Topic: Sonic X Shadow Generations

Just announced during Sony's State of Play earlier but coming to all platforms, Sonic Generations is getting a remaster and coming to a Nintendo platform for the first time. This remaster, called Sonic X Shadow Generations, includes a new campaign starring Shadow. The game's Steam listing also give a description of this additional campaign:

"Play as Shadow the Hedgehog in a brand-new story campaign featuring never-before-seen powers and abilities. When Shadow’s old nemesis, Black Doom, reemerges and threatens to take over the world, Shadow must journey into his own past, confront painful memories, face familiar foes, and unlock new powers to save the world and prove why he’s known as the Ultimate Life Form!"

Discuss the game here.

Having played this game as well as multiple other boost games, this game being on Switch is a big deal. If you've never played this game before, and especially if you've never played the 360/PS3 version of Unleashed either, you are in for a treat. The boost games that Nintendo platforms did get have all had significant compromises (primarily to how and when you can boost, whereas the 360/PS3 versions of Unleashed and Generations let you boost pretty much at all times provided you're skilled enough to keep the boost meter filled while navigating the obstacles), and I don't feel they're very indicative of how much fun the boost games are. The HD versions of Unleashed and Generations are the definitive boost games IMO, and they've never graced Nintendo hardware. Until now.

And the new storyline starring Shadow looks intriguing, and much needed. One of the biggest issues with Generations was its short length, and while this probably won't completely fix that issue (they'd pretty much need to like, double or triple the game's length before many people will probably be reasonably satisfied, and I doubt they've added that much) it'll probably help. But adding a new campaign with levels seemingly based on Shadow's past stories, with Shadow's abilities, and some of Shadow's villains? Sign me up.

I'm more interested in seeing if this'll make it to the Switch's successor, where it'll have a chance of hitting 60fps. Does look like Sega's finally giving Sonic Team a proper budget, though. The presentation of Shadow's campaign looks leaps and bounds above anything they've done since...possibly Unleashed. The section where the tunnel on the ARK distorts and becomes a portal to the distorted city (not entirely convinced it's either Westopolis or Radical Highway) in particular is genuinely really neat and well-done. Hopefully the controls and level design live up to the bar base Generations set (though I wouldn't mind the greater flexibility/precision of the base open-zone movement from Frontiers being integrated across the experience, since the one area Generations falters in is the finer movement on the ground - not that it matters often, though).

It’s somewhat refreshing to see them not shy away from the, uh, embarrassing parts of the franchise.

With the returning villain and even the tribal tattoo thingy from Shadow’s game right in the center of the logo.

Nice to see this come to Switch as it's one of the few Sonic games never released on a Nintendo console. Apart from the 3DS version, that is, which is great and sadly overlooked but it's pretty much a completely different game from what I can tell. It would be good if it was included in this as a bonus, but it would probably take more work to remaster than the main game.

This is a good point. There's a reason why the 360/PS3 versions of Unleashed and Generations never made it to Nintendo platforms until now, it's because those games especially are very intensive and wouldn't have been able to run on any console before the Switch (except for the Wii U, which was... well the Wii U). This game might not run the best on an OG Switch, I suspect it'll have to run at lower settings than other versions.

I am hoping that they've been developing a Switch 2 version simultaneously with other versions and just haven't announced it because Nintendo isn't ready to announce the console yet, and that once the Switch 2 is announce this will be one of the first third party games on it. The Switch 2 should be able to have an easier time running this game and a Switch 2 version would be closer in performance to other versions.

Ehh, I think it actually is Westopolis. The assets don't match exactly, but the environment matches much closer to Westopolis than Radical Highway. The biggest hint is the red sky, which also appeared in the opening cutscene of ShTH when the Black Arms first invaded Westopolis. If anything I think they might take some slight inspiration from other city levels Shadow's played like Radical Highway, Grand Metropolis/Power Plant, or Crisis City, other levels in Generations have done similar thing when there wasn't much source material to work with (for example, Sky Sanctuary added in the floating spinner things from Marble Garden), but I think the level will still be called "Westopolis" and take most of its influence from Westopolis.

In general, here's what I'm thinking we might get as far as levels and bosses:

SA2:
Final Chase (seems to be shown in the trailer)
Biolizard (confirmed, also a new version of this boss and not a port of the 3DS version)

Heroes:
Egg Fleet (also including elements from Final Fortress)
Egg Emperor (probably a new version of this boss, not a port of the 3DS version)

ShTH:
Westopolis (seems to be shown in the trailer)
Black Doom (confirmed)

06:
White Acropolis
Mephiles (the 2nd battle in Dusty Desert)

Speaking of which, isn't it possible for Sega to delist the 360 version of Sonic Generations from the Xbox One BC list? I've been wondering about for awhile today.

