Sonic Superstars
| Sonic Superstars | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 It's true, this game is a super star
| ||||||||||||
|
Sonic Superstars is a 2023 platform game developed by Arzest and Sonic Team and published by Sega. It features side-scrolling gameplay similar to the Sonic the Hedgehog games released for the Sega Genesis in the 1990s. As one of four player characters—Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, and Amy Rose—the player completes side-scrolling levels as they set out to defeat Doctor Eggman and Fang the Hunter. Superstars introduces power-ups that the player can obtain by collecting the seven Chaos Emeralds and four-player local multiplayer.
Plot
The story takes place on the Northstar Islands, an uncharted, wondrous archipelago known for their giant fauna. The notorious Dr. Eggman comes to these islands to turn these massive animals into Badniks and steal the Chaos Emeralds to conquer the world. To aid him in his operations, he hires the mischievous mercenary Fang the Hunter. At one point, Fang comes across a native of the archipelago, Trip, an armored, mysterious girl who is enlisted by the villains to protect and guide them in the islands' hostile environment. Having learned of Eggman's actions, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy join forces and travel to the Northstar Islands to take the villain down.
Why It's a Superstar
- This is marks of returning of one the creators of Sonic, Naoto Oshima, who departured on Sega in 1999.
- Making a 2D Sonic after Sonic Mania came out was a great idea considering how much less 2D Sonic games are made now, and while it is inferior to Mania, it still had solid mechanics and remain the charms of the old games.
- Unlike Sonic Mania, this game feature lot of new zones, even though Mania feature some new zones too, even better, some of them also look different from the other games of the series, despite some of them looking like rehash, but not as much as Sonic 4: Episode I.
- Despite the Genesis sound font, the soundtrack is still very great and had plenty of catchy musics and they still had the same style of music from the franchise after all, and thus at times the musics are so good that you want to stay on the stage longer just to listen to the musics, such as in the special stages for exemple.
- It is the first time where the classic era make a comeback after Sonic Mania.
- Solid controls, the characters will always be responsive and they aren't clunky to control at all, not to mention that the physics are a big improvement over the one of classic Sonic in Sonic Forces.
- Decent graphics that are very colorful and had plenty of environnements that are appealing to look at, although compared to Sonic Mania, it is a step back.
- Fun special stages that try to do something different, and while it isn't the best special stages the franchise offered, at least it still better than the ones from other Sonic games such as the Advance trilogy.
- The level design is great, and despite being a linear 2D platformer, there still enough explorations in most levels, which make the levels having slighly more replay values.
- Challenging and balanced difficulty, not too hard nor too easy, much like Mania.
- The bosses are once again fun and creative, as they are challenging, had unique paths and the fact that they had more than one phase for some of them is also a cool idea.
- Fang finally make a return after the long years that he didn't appeared since Sonic the Fighters.
- In fact it also introduce a new character, which is Trip and she is a decent character, and is more unique in comparison to some other new Sonic characters that we're not well received by the fans.
- So many modes to choose from that make the game longer, such as the story mode, and then you unlock Trip story mode, which is a bit different and let you play as Trip, the new character this game introduced.
Qualities That Are Not a Superstar
- It is a noticeable step backwards from both Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Mania.
- This is in a sense that this game doesn't play as well as Mania and the fact that it is way shorter than Frontiers, it also had less well made level design than both games despite still being good.
- While not as much as the Sonic 4 games, the game at times rehash elements from the Genesis games, such as some of the zones being similar to the Genesis games, though to be fair the game is called Sonic Superstars so at least it is a bit justified.
- It also rehashes the sound design of the Sonic 4 games, while not as bad here, it still isn't the best and it make you wonder why they didn't use the Sonic Mania sound font instead.
- The special stages can be very frustrating at times, and some peoples might not like it because of the style the special stages use.
- The new mechanics and stage gimmicks can be very frustrating to play with at times, and is a common complain with the fans.
- The Switch port occasionally has framerate issues on the loading screens (yet somehow nowhere else), in which Sonic Mania didn't had those issues, and that game was released in 2017.
- Also, this port's timer can often leave image retentions on the screen due to how fast it counts.
Reception
Sonic Superstars received mixed to positive reviews by critics and mixed reviews by fans, it had a score of 76 for the Xbox Series X/S version, 73 for the PS5 version and a 67 for the Switch version.
Most fans did praised the game for the varied gameplay and the fact that it goes back to the classic formula but criticized it for the frustrating mechanics and some fans outright disliked the game because of the mechanics.
Trivia
- Sonic Superstars is the first non-compilation 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game since Sonic Mania in 2017.
- This marks the first physical appearance of Fang since Sonic the Fighters in 1996.
- This is the first mainline Sonic game since Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) to feature a "Last Story".
- This is the first time Naoto Ohshima has been involved with a main series Sonic the Hedgehog game since Sonic Adventure in 1998.
- This is the first 2D Sonic game since Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (2016) to have an incarnation of Amy as a playable character in the base game.
- Sonic Superstars is the tenth Sonic game where Super Sonic fights the final boss that are not Dr. Eggman, the others are Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Advance 3, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Nintendo DS version of Sonic Colors, and Sonic Frontiers.
- This is the first Sonic the Hedgehog game to be localized in Thai language.
- Ian Flynn stated in a BumbleKast that the game takes place after the "Classic" comics by IDW Publishing, but he does not specify when, preferring people to play the game first.
- Takashi Iizuka stated that the game takes place between Sonic Mania and Sonic Adventure.
- The level clear theme is reused from Sonic Mania.
- Additionally, one of Sonic and Knuckles' victory animations is the same one from Sonic Mania.
- This is the first time Takashi Iizuka wrote the story of a game since Sonic Rivals 2 (2007).
- The intro animation was done by the Japanese studio Telecom Animation Film, using the character design sheets from Sonic Origins' animations as a reference.
- This is the first 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game to contain no lives.
- However, despite having no life count, a Game Over can still occur during fruit-related acts.
- In the scene where Sonic and Trip shake hands during Sonic's ending, Sonic was incorrectly drawn with two eyes.
- In the same shot, Amy was also incorrectly given pink arms.