Optional challenges and collectables unlocking FUCKING NOTHING. No, I don't care for achievements, you can shove them ALL up your ass without lube. If you don't want to to put unlockable bonuses and bonus content in your game, then don't have bonus challenges at all.

>>1755459 Reminds me of all those DMC V "fans", who were shocked to learn that Vergil did not actually sit on a plastic chair.

>>1755508 I want to think up other games this applies to >Earthbound >Undertale/Deltarune >FNAF (for some reason??) >Yume Nikki >Touhou Can anybody think of others?

>>1756016 -Metal Gear -Final Fantasy -Halo -Devil May Cry -Resident Evil -Megaman

>>1756016 Bugthesda games before Skyrim or Fallout 4 Silent Hill Metal Gear Solid Most Fighting Games

>>1756016 Really anything popular that has a significant story/lore can apply.

>>1755473 I get the sentiment, but... what about challenges that exists solely for the sake of distracting you from the main modes? Think about the challenges from Megaman 11. The only thing they give you is bragging rights, essentially, but they are fun for a change.

>>1757221 it's not like in cuckchan where a thread dies quickly. A thread can live through years.

>>1755508 >>1756016 I like to think of another subset of this type of "fan" >Huge Fire Emblem fan, admits to have only played Three Houses >Huge Armored Core Fan, only played VI As in, they claim to be huge fans of the series, but only played the latest game in the franchise, and have no interest in playing the other games, because "they are too old", or "too clunky", or "the graphics are bad". Now, I have no problem with people playing games in a series out of order I started with Fire Emblem on the GBA, but I would prefer if they called themselves Fire Emblem Three Houses fans or Armored Core VI fans, as in they are fans of those particular games, and not the entire series. There is also the question of what percentage of the games in a franchise you need to have played/finished to call yourself a fan let's ignore secondaries for now. Can you be called a Final Fantasy fan if you didn't play XI or XIV because MMOs are not your thing? What about the older games, does it count if you only played the remakes, like say, the IV remake on the DS? What about spin-offs, do I also need to also play most of them, or am I fine with just the mainline titles? What if I really liked Final Fantasy, but after XII I thought that the series went to shit, so I didn't play XIII, XIV, XV and XVI? Would I still be a fan, even if I don't like the series anymore, or do I get a special label like pre-XIII fan kind of how some Star Wars geeks get called prequel fans, or pre-Disney buyout fans? Anyway, I basically played, though not finished, all the games in the first 3 gens of Armored Core, and a bit of VI, and personally I don't feel comfortable to call myself an AA fan, until I have played gen IV and V, though I am fine with skipping the PSP spin-off.

>>1757247 >What if I really liked Final Fantasy, but after XII I thought that the series went to shit, so I didn't play XIII, XIV, XV and XVI? Would I still be a fan, even if I don't like the series anymore? The fitting description would be "I don't like the current direction, so I'd stick to the old ones". Basically every other community that a franchise has gone to shit, it's not a new concept. Doesn't mean you must suck their aged milk just because you're a "fan".

>>1757272 Sure, I agree there is no reason to mindlessly consume product, though what I was trying to talk about was about how much of a series can one be invested in, and still be considered a fan. You posted a Touhou image, and that's a good example of a community that is in almost constant friction with what they called "secondaries", people who claim to be fans, but never played the games, instead engaged with other media like manga, artwork, songs, official or unofficial. In the end, even though there might be a corporate interest in creating this idea of a "fan" as someone who consumes product, even without that, people in a community understand stuff like a real fan as opposed to a fake <game> fan that has never played the game. I realize that there is no hard science, as in you have to play at least 51% of the games in a franchise to be called a fan, and that it may all be subjective, still it's something that I sometimes ponder upon.

