Sonic Boom - What Happened?

[Music] hey there welcome to another on the eyeball serine face rubbing headache-inducing episode of what happened the show it was created to basically talk about Sonic the Hedgehog and I guess by that extension Jesus now you can't talk let alone think about the term video game disasters without having to reserve the good chunk of your mind Palace specifically for the blue blur I mean there's Sonic oh six secret rings the Black Knight Sonic Xtreme the god the Bioware one your puny brain would get overloaded by visuals of creepy blue feet and knuckles glitches so with that in mind we're reven ago is speeding up with our little spin ball of pent-up energy to explode into the fantastic calamity that is Sega and vague red buttons sonic boom rise of lyric a story begins in the futurist war zone known as 2009 to industry veterans teamed up to found a big red button an up-and-coming new studio that did precisely neither of those things nothing was going up and certainly no one was never mind those two veterans were Bob Roth ie and Jeff Lander who hailed from both Naughty Dog and luck so flux respectively Bob had been with the nasty dogs for 13 years having worked as a director of Arts on the 1st for crash bandicoot jak and daxter titles as well as the first uncharted Jeff on the other hand was an experienced programmer on the true crime series specifically on both the West and East Coast varieties East Coast booze girl but more importantly than all that Mister Lander was instrumental in blessing Planet Earth with a video game adaptation of Shrek 2 with these two seasoned hands you'd think the contracts would just be flying across their desks fast and hard but that wasn't the case for a big red button maybe because it wasn't the best time to start up a new company as lots of developers were actually being shut down at the time but they went through a variety of pitches and game prototypes that never really enticed any publishers however one company that was always looking for cheap solutions to making video games of course was Sega were interested in rebooting Sonic with a more Western focus sales of the then current crop of Sonic titles you know these winners weren't exactly Smash Hits in fact they showed a decline in profits overall and Sonic's reputation wasn't exactly soaring because of it Sonic was never good Sega felt that the entire IP needed an overhaul and thought that with Bob Raph II's experienced at establishing fresh ip's over at misbehaving puppy he would be the one to give Sonic a brand new spin see it says it says spin right in the script here that was I was unintentional the working codename for this take on the franchise was project Apollo an attempt to not clue people in that the big sonic reboot was in the works with a Western developer because aside from some spin-offs and diversions was something that had never been attempted before if you recall this was going to be phase 1 of Sega's big dumb plan to split the universe in Twain from then on out sonic boom would be the North American series while Sonic team would continue their usual efforts what the heck is going on the sonic franchise would then pass off between both brands with different studios at the helm which was again second trying to crib note some other far more successful publishers so big red buttons first step was delving deeper into the lore than ever before explaining Sonic's origins as well as Eggman's to really kick off this whole new universe on the right foot Sega's official edict was to radically change parts of the sonic formula which were moving to the right I guess with things like teamwork and co-op along with placing a much greater focus on exploration and skill based platforming the game would be roughly divided between 80% exploration versus 20% speed with a lot of those beam vehicle a big red button would spend more than a year fleshing out the world storyline and gameplay systems before eventually presenting their ideas to Sega of Japan for approval this would be in the form of a vertical slice a playable but brief section of a level 4 showed off all the main gameplay mechanics once approved they then start building the rest of the game off of that blueprint along with any feedback and changes from Sega which where did you know it would be a metric fuckton this of course would include stuff that contradicted the other stuff that Sega wanted in the first place that's so Sega but we'll get to that stinky Bridge when we cross it now another important thing that was always changing was what this sonic came was gonna be called as two names in particular were being tossed around one being Sonic origin since the game was exploring that and the second was Sonic synergy which made sense due to all the coop shenanigans in fact co-op wasn't just the throwaway mode or gimmick that rather became one of the game's core features as big red button was pushing for for player functionality and an online component to booth it all sounded pretty ambitious but fortunately Sega had asked big red fun to target next generation systems which obviously meant the PC ps4 and Xbox one in terms of engines Sonic we used the one that while unconventional could boast pretty visuals well-suited for the lush new world big red button was designing CryEngine 3 while not as common or familiar to most game studios was still considered an impressive bit of tech at the time during this phase of development things were going smoothly but has any stalwart what happened fans should know but Sega about you should never be too comfortable less than that of gooey [ __ ] be unleashed upon your naive unsuspecting head once Sega and Sonic team then headed up by a newly promoted Takashi Iizuka was shown the vertical slice they started to ask for thousands of changes they felt what big red button presented was far too removed from what the franchise stood for you know despite that being the whole point of the project