Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) - What Happened?

hello and welcome to another baffling buffoonery filled episode of what happened the show that tests your brittle faith in the video game industry makes you ponder the meaning of existence and constantly has you begging for the answer to the eternal question sonic o6y okay not so fast there hedgehogs to properly tell the tale of one of the biggest failure is an electronic entertainment you dear viewers and especially Sonic fans should grab your crucifixes and/or Bibles it's gonna be one bumpy ride through developmental hell 2006 was going to be a banner year for Sega yeah they didn't exactly become the big chili dog of third parties that they sought out to become back in 2001 but the industry was heading into the HD era so there was a chance to start fresh part of this new plan was to make a high-definition sexy slick looking central Sonic the sexes hog title it would also culminate with the blue blurs 15th anniversary it would also be the launch game for the assuredly successful PlayStation 3 and be a moneymaker for the Xbox 360 which was starting to hit its sales stride at that point Oh what's this Nintendo is making a new console - [ __ ] well we've gotta have Sonic on there it was like Sega had a t-shirt launching bazooka but instead clothing it was just crammed with Sonic's twisted broken body which will then just shot out in all directions and Sega figured they'd hit their target eventually the game would go on to be simply dubbed Sonic the Hedgehog I was meant to be the new starting point for the franchise spearheaded by impressive visuals wowing pretty much everyone who laid eyes on it but behind closed doors of Sonic Team things were they weren't going well through various mostly hilarious reasons the Wii version of Sonic 2006 had a few shall we say snags and by snags I mean it was canceled the development team were split in Twain Sonic's father walked away from Sega the release date of the game for even more hilarious er reasons could not budge it had to come out by the end of 2006 and when it did it left a permanent poop stain on the hedgehogs chested legacy that from that point onward could never really be scrubbed off sonic was never good so what happened to fully unravel the enormity of Sega's failure to kick off a new generation on the right foot let's take a Lightspeed - backwards to the raunchy filthy morally corrupt year of 2004 shun Nakamura the director of such sega titles as samba de amigo and billy who and the giant oh i received word from his bosses at Sega that there were fast tracking a big sonic reboot to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the franchise that was also set to debut on the new generation of consoles he wasn't take up the task of senior game designer on the project directing duties would fall to 1 yo Jiro Ogawa or the producer role will be filled by Yuji naka one of the original masterminds behind Sonic 1 final team member was also added to the staff and that was yoshinari Amaka who had spent most of his 2004 working on a prototype for a quote-unquote realistic game that would use the havok physic's engine until Sega just cancelled the whole thing outright he was then moved onto Sonic's big 15th birthday barf Arama during the planning stages when they were still trying to suss out exactly what it was going to be with the graphical power of next-gen systems available to them the team decided on the idea of placing Sonic in a more detailed and grounded world to which amok I suggested they used the prototype of the game he had been working on as a base with the player being able to interact with a lot of physics base objects this was not a good idea while full-time development didn't kick off until early 2005 it wasn't long before Sega demanded some sort of demo be put together to show the press at e3 of that year since this was the first HD game the teaming worked on paired with the complexity of using that physics engine the only had time to squeeze out a non-playable presentation was showed sonic moving across a grassy landscape and enter some temple ruins while it was merely showing off the tone and scale of what they're going for most game journalists were excited by what they saw now once he was over and the team returned to working on the game and full things began to get terrible the problem with tech demos is that they're usually made to just Express what the team hopes to achieve and not strictly what's possible and in this case almost everything turned out to be very much impossible since Sega is a Japanese company emphasis was put on prioritizing the PlayStation 3 version of Sonic the Hedgehog since now the Xbox brand was always kind of considered the biggest laughingstock of the century to Japanese fans the 360 version would be a port with the Wii iteration also seeing the same treatment that is until Sega finally received the specs for the machine from Nintendo very sharpish oh god can see that the Wii version require craploads more work to port over and decided to split the main team into two groups one will work exclusively on the Wii while the remaining staff wouldn't continue on the ps3 even more quickly Ogawa realized even that would it be possible and told Sega porting down to the Wii specs wasn't really a thing and they would need to make a whole new game from the ground up and that he would direct that title personally this game are going to be Sonic and the secret rings or at that time be known under the much cooler moniker of Sonic wildfire Ogawa's next step was to move even more staff over to secret wildfire rings and got to work leaving the HD sonic without a director shun Nakamura was then thrust into the position with little notice and having only worked in that role on much smaller games simply wasn't prepared for the Herculean task ahead of him he had to pick up the pieces from Ogawa but his team had been gutted and in the most Sega like behavior ever Sega didn't add any additional talent to bolster their ranks so they would need to slow Geron with whoever they had left later that year in October of 2005 the company would publicly announce that Sonic the Hedgehog would see release the next year for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360 and would be returned to form for the mascot development however was still going slow and Nakamura could see that they would need to drastically start cutting back on the game scale and what was outlined during his planning phase in earlier leaked gameplay demos there was going to be a dynamic day and night cycle and a much more fleshed out hub world for Sonic to explore not just the depressing goo lag that was so Lyanna ever wonder why the objective go to the desert appears early on in the game well that's a holdover to where there are different hubs for Sonic to explore originally there is going to be desert and snow environments but all were eventually cut and folded into so Lyanna who even at this stage problems were just piling up but at least Nakamura could ask seasoned Sonic veteran Yuji naka for help and guidance 200 he's his he's left the company in March of 2006 mr. naka announced he was leaving his position within Sega to form his own company probe saving that Sega had stuck him in a managerial role he had become unhappy with and wanted just to get back to creating and developing himself this departure had been rumored for months and while it was a loss for Sega it was a much more devastating loss to Nakamura and his team or Viki what was left of his team because guess what when ugh he took even more staff with him just who's who's working on this thing now at this point Nakamura is grabbing janitors and sitting them down at workstations he also then decided to take the only sane option left which was cut even more content to make that release day while we covered some examples of gameplay focused exclusions like the hub worlds this also had a ripple effect across other areas of the game such as the script and voice acting because the game story was constantly to keep up with the amount of [ __ ] hitting the chopping block some things still sort of just slipped through like the scepter of darkness this MacGuffin went through a lot of name changes up until the 11th hour with one of those earlier ones being the book of darkness which is still referenced