

Nine was astonished; he never thought he’d see his friend again after the universe was put back together. 

Once they separated, Sonic asked how the heck he was there. “Oh no--did Tails accidentally touch the prism?? Nine, have you seen any other versions of yourself around here??!” 

Nine tells Sonic to relax, and explains how he came here on his own, and his overall objective. Sonic seems relieved by this answer, and invites Nine to hang out at his home until he’s ready to go. Nine agrees. 

While walking Sonic tells Nine about what’s been happening since they saved the universe, and his current “predicament”.  At some point, Sonic met up with Shadow to discuss what to do with the Paradox Prism, like where the best place to hide it might be. During their conversation, Sonic got a bit too close to the prism, and it tried to pull him in (like how the individual shards did). Shadow managed to pull him out before it completely absorbed him, but the prism disappeared right after. Since then, Shadow has gone looking for it. Apparently Sonic coming into contact with the prism has some…unintended effects. 

They finally reach Tails’ workshop, and upon entry, Nine quickly realizes there are 

not one,

not two,

but THREE other Sonic’s sitting around and chatting (one of them was dangling from the rafters when they walked in)

“Everybody, this is my friend Nine from New Yoke City! Nine, this is Dash, Flow, and Tumble the Hedgehogs!” 

According to Sonic, these variants of him appeared around Green Hill shortly after the prism tried to absorb him. 

This is how he says he met them:

Tumble: They, quite literally, ran into each other.

Flow: Found by Amy and Rouge on the beach, seemingly having wiped out on his board. 

Dash: Found by Knuckles, who Dash started trying to fight immediately. He did the same when Sonic arrived. Apparently he thought he was in a simulation set up by the "Chaos Council". 

They aren’t sure why, but when Sonic touched the prism, it pulled the others from their prime universes to Green Hill, that was about a month ago. As of now everyone is trying to find a way to get the three hedgehogs home. 

At first, Nine isn’t sure how he feels being around four Sonic’s at the same time, but Sonic himself convinces him to give it a chance. If anything, his knowledge of dimensional travel could be really helpful to them, and…Sonic thought it would be nice to spend time with him again. 

At that, Nine concedes to stay, but only for a little while. Sonic is over the moon about it. 

Nine figured he would take some time to see what each of these Sonic variants were like, at least to some degree.

Tumble the Hedgehog

Original Dimension: Boscage Maze

Nine found Tumble to be very, VERY energetic, somehow more than Sonic himself. He never sits in one place for long, practically bouncing off the walls. His speaking is a bit broken, but he communicates just fine (apparently his first language is “canine”). He spoke a lot about his little brother Mangy, who he’d spend the most time playing with back home. His favorite game to play, Nine discovers, is a game he created called “Tumble Tag”. Similar to regular tag, someone is called “it” and their job is to chase down the other players. The only major differences in Tumble’s version being;

Tumble is ALWAYS it 

Whenever Tumble catches you, he gives you a 30 second head start to get away again

You don’t get to decide when you start playing, you don’t get to decide when you STOP playing 

Nine was forced to play with him for about 45 minutes before Sonic was finally able to distract Tumble long enough for Nine to get away. 

Honestly Tumble wasn’t AWFUL, he was just a lot. 

Flow the Hedgehog 

Original Dimension: No Place

Any time Nine spent one-on-one with Flow was filled with Flow’s seemingly endless stories and tales about his life on the high seas. Going on adventures, meeting his crew, fighting sea beasts, exploring the vast oceans….yeah he talked a lot. One of the few things Nine was actually a little interested in hearing about was his surfboard; It had a rudder with a gyroscope built into the underside of the board, which allowed Flow to control where his board goes via his center gravity. 

Upon asking, Flow went into a long story about how he’s the crews lookout, meaning he spent most of his time in the crows nest. But being such a high energy person, being confined to such a small place for so long was stifling, to the point even running laps around the ship wasn’t enough to settle him, and it was annoying the crew too. Luckily, his buddy Sails had the bright idea to upgrade Flow’s board so it doesn’t need waves to move through the water. Flow seemed ecstatic to talk about this, singing praises about his companion for HOURS. 

Nine decided asking wasn’t worth it in the end. 

Dash the Hedgehog 

Original Dimension: New Yoke City

Nine couldn’t help feeling a bit bitter upon learning Dash was from his home dimension, as he never got to have his own Sonic like most of his own multiversal counterparts. Upon questioning, it turns out Dash had initially fled Green Hill when the Chaos Council invaded, and only returned several years later to help the rebellion. Nine wondered if they would’ve found each other at some point if he hadn’t left so soon, but didn’t linger on the topic long.

Much to Sonic’s disappointment, Dash and Nine didn’t speak much to each other for the majority of Nine’s stay, as they had no real interest in getting to know each other, there was no point. 

Miles “Tails” Prower 

Original Dimension: Green Hill

Nine found this version of himself to be tolerable. He had a lot of questions, of course, he and his counterparts were all equally inquisitive. Tails was working on helping the Sonic counterparts return to their home dimensions, and so asked Nine lots of questions related to the topic. Nine unfortunately hadn’t mastered travel between SPECIFIC universes without the Paradox prism, so all he could provide was what little knowledge he had gained about multiverse travel and the prism itself. 

Tails also gave Nine a bag of mint candy to snack on, so that was a bonus. 

Sonic the Hedgehog 

Original Dimension: Green Hill

Nine found being able to spend time with Sonic without the constant threat of danger to be pleasant. Sonic spent a lot of time telling Nine all about his friends, what they like, what they don’t like, and how they differ from their multidimensional counterparts. He didn't linger on himself long, and was instead more curious to hear about Nine and his multidimensional adventures, so Nine obliged in telling him about the all the universes he had seen up until that point. 

Seeing how engaged Sonic was in his stories was also really encouraging. 

Overall, Nine enjoyed any time he got to spend with Sonic one-on-one. 

Something everyone seemed to neglect informing Nine about before nightfall was a certain ahem “condition” that Tumble has. According to Sonic, Tumble had informed all of them that he was born this way, and it only happens every couple of weeks after sundown (Tumble had assumed all his counterparts had this ability, which is why he didn't say anything straight away). While in what they call his “hedgewolf” state, Tumble becomes completely nonverbal and just a bit more feral. While still in his right mind, he seems a bit more influenced by his instincts while in this form. 

Tumble Tag becomes significantly more anxiety inducing when being chased by a hedge-beast double your size while also under the cover of night. 

Nine slept in late the next morning.