the game was too slow there were no longer sure about those character designs and they wanted more speed sections they also asked for the ability to swim underwater to be removed so that Sonic and friends would instantly die as soon as they touch the deadly substance known as h2o you know like in the old Sonic games I mean you know like in the old sonic 3d games there are even some changes that were a bit weird like initially the character of cliff this thing right here started off as an inventor providing gadgets and the like to Sonic & Co like a lot of the other NPC's in the world Sega requested some alterations and for cliff it was to change his occupation as an inventor why well this was due to an ironclad rule in the Sonic Bible which stated that only tails and Eggman can be inventors which I assure you I'm not making up finally there was the real kicker the storyline you know what most of the game revolved around that had to be changed too because apparently Sonic Team wanted to try their hand at the hedgehogs origins down the line so they were uncomfortable with letting a western developer tackle it first despite this being the whole separate universe thing okay so anyway the epic tale involving Sonic and his initial friendship and eventual falling out with Eggman oh that had to be redone ever wonder why in the finished version of sonic boom there's statues depicting ancient echidnas and hedgehogs and [ __ ] but nobody really notices or says anything about it that's why all of that world building went to waste because despite some of the levels and scenery hinting at a grander tale it was all scrapped for a thrilling narrative about Sonic beating a villain y'all brought them some fresh ideas so with the origin story all thrown out what were they gonna replace it with well fortunately Sega had just the thing oh no they had struck another completely separate deal with a French animation studio to produce a brand-new computer animated cartoon which will be dubbed sonic boom also be aiming at that lucrative Western market Sega felt to keep brand continuity Sonic's energy would need to adopt this new world's aesthetic and tone and obviously the name as well now while all of this was surely an RKO from out of nowhere to pull on big red button it fortunately wasn't a deal breaker as changing storyline and character art wouldn't be really devastating to the project that's because what zeg was about to announce next would definitely be devastating to the project game companies always ruin their beloved franchises not long after the game shifted to sonic boom Sega informed big red button that it was now going to be a Wii U exclusive and no you can't stop this you know the Wii U whenever Nintendo's biggest failures Sega decided to enter an exclusivity deal with them delivering three new Sonic games including boom onto a console that didn't support CryEngine three big red button as you can imagine were in panic mode what's more the still Nintendo had a time line the game needed to be out in 2014 which left the studio slightly less than a year to make all this work and it really didn't work okay well obviously it did in the end kinda the game is playable but what did it cost [Music] so obviously to make all of this happen big red button need to start scaling everything back and removing features well I wasn't able to cut every one I wanted to I have cut a lot of you for player co-op was removed the same goes for any online features more elaborate team up attacks were also taken out and whole sections of additional story and dialogue were hastily sliced from the narrative some of those included instances of Sonic talking to lyric or vice versa where they insinuate they were familiar with each other despite them not being actually familiar with each other who are you yeah Amy congratulate s' a completely different character during an action stage despite the fact that Knuckles is the only other guy on screen poor knuckles there was a penultimate plain level where Tails gave chase to lyric there's also gonna be some child collecting functionality there is even gonna be gamepad gimmicks where you use the touchscreen to control platforms and whoodles of other stuff some of that stuff was entire cut sections of the world itself as they initially only existed to support four player sections like waterskiing as seen in this trailer oh right that's the trailer yeah this is a whole other mess of bubbling Hedgehog poop remember this remember how despite it looking different than most Sonic games still look pretty cool nice and shiny lots of animations and effects and tons of for player action well as long as sega added this big disclaimer they could technically show you anything they wanted even if it was running on high-end PC workstations which you know it was none of this was Wii U footage as it couldn't be because this trailer was cut days maybe weeks after Sega told big red button to start toiling in the barren and lonely you minds so all this lies some lies and some lies there oh that's a big lie right there it almost makes you think that during the colonial Marines debacle it's like a learned a few magic tricks from one Randy Pitchford king of the charlatans the centered the soul-crushing almost year-long marathon of crunch to get all of their spreading on this it was a tall order as every single thing big red button had designed animated and optimized was all intended for machines that greatly overpowered the WiiU now not only did porting down to it proved to be a massive pain in the ass dude although cut content was a logistical problem in the sense that CryEngine 3 didn't support the WiiU architecture at all there apparently were some early attempts at getting the engine up and running for a theoretical part of Crysis 3 but Iain Crytek quickly abandoned that plan once they realized that it might actually result in them you know supporting the WiiU because of this a whole lot of basic things