#penny-arcade

[dailydorkysnatching]

Day 35: Dear Nikki, did you hear that THE game you used to play is coming back? What do you mean you didn't play Poker Night at the Inventory? Oh wait, GIRLS don't play poker nights with Max. Only WOMEN, like me. Toodles!!

[blazehedgehog]

I wanted your thoughts on a portion of KingK's new Sonic 06 video, as someone who was there at the time. He argues that most of the discontent for early 3D Sonic games came from disgruntled fans, "the type that would spend most of their free time browsing Sonic Retro," until Sonic 06 came out. In other words, early 3D Sonic was well-regarded /except/ among fans. His script is in the description of his video if you want to read it.

I mean, no. I think I've mentioned this recently but I have distinct memories of going back to school in late 1999/early 2000 and hearing people talk about Sonic Adventure, after having gotten the game for Christmas.

I was the defender. At least in my neck of the woods, people hated how Sonic was getting crowded out of the spotlight by his supporting cast. They hated playing as Big the Cat, they hated playing as Amy Rose, and they hated playing as Knuckles.

These were not Sonic fans. I was the Sonic fan. I was the one being like, "um actually, the Genesis games added a new playable character after every game, so this is normal for the series."

Those complaints did not go away. They only got louder. For Sonic Adventure 2, Penny-Arcade gave the game a backhanded award: "Best Sonic game where you do not play as Sonic." This was also after they ran a comic two days after SA2 launched where Gabe is visibly trying to get his money back.

And again: not Sonic fans.

Terms like "Sonic's shitty friends" were not invented by Sonic fans. That one came from snarky mid-2000's podcasts like 1up Yours and GFW Radio, which delighted in punching down at Sonic fans.

There were Sonic fans that did not like the direction of Sonic Adventure, sure. But to suggest Sonic fans are the ones who invented a false narrative that 3D Sonic games were bad is insane to me. That's strawman talk.

[beeskeepony]

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2018/04/30/hogwash

[wshnuw]

Acceptance

I think one of the reasons I have focused on sharing is because I want to be a part of a community of people that produce work that I admire. There’s an issue with that, though, because Bill Watterson, Paul Madonna, Heinrich Kley, Randall Munroe, Theodor Seuss Geisel, Jerry Holkins, and Mike Krahulik aren’t going to read my work and say, ‘That’s our boy, Wilco.’

[mattcowdery]

Fanart painting for penny arcade’s C Team franchise. I’m really digging it, they’re a funny crew with a good dynamic.

[blazehedgehog]

I don't think you've ever answered the question before, but what is your YouTube avatar?

It's funny. I stumbled on the post containing the explanation just a few days ago but I couldn't find it now if I tried. It's from an old Penny-Arcade comic, back in the days where I still read them.

The image of a tired, burned out Sonic was pretty identifiable so it was my avatar everywhere for like a decade.

[blazehedgehog]

I know this is in relation to an older post of yours, but I need to get this off my chest...did people really hate the original Halo back when it first came out, or was it just the Penny Arcade guys that hated it?

There are definitely people who did not vibe with Halo back in the day. Most of them came from the PC space, I believe, where a game like Halo seemed a lot less special.

Because, like, Halo didn't invent big levels, or shooters with vehicles, or even dual stick analog aiming. You could, if you wanted, pick Halo apart really easily. It had a very long hype cycle, being announced three or four years before it came out, which back in 2001 was nothing short of an eternity.

Bungie made a lot of promises about what they wanted Halo to be, and then delivered on less than half of them once Microsoft came knocking. I believe it's been said they rebuilt most of the game from scratch in only a few months in order to launch with the Xbox. But I also believe they credit Microsoft with lighting a fire under them that helped Halo come out at all, otherwise it may have spent years more in development hell.

But make no mistake, Halo was a big deal. Huge. It may not have invented its ideas, but it used them to bring a type of game to a type of people that had never seen anything like that before. Halo did a lot of things right, even if later parts of the game feel held together by bits of duct tape and a photocopier.

The Penny-Arcade guys were just the biggest jerks about it.

[blazehedgehog]

Just a small question, where did you get your YouTube profile picture from? It looks like it's from a newgrounds animation.

It's from Penny-Arcade. I used to be a big fan of their stuff back in the day.

I haven't read Penny-Arcade in probably a decade at this point. The creators started getting kind of up their own asses, their style of humor fell out of favor... really, there's a mile long list of reasons behind why I stopped caring.