[Nine's personal log] - “From what I’ve been able to observe during my stay, dimension 6U441-/U441 has an overall stable environment and it’s ecosystem is decent. My radar did detect some minor anomaly, but I was unable to pinpoint a location. I let Sonic know regardless.  Population in this dimension is overall decent, aside from the ‘anomalies’ currently present due to the Paradox Prism." 

"While I find this dimension is decent overall and I wouldn’t mind being in Sonic’s presence more often, I’m not comfortable staying long term as the presence of my counterpart makes me feel... invasive. I'm sure Sonic would have a fit if I admitted that to him, so I’ll keep that to myself."

"I’ll stay until I’m positive the group is able to handle this “situation” of theirs on their own. I have no real obligation to stay, but I don’t mind hanging around for a bit." 

Eventually, Nine decides he’s ready to move on to the next dimension. Tails thanks him for all his help, Tumble tries to play with him one last time, and Flow holds Tumble back for Nine’s sake. Sonic is a bit disappointed, but he still wishes him the best. Dash and Nine don’t exchange words. 

Nine opens the next portal, but before he can go through, Sonic embraces Nine one last time. “You know, once you’re all settled wherever you end up...we wouldn’t mind if you ever wanted to try visiting us again. ” 

Nine smiles a bit, and ensures he’ll see what he can do. 

As he steps through the portal, all he hears is the voices of the group, wishing him safe travels. The portal closes behind him, and Nine continues on his journey. 

Dimension: 6U441-/U441

Time Spent: 2 1/2 weeks

Overall Rating: 7/10

“It was good to see an old friend, kind of wish it was ONLY him though.”

What awaits Nine on the other side of the next portal? Check 

#Nine-Tailed Travel Guide through the Multiverse to find out! 

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Superstars!

Superstars is out! And guess what? It's good! It's a worthy new entry in the series, and I mostly like it. Mostly. Except for the handful of parts I don't. As usual, allow me to share my thoughts.

(For the record, I got the PS5 version of Superstars. I can't speak for how it plays on older hardware like the Switch, or how the weird Steam version that seems to make you log in with Epic runs. But I encountered zero performance issues, personally.)

General thoughts

The thing is, aside from two notable flaws I'll discuss in greater detail below, I can sum up my feelings on most of Superstars quickly. You see, it's... a Sonic game. This will either be a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. It's not a bold new take on the series that'll blow you away, but they also didn't fuck it up. There's no catch this time! There's something refreshing about that straightforwardness, given how rare it is to get a regular-ass New Sonic Game from Sega. It's just a new classic-style game where you can play as Amy, set on a new island with all new zones, and Fang is in it! This might be damning with faint praise, but that's what it says on the tin, and they did a good job overall.

(It also has co-op. That's nice. I didn't play it in co-op.)

It plays exactly how it should. At no point did anything feel Wrong. The graphics might not have the absolute highest fidelity, but I think the character models look really nice, and the levels look appropriately good with vibrant color palettes. A couple zones like Sky Temple gave me Klonoa vibes, which I like. One zone is an absolutely incredible homage that I won't spoil. The story here is minimal (as expected), but there are a few good moments of telling the story through the gameplay, particularly one very cute sequence with Trip. I did find a couple stage gimmicks moderately annoying (Speed Jungle 2 and Press Factory 2, looking at you), but like... I could say the same thing about Mania, and also damn near every other Sonic game ever made. There's always That One Level. Superstars may not raise the series to new heights, but it generally executes well on the standard beats of the series. It's an easy recommendation for all fans of 2D Sonic.

Really, aside from the two big flaws (we'll get to them), this game's greatest crimes are simply not being quite as good as Mania, and also coming out the same week as the more creative and polished Super Mario Bros. Wonder. If we hadn't gotten Mania, I would easily be calling this my favorite 2D Sonic game since... what, the Advance trilogy 20 years ago? I like the Rush games, but if you asked me to replay one or the other, I might have a better time with Superstars. And, yes, it beats the hell out of Sonic 4. It's not even close. Anyone who says this game is exactly like Sonic 4 is just being a hater.

...I guess I would say that $60 is a bit steep for this, but you know it'll be on sale for a more appropriate $30-$40 in a few months. This isn't a Nintendo game we're talking about here.

Nice little tweaks

Superstars also features a number of welcome quality-of-life updates over Mania, bringing it more in line with the design ethos of modern platformers.

You have infinite lives! No more getting a game over on the final boss and having to redo the whole final zone - or, god forbid, the entire game

Time overs are gone! It'll warn you before you go over ten minutes, but I have no idea why because it doesn't kill you anymore

The game features a hub from which you can easily replay previous levels, rather than needing to beat the game or put in a cheat code to unlock the level select

This means you can easily go back and hunt for any special stage rings you missed. However, as a tradeoff, it seems like you can only get one Emerald per zone now, rather than being able to get Super Sonic by the end of the first or second zone

You can swap characters between levels! No more having to start a whole 'nother save file to play as Tails

And those characters even have optional little movement tutorial rooms available from the hub, which is great for new players who may not know about things like the Drop Dash

And, finally, checkpoints now feature arrows pointing in the direction you were supposed to be going, in case you forget upon respawning

Of course, while you might not be getting game overs, Superstars certainly compensated with some bosses that kicked my ass.

Bosses

Here's what I would consider notable flaw #1.

I have mixed feelings on the bosses in Superstars. I don't think many of them are poorly designed - in fact, a lot of them are good, and offer fun moments of spectacle. But for a 2D Sonic game, they're REALLY long and drawn out, and by the late game this was starting to get draining.

Bosses tend to be the type where you have to dodge their attack patterns for a while until you get the chance to hit them exactly once, MAYBE twice. A few bosses seem to have quicker options if you abuse your post-hit invulnerability or play as a character with a double jump, but many will either be completely invincible or run away to the background for long periods of time, making it impossible to damage them outside of the allotted windows. And even if it seems like you'll be able to get in a second hit, many bosses turn invincible and skip ahead to the next attack pattern as soon as they take the first hit. Again, most of these fights aren't BAD, but because of this behavior they sometimes take almost as long to beat as the entire levels preceding them. This didn't bother me much early in the game, but against the more challenging bosses towards the end that kept killing me several minutes into a long fight, it got tiring. The final boss of Story Mode probably took me like an hour.

While this certainly isn't an uncommon style of boss design, part of me suspects they did this for the sake of co-op players. For one, playing in co-op means that you don't necessarily have to start the entire fight over if one person dies, so I assume the length is less of an issue. But in particular, true classic-style Sonic bosses that you can just hit repeatedly with good timing would go down in a few seconds against a team of four players. Likewise, the swarm of clones from the "Avatar" Emerald power would probably obliterate every Genesis era boss with one button press. So I get why every boss needs all these invulnerability periods, but still. I at least wish they'd made some of those attack patterns shorter and given you more frequent opportunities to deal damage.

