Like this:

Everything below the line will be the emailer. The emailer makes an interesting point about Sonic 4 and the iPhone. I actually do have a game up on such a device (and I do have cashflow coming from my little game). I can say that many developers and other business interests think the cell phone games are the Seven Cities of Gold. I wouldn’t be surprised if the target of Sonic 4 is actually cell-phones.

Email is below:
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I thought it was kind of interesting that someone brought up Sonic 4.
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I had actually been watching the development of that game partly as ‘research’ of my own and also to see how it compares with your description of companies that had been ‘doing it right’. As the other reader mentioned, there were definitely some ‘purist’ camps that wanted to have the complete retro-style graphics/gameplay, but others that didn’t quite mind the additions. Notably though, it removed some aspects from Sonic 3, such as the option (emphasis on optionality) of playing other characters, removal of powerups, and having control dissimilarities such as making it mandatory to hold a direction in order to accelerate (in the older games, if you had rolled into a ball, you’d accelerate down hill – in Sonic 4, you can actually decelerate by not holding a direction) – and I’ve seen quite a few friends get turned off to the game from this.
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Stepping aside from the actual gameplay aspects (since the other reader seemed to have covered this), I also noticed other things concerning the game and its development – one that tells an… interesting story that SEGA hasn’t officially confirmed, and one that seems to be a sort of strange, twisted parallel universe to the articles I’ve read on your blog.
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It really piqued my interest since they claimed to be taking fan feedback, so I decided to see how much of it they would take into account and to see if it would lead to success as you claimed SC1 and Blizzard had done. They had extended the development time around E3 in order to make some yet-unannounced-tweaks to the game. There were two stages from early development leaks that people had complained strongly about (one of which was a dizzying “mine cart stage” where Sonic rides a motion-controlled mine cart for the whole stage), and other physics issues that some people had felt were “a little off”.
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When Sonic 4′s website was first put online, SEGA announced it would be released as a downloadable title for the three major gaming consoles (Wii/PS3/X360) as well as a fourth “mystery platform“. In an early leak, someone had found an unused “iPhone” image on the server, but there was no official announcement about this until E3. When the delay was announced, they then claimed the iPhone would have two exclusive stages. In the subsequent months, the Sonic 4 website would have updates featuring two new stages that had features that were completely new and different from the early leaks, as well as some graphical updates.

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So here’s the kicker.

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What I found wasn’t a tragic story of trying to please both the ‘classic fans’ and ‘new fans’ – it’s a story of SEGA trying to make waves on the hot new gaming system, the iPhone, and making deliberate design changes to a beloved franchise just to make it suitable for the iPhone.

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- It’s a downloadable title. From the beginning, it was a downloadable title. Perfect for the AppStore, isn’t it?

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- It seems the iPhone version had a control option added (versus the classic Sonic iPhone releases) that allowed for tilt control – tilt the phone in order to “press” left or right, and the camera system they used was identical to the one found in the mine cart leak, and some people on SEGA’s forums even claimed that the stage wasn’t bad at all on the iPhone. This may have actually been response to ‘fan feedback’ (from the other games) claiming that it was hard to play the Sonic games with a virtual d-pad. Honestly, if it were me, I’d have taken it as a flag saying “this is probably not the right console to be releasing a Sonic game for”.

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- Some of the physics complaints that I’ve seen about the game (ex: Sonic decelerates powerfully when you release the d-pad) can be explained off as changes made to the game’s physics to make it easier to play on the iPhone with tilt controls. Ironically enough, it seems most people ended up only using tilt controls for certain occasions, preferring the use of the virtual d-pad.

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- When Sonic 4 was released, we found out that the two stages that people had complained about were left on the iPhone, while the two revamped stages were given to the consoles. The iPhone build was basically what they had during E3, and people rejoiced to find that their console Sonic 4 had better stages. Now, this isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, and I’m glad they did it, but… the people who wanted Sonic 4 the most were the ones who were expecting his triumphant 2d return to consoles.

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Why was the early leak of the game an iPhone stage? Because they were originally developing for the iPhone.

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In this universe, the labeled “hardcore” are the ones who want the return of a classic 2D Sonic, and the “casuals” are the 3D fans who want homing attack to poison the 2D games. The hardcore place the blame on the casuals for being an influence that made Sonic 4 “bad” and “different”. But as I see it, this is merely a front, but there were quite a few users that saw a different final boss:

Takashi Iizuka.

In the SEGA Sonic 4 forums, Takashi Iizuka became the parallel “Sakamoto” figure - though rather than the Sakamoto idolization, you’ll find that they have a rather… different image.

This was made by a user on the SEGA forums, comically enough.

Iizuka had mentioned in an interview that usually, the iPhone versions of games are dumbed down versions of the console games, so they wanted to make it “as good” as the console versions.

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The way I see it, SEGA developed Sonic 4 for the iPhone specifically, then only later did someone (thankfully) realize that the iPhone stages aren’t all too suited for the console versions and pushed for extended development. In the end, the console versions became a sort of bitter port of an iPhone game, seasoned improperly with nostalgia.

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The ironic thing about it all is that while Sonic 4 reportedly topped PSN and Wiiware download lists, it quickly dropped off the iPhone top 10.

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Hope you enjoyed the story. I’m still sort of watching what SEGA will do about it. There were quite a few people who did enjoy Sonic 4, and there’s no shame in that – but even then, you’ll hear “something feels…. off“. It’s an almost universal opinion on the SEGA forums that, regardless of whether they did or didn’t like the game, bringing back the classic physics (among other things) would have made the game so much better.

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I’m actually sort of glad Sonic 4 is in episodes though. It felt like SEGA had been so off the mark with Sonic games recently that they sort of need to take it in bits and take fan feedback. Hopefully, Sonic 5 will be a proper disc release – for consoles, as it should be.

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