in the final game this is one of the biggest but not the only reason why sana 2006 is plot is fractured unfocused and generally really creepy and awkward however the team couldn't spend their time ironing out plot details when they had a lot more pressing matters to address like falling out of the world and 2 minute long load times baby you know in fact they didn't have time to even address that stuff because that's all still in the game their main goal was to simply slap all this [ __ ] together III 2006 was looming and Nakamura and like the three people working under him realized they needed to meet the game at least completable in time for its release date that fall now up until this point Sonic oh six had never had a hands-on demo available to the public before and while it wasn't really ready this was the last a three before launch so they had to show something the demo consisted of a sonic and silver section and for whatever reason silver was originally envisioned to be an orange mink named Venice but was changed to an edgy serious character to join the never-ending parade of edgy serious characters the franchise had been building up reception to the demo was mixed to say the least most of the emotions that rack the soul when playing the final version of Sonic oh six like depression sadness frustration and revulsion were echoed during this e3 it was still very very very unpolished Sonic would get killed easily by innocently misplaced jumps running into things and many other hallmarks at the game instituted still though it was a product in development it was of course pre-alpha so a lot of early preview stated that it would doubtedly see a bevy of improvements and it did but but not really the next major blip on Sonic's treaded corpse Laden path to release was September 27th at Microsoft's x06 event which presented a brand new build of SONET that featured many improvements to the core gameplay although in a twist that could only happen a sonic these improvements were never actually implemented into the main game see some time in early 2006 Sega upper management had struck a deal with Microsoft to promote the game as a more Xbox 360 focused title putting most of their marketing muscle behind that version in the West while the ps3 would be the dominant one in Japan due to this the demo of Sonic at Microsoft's vent had a few extra levels of polish that the Xbox 360 porting team had time to get out the door the camera received a lot of tweets and was more dynamic Sonic's run animations off boost pads were not as stiff and robotic as homing attack had a nice forward arc that would maintain momentum and of course there were numerous bug fixes when interacting with walls and pretty much every other obstacle these were all tiny improvements but there were so many of them that this demo is seen as the superior version of the game however since the main skew from a developmental standpoint was the ps3 with a 360 version being the port these changes were discarded once the new ps3 build was available and / never integrated back into the main developmental pipeline this improved demo was also released publicly on the 360 marketplace so lots of fans that went hands-on with this had no idea of all the delights that the final version would show them this deal with Microsoft further complicated matters as part of it seemingly was that the game had to release by the end of the year with no room for compromise and even if that weren't the case Sega had already mandated that it had to make songs 15th anniversary anyway so a delay was not in the cards but why well Sonic and the secret Rings had slipped to a 2007 least eight and would miss the Wiis launch so Sega was unwilling to budge on both games missing the big stupid birthday that nobody really cared about but them least the games when they're good not just to coincide with some [ __ ] fictitious woodland animals fake birthday like what are you crazy thus on the dreaded day of November 14th the game was released on both consoles with the ps3 version actually winding up with an improved framerate but it was of little comfort to the legions of Sonic fans that had been wrapped in anticipation / dread while the fastest thing alive had a few rough patches in his career up to that point the gloved finger could always be pointed at those titles being yeah weird spin-offs developed by Western teams or any other excuses one could make but no one could excuse this the game would then get slammed from pretty much every publication in existence you know except for one of course oh six was criticized for it's incredibly lengthy numerous load times poor optimization buggy gameplay confusing story huge reliance on non interactive cutscenes how long is this gonna go on and a distinct lack of anything really next-gen about how a played this was supposed to be Sonic's splashy comeback into a new generation and a big anniversary event of the franchise's longevity but it wound up simply being a standard bearer for why Sega could never really get the Hedgehog's games working as well in 3d as many of his contemporaries did knowing all of this we can at least see the massive amount of reasons as to why the game failed so spectacularly unrealistic demands by Sega the departure of Yuji naka unfamiliar hardware and technology and of course the splitting of the teams irreversibly destroying any chances that had to be a quality product what's more Sonic in the secret rings while trying a number of different things wasn't left without its own blemishes and naysayers frustrating controls and design made it fairly divisive that wasn't something that couldn't have been fixed by both teams getting the proper manpower in time to deliver on the promises Sega was / is said to be mortified by the failure to this day a sentiment shared by the actual team members with Nakamura simply stating development on next generation machines proved to be very difficult for us with many things we didn't understand comprehending the variety of new technologies the new hardware handling the enormous amount of information these were all aspects that far surpass both my expectations and experience upon its launch and critical drubbing Sega also canceled plans for a proposed Windows version of the title something that was teased and III brochures that threatened the game would curse pcs sometime after the launch of the console iterations Sega even doubled down on this in the instruction booklet for the PC version of Sonic freeriders the first of the racing trilogy that further cemented the Hedgehog's plummeting reputation that same year Sega even went out of the way to delist the game's on-demand version of Sonic o 6 in 2010 because of the perception it was still damaging the brand years later but to be fair this is probably one of the only smart decisions they made in regards to this whole debacle it's also pretty clear that some of the cut concepts and ideas from O six sped their way into the follow-up Sonic Unleashed including the day/night cycle multiple hubs and more momentum based gameplay until of course Sega decided to take a werehog sized poop load all over that potential it's been 13 years and Sonic Team has had some definite highs and some undeniable lows since and the major players are at the helm have had similar seesaw like careers shun nakamura going to direct the charming Rhythm Thief and the Emperor's treasure but it would also be one of the main producers behind Sonic forces yuujiro okaaay left the company in 2012 and seemingly hasn't returned to game development since Yuji naka would never find the success he had with Sega again producing titles such as let's tap Ivy the Kiwi and rodea the sky soldier before moving on to we're Enix in 2018 in an unknown capacity and thus concludes the story of Sun in 2006 a game which rocked the franchise so hard never really recovered from it at least not fully all stryn talented fans have brought some much-needed positivity back to the series many many missteps have been made since then all of them ripe for more what happens of their own and if you'd like to toss one of those bloated blue carcasses up on our stage let me know in the comments below or send an angry email about how you think Sonico six still has some redeeming qualities at mat muscles at gmail.com thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 782,919