Emeralds and their powers

Speaking of the new Chaos Emerald powers: they're neat, I guess? They're fine. I didn't use them much. Actually, I kept forgetting I even had them - although the game will play a noise and show an icon in the corner of the screen to remind you any time you reach a spot where a specific power is useful. Avatar, the first power you get, is at least good for getting a couple free hits in on the trickier bosses. Yellow's ability to slow time is obviously good, but, again, I always forgot I even had it and made it through just fine without it. I was also pleased to realize that the swimming power is useful for the water levels and not just for climbing up waterfalls.

Oh, and the new grappling-based special stages kind of suck, but they're not the worst, and I'll at least give them credit for trying something new. (Motion Sickness Zone from Sonic 1 does return as a bonus minigame, but I only did it once lmao.)

Battle Mode

I haven't played Battle Mode. Couldn't tell you if it's good or not. It did, however, give us official designs for Metal Tails and Metal Amy after all these years, and also it let me make this:

...Okay, enough beating around the bush. Let's talk about the thing that REALLY drags down the experience.

The soundtrack...

(This lengthy section on the music will feature some light spoilers for things like zone names and themes.)

Now, don't get me wrong. There are some bangers in here that I've been listening to on loop. But this is one of the most inconsistent soundtracks I've ever heard, and I'm not sure I've ever played another game where the music has such a sharp dip in quality in the back half.

As anyone following this blog knows, prior to release I was a little obsessed with trying to gauge what the soundtrack would be like. "Jun Senoue" and "new Classic Sonic game" naturally evokes the memory of Sonic 4, but from the start we knew Tee Lopes was involved as well, and almost all of the music previewed before released leans more towards the sound of Sonic Mania than anything else. I was hopeful! I was excited! Jun deserved another chance at doing another classic Sonic OST, and Tee is one of my favorite game composers of all time between his Sonic material and other works like the TMNT: Shredder's Revenge OST. I frequently thought back to this Sonic 4 remix medley by Jun and Tee as a reminder that these two could really be the dream team, bringing out the best in each other's work.

Sure enough, the front half of the game is largely dominated by the Mania sound, whether it's a track by Tee himself or one by an in-house Sega artist that's compatible with his style. Pinball Carnival Act 1 by Rintaro Soma (an up-and-coming composer who wrote a bunch of the Cyber Space themes in Frontiers) takes obvious inspiration from Mania's Studiopolis Act 1, to the point that I was shocked when Sega posted the track and revealed it wasn't written by Tee. Act 2, however, forges more of its own sound by leaning into the act's spooky haunted carnival theme. And despite being the music lead, the only level theme that I know for sure was written by Senoue in the front half of the game (Bridge Island Act 1) was actually arranged by Tee Lopes to give it more of that Mania sound. Hell, the level clear jingle is literally just the one from Mania. A few level themes by other composers don't quite match that style, but they fit in well enough.

But there are early signs that this sound won't be consistent throughout the game. Our first warning of things to come is the boss music:

When early copies started floating around and the soundtrack leaked, many, many people hoped that this was merely a placeholder, like the literal Sonic 4 Episode II music used in the earliest previews of Speed Jungle, and that it'd get replaced with a day one patch. Oh, those poor, innocent fools...

Even if you don't mind the poor production with the returning Sonic 4 faux-Genesis sound, this is a very simplistic thirteen second snippet of music that then plays a second time in a higher key before it loops. This wouldn't be the end of the world if the bosses were as short as the ones in the Genesis games, of course, but they're not! This theme is used for a ton of lengthy fights throughout the game, including an EXTREMELY long and tedious autoscroller boss at the end of Golden Capital Act 2. Maybe I would've enjoyed the bosses in this game more if they were paired with some earworms that'd get me hyped up and sell how cool and exciting the fights are supposed to be, but grating songs like this just made the minutes spent fighting those bosses feel like an eternity.

Still, boss music (and menu music) aside, all of the level themes in the front half of the game ranged from decent to great, with the peak easily being the phenomenal Lagoon City Act 2 by Tee Lopes. And then... I got to the back half of the game. And the Mania style completely disappeared, replaced largely with the dreaded Sonic 4 sound. That isn't the style for EVERY song in the back half, but even the ones that try something different tend to be weaker than the material from the first six zones, with less engaging melodies and less intricate arrangement. Many sound straight up unfinished, leaning on extremely basic synth patches with no personality. And there isn't a single track from Tee in the back half. He just disappears from the project altogether.

What this means is that we go from this absolute banger by Tee Lopes in zone 6, which elevates what's otherwise a bog standard desert level to a thrilling adventure:

To... this, in zone 7:

It's EXTREMELY jarring!

The thing is, this is actually one of the better tracks in this style. I have to assume this is by Senoue, because you can totally hear a good Adventure or Heroes era Senoue track in there once you get past the crude synth replication of the Genesis era Sonic sound. Senoue is still a great composer, as you can hear clear as day with Bridge Island, but he's working with a restrictive sound palette that doesn't play to his strengths at all. If only he'd bust out that damn guitar, or at least pick some better synths.

(And no matter what people will tell you, no, this is not an accurate recreation of what the Genesis's YM2612 chip really sounded like, nor is it representative of what it CAN sound like at its best. Go back to the Streets of Rage 2 or Ristar soundtracks if you need a reminder.)

While I can at least see what the Press Factory tracks were aiming for, some other faux-FM synth tracks are just really bland. They don't have anything interesting going on, and they also don't seem particularly tailor made for the levels they accompany. They're just attempts to mimic what Sonic 1-3 sounded like on a very literal level. Take, for instance, the Golden Capital Act 1 theme, AKA "we've got Sky Sanctuary at home." While the better level themes in this game enhance the mood or even completely carry the vibes of a level, the weaker tracks can really suck all the air out of the room and make a level feel like more of a slog.

What kills me is that there are, in fact, a couple examples of how to do throwbacks to classic Sega FM synth music well on this very soundtrack! They're just not the Sonic 4 type tracks. I love the Frozen Base Act 2 theme, presumably composed by legendary Sega composer Hiroshi "HIRO" Kawaguchi, who's responsible for all-time classic arcade soundtracks like Fantasy Zone, Out Run, Hang-On, After Burner, and more, as well as the hacking and pinball themes from Frontiers. Maybe to an untrained ear this doesn't sound all that different, but it has a catchier tune, better instruments, and stronger production overall. I'm also a fan of the track for Sky Temple, which isn't perfect, but it blends a few Genesis-esque instruments like the Sonic 1+2 snare with other instruments for a richer sound. If the whole soundtrack sounded more like these examples, I'd definitely be complaining less.

