78. OMG TEH GUNS!!~~
Meet Shadow. He's an amnesiac with a dark past. Is he a hero or a villain?
Neither. He's a shitty character design that Sonic Team, having seemingly mined out all of their lousy peripheral characters from times past, turned to to help reinvigorate the franchise.
When Shadow's spinoff game went into the works, you'd think Sonic Team would finally overhaul the aging Sonic Adventure engine. Naaaaw. They gave Shadow a gun, threw in some half-ass branching paths, and called it a day.
The camera in the game is beyond broken, and the gun mechanics are ridiculously tacked on. How about choosing your path? Well, it pretty much works like this--EVERYBODY is trying to kill you. So whoever you don't try to kill back determines your side. Pity you don't really have a way of getting the humans or aliens to STOP FRIGGIN TRYING TO KILL YOU, but that would have taken some additional programming Sonic Team wasn't really interested in doing.
The game's director, Takashi Iizuka, hyped it as being a more mature direction for the series and completely downplaying the gameplay improvements (or lack thereof).
GTA-loving rugrats who previously ignored the series because "Sonic is teh kiddy and teh gay" no longer looked at the series the same way. It was now simply "teh gay." Or for those who tried the game, "s***."
79. No Streets of Rage for you!!! Part 1
Much like the Sonic series didn't get a new, 3D, high quality entry on Saturn--or even the Dreamcast--the Streets of Rage series was slated, canceled, rumored, canned, teased, and faded into obscurity.
Streets of Rage Online has basically the entire saga summed up:
http://soronline.classicgaming.gamespy.com/misc_sor4.htm
The weird thing is, Sega wasn't above making 3D beat'em ups that weren't related to Streets of Rage, no matter how dubious their quality.
Besides the sorta-ok Dynamite games, Sega also produced the crappy Zombie Revenge, and the obscure arcade/Xbox beat 'em up Spikeout.
80. No Streets of Rage for you!!! Part 2
After the success of Sonic Mega Collection (mainly on Gamecube), Sega opted to once again to try to capitalize on the quality and success the Sonic series once had.
They did this with Sonic Gems Collection, a compilation that contained some of the lower-key/rarer/2nd tier games in the series. Included in it was the centerpiece, Sonic CD. Also included was Sonic the Fighters (previously unreleased on console), Sonic R, and many Game Gear titles.
Like with Sonic Mega Collection Plus, though, Sega included some non-Sonic titles in the mix. Mega Collection's choices were usually tangently related: Ristar had been developed by some of the Sonic CD team, Flicky's characters were used in 3D Blast, The Ooze and Comix Zone were developed by Sega Technical Institute, who (with some Sonic Team supervision), made better Sonic games ever than Sonic Team themselves.
Well, instead of something actually developed by Sonic Team (like a Phantasy Star or something), Gems included Vectorman 1 and 2, Bonanza Bros., and...all...3...Bare Knuckle games. The Streets of Rage games weren't included a compilation except for the Streets of Rage 2 with crap sound on the Dreamcast Smash Pack. Heightening interest among Sonic fans was that it included the original Sonic CD Japanese soundtrack. Well, these goodies were included for Japanese consumers anyway.
The American and Europe versions of the game were announced as having the Streets of Rage games cut the compilation. Apparently sprite-based violence will still earn you a T rating (but beating up mutants in Comix Zone? ACCEPTABLE!), and we know that the kiddies love buying compilations of games they didn't play when they were younger.
Well, with those cut from Sonic Gems, maybe they could be included on the T-rated Shadow the Hedgehog, so as to put *something* redeeming on it? Naw...
Plenty of Sonic nuts just ended up importing the Japanese version, though.
81. No Streets of Rage for You!!! Part 3
Flash forward to 2006...Sega is putting out a massive new collection of Genesis classics...it has a little Sonic, it has Ecco, it has Ristar, it has the Genesis Phantasy Stars, it has all the Golden Ax games, it even has Altered Beast for laughs.
It's rated Teen, too. Okay, so maybe Sega could show some love to the non-Japanese territories, and *finally* put the 3 Streets of Rage games on there as a bonus?
Nope. But gee thanks for the never-released-here GOlden Ax 3, Sega. That totally makes up for it.
82. Dear loyal Gamecube consumers...f you. YOU PAY EIGHT DOLLAR EACH!
Despite the fact that the Sonic games have sold terribly on XBox, and kind-of-decent on PS2, the same releases on Gamecube have been huge successes. So much so that the PS2 version of Sonic Gems Collection never made it to the States.
So, Sega has opted to feed nostalgia nuts by releasing many of their classic titles (including the Streets of Rage games) on Virtual Console. However, shortly after doing the Sega Genesis Collection, curiously almost every single damn one of the Genesis games has showed up for the Virtual Console's Genesis offerings. For 8 bucks a pop. PS2 owners got over 2 dozen games for 20 bucks, in comparison.
However, by this point, even the most anti-piracy fan of the series has ROMs of the games sitting on the PC or acquired the original carts, so go to hell, Sega.
