What’s most curious is how much they’re actually changing about Sonic Colors. Though, if we’re being honest, whatever style of lightbloom they’re using still makes the game look pretty washed out. Better looking screenshots of a more recent build surfaced from Famitsu, and a technical artist working on the game revealed short video clips through an ArtStation account that made the game look a bit more accurate to how it originally appeared in 2010 (that Artstation post has now been removed). In the days since the Sonic Central stream, evidence has mounted that the trailer shown during the stream featured an older build than anticipated. For Colors Ultimate, this manifested in significantly darker lighting and lower quality lightbloom, dramatically impacting the mood of some levels. Still, more often than not, preserving the original visual identity of a game is more important than whatever clumsy touch-ups most publishers put these games through. We’ve seen this before – the lighting in “Batman: Return to Arkham” looks noticeably worse than the original Arkham Asylum trilogy, and “Mass Effect Legendary Edition” boasts improved skin rendering and higher resolution textures that just make those games look more inhuman.įor a big release like this from a major publisher, deadlines must be met, which means there’s little time to delicately repaint textures or make sure lighting looks totally correct. The issue was something common with remasters of this type – it’s something I guess we could call “The George Lucas Effect,” where needlessly twiddling with an already-finished product slowly makes it worse. It had leaked from multiple sources weeks ahead of the announcement, and managed to make a pretty underwhelming display on stream. Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition was definitely one of Sega’s worse kept secrets. So what do we have, then? Beyond the brilliantly deranged idea of putting Mascot Suit Sonic in to several games and hiding a port of Sonic the Fighters inside of a different, $70 game, Sonic Central really revolved around three major announcements: Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition, Sonic Origins Collection, and a mysterious teaser that almost instantly stopped being mysterious once it was discovered how little Sega did to protect its secret. There’s almost a precedent being set here, where Sega talks a big game only to trip and spill their chili Some of the misplaced hype for this 30th Anniversary can be blamed on a hungry fandom who was getting punchy without any news, but this is also the company that gave us Sonic 2006 as part of Sonic’s 15th anniversary celebration, you know? Five years ago, it was Sonic’s 25th anniversary (the fun number everyone treats as a real serious milestone) and while that live event was where the magical Sonic Mania reveal took place, there’s plenty of clips of how awkward and bizarre the rest of that event was. But the thing is, this isn’t my first rodeo, and it’s not Sega’s first time botching something like this. Things were weird and will continue to be weird for at least another year, possibly even two or three, as the effects of covid on the work place environment continue to ripple outwards. It’s still a pandemic right now, actually. And to tell the truth, this isn’t an article I really wanted to write (though some of that is because I had immediate knee-jerk reactions over on my personal blog). I cannot say the same for the Sonic Central 2021 announcement stream. The hearts of many Sonic fans soared that day. If someone told me Sonic Mania was their favorite Sonic game ever, I would smile and nod, and think, “yeah, it was kind of amazing they pulled that off.” And then I’d think of that reveal again, and the impact it had, and how the music swells at just the right points. I may have my complaints about Sonic Mania now that it’s out, but those are weird, personal complaints that I still haven’t entirely, accurately unpacked. I’ll admit, as a Sonic fan, it even made me a little misty-eyed. With the way it builds up and then unveils itself, it was the perfect reveal. A moment of, “wait, WHAT?!” upon seeing who was working on that game and what it looked like. When Sega announced Sonic Mania, there was an undeniable electricity.
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