I really just have to wonder... how did this happen? How did this end up being so inconsistent? Many fans on social media are jumping to the conclusion that Senoue is just extremely stubborn and refuses to ditch the style from Sonic 4. I can't deny this possibility, but some things just don't add up. The almost complete lack of "retro" style music in the promotional material. The fact that the style just suddenly shifts halfway through the game, then disappears for the final zone, as if that's not the note they want to end on. The complete lack of any tracks by Tee Lopes in the back half. The focus on the Mania-style tracks in the bonus "mini soundtrack." And most perplexing of all, the fact that three of the first tracks you hear in the game were Senoue compositions that were given extra attention with arrangements from Tee Lopes.

This is pure speculation on my part, but it almost seems like they straight up ran out of time.

Perhaps Jun wanted more of his tracks to get full arrangements from Tee, or for Tee to contribute more songs, but things were down to the wire and they chose to leave in some of the raw Sonic 4 style demos. The soundtrack being crunched out in a matter of months at the end of development would certainly explain why Speed Jungle had to be demoed without its music a mere four months ago. It'd also explain why a game that's only a few hours long needs NINETEEN composers listed in the credits. And also the fact that multiple zones just have completely different, unrelated music by different artists across their acts. Did they need multiple artists working on different acts simultaneously, completely independent from each other with no time to cross reference each others' work, due to extreme time constraints? I'd buy it.

Ah well. It's not the end of the world. I've heard worse Sonic music. But I'll always think of what could have been...

At least the final battle with Eggman at the end of Story Mode has a pretty kickass boss theme, which ALMOST makes up for how bad most of the preceding boss music is (and the fact that that very difficult fight doesn't have a checkpoint between phases and took me like an hour to beat lmao). It even seems like it might be written by longtime Phantasy Star Online composer and recurring Sonic contributor Hideaki Kobayashi. That's the guy who wrote NONAGRESSION!!!!!!!

The postgame

Speaking of beating Eggman! It turns out Superstars has a good deal of postgame content, as merely beating the last zone with all the Chaos Emeralds doesn't take you to the true final boss. In order to do that, you'll need to do something else.

Before we hit the big spoiler warning, I'm going to give any future players who are still reading a warning. If you value your sanity... don't force yourself to do all the postgame stuff. Don't make the mistakes I did. It's not worth it, and it may very well knock your personal score for the game down a couple points.

----------------------------------------------------------------

SPOILERS FOR THE STORY, UNLOCKABLES, AND THE POSTGAME BELOW THIS POINT

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

----------------------------------------------------------------

The bonus scenario

Sonic Superstars has a big surprise in store for anyone who beats the main story. For the first time since... what, Silver? In 2006? We finally have a brand new playable character in a new Sonic platformer! (I wouldn't count the player avatar in Forces as a full-fledged New Character.) Yes, after the credits roll, you unlock Trip as the super-secret fifth playable character. I was really excited to see this. Trip is cute, even if her masked appearance from early in the game is perhaps a more unique design than a Sonic-ified lizard girl who can only vaguely look like a real sungazer lizard. She IS the first new Sonic character Ohshima has designed since the '90s, though, so she gets points for that - and she gets even more points for literally turning into a dragon when she goes Super. We love a girl who can turn into a dragon, don't we folks? And her playstyle is fun, too, with a double jump and the ability to roll along walls and ceilings.

But Trip isn't just playable. Like Knuckles before her, she gets an entire alternate story mode of her own, which somewhat remixes the level layouts, generally makes things more challenging, and swaps out Eggman for Egg Robo. I was so excited to see this! It really felt like the game had so much more in store for me than I'd anticipated.

...Then I spent probably around three hours attempting to beat the new final battle with Fang at the end of Trip's Story. And it made me regret doing Trip's Story at all.

Once you learn the patterns, a lot of them are actually piss easy. But the difficulty comes down to a few misguided factors:

The fight is LOOOONG. On a successful attempt the whole thing will probably take the average player about, like... seven or eight minutes? Maybe longer? This is where I really started to get pissed at the game for making me wait through these stupid attack patterns before I could attempt to hit the boss once.

The fight is divided between two phases, one with Fang in a vehicle and another with him in a giant robot, with no checkpoint between them. Dying to one of Fang's bullshit attacks on the second phase means having to redo the ~5 minute first phase all over again. And, worst of all...

Fang has multiple projectile attacks that are guaranteed instant kills, even if you have rings.

Also there's a stupid desperation headbutt attack that can really easily catch you off guard and kill you, but I only got that far in the fight once.

It's the instant kills that got me. If those fucking immobilizing net attacks just made you drop your rings, or you could at least wiggle out of them by mashing buttons (EDIT: apparently you CAN do this but you literally have to button mash so rapidly that it's a crapshoot whether or not you'll physically be able to do it), it would have been totally doable! Kinda fun, even! Slow, but pretty cool in terms of spectacle. But nope! Three hours! Three hours on this! This is, without a doubt, the hardest boss I have ever faced in any Sonic game, period, and one of the hardest bosses I've ever seen in ANY game. All because of one attack pattern where making a tiny mistake means starting over.

The glitches didn't help, either. Something about the way the circular boss arena was set up in both stories' final battles seems to make the floor intangible sometimes for non-player objects. Occasionally my dropped rings, enemies I was supposed to knock towards Fang, or one of Fang's insta-kill projectiles would just fall through the floor randomly. This definitely wasn't my main problem, but it helped drive home the idea that this fight just wasn't worth my time.

After three hours of attempts, I gave up. I just went and looked up the ending of Trip's story, as well as the contents of the Final Story, on YouTube. Turns out I made the right call, because boy, that true final boss looks like dogshit. It's just a very dull fight against a big generic cartoon dragon. Apparently this is the thing Eggman was looking for. It appears and is defeated with little fanfare. I think I liked it better when I assumed the scary dragon being foreshadowed was just Super Trip.

...Also, hey, what's up with The End being very conspicuously visible in the background of the last zone?? I know it's just a cheeky cameo, but, like... isn't it supposed to be sealed away in Cyber Space right now? Should I be taking this literally? Does this have lore implications? This is one hell of a way to remind people that the timeline's been reunified, I guess

Closing thoughts

I really hate to part ways with Superstars on a sour note like this, because like I said up top, I mostly enjoyed my time with it! It's really just a small handful of particularly frustrating bosses and the inconsistent soundtrack that drag it down. Other than that, it's solid as a rock. Maybe wait for sales if you're not dying to play it, but it's definitely worth playing for any Sonic fan. Just... skip the true ending. I would have stepped away MUCH happier with this game if I'd done that.

