Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

[CrazyT]

I've already said this before, when Iizuka made that "speed boosters are necessary" comment, but I'll say it again: It honestly feels like I'm reading a quote from that fake Iizuka Twitter account. He's just that ridiculous sounding in these interviews.

^This is my exact view on this. He indeed sounds pretty rediculous.

http://twitter.com/iizukaTakashi  

"The next Sonic game will remove that pesky floor and replace everything with rails for pure action and fun." :lol:

[Team Andromeda]

Sharky is sidestepping everything thrown at Iizuka. I do not care about his work on 4 or Colors, I care about what he has done to the franchise and Sonic Team in general. He IS the reason for the dark story and characters the series obtained when it went 3D including the style change, HE hired many of the people who would work on some of the worst Sonic games of all time, he ruined NiGHTS... He also constantly lies in almost every interview he is in and has proven that he is just not very smart and keeps giving bad PR. One of the worst things is that he will only let Jun Sunoue work on Sonic music anymore when there are dozens of much more talented people that are literally begging for the job, like Nakamura, Jacques and even Tallarico...

Sharky is spot on . Iizuka ruined NiGHTS ?  he's the man responsible for the game and the whole dream concept (as we know it); Take it
you're on about NiGHTS JITD, well I blame SOJ for that, for dropping the 360 and PS3 versions and making the team make a Wii version meaning most of the concept and planning work was all useless.
 

Sonic Adv is simply brilliant and my fav 3D platform games of all time. Sonic Adv II was great with some of the best Sonic sections around, and Sonic Colors is bloody awesome and everything I want in a Sonic game,  so wish it was also made for the 360 and PS3.

Don't get the issue over Jun Sunoue. His Sonic tracks have always been brilliant, with Sonic Adv being one of the greatest music scores ever written for any game.

[Sega Uranus]

Sharky is spot on . Iizuka ruined NiGHTS ?  he's the man responsible for the game and the whole dream concept (as we know it); Take it
you're on about NiGHTS JITD, well I blame SOJ for that, for dropping the 360 and PS3 versions and making the team make a Wii version meaning most of the concept and planning work was all useless.

He did not direct the first game. He is good at level design when he is basically told what to do, but when he is controlling everything, the whole thing falls apart.

The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 NiGHTS 2 did not get good impressions, many people said it was just not fun. Being on Wii has nothing to do with it... He was the one that suggested the game should have all of that extra nonsense, it just bloated the experience with terrible ideas like the masks and the main portion of the game was even done incorrectly, losing all of the magic of the original game. It had nothing to do with being on Wii...

Sonic Adv is simply brilliant and my fav 3D platform games of all time. Sonic Adv II was great with some of the best Sonic sections around, and Sonic Colors is bloody awesome and everything I want in a Sonic game,  so wish it was also made for the 360 and PS3.

The Adventure games are good, but because they stuck to the basics of gameplay. He is the guy who wanted more gameplay styles and big monsters that overthrew Robotnik. All of this can still be good, but the concept itself is retarded and should not be in the series.

It is something Sharky constantly mentioned, but recently stopped. Unless he started liking it or forgot, he found out Iizuka did all of that and pretended like nothing happened.

Don't get the issue over Jun Sunoue. His Sonic tracks have always been brilliant, with Sonic Adv being one of the greatest music scores ever written for any game.

Jun did not do all of the music from the Adventure games.

I am not trying to say he is one of the worst music directors or anything, he can do some great stuff, but he is the ONLY guy Iizuka wants working on his games, which is why something like Black Knight - Not Iizuka's game - had tons of really great musicians working on it.

Stuff like Heroes' soundtrack was done by someone else inside SEGA, but Iizuka decided to let Jun remix it all with electric guitars and take all of the credit... Terrible. Sunoue directing the overall sound of the series has hurt the games a lot too I think. Because of him we have lost basically every established sound EXCEPT the ring noise.

