#arzest

[shinigami-striker]

Sonic Superstars Releases Next Week! | Tuesday, 10/10/2023

Next week, Sonic Superstars releases. In the meantime, I've found some official website sprites of Sonic, Amy, Tails, and Knuckles down below:

The orange ones were from the North American website while the magneta/pink versions were found from the Japanese version.

#2023 video games #2d platformer #amy rose #arzest #classic amy #classic knuckles #classic sonic #classic tails #english version #female protagonist #japanese version #knuckles the echidna #miles tails prower #next week #october 10 #october 2023 #playable characters #protagonists #sonic #sonic superstars #sonic team #sonic the hedgehog #tuesday thoughts #upcoming game #video games #ソニックスーパースターズ #ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ

[kenjus-benjus-jedi-wayseeker]

#nintendo direct #super mario bros wonder #smb wonder #smbw #super mario #mario #sonic the hedgehog #sonic superstars #Sonic #Nintendo #Sega #arzest

[blazehedgehog]

Would you mind going more into detail on the visual side of Superstars? Some of its shortcomings, inconsistencies, etc. I haven’t had the time to put anything together to discuss it, but had the same feelings about the way it looks that you seem to have, and no one else really seems to see it.

Sure! I actually already broke a lot of this down in my discord for my patreon donors, so I'll just mostly copy and paste what I said out of there. Warning: LOTS of images ahead!

The problem I have with the way the game looks is the lighting. Let's take this screenshot as an example:

I want you to ask yourself: where is the sun positioned in this image?

Let's look at Sonic. On Sonic's body, the sun is above him, to the right, slightly in the background. The top edge of his head has the highlight, which fades in to a shadow closer to the camera.

The shadow on the grass suggests the sun is in the same position, but shining from the foreground. The shadow is being cast going in to the background, away from the camera. This is the opposite of Sonic's body.

This rocky outcropping near the top of the image is receiving very intense edge light from both the left and right sides, but barely from the bottom.

Under the grass at the bottom of the image, we see light shining up from below this rocky arch. You could say that maybe it's light reflecting off the water (caustics), but it lacks the caustic pattern and is pure white light, when the water itself is teal. Caustic reflections also generally don't carry 25+ feet away like this does.

The palm tree fronds are receiving light from the same direction as Sonic is, but the trunk is being lit like the rocks are, which is to say its edges are lit up, even in places that should be in shadow.

This is what's known as "rimlighting." It's an important detail in photography and 3D graphics rendering, because it creates a strong outline for characters and important objects.

The catch being rimlighting is one of those things that works when it makes sense. In photography, getting a good rimlight requires very carefully positioning physical lights in a scene, and that light obeys the properties of reality.

What Sonic Superstars has done is grab a very basic rimlight effect that applies a cheap, colorless halo around objects using a shader. It doesn't obey the properties of real light, it just makes everything look weird and inconsistent, giving it this awkward glowing outline. This type of effect was common in Wii games from the mid-2000's. For example, Super Mario Galaxy uses this type of rimlight quite a lot.

Galaxy gets away with it because it's a game set in space, and these bright glowing rimlights help characters pop out from the dark space backgrounds. And, on brighter levels, the rimlight intensity is reduced considerably:

Sonic Superstars has applied its rimlighting in a very haphazard, cheap, ugly way. Some have called it "Generic Unity Rimlighting" because a lot of low-effort games use it to bad effect. And, as far as we can tell, the game is being made in Unity, because the debug menu uses the default Unity background color.

The whole game's lighting situation just looks muddy and dark and confusing, when I think the ideal should be something like New Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.

Lighting is a bit flat, but everything is bright, clear, and consistent. Superstars is very messy and dated looking by comparison. And the above two games are like 9 years old!