I wanna try to end this on a more positive note but I'm tired, so, uhhhh... look, you can unlock a Metal Nights skin for your Battle Mode bot!!

Anyway back to jamming to about half the soundtrack on loop while pretending the other half doesn't exist, and looking forward to the continued Fang Renaissance with his upcoming IDW miniseries

[archangeliccc]

The Magnus Archives is a fucking pipeline, I swear. At first, I was like:

"I don't listen to podcasts...not since I listened to a few episodes of Chuckle Sandwich...they're far too long...I dont know if I'm going to even finish this..."

*listens to the entire podcast*

"Holy fuck, that was awesome. I'm obsessed!"

*listens to it again, finishing in less than a month*

"Wow, that was awesome, but who is this Arthur Lester I keep hearing of from adjacent fandoms? I think it's funny that me and the main character share the same name...Maybe I'll check it out."

*sees the length of the episodes*

"Wow, this is going to take a while..."

*gets caught up with Malevolent in two weeks by listening to it at work*

"Holy shit, that was awesome, but what is this Welcome to Night Vale thing I heard of one time a few years ago in a passing conversation I have barely any recollection of?"

*listens to WTNV*

"Oh fuck, I have an addiction to audio dramas now"

Post Script:

I've learned that it is very easy to continuously listen to podcasts for lengthy amounts of time at work, given the fact that I work 8 hour shifts stocking and recovering grocery aisles. That being said, if you ever see a short emo guy restocking shelves in a random fucking store with one earbud in, always assume that he is feeding his horror podcast addiction, especially if his name is Arthur. Exclusively if his name is Arthur.

Because there is only one person I know with that name.

And it is me.

Tumblr User Arthur "Ikkaros Archangel (Archangeliccc)" Gaylord IV Avatar of the Whore Goddamn Motherfucking Jurgen Leitner...the First...my official title...

Now, I have to go unlock all of the characters in hit game from 2007, Sonic and the Secret Rings so I can play as Shadow the Hedgehog in party mode. (Unrelated to the above post)

[deltastra]

My Thoughts on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Trailer

ITS HERE. AFTER NUMEROUS RUMOURED RELEASE DATES, THE TRAILER IS FINALLY HERE. GUYS I DREAMT THIS TRAILER LIKE 4 TIMES THESE PAST 6 MONTHS I WAS GOING INSANE. SPOILERS FOR THE TRAILER BELOW!!

THE DETAIL?! I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I JUST KNOW THE SHADOW ESCAPE SCENE IS GOING TO BE FIRE.

Ok so I love how compared to Sonic's soft-looking quills which looks more like fur, Shadow's quills look more spiky and rough. It's so clear that they are parallels that even their designs beautifully contrast.

"Shadow's story began a lot like yours Sonic. But where you found family and friends, Shadow found only pain and loss"

This gives me hope that they will actually adapt Project Shadow in its truest form. Especially seeing the G.U.N agents point their guns at Shadow and Gerald Robotnik who appear to be grieving. While I don't expect them to show Maria's death, I hope they at least imply it. (I feel bad for the actress but a lot of fans will cheer for her character's death because it shows that the writers care about following the source material lol)

Okay so one thing that is different is that instead of Sonic being framed and hunted by the government, he is instead asked for assistance to track down Shadow. Makes sense for their universe given the first two movies. However, I do hope Team Heroes end up betraying the authorities and let Shadow escape.

WE ARE GOING TO GET A NIGHT CITYSCAPE FIGHT I LOVE THESE TYPES OF FIGHTS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

ALSO KEANU REEVES SOUNDS GREAT AS SHADOW!!

AND THE TELEPORTATION? I LOVE IT! Looks like they won't portray it as "Chaos Control" but it's fine I guess!

THAT RUNNING ANIMATION ACTUALLY LOOKS MORE MENACING THAN THE GAMES WHAT THE HECK?! THAT'S SO WELL DONE!

THE FIGHTS DEFINITELY IMPROVED BASED ON THE FEW SCENES WE GOT!

Okay so this is giving me hope that they won't make Team Sonic work with the authorities. Looking at their faces, it gives me the impression that they took away their dad (possibly he is the one being framed?)

Well Jim Carrey did ask for the fat suit! Looks like he's going full Eggman now!

Bro they're doing this on purpose at this point. Man I love Agent Stone so much.

OKAY SO I KNEW THAT HE WILL HAVE A MOTORBIKE CAUSE OF WHAT PEOPLE SAID THEY SAW AT THAT CON WHERE THEY PLAYED THE TEASER BUT MAAAAAAN.

HE RLLY PULLED UP ON SONIC WITH A BIKE.

OH MAN THAT DETAIL

AKIRA REFERENCE OF COURSE THEY HAD TO!!!!!

OH HE LOOKS SO COOL IM GOING TO EXPLODE.

THIS. This is why I love night cityscape battles. They look so beautiful.

WAIT SO GERALD IS ALIVE IN THIS UNIVERSE...INTERESTING. I love how the actor matches Jim Carrey's Eggman!

OKAY SO FIRST OF ALL GUYS, GOD THIS TRAILER WAS LIKE 5% OF WHAT I SAW IN MY DREAMS SO IM HAPPY.

Jokes aside, perfect. I love this trailer so much and it was worth the hype. I'm so excited to watch this movie despite the few minor events that they changed in order to properly incorporate this story into the movie universe.

I doubt Amy or Rouge will appear but that's fine. Maybe for a post-credit scene I think.

Shadow is definitely the star of the show here. The detail on his quills, his voice, and his behaviour is all so good. I'm sure they'll give Shadow's character justice. I'm assuming Project Shadow will be the prologue in the movie before the title card drops but thats just me predicting stuff!

AAAAAAAAAAAAH IM SO EXCITED GUYS HEHEHEHE

[datcloudboi]

List of Video Games Turning 10 Years Old in 2024

Alien: Isolation

Assassin's Creed: Rogue (the one where you play as an Assassin turned Templar.)

Assassin's Creed: Unity (the one set during the French Revolution.)

Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky

Azure Striker Gunvolt

The Banner Saga

Bayonetta 2

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea (the DLC where you go back to Rapture)

A Bird Story (a sort of spin-off of "To the Moon")

BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! (is this a sequel to 1 or a prequel to 1? I forgor)

Bravely Default (in North America)

Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (the one with K*vin Sp*cey)

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 (to date, the last new Castlevania game to release)

Child of Light

The Crew (going offline at the end of March)

D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die (a wonderfully strange game from the guy that made Deadly Premonition)

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (in North America)

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (in North America)

Dark Souls II

Deception IV: Blood Ties

Demon Gaze

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Disney Infinity 2.0

Divinity: Original Sin (from the team that would go on to make Baldur's Gate 3)

Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Dragon Age: Inquisition (the winner of GOTY at the very first TGAs)

Drakengard 3

Earth Defense Force 2025 (EDF! EDF! EDF!)

