One thing I hear a lot and want to bring up is the concept of what the "true" Sonic identity is, and "how" Sonic "should be." We can't say that the "true" Sonic is inspired by Action B movies, or Adventure Inspiration because the "true" Sonic, Sega's Sonic, has no "true" identity. He has no one pure and true source of cultural influence he draws from. Sega makes him to reflect and mimick whatever is popular at the time. I have a friend who told me when he was in school he would wear hats or play yugioh just to copy his friend. Sonic Team is the same way with Sonic. They aren't the ones to move the helm of culture and societal influence, they simply are bandwagoners trying to get in on the next big thing.
Sonic 1 first was made to cash in on the popularity of Mario, but it was also inspired by the competitive egotism of the 90's as it sought to be better and "cooler."
Sonic 3 was based on absurd B movies because that's what was popular at the time.
Sonic Adventure 1 was inspired by Super Mario 64, other early 3d collectathons, and the rising popularity of anime.
Sonic Adventure 2 was inspired by the skate boarding fad and Tony Hawk games. It used "Cool, Radical, etc." when skate boarding off of a jump.
Shadow was inspired by grandtheft auto, call of duty, and halo.
Sonic 06 was inspired by realistic Playstation and Xbox games.
Sonic Unleashed was inspired by Pixar, Dreamworks, and the rise of 3d animation companys like them.
Sonic Colors was inspired by the success of casual Wii games like De Blob.
Sonic 4 and Generations were inspired by the success of New Super Mario Bros. Wii and PS3 HD remakes.
Lost World: a result of a resurgence of the interest in simple platformers again. Rayman Legends, Donkey Kong Returns, New Super Mario Bros U, etc.
Sonic Boom: is odd because at it's core it reflects the old age of and shows how behind the times the developers were, when initial creating it, but in terms of writing it's gained it's cultural influence from recent internet meme culture. I'm the leader to local 11 year old scouts and yep, I can definitely say they have the same awkward passion for internet meme culture that Sonic Boom has, so it's actually perfectly toned for the rising generation. It's just that the rising generation's internet meme/ viral youtube videos culture is a cess pool of obnoxiousness.
Sonic Runners: Well if that is indeed going to be the next game from what I can tell of it, it looks like a 3d version of Sonic Dash meant to cash in on it's success. That would be almost prove my pattern because the next game to come out according to it is supposed to be a cheap, crapped out, cash in to take advantage of hype or popularity of some Sonic game that was made. That's actually not a bad strategy on their part. Sonic Dash undoubtedly has exposed a lot of people to Sonic due to it's free to play nature, but for that reason it can only get so much money out of people, so now Sonic Team is making a 50-60 dollar game resembling Sonic Dash and Jump in hopes people brought in by those games will recognize it and buy it.
After that game, in 2016 we the most likely to get a second Sonic Boom game or Sonic Adventure game. A Boom sequel is still possible because the cartoon is doing well and will continue for most of next year at the very least. Sega didn't directly take the hit when Boom failed, After that and according to the pattern, Sega's going to try and reinvent Sonic once again in 2017 with whatever's popular then. The new Stars Wars movies are going to be very popular and all the rage then, and Toy Story 4 is coming out in 2017, perhaps, the 2017 reboot game will be the true Super Sonic Galaxy, or the aesthic and culture influence will be inspired by childlike imagination of playing with Toys like in Toy Story or the Lego Movie. By 2017 I'm expecting a sequel that movie, and Sega knows the best way to spread Sonic is through kids so there's a strong chance we'll see Sonic trying to make Sonic in that vain. Then again we are going to see the new Sonic movie come out and that's going to be PG-13, so perhaps there will finally be two different flavors of Sonic avaible. One for the younger audience and one for the older. So there could be two 2017 Sonic game or one shortly following the other into 2018. The younger one could be Toy Story inspired like I mentioned, and the older one could be inspired by modern day action thrillers like World War Z; so the tone would end up like modern action movie adaptations of old cartoons like the Rock's GI Joe Movie, Micheal Bay's TMNT and Transformers films, perhaps it may even draw inspiration from the success of Marvel and other Super Hero movies.
So what do you think? Does that seem to be accurate and make sense? Any counter observations or arguments?
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