Rating: 4.9158559 out of 5

Keywords: Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic 2006, Let's Play Sonic 2006, Video Game Disasters, Wha Happun?, Matt McMuscles

Id: GSLPOmQV9_w

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Draigg]

At least Sonic '06 still managed to provide some kind of entertainment for us. You can't say that LPs of it aren't some of the best examples of sadomasochism known to man. The ones made by Retsupurae, Game Grumps, and pokecapn are god-tier in their suffering.

[u/DickButtwoman]

Matt again missed the greater context of the sale of Sega and how that affected them. It's a good rundown, and though there are some qualms about some off-hand remarks (no one's gonna say that E-102 is 'edgy'), it's alright.

But it's so important to note that the folks in charge of this whole operation had 0 idea how a video game was made, marketed, and sold.

Also, not a single mention of Iizuka? He actually makes multiple appearances in videos that Matt used. His hands are all over this dogshit pile.

[u/Sperium3000]

I'm sorry Matt, but what are you talking about? Silver's not edgy! He's a huge dork. Have you heard his theme song?. Yeah, in 2006 he was way more serious than his subsequent appearances, but even so he wasn't at all edgy.

[u/therealchadius]

This video didn't mention Sonic Rush, which came out in 2006 and was way better than the "real" Sonic game. To the point where Blaze's origin story is from Rush and not '06. (although her comments in Generations mess that up.)

[u/gt118]

Still can't believe there are 2 ACTIVE REMAKES for this god damn game that are still being worked on by the community.

[u/RevenTheLight]

Okay, this is actually a pretty good and informative. Kudos.

EDIT 1: Also, "Who's working on this game now?!" seems to be Sonic Team's motto since '06

EDIT 2: FUCK YOU MATT, GAMMA WAS AWESOME!

EDIT 3: FUCK YOU MATT, BROTHERHOOD and BLACK KNIGHT WHERE GREAT! And Forces was alright...

Ether way, great video. Good to see someone putting more research into this then "06 suck gemme YT views"

[u/ScottPilgrim2013]

I remember seeing this game as a kid a lot whenever I saw it at BJ's(A warehouse chain store) and wanting to get it, because at the time I knew nothing about 06 and how bad it was.

I also remember watching a lot of videos that would use clips from 06 with different audio put over top of it(Think like an AMV Hell thing, for those who remember what that is) and being so confused at how awkward the Sonic characters looked and how stiff they moved in that game.

[u/gothamsteel]

I thought Sonic Colors was the game that was formerly Sonic 06 Wii, and the fable arc after.

[u/DataReborn]

Is it just me or does Matt's audio sound like kind of blown out? Like it's been recorded too loud. I can't really tell if I'm crazy or not.