The Evil Within (from the creative director of Resident Evil)

Fable Anniversary

Fairy Fencer F

Far Cry 4

Freedom Planet

Guilty Gear Xrd Sign

Hyrule Warriors

Inazuma Eleven (in North America. And digital only.)

Infamous: Second Son (as well as its expansion, First Light)

Kirby: Triple Deluxe

The Last of Us Remastered (just one year after the original version came out...)

The Legend of Korra (the game from PlatinumGames that you can't buy anymore)

Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham

Lego The Hobbit

The Lego Movie Videogame

Lethal League (from the team that would go on to make Bomb Rush Cyberfunk)

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (the third and final chapter of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy)

Lisa: The Painful (yes, really)

LittleBigPlanet 3

Lords of the Fallen (not to be confused with Lords of the Fallen, which came out in 2023)

Mario Golf: World Tour

Mario Kart 8 (the original version)

Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes (the prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which came out 18 months later)

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Might & Magic X: Legacy

Murdered: Soul Suspect (it's like Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, but not as good)

Natural Doctrine

Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty! (a from the ground up remake of the first Oddworld game from 1997)

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures 2 (yes, it got a sequel. I don't know how or why.)

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth

Pokemon Omega Ruby & Pokemon Alpha Sapphire

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy (the last time that Professor Layton himself was the protagonist. At least, until the New World of Steam comes out)

Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Pushmo World

Risen 3: Titan Lords

Sacred 3

Samurai Warriors 4

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (the 3rd one)

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Shovel Knight (yes, really)

Skylanders: Trap Team (the 4th one)

Sniper Elite III

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal

South Park: The Stick of Truth

Steins;Gate (in North America)

Strider (the one from Double Helix)

Sunset Overdrive

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS (or Smash 4 for short)

Tales of Xillia 2

Tales of Hearts R

The Talos Principle

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call

Thief (the reboot)

This War of Mine

Toukiden: The Age of Demons

Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark (this game merged the storyline of the War for/Fall of Cybertron games with the storyline of the Michael Bay movies. I’m not joking)

Transistor

Valiant Hearts: The Great War

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Walking Dead: Season Two

Wasteland 2

Watch Dogs

The Witch and the Hundred Knight

The Wolf Among Us (sequel this year!)

Wolfenstein: The New Order

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

Yoshi's New Island

[cutegirlmayra]

Combining Prompts (To hopefully get through them all at last! DX lol)

"I play POLYMERIZATION! Taking these two prompts on my side of the inbox, I'll have them merge to combine and create..!"

"This-" Prompt:

“You’re nothing but a manipulator.”

The charismatic sound rattled Infinite to no end.

How could he continually disregard threat after threat? The abuse of Infinite’s words trying to sting a thousand deadly poisons about his friend’s shortcomings in the war rolling through his blood as though rain upon skin, not lasting… not affecting…

His spirit was unwavering and undaunted in the fact of his charading mask.

Infinite put a clawed hand up to it, his own insecurities shaking at Sonic’s optimism. Who taught this hero that? Was in just innate in him!?

‘His friends… are truly his power.’ He turned with a wide swish of his tail to the jail cell, also unrelenting, also unyielding.

His hands gripped the cage bars, “You have so much faith in your pathetic friends… the stench of their fear, after losing you, saturates the air even through the smog of burning smoke and ashes!” He shook the bars by accident, having thrusted himself up against the metal borders between freedom and entrapment.

Sonic, his arms folded, smirked with a side-eye back to Infinite’s attempt. “You’re the pathetic one. Shaking the cage instead of me.” He nonchalantly lifted a palm up towards the ceiling, as though shrugging. “My friends would never lose their cool.”

Unable to hold back a growl of distaste at failing to rile Sonic up or even get a reaction of misery out of him, Infinite, like a predator unable to feast on his prey’s sufferings, threw himself around and paced himself as though to walk away.

But no… It occurred to him, then… His one eye widening before slyly looking back at Sonic

He held a hand again to his mask, but this time, more poised than ever.

“I’m not sure what will convince you… besides, perhaps, an example?” He wanted to check to see if Sonic was now paying attention, he hadn’t exactly described a situation before. He had always, vividly, tried to paint a picture for Sonic of his friends falling back at his own power, at scurrying away in pain.

Describing injuries and their looks of fear and torment never seemed to phase Sonic, as though he knew his friends all too well…

“But this one…” He slightly tilted his body, wanting just a glance… a peek at his face. “Might surprise you.”

Sonic was still facing his back to him… ‘Alright… the games begin anew.’

More confident, Infinite turned away from looking slightly over his shoulder and continued his farce since of illusionary power…

“That one hedgehog, pink and frail, wielding a hammer not quite proportional to her size… Ring any bells?”

“She’d like me to hear bells.” Sonic scoffed, but it did mean he knew the very girl Infinite was speaking of…

He smirked under his mask. ‘I have you now… Sonic..!’

He paced to the side, showing he wasn’t going anywhere. “A spirited girl. Kinda reminds me of you, at times… Rallying her troops, raising their courage to fly the flag of resistance wherever they should so march… After all these months, though… I have come to find her weakness is rather… easy to exploit.” He raised a clawed hand, and curled it maliciously.

He took another peek.

A swift turn of Sonic’s quills showed he didn’t want to reveal his listening in…

‘Excellent… I’ve found your weakness as well.’ He swished only one beat of his tail, bringing it to his other side.

“It didn’t take long… You can read that one like a book. A picture book, even.” He lightly threw out some humor, mocking her. “Who knew a girl who’s fought robots all her life would get so shaken up by…”

He fully turned to face Sonic, folding his arms, “One…”

Sonic’s body twitched, before he repositioned his feet and seemed to regulate himself.

This was the first time Infinite was using an example about the little termite. She had holed herself away after an unfortunate setback… with Tails realizing both of them weren’t fit for combat.

Tails, with the loss of his best friend, and Amy dealing with loss by trying to stay active in hope and combat… only to be overthrown by her childhood trauma when faced with Metal Sonic Phantoms…

“My power grows stronger… thanks to her fear.” He dipped his chin down slightly, then walked with great, easy and relaxed strides as though he had all the time in the world to squeeze every last morsel of a delicious meal out of Sonic…

How he had longed to see the look of despair on that overconfident hedgehog’s face… a hero broken and defeated by Infinite’s own might and power..!

