What is Sonic Council: Part 2, The Game
Alright, gamers! It's time to get into it! In the last part of this blog, I talked about the origins and history of Sokko Seitokai: Sonic Council in Japan's Gamest magazine, but it's time for the main event: the game!
So! As we previously discussed, Gamest seemed to have a real thirst in making Sonic Council a bit of a thing. Seeing as it was more or less their own original work, they had a bit of a go at pushing Sonic Council into a franchise, with its comic, a couple drama CDs, a light novel, and, of course, the game! Sokko Seitokai: Sonic Council! On the prestigious and ever silly Sega Saturn.
Sokko Seitokai was developed by prolific developer SIMS, a joint venture between Sega and Sanritsu, that developed a plethora of games for arcades and consoles, and published by Banpresto , and released in January of 1998.
Although I don't know too much about its development, I do know it was developed with the budding Japanese FGC is mind. At least so the dubious internet claims! The team reached out to professional, or at the very least what amounts to professional in the 90s, players to oversee and give feedback to the game and its systems. They worked closely with players, holding regular pre release tournaments to help the devs get insight into what needed to be twisted and tweaked. It was a fairly novel way to make a fighting game back then! But Gamest was a magazine by gamers for gamers, and so help them god, their game would be too! Interestingly, there's even an official Gamest scoreboard in the game itself which displays the game's characters performance and win/lose rates across these pre release tournaments.
(From top to bottom: ? ? ?/Shibata, Kumiko, Aya, Ai, Yuko, Rika, Ishida, Mika, Kato, Naoko) (Do not trust these numbers for character tier >:3)
Sadly, not much footage of Sonic Council from Japan exists that I can find, save for an odd tournament or two in the 2000s or 2010s of questionable quality. And so it is as well, just because Gamest has some real actual gamers on the line for its development does not necessarily mean those primordial gamers exactly knew what they were doing. This was the 90s after all. Games were played primarily on vibes and not so much the cold hard frames. Regardless! As far as this cool connoisseur's concerned, they and their many chefs were cooking with this one, gamers.
Of course, the game itself centers around the eponymous Sonic Council and its various friends and foes. It pulls primarily from its source material, including moves and abilities featured themselves in the manga. The only original character is the dubious Space Boss Shibata, who, I think, is essentially just Jotaro Kujo if Jotaro Kujo had Kazuya Mishima's move set and a laser. Which kicks ass. Now this is of course because the game follows its own original little side story, as the Space Boss puts on the usual suspect for any good fighting game story.. some kind of tournament! Naturally, our local battle freaks can't say no to a good time.
As for the gameplay itself, it's a six buttons game with your traditional light, medium, heavies and throws, dash attacks, and all that jazz. Naturally, each character has a handful of unique specials and supers at their disposal. The game largely borrows the magic series school of fighting game design a la Darkstalkers. A fairly simple enough system where generally speaking you're able chain light attacks into mediums into heavies,
For example, Naokos c.lk > c.mk > c.hk is a pretty safe bet! Or if youre looking for something a lil sassier you can hit Ai's d.lp > lk > mp > mk > hk.
Though! It depends on the character which actual routes are possible. Pushback and the like tend to complicate the general rule of thumb there. As for defensive options the game has a tech roll on knockdown to either roll left or right so long as you hold a direction, and the Sonic Shift, a move that cancels out of block stun and rolls out behind your enemy. The game has some generous meter build up, called the yaruki gauge, that you can use for either the sonic shift, or for the one of your Testuwan Special Moves, aka, your supers!
One of the fun little quirks of this system is being able to often cancel a super into a super, with which how meter you build, is never out of the question. Though absolutely sinister, you can cancel Ai's 3 hit shoryuken super into her unblockable demon on any 3 of the hits if they've been blocked. It's heinous, devious, and the sweetest dopamine hit I've had in ages. This game has sauce. it's got all kinds of wild moves and wacky interactions. Legit, the way it feels, the way it plays -it's really fun. There's something to it. The way characters interact with each other is just so insane sometimes it's impossible not to have to have a good time. It is equal parts tightly designed and evil and chaotic. Genuinely, it's a lot of fun. Every time we play it's grins from ears to ears. The pop offs are crazy. It's a good game!
Had Gamest not gone defunct in 1999, one wonders how far exactly this project would have gone! In a perfect world, we would have 10 more highly controversial much maligned versions of Sonic Council in which no one can agree which the best one is and like one really good one like some kind of Asuka 120%. Also we could have had that sick as hell claw girl with the stripey socks who's just like me fr fr. What a world we'd be living in. It would fix me. But alas! What we're left with is one good ass game regardless! An interesting little oddity -a piece of a history and a perfect capsule in time. Give it a shot! Its pretty neat!
And there it is, gamers, part 2 complete. From this point hence we'll be focusing on just the progress of sprite rips, scans, screens shots, and so on. Just the beautiful nitty gritty. Thanks for coming along, and until then, take care!