#questions #rubyrkgk #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #sonic superstars #arzest

[gameboydemakes]

If there was an award for "most recent game released to receive a demake" I truly think Balan Wonderworld would be the victor! (But then it is something that can be ever changing mind you!) Adding to the further name confusion I did indeed take the opportunity to call the Gameboy "port" of "sorts", Balan Wonderland! Not only a play on the Super Mario World and Super Mario Land name convention, but because hey, come on, who *hasn't* accidentally called Balan Wonderworld, Balan Wonderland?But what IS Balan Wonderworld? Perhaps this "worst game of 2021" either flew over your radar or barreled right into your radar, setting off a major red alert making you avoid it completely. Well, if you want the absolute creme de le creme coverage, I highly recommend Austin Eruptions video on it, found here! Even if you're somewhat familiar with the game Austin goes into such depth and brings up the games strong points whilst not dismissing the game’s obvious flaws. Cannot recommend the video enough and it's a good chunk of the reason why I wanted to demake Balan! So if there is even a smidgen of a speck of a whisper of interest in Balan Wonderworld, maybe check it out. Or do what I did which is watch playthroughs and then listen to the entire OST on repeat whilst demaking it :D.

If you liked this, please visit my Patreon. Any amount thrown my way helps and is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Patreon] [Twitter] [Instagram] [Kofi]

#pixel art #ドット絵 #nintendo #gameboy #square enix #balan wonderworld #balan wonderland #demake #GB studio #platformer #Naoto Ohshima #Arzest #Balan Company

[cold-fire-yo]

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic #sonic rush #sonic superstars #Nintendo DS #9th gen systems #boss battle #my first poll wow #blaze the cat #trip the sungazer #dimps #arzest #sonic team #sega

[smashtheoni]

Oh neat, we can switch characters mid playthrough.

Sonic Superstars - Episode 3: Let's Talk About Jank

#Sonic #Sonic Superstars #Sonic the Hedgehog #SEGA #Arzest #Youtube

[stachehand]

Mario and Sonic: like it's 1991

Feels like one coincidence after another between Mario and Sonic lately, and that's a very good thing.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic superstars #super mario #super mario bros wonder #video games #arzest #sonic team #sega #nintendo #looking forward to both of these excellent looking video games #both have fun and interesting gameplay ideas going for them #they shall be celebrated together in the fall

[bltngames]

It's nice to be able to turn a video around in 8 or 9 days as opposed to the 3-5 month death marches the last few videos have felt like

#sega #sonic the hedgehog #sonic superstars #artoon #arzest #blinx the time sweeper #gut check #bltn #video #Youtube

[lewisibarra1512]

While everyone is out at the cinemas watching Oppenheimer, especially making aliens become friend shaped huggers, I sat on my desk and created a huge portrait based on reports about saying goodbye to a certain stage that once strived for 32 years but is now replaced with a new home: Bridge Island Zone.

Certainly cannot wait to play it! :)

#Sonic Superstars #SEGA #Sonic Team #Arzest #Classic Sonic #Classic Tails #Classic Knuckles #Classic Amy #Bridge Island Zone #Procreate

[tiny-design]

As part of the platforming and exploration based challenges in Balan Wonderworld, the player is able to acquire a multitude of Costumes that alter gameplay in some way, providing unique changes in movement, attacking, or even puzzle solving. Whenever the player takes damage or falls out of the stage, they lose whatever costume they are wearing, and upon losing all of the Costumes, are unable to continue playing. This makes the Costumes serve multiple purposes, not just as a way to advance, but also as an alternative lives system, ensuring that a Game Over can only occur if the player loses all of their Costumes in rapid succession.

#balan wonderworld #arzest #balan company #square enix #yuji naka #2021 #tiny design #game design

[satoshi-mochida]

Sonic Superstars opening animation.

#Sonic Superstars #Sonic #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sega #Arzest #Youtube

[shinigami-striker]

Shadow Superstars | Thursday, 02.15.24

The new DLC costume based on the likeness of Shadow the Hedgehog is now available for free in Sonic Superstars on all major console platfforms.

