Project Needlemouse

Martin · 14 years (6:43 PM · Sep 29, 2009)

I SO called this.

I know this is a little bit of old news right now, but I can't help but gloat a tiny bit.

Over a year ago, I posted about Sega's continued efforts to ruin their best franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog. I posted about how the 2D elements of the old games just don't translate to 3D. And I posted about how a 2D game, drawn in 3D, would still likely be met warmly by Sonic fans. This was pre-Sonic Unleashed, and I not-so-secretly hoped Sega would prove me wrong by refreshing the franchise with the it.

If you've played the game, however, you know that this wasn't the case. Sonic Unleashed was horrible. Stanky, even.

So now, almost a year after the release of Unleashed, and almost a year and half since my Sonic rant was unleashed, Sega has announced that in 2010 we'll be seeing a new, 2D sonic game via the following trailer:

So, I guess ol' Marty has his finger preeetty close to the pulse of the gaming industry, eh? Now I just need to wait for the downfall of Twitter, and my life will be complete.

11 Comments

  • I actually enjoy using twitter now. I mostly follow people who use it as more of a link sharing service than micro blogging, meaning I frequently follow links from the posts to interesting things. It’s like Digg, but more personal.

    I recently acquired an invite to something called Brizzly, which is basically a supercharged Twitter (actually linking to twitter, and using twitter as it’s backbone, but with extra features). It’s still invite only, not fully released, and I’m wondering if Google Wave will cause it to collapse before it’s even started.

    I’m hoping to get a Wave invite, but not holding my breath. I never signed up for an invite, and most of my friends likely haven’t even heard of it. I might just have to wait.

    I hate waiting.

    • Martin says:

      I saw the Google Wave demo a while ago, but I wasn’t all that impressed with it. I have no trouble sharing rich media with friends now, so why would I need a new program (or is it a web site…?) to do what I can already do now, with ease.

    • I think the idea of Google Wave is that it’s an in browser program, or I guess it would be called a website. It is likely an important part of getting Chrome OS to take off, since the idea of Chrome OS is that almost everything you do should be on the internet (using Chrome).

      And whether or not I need it is beside the point. It’s just another new toy to play with :).

  • kc lc says:

    The pulse of the gaming industry, eh? You actually *found* one?

    Your Nostradamian musings aside, I think you’re wrong about Twitter. Despite its tendency to promote needless blathering, its use by the Iranian election protesters gave it legitimacy. And lots of US municipalities now use it to post road-repair notices, and schedule changes.

    So I think Twitter has grown roots.

    • Martin says:

      I’m not sure that I agree with you, KC.

      The role Twitter played in the Iranian elections was nebulous, at best. It didn’t change the outcome in the slightest, and the whole debacle would have been just as easily covered on blogs or other independent news sources. And we’d probably be better off if it had been, because we wouldn’t have had to rely on the sound-bite nature of Twitter for info.

      But then, I have doubts about the legitimacy of the messages posted on Twitter to begin with. What would have stopped me from creating a Twitter account and pretending to be from Iran and in the midst of an election crisis from the comfort of my apartment in California?

      That’s not to say that I don’t believe anything was going on with the Iranian elections; surely, there was something wrong going down there – I highly doubt the people of Iran freely and willingly re-elected Ahmadinejad – but that’s another issue. My problem with Twitter in the Iranian elections is that there was absolutely no way to verify that the comments people were making were real or accurate.

      Add to that the fact that, as they reported how important Twitter was to these elections, all the news organizations in this country were also busy getting advertisements for their networks on the service, and you’ve got me pretty skeptical of the whole thing. I seriously doubt Twitter would have take off the way it has over the last few months if the media hadn’t gotten on-board and begun using it as a free platform for advertising.

      The road construction / delay notices are of limited use as well, as more states adopt laws banning people from using mobile devices while driving. If you require traffic news urgently, most GPS systems include that functionality these days. But hey, it’s probably easier for your county’s transportation office to post a short blurb on Twitter and hope people read it without crashing, rather than releasing the news to GPS services or reporting the problem to the highway patrol and news outlets.

      Anyway… I’ll agree, regretfully, I might have been wrong about Twitter taking off, but I won’t concede that it serves some great purpose quite yet.

    • kc lc says:

      You’re reading too much into my comments about Twitter. Perhaps my use of the word “legitimacy” was a poor choice.

      I’m not suggesting Twitter provided value during election protests, or influenced their outcome. Twitter doesn’t support Farsi, so most traffic was probably from Americans or journalists anyway.

      Nor am I suggesting that use by civil/municipal organizations provides better service than existing outlets.

      I’m just saying that it has taken root. The longevity of popular fads doesn’t depend on their usefulness. What matters is that people use them, and talk about them, until they reach some critical mass.

      You must admit that requests from the US State Department asking Twitter to delay their scheduled maintenance until after the protests — followed by international news stories about it — are a promoters dream come true! You said it yourself: the media reports boosted it.

      I think it’ll be with us for a while — useful or not.

    • Martin says:

      Maybe I shouldn’t have started off by saying I disagree – because frankly, I don’t disagree. Twitter has indeed taken root.

      Whether or not its taken root on ground that will slide away at the first sign of rain is another thing, and like it or hate it, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future. I’m still waiting to see if they can actually monetize it. They’ve got millions of dollars in backing from media companies, but currently no way to sustain it without severely limiting the functionality of the site.

      I’ll probably be forced to integrate it into the next version of Reflect Games somehow, so I guess I should keep quiet for now anyway. :P

    • kc lc says:

      You’re certainly right about the investment. They’ve disclosed $55 million so far (with probably more undisclosed).

      Can on-site advertising alone provide a good return on that much investment? I’m not sure, but I doubt it. So I think they’ll have to allow advertisers to target Twitter users based on their profile, or maybe the content of their “tweets”. The danger is that might drive some users away.

      I guess there’s just tons of money floating around looking for good investment. God knows, the stock market isn’t returning anything. And T-bill rates are way down. So the big investment houses that survived the housing bubble, are looking elsewhere.

  • T-Bird says:

    I’ve always been disappointed by all the 3d renditions of the 2d masters. Mario did it FAR better than sonic (eww, sonic turned into 10 year old dribble), but still wasn’t the same.

    I hadn’t heard about sonic until just now but I was pleasantly surprised about a week ago when I found this.

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002BRZ9G0/ref=s9_simz_gw_s3_p63_t2?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=01WMNV1A8TFV67GYYZV7&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

    And on topic B – I’m not a big fan of social networking in any of it’s forms… though I’m posting here… so take that with a grain of salt.

    • Martin says:

      Yeah, Mario definitely took the 3D plunge better than Sonic. And even though Mario 64 (and its successors) wasn’t entirely the same as the old Mario games, it was still fun, and remained about level exploration / mechanics experimentation.

      The “relaunch” of the 2D Mario games with New Super Mario Bros. on DS and now on Wii are great as well. Though they don’t necessarily feel the same as the old Mario Bros. games either, they do hearken back to the 2D days of old more than the 3D games. I’ve even heard that the Wii version is somewhat difficult, a welcome change from the direction the industry seems to be more or less heading in.

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