Cause ya'll know how Sega took down the OG versions of Sonic 1, 2, 3&K, & Sonic CD from Steam, Xbox Live/Market, & PS Store when Sonic Origins was announced back then.

Aside from that, I wonder how long it's going to be for Sonic Unleashe to get the remaster treatment. But not to mention there's also the Wii/PS2 version to account for too. Sorry for being off-topic btw.

@DanijoEX-the-Pierrot didn’t Microsoft announce some time ago that they would be phasing out legacy content (og and 360 games) in the near future?

@Eel Hard to say, I don't keep up on Microsoft's news really & Microsoft themselves haven't really said much aside from announcing they're closing the 360 store. And that's only for the games that aren't on the compatibility list. Can't say much for the OG Xbox tho. So i assume the games that ARE on the BC list are fine.

Considering that I got the PS3 version of the original in 2011 (and was the first-and only-Sonic game I ever preordered), I'll do the same for the PS4 version this year.

Sonic Generations is one of the better boost games, so I'm happy that Sega's giving the game a remaster. Plus it's finally coming to a Nintendo console... not counting the 3DS version of course. Shadow's story mode looks pretty fun, and looks like it has the potential to rectify my issue with the original game - its short length. Really wish it had more levels and bosses beyond what it originally got.

Looking forward to playing this game as I have only played the 3ds one (I have never owned a non-nintendo console xD)
The new Shadow stuff also looks epic and its cool to see Sega acknowledging the edgy boy.

This is one of those games where the only reason I'm not gonna buy it anytime near launch (if at all) is because I can't justify just endlessly buying new versions of games I already own.

If it wasn't for that, this would be right up there with TTYD for anticipated not new games. Loved Generations so much, unquestionably my favorite 3D Sonic and one of my favorite gaming experiences on the 360. Still mad that they made Colors and Generations in back to back years and then just gave up for no reason, when I would've bought every 3D Sonic of that quality.

I'm going to consider this one. I don't trust Sonic to be quality, but I feel like Generations might be an exception. I am hesitant though, because I've seen a few videos of this game and oh boy is the story cringey. Weirdly enough, I think a good story is important for Sonic because it appears that making fast paced levels requires a lot of effort for it to actually be good, more so than a traditional 3D platformer. It can help extend the runtime, in turn adding value.

New trailer shown off at Summer Games Fest

Looks like Rail Canyon from Sonic Heroes and Kingdom Valley from Sonic 06 are being added to Shadow's campaign. Also shows some kind of new powerups... where Shadow grows demonic wings or something? Not quite sure what that's about.

Solid choices for stages. I am especially happy to see Kingdom Valley make the cut, that was such a unique and iconic stage from 06 that I wanted to see redone in boost style.

EDIT: Further information shown on the website. The White Space in Shadow's game mode is a full 3D hub world more like Frontiers rather than a 2D glorified menu.

Also in this game Shadow will be able to use new Doom Powers (it seems the demonic looking wings is one of them). Shadow can use Doom Powers to do things such as surf on the water, fly over obstacles, or use Chaos Control to stop time.

Generations was a great game. Back when it first released, I forced my out of date PC to run it... Yeah, the performance wasn't smooth and I had to turn the resolution way down, but with this new release I'll get to play the game as it was meant to be played!

Last time I've played Sonic Generations was in 2015 for 3DS & then 2020 for the Xbox 360 version on Xbox One.

I will say the 3DS version wasn't as great as I thought it would be. Sadly, I'm skipping this one.

Some people have been saying the CHAO seen in artwork signals a possible Chao Garden inclusion.

The plot thickens. Several attendees have gotten to play a demo and according to their hands-on impression the Ark level is simply called Space Colony ARK and seems to use the music from the ShTH level The Ark. And supposedly in the middle of that level (they said only Space Colony ARK and the Biolizard battle is playable in the demo) that scene where Black Doom distorts space and sends Shadow to a city. That city section seems to be a distorted version of Radical Highway, again based on the music.

However, it does seem like the content shown in Space Colony ARK doesn't seem to be directly influenced from a single level but instead takes from multiple levels. They use the music from The ARK, but the level design seems to be more based on Final Chase (the ARK by itself wouldn't be a good choice to recreate because you spend most of that level riding a flying enemy called a Black Volt). Likewise, the music for that city section seems to be Radical Highway, but the atmosphere seems to vaguely resemble Westopolis, and there's even a skydiving section that seems a lot like it. It's possible that some of these levels aren't based on a singular level like some of Generations but take cues from multiple levels. Black Doom also has some lines throughout the stage and seems to have a new VA, but sounds mostly similar to how he did in ShTH. Anyway, here's footage of the demo, Shadow content starts at 3:47:

The new trailer from a few days ago confirms Radical Highway (SA2), Chaos Island (Frontiers) and a boss fight against Metal Overlord (Heroes):

I'm so glad there's more Heroes content. Heroes is peak 3D Sonic to me.