#downloadable content #free dlc #sonic #sega #sega of america #sega sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic team #sonic superstars #arzest #sonic x shadow generations #video games #classic sonic #ps4 #ps4 games #ps5 #ps5 games #nintendo switch #xbox series x #pc game #february #february 15th #february 2024 #thursday thoughts #shadow the hedgehog #out now #available now #video game character #protagonist

[theautisticgamer]

Sonic Superstars: My Thoughts Before Release

A while back, Takashi Iizuka said that Sonic Team’s long-term goal would be to produce main-line games in the open-zone format roughly every five years, with the interim containing 2.5D platformers to appeal to casual audiences. We’re finally seeing the realization of that interim plan with Sonic Superstars releasing this fall. Here are my opinions on various aspects of the game.

I won’t be discussing the graphics here. Fans with a classic bias miss the pixelated style of Mania, while fans with a modern bias, which hated Mania’s pixel style, are eager for a modern polygonal take. My personal opinion, as a gamer heavily influenced by both of Sonic’s eras, I say either style is good. I'm also very glad that they are keeping Classic Sonic active to represent the side-scrolling platformer game style and keep it visually distinct from the open-zone games. This should be overall beneficial for marketing Sonic games both now and in the future.

What’s more important to me than the graphics are the physics, which I suspect are harder to emulate in the polygonal graphic route, but people from the Sonic community that were invited to play the demo, like Gamescage (Sonic’s self-proclaimed hype-man of YouTube and Twitter fame) say the physics feel exactly like the classics, so I trust his and others’ judgment. And no wonder the physics are so good, Naota Oshima is on the project!

Which is the beginning of my concerns. The game is being developed by Naota Oshima and his studio Arzest. At a glance, it doesn’t sound like that’s a problem, since Naota Oshima created Mr. Hedgehog/Mr. Needlemouse himself. The problem comes with Oshima’s reputation and credibility. Oshima and Arzest worked on Balan Wonderworld, a major failure in the game’s industry that severely cost the game’s publisher, Square Enix. What specifically caused that game to fail were poorly designed functions for character abilities, poorly laid out stages, poor animations, and bugs. While some have claimed Oshima and Arzest didn’t have much involvement in the specific parts of Balan Wonderworld that caused its failure, I find that hard to believe because Oshima was co-heading the project. I’m not calling Arzest into question here as much as I am Oshima; for one we don’t know which Arzest team members were employed there at the time compared to now, and we don’t know who contributed to which problems. But one thing hard to argue with is that Oshima was responsible for ensuring both his employees’ work and the work of other Square Enix employees had been up to snuff on the project, and he fell short of this. This doesn’t mean Sonic Superstars is doomed to fail, it could be a much-needed test to see if Oshima/Arzest can learn from their mistakes by what we’ve seen so far of the game, they have.I know this was a long section, so the TLDR of this section is that Naota Oshima and Arzest have some rough history and we could expect some bugs at launch.

I also think we should expect different level design from Sonic Mania. Sonic Mania was developed by Christian Whitehead and a team full of other indie creatives not just from the Sonic fanbase but beloved/trusted by them, now under the studio name Evening Star. I may talk more about why they’re not working on this game in a separate article, but Evening Star was inspired by Sonic 2 and 3&K when working on Sonic Mania’s level designs, games that were considered the best in the classic trilogy. However, Sonic Team had been split in two during the classic era, half of its members going overseas to the USA to create STI (the Sega Technological Institute) with members from the Sega of America branch. Sonic 2, Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles were made by STI (fun unrelated fact, current head of Sonic Team, Takashi Iizuka, was part of STI starting in Sonic 3). Naota Oshima, however, was involved in Sonic Team’s work in Japan, so his contributions were on the original Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic CD. While these aren’t bad games, they pale in comparison to Sonic 2, 3&K, and Mania. I do think the levels we’ve been shown look better than Sonic the Hedgehog or Sonic CD, so I’m glad to see that, but I still wouldn’t expect the levels from this game to be the best we’ve seen so far.