[Team Andromeda]

He did not direct the first game. He is good at level design when he is basically told what to do, but when he is controlling everything, the whole thing falls apart

I never said he was, and you can over state the roll of Director, which is really some Japanese made title for a Senior Producer. Everyone seems to love the Dream concept of NiGHTS, that is thanks to  Iizuka-sand, NiGHTS before that was a very different game.

it just bloated the experience with terrible ideas like the masks and the main portion of the game was even done incorrectly

?  The main section of NiGHTS play much the same as they did onthe Saturn. The original plan was to use the 360 and PS3 HD graphics to perfectly capture and realise the whole dream concept , Those plans were blown to bits and the Team had to make do with a Wii version and not the best amount of development time

The Adventure games are good, but because they stuck to the basics of gameplay. He is the guy who wanted more gameplay styles and big monsters that overthrew Robotnik

Iizuka always wanted to make a Sonic RPG and with Sonic Adv he got his wish , and to me its the best Sonic game I ever played. Where I feel Iizuka  was very wrong and foolish was in making Shadow the Hedgehog and trying to make the series appeal to adults (which in a lot of cases it already did)

The Bosses battles I don't agree with , there's almost so many times you can face Egg man as boss, before getting bored.

Sonic Team have at last grasped people just want to play as Sonic and they're making good on that

Jun did not do all of the music from the Adventure game

I have the OST to the game, and all my fav tracks are done by Jun. I've always like his music for SEGA games, not just Sonic games. I think he's always produced brilliant sound tracks

And speaking of Black Knight it's the worst Sonic 3D game around, even worse than Sonic 06 and you can not blame Iizuka for that. Sonic Colors is brilliant in stark contrast to them

[MadeManG74]

Although I do think that Sonic Team during Sonic 06 era had to have been the single worst development team to ever walk the earth (hence the 'Iizuka is rubbish' comment).

Iizuka had nothing to do with that team.

The Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog team however...

I stand corrected then.

Still, what happened with NiGHTS is enough for me to not like him very much.

And again, so I don't sound so negative, everything looks to be turning around with Sonic Colours at least.

[Sharky]

It is something Sharky constantly mentioned, but recently stopped. Unless he started liking it or forgot, he found out Iizuka did all of that and pretended like nothing happened.

I stopped mentioning it because it stopped being a problem. But everyone here pretty much loved Sonic Adventure when it came out. Dispite half of the gameplay being completely unsonic like. Sonic, Tails, Amy and even Knuckles were good to play.

Either way, Iizuka might suck at PR, but at least half of his games were awesome, including his latest one.

[Sharky]

I stand corrected then.

Still, what happened with NiGHTS is enough for me to not like him very much.

And again, so I don't sound so negative, everything looks to be turning around with Sonic Colours at least.

I don't blame you for thinking the guy was to blame for Sonic 06 considering I've seen him get the blame for all sorts of things now.

But if you look at the most incriminating Sonic games, He's had very little to do with many of them.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) — Special Thanks
Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007) — Special Thanks
Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (2008) — Recording Coordinator
Sonic Unleashed (Xbox 360 & PS3 Version) (2008) — Level Design Special Thanks
Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008) — Sonic Character Supervisor
Sonic and the Black Knight (2009) — Special Thanks

Between Sonic 06 and Sonic Black Knight was easily the worst period of the Sonic series.

I agree Shadow was a disaster but I honestly think there was pressure to make a shadow game from higher ups after the entire 'Shadow is amazing' period after Adventure 2. The game was a mess and I think they missed the mark by a mile. No excuses. The biggest mistake he made.

NiGHTS JoD suffered from being stopped mid production and moved from one console to another. Again it had some bad design choices but I think half of the game hit the mark and went beyond the original... That being the level art and design, which is still amazing.

All I'm saying is that the guy is, at the very worst... hit and miss.

[MadeManG74]

^I actually didn't mind Sonic and the Secret Rings myself. Maybe it was just that it was a billion times more fun than Sonic 06, but I thought it was alright myself.

As for JOD, I think that the music was probably the best thing about that game, and the whole art direction was pretty good, probably as good as the original But yeah, overall it had some very poor ideas thrown in.