were a whole lot of never figured out like how you need to allocate GPU power to stream on to the gamepad big red button had to somehow navigate through all of these issues and eventually contacted Crytek for help they had no other test cases or finished games to tinker with to guide them as no one had attempted what they needed to do so it's a miracle they got it to happen at all obviously two very very very mixed results but the game boots and goddammit that's something Crytek eventually helped finagle sonic boom to run on a special version of the engine that no other game has used since now aside from all that a typical thing that most developers try to plan for is that when they're deep into production on a game to start prototyping or designing a follow up with a smaller team like a sequel or DLC just something this is so that when the priority game is wrapping up they can retain most of their staff and immediately start building the next thing when everyone's free unfortunately for big red button since the deadline was so tight and they needed all hands on deck no other follow-up projects were in the pipe thus in the final months leading to sonic booms released had to let go of 50 people to cut costs leaving less than 20 working at the studio sonic boom released on November 11th 2014 and remains one of the worst selling games in the series wait wait oh I know stand corrected Sega took the time to come flat ax and declare that sonic boom was indeed the worst-selling Sonic game of all time like what what type of publisher goes out of their way to give additional information that shows how badly they [ __ ] it up that's that's so Sega what's more is that the blame couldn't even be directly shifted on to the Wii U as Sonic lost world had performed far better the previous year now while the game was certainly looking shaky and franchise fans had problems with all the designs the very idea of sonic boom itself was muddled and confusing especially to casual fans get it not at all was this based on the cartoon or was the cartoon based on the game where does the 3ds version fit in way is this replacing the Japanese games or not even if development had gone smoothly the handling of the split universe was just a really bad idea from it's very inception the poor sales aside the critical and fan backlash the sonic boom was far far worse than a slight dip in Sega's profits for that quarter Bob Roth II's stated in an interview with polygon in 2015 we knew that historically Sonic games have been treated very poorly by the press and we knew there was going to be some of that but I was kind of taken aback by just the kind of hate that was being poured out it was very disheartening you know you work your ass off for three years you crunch like mad you go through hell and back to try to make a ship date and I've never experienced like hate mail in the past now I'm getting people telling me I ruined their childhood alright sorry about that you know I did the best I could a former producer at Sega of America won Stephen frost at a far more businesslike view on sonic boom in focus tests we heard all the time people were sick of speed Sonic was too fast they wanted to slow down speed was shelved because we were under the impression people didn't want it speed is always a sonic thing and we didn't focus on that look dude I don't know who you got to participate in these focus tests but are you sure you're not confusing them with no one regardless he continues the biggest mistake in boom was adding too many features to it it was too much to ask for any development team I was tasked with create an experience that appeals to an audience which doesn't play Sonic if I could do it again I would remove features and speed would be the main focus from the start oh okay I guess solo sonic games I don't know how long that can last there isn't enough variety to sustain it the future of Sonic games needs to be co-op as it worked really well in sonic boom community and online play that sustains it in general you need to do multiplayer and add online multiplayer aspects that will sustain and keep the franchise live will it though so with that idiocy is still wafting in the air what happened to sonic boom well the cartoon show produced over 100 episodes but it's still unclear whether a third season will ever come out despite the show gaining popularity with its clever writing and fourth wall breaking humor let's act out my sonic fanfiction I'll make something family-friendly Sanzaru who developed shattered crystal and Fire and Ice did far better and achieving a balance between the old and the new but then again they didn't need to port Unreal 4 until the goddamn 3ds did they they went on to several more projects like helping out on the recent Spyro remaster as for big red button well after the critical and commercial failure of rise of lyric they closed their doors in May of never wane other than this okay that's stamp no wait big red button are they're still in business too now and I could have okay whatever they seemingly have transitioned to developing for both mobile and VR devices let's see they worked on a John wick game as well as their own IP the arc slinger which seems to have been a big success of good on them so with that I think we can definitively say that the sonic boom experiment is indeed over and while it was a good idea on paper and not really wasn't even a good idea I'm favorite that's that's stupid oh we don't know what Sega and Sonic team is cooking up next but you can bet whatever it is has a great shot at being featured here at what happened in the future in the meantime shout your suggestions in the comments below or lightspeed - on over to the flop house VIP patreon to officially vote on our next topic see you next time and thanks for watching just look at that sunlight the Hedgehog guy whatever happen to him is he still a thing [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 897,221

