Y'know, talking about 'physics' in Sonic games, Momentum, inertia, pinball physics, slope physics, has become something of a meme in the Sonic community. A little bit an object of ridicule.
And y'know? I get it. We beg for it and criticize Sonic games for lacking it so much that I can imagine that for those of us who aren't even here for that, who picked up Unleashed or Generations or Colors and found their favorite game that hearing "It's missing momentum so it's bad" all the time is really frustrating. Like "NO! This game is amazing and you're just picking it apart because it's not exactly what YOU want!", which admittedly has SOME truth to it.
But I want you to imagine that Mario abandoned its jumping mechanics. Jumping into blocks does nothing but stop Mario's jump. Jumping onto enemies or into Koopa shells damages Mario now, and you're forced to use power ups to deal with foes, which are now just scattered across levels.
From the perspective of someone who grew up with Mario, hell, the average person with a passing awareness of what Mario IS, maybe they enjoy it for a game or 2. "Hey cool, this Mario game really zeroed in on using powerups and combat with enemies! New type of Mario game!" Then 5, 10, 15, 20 years pass and they're STILL doing it, They've alluded to some of the old mechanics here and there. "Hey, jumping on enemies doesn't hurt you now, you can bounce off of them like the old games" But still, the focus is on using powerups to defeat enemies. It doesn't feel like they've "changed things up" anymore, that they've "iterated on the old", it feels like they've abandoned Mario's core design, because they HAVE.
And before Mania, and now Superstars, that's what happened to Sonic. The core idea of Sonic was thrown completely to the wayside like it didn't matter. Imagine growing up with Mario, connecting with it enough that it's a part of your identity, not because you failed to find your own, but in the way that anything you love with your whole heart becomes a part of you, and then having the thing you fell in love with cast aside like garbage, just waiting for it to come back.
You break down Sonic to its very core, remove the imagery, the animation, the character design, attach the character controller to grey squares on grey platforms with grey backgrounds, and you still have what makes Sonic fun. It's in the programming, the design and functionality of mechanics, in the shape and functionality of the environment. Sonic the Hedgehog is merely the name and identity we attached to a game about building inertia and rolling on sloped terrain. And for decades it's been missing.
And listen, I LOVE Sonic Frontiers. It isn't perfect even in the areas where I love it, but it has the rest of the things that make me love Sonic. The stuff that you add on top of the grey squares, the visuals, characters, music, stories, even parts of the gameplay. Still, the game about building inertia and rolling on sloped terrain isn't in there. The last 3D game we got about building inertia and rolling on sloped terrain released in 2001.
There's a part of me that's terrified. That I'll die before I see another one. A modern 3D Sonic game built on that same idea. The grey squares becoming cubes. That I'll die waiting to see what could've been done.
