Category: Series Retrospective
-
Sonic Series Retrospective Part 10: The Cycle Repeats

Coming off the nostalgic high that was Generations, things were looking bright for the franchise’s future. They had not only gotten down exactly what 3D Sonic should be in the previous game, but also proven that they had a good template in case they ever wanted to work in 2D again. They’d also largely shaved…
-
Series Retrospective: The Twilight Zone (1959), Season 2

Well it’s been something like eight months since I talked about season one of this show, and while I frankly prefer writing other articles, I promised we’d go through this whole show eventually. I have nothing special to add for an intro this time. Just enjoy my musings on season 2. And yes, I…
-
Sonic Retrospective, Part 9: Twenty Year Legacy

Following the more positive reception to Sonic Colors, things were looking up for the franchise; all Sega had to do was produce a worthy follow-up. With the series’ 20th anniversary approaching, they wanted to do something special, something that wouldn’t produce the disastrous results of their 15th anniversary title. So, come 2011, the fans grew…
-
Sonic Retrospective Part 8: Experimentation Station, The Storybook Unleashed

As previously mentioned, Sonic 06 doesn’t end at Sonic 06 for the Xbox 360. There was also a Wii port, with one major issue: split development time and different hardware meant that this game wouldn’t actually be possible on the Wii before the release date. Seeing the problem, Sega did the sensible thing and canceled…
-
Sonic Retrospective Part 7: Defining the Cycle, in 2006

Alright, time to finally talk about this game. Following up on the expansive era of Heroes and the Adventure titles, Sega produced a special game for the series’ fifteenth anniversary, which used the strange reboot naming formula of just having the original game’s title again. Due to its release date, this game would go on…
-
Sonic Retrospective Part 6: An Expansive Cast

Following the success of the Adventure games, the series had an excellent and well-respected place in the gaming industry. Perhaps a better place than its parent company, given that the Dreamcast would be Sega’s final console. At this point, the Sonic series would have to continue on as a set of third-party titles, and while…
-
Series Retrospective: The Twilight Zone (1959)

As one of the shows that has stood the test of time, everybody in the US remembers this bizarre horror-sci-fi-thriller show, especially because the scripts for a few episodes are included in English textbooks as a means of teaching students how to read scripts. The series ran for five seasons, with three revivals and an…
-
Sonic Series Retrospective Part 5: Call to Adventure
The Dreamcast was the swan song of Sega’s time as console developer. Anyone who had the opportunity to use the thing as child would tell you how ambitious the console was, as the first console with internet connectivity, using a controller that was effectively the Wii U Gamepad long before the Wii U would be…
-
Sonic Series Retrospective, Part Four: An Era of Spinoffs
Just as with any other mascot, success leads to one inevitability: merchandising. With recognizability, a character gains the ability to sell anything their face can reasonably appear on, and the snide blue hedgehog would quickly join Mario in the quest to do just that. it was at about this point in the series that Sonic…
-
Sonic Series Retrospective, Part Three: Technical Innovation & Knuckles
With Sonic CD safely tucked away on another system, the inevitability that was Sonic 3 could focus primarily on being a sequel to 2, and would pave the way for the series going forward, in a way that would quietly foreshadow the series’ jump to 3D on the Dreamcast. Of course, the devs had no…