He tapped the metallic edge of his mask’s ‘nose’ against the metal bars. “Sonic? You still there?” He mockingly teased.

Sonic huffed out some air from his nose, scoffing at him.

“Want me to go on?” He was loving this.

Sonic? Silent?

“No remark at all, have you?”

“... You prattle on and on… just like Eggman.” Sonic’s words infuriated him.

He straightened up, stood more intimidatingly at the border of the cell, dropping his arms and forming fists. “What!?”

“Amy might have some small hammers…” He finally… turned around.

He walked to face Infinite’s trembling eye with his own, steady and steadfast, piercing emerald eye of his own.

“But she can also carry bigger ones… and it looks like you haven’t seen those yet.”

Infinite grunted to disregard Sonic’s bold stance and claim, flicking a hand up to dismiss his heroic defense of her.

“It’s no use, Infinite… You can’t shake me up.” Sonic smiled, leaning back. “Why not just quit already?”

“I can do whatever I please!!!” Infinite, losing his cool, slashed a claw across the bars as Sonic jumped back, landing on three limbs before smiling confidently once more, getting up to see Infinite breathing hard.

Infinite put a shaking hand to his throat… as Sonic tilted his head and chuckled to the side of himself.

“Right. Whatever you ‘can’ do… but without that mysterious power of yours… you’re nothing but the empty shell you wear on your head…” He swiped an arm out, as Infinite looked up, as though worried Sonic saw right through his ruse…

“You’ll pay for that… hedgehog.” He moved and lowered a lever, as Sonic’s face turned from joking to serious.

Another torturous arena battle, eh?

When would he learn…

Once rescued, Sonic immediately found out the source of Infinite’s power through some trial and error, but with the help of his friends, he also noticed…

At the final battle, Amy was avoiding the Metal Sonic’s…

His heart Infinite’s words, seeing that they must be true.

At first, he was relieved to hear Amy didn’t leave the base most of the time. Figuring all of Infinite’s spout out nonsense was just like his Phantom Ruby powers, make-believe that he convinced himself he was seeing.

It gave Infinite power to see others weak and helpless before him… he soaked in their expressions of fear as though a vampire to their bloodlust.

Amy’s face would shift when seeing a Metal Sonic coming at her, then turn to only find another in the opposite direction.

Her hammer stayed at her side, ready… but never launching itself towards its foes…

Sonic didn’t have much time… he needed to defeat this thing, the giant mecha Eggman had holed himself inside… but this… this needed to be addressed first.

Because, in truth, seeing even some of Infinite’s words proving true… was what truly made Sonic feel fear.

His heart trembled, yes.

But not in weakness…

In strength.

“Amy!”

Alarmed, Amy turned around to gasp, seeing Sonic leap over her and curl up to knock away a few more enemies, leaving–purposefully–the Metal Sonics as the only illusionary menaces still plaguing her flanks.

“W-What did you do that for? Come to help or selectively not hit the ones with your ‘somewhat’ face?” She teased, but as he put his back against her own, letting the Metal Sonic’s swarm and surround them, he could feel her body quake in fear…

He closed his eyes, trying to help his heart beat louder… Maybe, just maybe… Her heart might match its empathic pace.

It might guide her to the bravery he knew was always within her, even at her most lowest,... Amy wasn’t the kind of girl to quit.

“Amy…” He turned only some of his face over his shoulder, speaking indirectly to her as he opened his eyes to see the Metal Sonics raising their metallic claws, slowly taking steps to pin the two more and more against each other… squishing them into the center of their pre-pounced huddle.

“Remember what we said Infinite’s power runs on?” He eyed her behind him and then the Metal Sonics… they were growing larger… their red eyes blaring as though two twin lighthouses… not meant to instill safety, but distill it with the heat of battle, rising in growing doom.

“They don’t casts shadows…”

She looked down at the ground, seeing that.

“But in your mind… The more power you give them, the greater they become.”

Sonic’s words were like an anchor to her soul, and she took a deep breath, holding the Piko Piko Hammer, a trusted friend nowadays, with both hands… gripping it tightly and rubbing a twisting firmness to secure the lock they had on them.

She nodded, understanding.

“Banish that doubt, Amy… I’m here for you. I’ll be your strength… just like when it all first happened… I won’t leave you hanging for long.”

His voice was so gentle, so reassuring.

Her eyes blinked in recognition, remembering dangling by what felt like an iron thread, crying out in desperate cries to be let go… 

Sonic’s spin dash cut what felt like impossible bands to break, and once catching her footing, the binds of those ropes falling away, rushing into his arms, “Sooonnniccc…!!!”

Feeling that rush of gratitude like how she had felt back then, she smiled with peace finally lingering in her heart…

Her heart and his… steadily beating to the same drum.

“Thank you,... Sonic.” She teared up a little, “I missed you.”

He smiled, too. “Not for too long..! I hope…” He teased, but looked behind him and winked to her.

“Hehe, you’re such a charmer!” She played back, before swinging her hammer up over her head, “HHHHHHHEEE–” She wound up.

The Metal Sonic’s suddenly froze, looking at their bodies as they began to continually shrink in size.

“-HAHHHH!!!!” The Hammer grew in power, springing out puffs of what looked like cotton clouds to then reveal its enormous size..!

It swung down to completely flatten quite the regiment of Metal Sonics, now the size of nothing more than ants compared to her enlargened hammer.

The ‘Piko!’ Sound was deep, a low, heavy sound that amplified by the impact pulse and waves of air as rocks flew up in debris from the collison.

The echo made other Metal Sonics turn before lifting their arms to try and shield from the wind blast… but were taken out by the flying, large rocks that came hurdling at them.

Sonic flicked a thumb across the underbelly of his nose, proud of his friend conquering her fears, and realizing that was exactly why Infinite separated him from his friends.

The one thing that Infinite and Eggman did happen to see…

Was that Sonic… helped to dissipate fear from all those who trusted in him.

He was… Their beacon of everlasting Hope… and gave them the will to fight!

He took out the rest of the Metal Sonics in front of him, “I’ll take care of the rest!” He snickered, “And I don’t like my face that much, Amy! Come on!”

“Biggest lie I’ve heard today!” Amy cheerfully teased back.

“The nerve!” Sonic joked, but smiled and chuckled at seeing her thriving now on the battlefield…

Their rhythm aligned, their hearts were now synced, and with the same speed of delivery, Sonic and her continued to thrash the foes around them before he sped off with a kind wave goodbye, his eyes softened in a glaze of admiration of her.