[George]

The ideas in the game where the ORIGINAL ideas. I don't think the ideas where poor (NiGHTS gameplay with platforming sections, instead of awkward walking to NiGHTS platform).

The issue was that it was not executed properly. Probably due to the game starting half its development time on HD consoles then moving to Wii. It obviously needed more development time. It fared 'good' with critics. More so than Sonic Unleashed.

[Autosaver]

Sonic Unleashed Wii, Sonic Chronicles, and SATSR did score pretty high...

[Sega Uranus]

I honestly cannot believe people are defending Journey of Dreams... It was a disaster. Yes, the music and art are good (I would say the music might be better than the first game even), but the gameplay was just all wrong. They literally went out of their way to remake all of the same concepts, but not do them right. The whole concept of the first game was about lapping the levels to improve your score. This is missing completely and they had the WHOLE FANBASE telling them exactly that this is what they wanted and nothing else... Guess what... They changed it, and then they added the masks and the Pian garden, and the online multiplayer, and the dozen or so minigames, and the horrific and unskippable cutscenes and gave NiGHTS a voice. They ruined every gameplay concept from the first game or just made it worse overall, even elements like the story had incredible amounts of plot holes, something that is actually HARD to do with such a short game.

Rushed my ass, Journey of Dreams is one of the worst videogame sequels of all time. It makes Sonic the Hedgehog 4 seem Godly in comparison.

[CrazyT]

For emphasis:

“In this title, we have not done a straight port of the gameplay [from the Genesis games], but rather updated it with actions which could not be done in the previous titles, like ceiling-running”.


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 :lol:

[Team Andromeda]

honestly cannot believe people are defending Journey of Dreams... It was a disaster. Yes, the music and art are good (I would say the music might be better than the first game even), but the gameplay was just all wrong. They literally went out of their way to remake all of the same concepts, but not do them right. The whole concept of the first game was about lapping the levels to improve your score. This is missing completely and they had the WHOLE FANBASE telling them exactly that this is what they wanted and nothing else... Guess what... They changed it, and then they added the masks and the Pian garden, and the online multiplayer, and the dozen or so minigames, and the horrific and unskippable cutscenes and gave NiGHTS a voice. They ruined every gameplay concept from the first game or just made it worse overall, even elements like the story had incredible amounts of plot holes, something that is actually HARD to do with such a short game.

You'e being just a bit silly and really unfair . For one thing the team did had time , but a lot of that time was spent pepping the game for the 360 and PS3, and when you have do down grade everything with no extra time,  it will effect the development and a lot of the plans, the gulf between 360 and Wii graphics is massive.

You also then had constant infighting with SOJ and SEGA west; SOJ thinking NiGHTS was a kids game and that should be reflected in the Budget and console to develop on, while SEGA West and the NiGHTS team trying to point out that the kids that  bought the Saturn version have all know grown up and have kids them self's and would be more likely to own a PS3 or 360 . That is not great for any development.

Another fact to bare in mind, was that  Saturn NiGHTS was THE top SEGA project at the time , given a higher priority than any SEGA other  consumer game or any  Arcade game and anything the team wanted the Team would get, NiGHTS II even if it was on the 360 or PS3 was never going to get that sort of R&D spend or priority. When all is said and that the game isn't that bad at all.

IMO a Sequel to NiGHTS should never have been made, but the game isn't that bad

I'll not try and defend the shitfest that was Shadown the Hedgehog, but Iizuka-san has been behind my Fav Sonic games , the man that came up with the whole dream scenario for NiGHTS and just don't get the problem with Jun. When he's made some of the best Sonic and SEGA tunes there is

[Sharky]

I honestly cannot believe people are defending Journey of Dreams... It was a disaster. Yes, the music and art are good (I would say the music might be better than the first game even),

But those ARE the bits we are defending...

[Autosaver]

Bits... Segabits
lol pun

Ok fine. :|

Can we not post anymore Iizuka quotes? They're all stupidly retarded. Damn it! Shut up Iizuka.