Keywords: Sonic Boom, Wha Happun, Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric, Bad Sonic Games, Video Game Disasters, Matt McMuscles, Sega, Video Game Documentaries

Id: sNxaQ2jAPIk

Length: 19min 9sec (1149 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Lieutenant-America]

Matt continues to sandbag Black Knight.

[u/midnight_riddle]

Man, it seems like the guys at Big Red Button had passion and experience and GREAT ideas, but SEGA Team micromanaged it to hell. While it's great that Sonic Boom wasn't 06 levels of fucked up train wrecks....it wasn't a memorable game. It's amazing Big Red Button got as much accomplished as they did, certainly less experienced devs would have choked.

I know there was backlash against the redesigns, mostly because it made their legs look a tad too long (which was particularly stupid looking for Knuckles) but I personally thought they were rather spiffy.

And Sonic Team making Big Red Button throw out all the lore and story because Sonic Team didn't want to be one-upped and were the ones who were gonna do it right is really funny when you consider Sonic team went on to produce....Sonic Forces.

[u/DickButtwoman]

Once again, Matt completely missed the context that Sega of America was essentially fired at this point... they just hadn't been handed their slips. There was 0 oversight outside of the verticle slices handed to Iizuka where he handed them back a thousand different hack-tier changes.... essentially, there was no one between Sega of JP and BRB, which meant that there was no one to smooth over the insanity; there was no one at Sega to tell Iizuka "no, we're not going to force them to port a third party engine to a console that can't handle it".

Though Iizuka's fuckery definitely didn't help, and I'm glad he got called out this time...

[u/illegalcheese]

So big devs can force small devs onto an impossible task and then the small devs get punished for it? What a fucking world. If I'm understanding right, BRB had to lay off 50 workers towards the end of the dev cycle because the forced transition to the WiiU was so costly. Seems to me like they should have been allowed to tell SEGA to fuck off when they had the rug pulled out from under them a year before, when the WiiU exclusivity deal came out.

[u/ContraryPython]

The biggest mistake in Boom was adding too many features to it

That’s just scratching the surface of awful it was

The future of Sonic games needs to be co-op, as it worked really well in Sonic Boom. Community and online play, that sustains it

Wow, that aged like shit

[u/RevenTheLight]

Did you know that there was a Sonic Boom comic published by Archie? It's not bad - very fateful to the cartoon (being an episodic gag show) with a very good art style.

As far as I remember, it's nothing too special and lasted only like... 11 issues before Archie burned down, but it's a good afternoon read. It also gave us the only legal way Knuckles is allowed to have his Cowboy hat back.

[u/ScottPilgrim2013]

No way that "Only Tails and Eggman can be inventors" thing is true. I know they have some stupid mandates, but why limit inventing stuff to only 2 characters?

[u/Flare3500]

Holy shit like I can understand changing game engine because of reasons, but like the idea of your making a game for a current gen system then suddenly a Wii U is fucking insanity

What the fuck was SEGA thinking

[u/[deleted]]

If at any point, you tell your game dev staff: "Remove this quality of life feature; this game has to be more like Sonic '06", you need to have your brain scanned. There might be a serious chemical imbalance.