I am excited for the game having co-op, but sadly it’s only local. This is a major missed opportunity to make the game fun to play with online friends, in the way Super Mario 3D World in its recent Switch port. I’m hopeful that with enough petition from the community, we can get them to add online co-op post-release. If not, there still should hopefully be a way to loophole some online co-op through Steam’s program made during the covid pandemic, Remote Play Together, which allows players to use local co-op features online.

While we haven’t seen the announced Lego DLC yet, I’m genuinely interested in the decision and I think it will provide fun additional content for the game. And since they added skins to the game for Lego, as well a DLC skin for people who signed up for the games’ newsletter (in the form of Amy’s modern clothes), what other skins could we be getting? Even though it was cool to see skins in Sonic Frontiers, we really didn’t get enough of them and I would love a chance to unlock a bunch of skins in Sonic Superstars as a reward for completing various challenges. This could further add to replayability on top of the character roster.

Speaking of the character roster, I’m glad to see Amy Rose added to it, giving us female representation, and while I’m glad Origins Plus DLC paved the way for her here first, I’m looking to her first genuine debut as an intended playable character in a classic Sonic game. It is suspected we’ll also be able to play as a fifth character as due to suspicious gaps in the title sequence and opening animation. Whether this will be Fang, the new character Trip, or even perhaps a return of Mighty as Plus DLC, we’ll have to see. I think that wraps up my thoughts on Sonic Superstars. The TLDR is that while some aspects of the game should be approached with caution this will be a fun experience and worth being excited for. What are your thoughts on Sonic Superstars? Do you agree or disagree with any of my points? I love interacting with the Sonic and gaming communities and would love to hear from you in the comments.

#video games #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #arzest #naoto oshima #gaming #platformers #classic #classic sonic #Sonic Superstars #superstars #speculation #my thoughts #thoughts

[blazehedgehog]

So is there something substantially different about Chaos Control that separates it from Superstars' emerald powers, or did it just tear open a massive plot hole?

I suppose, if we wanted to, we could focus on the line from the original Sonic Adventure, where Knuckles says the Chaos Emeralds translate "thoughts into power."

Which basically gives them the ability to say they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, because all that really matters is what the person happens to be thinking about.

Alternatively, one of the emerald powers in Superstars is to slow time, which depending on how you view the initial Sonic x Shadow introductory cutscene, when Sonic says "he's using the chaos emerald to warp!", we still see Shadow physically move in space. He's not teleporting -- it's closer to a "vanish attack" in Dragon Ball Z, where a character moves so quickly he simply disappears in one location and reappears somewhere else.

By that I mean time compression/stretching still seems to be a key component. This is further backed up in Sonic Heroes and even Shadow's solo game, where in some contexts, Chaos Control freezes time.

To some degree, that's all Chaos Control seems to be -- it's some way of playing with the perception of time, given Sonic 06 uses Chaos Control as a way to jump back and forth between whole entire different eras of the past and future.

Ergo, don't worry about it.

#questions #melcodriggs #sonic superstars #chaos control #shadow the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #sega #sonic team #arzest

[gameboydemakes]

Second track from the Balan Wonderworld demake is none other than the Dance of the Negati! 

Music by @beatscribemusic.

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#pixel art #ドット絵 #nintendo #gameboy #square enix #balan wonderworld #balan wonderland #demake #GB studio #platformer #Naoto Ohshima #Arzest #Balan Company

[violetfeatherwind]

Holy cow! I just now found a place I've never seen where to get extra drops!! It's high up in one of these bird houses!!

#balan wonderworld #balan #save balan wonderworld #square enix #arzest #balan company #balanposting #nintendo switch #screenshot #wonderword positivity