She gave him a beautiful smile that freely warmed his heart with the light of hope she had once taught him to possess, and sped away to take on the big bad boss… once more… with a heart cleansed from doubt.

And certainly not holding on… to any more fears.

[jjungkookislife]

a prompt that’s been on my mind recently:

oc and jk at a halloween party, and he’s doing everything to make her jealous to see if she shares the same feelings.. but it backfires because she finds it a little childish and they have a real conversation about their feelings 😭

oooh this is such a good one, anon! thank you :)

When You're Done

pairing: jungkook x reader

warnings: jealousy, alcohol use/mention, food mention

They did the Monster Mash...

You giggled as one of your favorite songs filled your best friend's home. Hoseok was ever the social butterfly as he made the rounds as host.

He had greeted you briefly before disappearing into the crowd of strangers. Well, most of them were strangers, a few of your friends were scattered about. You lingered by the appetizers, sneaking cheddar cheese bites and crackers. Your glass of wine had been refilled twice, but it did nothing to take your mind off the itchiness of your skirt.

"Jung Hoseok!" You grit your teeth as you spot Jungkook across the room in a costume that compliments yours. You had the bright idea to come as Wanda from the Fairy Odd Parents, and there stood Jungkook as Cosmo, green hair and all.

You turn on your heel, using the crowd to your advantage, pushing past the spiderwebs, and the streamers.

"Whoa!" What's got you in such a hurry? Should have come as Sonic instead," Jimin giggles, while you roll your eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me Jungkook would be here?" You sigh.

"Because I was in charge of the food, not the guests?" Jimin raises a thick brow. "I thought you liked him?"

"Shhh!" you smack his arm repeatedly until he grabs your hand, licks it, and sets it down. "EWWW!"

"That's what you get! You almost got crumbs on my flowy shirt," He snarks.

"You look like a pirate."

"You look like the Tooth Fairy." He retorts. He holds his hand up before you can insult him again. "Just ignore him, or flirt with him, or fuck him. I don't know at this point. Go do shots with Jin and Tae."

"I loathe you," you grumble as you walk past him.

"Love you too, cutie!" Jimin calls out as you flip him off.

You find Seokjin in his lifeguard costume and Taehyung in his Monopoly Man costume. He chats with a group of girls, each fawning over him.

"Hey,!" Seokjin waves as he has you join him on the bench. He has a cup in his hand as he looks at the fire burning before him. "Heard Jungkook's here as Cosmo. How does that make you feel?"

"Seokjin, don't psychoanalyze me. It's bad enough you work with my mom," you huff. Seokjin cackles as he drapes his arm around your shoulders.

"She just wants you to be happy. Maybe with a grandchild or two. Human or feline."

"Jin!" you huff as you head back to the party. You spot Namjoon in his mummy costume and join him on the dance floor.

You ignore the heat of a familiar stare. You weren't opposed to Jungkook speaking to you. You were friends... sort of. He had been acting odd as of late. It seemed like he had someone hanging off his arm every time you were around. Was he trying to make you jealous?

Hoseok told you Jungkook liked you a few weeks back, which excited you because you had crushed on him for six months since he joined your friend group through Namjoon. The two were coworkers at his gaming company but now you dreaded being around Jungkook.

Jungkook holds the waist of the person he's with. He laughs at something they say but his eyes are on you as you dance to the song. You ignore him, dancing with Namjoon until Yoongi comes to join, then the three of you are jumping around and laughing.

"Let's go play a game!" Yoongi shouts over the music, you nod as you follow him and Namjoon off the dance floor.

Jungkook follows you with whoever he's selected for the night.

You take a seat beside Namjoon, joined by Jimin and Seokjin. As Yoongi explains the rules, Seokjin and Jimin pull you into their selfies, making you laugh when they kiss your cheek. When Yoongi rolls his eyes at you , you sit up straight, pouting as you apologize.

Jungkook's brows furrow as he stares at you with Jimin draped over one side and Seokjin on the other. He moves his hand onto the person beside him, joining their fingers. He knew it was wrong of him to use this person to get to you but he wanted to make you jealous. He wanted you to feel like he did.

You smile briefly at Jungkook, waving before turning your attention to Yoongi.

"All right, pick a partner," Yoongi instructs, and Jimin scoops you up in his lap, making you laugh.

"I guess I'm taken," you announce.

Jungkook growls as he scoops the person he brought. He watches you, but you say nothing as you stare at him. You wouldn't fall for his game, not now. Though your heart hated to see him so close to someone else. He had to know about your crush. It wasn't like Hoseok to keep quiet, not when he could play matchmaker among his friends.

Was Jungkook doing this on purpose? To hurt you?

You shake your head, paying attention to Jimin as he loops your arms together.

Jungkook gets close to the person beside him, and he realizes they're dressed as a doctor or something. He's not quite sure nor does he care as he kisses their cheek.

Your smile sours as you watch Jungkook. Yoongi sends you to the party to collect the items assigned to your group. You eagerly run off, wanting to be as far away from jungkook as possible.

"Jungkook, you're not supposed to follow me," you huff when he appears beside you at the snack table.

"Who says I'm following you?" he asks as he grabs a drink. You sigh but continue on your way. You had to find someone dressed as Batman.

"Where are you going?" Jungkook asks as he steps beside you.

"Away from you. Where's your Doctor anyway? The two of you seemed pretty close," You remark as you head down a hallway that leads to the kitchen.

"You noticed?" Jungkook's eyes widen.

"Yes, why are you trying to make me jealous? It's childish as hell!" You exclaim as you grab a water bottle from the fridge.

Jungkook frowns. "Who says I'm trying to make you jealous?"

"Jungkook," you sigh heavily. "Hoseok has to have mentioned my crush on you. I don't know why you're messing with me like this. It's cruel to make fun of me."

"I'm not making fun of you!" Jungkook shouts and you stare at him pointedly.

"Then why are you acting like that with your Doctor? You keep appearing everywhere I'm at to hold their hand and kiss their cheek. If you don't like me, fine. Just don't be an asshole about it."

"Fuck, I'm an idiot," Jungkook huffs. "I wanted to make you jealous, okay?"

"Why?"

"Because I like you, and it seemed like you never acknowledged me unless someone was beside me."

"You are an idiot," you giggle.

"HEY!"

"I just mean, if you'd look past your childish games, you'd realize I like you. I have for months now," you shake your head.

"Really?"

"Really," you nod as you take his hands in yours. Jungkook kisses your cheek, giggling when you hide your face in his chest.

"Now, can we stop playing these stupid games?" You ask as you wrap your arms around his waist.

"Yes," he answers. "You're the only one I want."