>>1757247 These are good questions. I'd argue that you do not have to play all the spinoffs, or even any of the spinoffs, to consider you a fan. Of course, it also depends on how large the series is. The larger the series, the more acceptable it is to have skipped some entries, especially spinoffs. I strongly doubt there are more than one or two people on this board who have beaten every single Mario or Sonic game, simply because there are too many. Even just the mainline games would still be tough to do. Of course I have, though. There are people on this board who seem like big Castlevania fans, but when I mention all the ones I've beaten (which isn't quite all, but getting close), it seems like I've beaten more than everyone else here. I don't think that means there are no Castlevania fans on this board. I think remakes count if the remakes are very similar to the originals. If you beat Super Mario Bros Deluxe, or the version on Super Mario All-Stars, then that counts. If you beat Final Fantasy VII Remake, that doesn't count, because it's really a different game. There are edge cases, like Ratchet & Clank 2016, but I'd edge on the side of caution and say those don't count. Too different. That said, if a game is different enough, even if officially counted as a mainline entry, I think you can count yourself as a fan if you skip it. I love Zelda II, but I can understand if someone else loves the entire series and just isn't into it, since it's so different. I think the Final Fantasy MMOs are perfect examples of games that might be officially counted as main entries, but are really so different they're effectively spinoffs, and can be treated as such. But then Final Fantasy in general is such a long series that I think it's fair to call someone a fan even if they haven't played every single mainline entry. If you sat through like ten very long RPGs, you might be missing many entries in the series, but I think it's fair to call yourself a fan. Someone might be a bigger fan, but you've invested maybe hundreds of hours. I think you count. I've 100%ed every single Zelda game except for Zelda's Adventure, because I can't be bothered to set up a CDi emulator. I played the remakes of the other two CDi games, and I think those count. I think I can still call myself a Zelda fan. In fact, I think I could call myself a Zelda fan like a decade ago when I had still only beaten the first five or six games in the series. And I still haven't read all the manga. So does that count? Maybe I'm not really a fan. Actually, fuck it, I'm going in the other direction on this one. I've 100%ed every single Sonic game, watched every show/movie, read every comic/manga. I even read Ken Penders' original book, The Lara-Su Chronicles. It's by law the official continuation of characters that began in Sonic comics. I hereby declare that no other Sonic fans exist except me, because I'm very confident that nobody else has bothered with all that shit. Sonic '06 isn't even a relatively bad entry in the franchise once you take it all in. But actually I just realized that I haven't read all the chapter books and Choose Your Own Adventure books they released back in the '90s. I read the Sonic & Knuckles adaptation chapter book, and the Choose Your Own Adventure Metal City Mayhem, because I had them as kids, but I remember that was #2 in a series of CYOA books, so I must be missing some. So I guess I'm not a real fan. Maybe once a franchise gets big enough, nobody is a real fan of it anymore. Or alternatively, if a franchise gets big enough, it's reasonable to say you're only a fan of one corner of it. If there is a distinction in eras, or styles, and you're very into one but ignore the rest, I think that's fair. While I think Classic Sonic fans actually are often casuals in disguise, there obviously are real ones, because they made Sonic Mania, the best game in the series. I can totally understand why someone might prefer 2D Zelda over 3D Zelda, and even ignore 3D games but continue playing the 2D ones (however, I also feel like if you like 3D Zelda but dislike 2D you're a filthy casual). The Star Wars example is appropriate. Real Star Wars fans hate the Disney movies. Perhaps there are fights between those who like the prequels and those who don't, but I'd count them both as real fans. If you like the Disney movies you're not a real fan, you're a casual who clearly never liked the originals that much in the first place. If you did, you'd be disgusted by the new ones. Same obviously goes for things like Star Trek. I think TOS is way better than Next Gen through Enterprise, but I'll respect fans of that as real fans. But if you like Discovery or anything after, you're not a fan. I guess actually maybe I exclude people from being called fans not based on what they haven't consumed, but based on things they like that disqualify them. I'll go so far as to say that if you like The Simpsons Seasons 13+, you aren't a real fan. I know fans do argue about the Mike Scully seasons (9-12), but the series gets way, way worse with 13, and that showrunner, Al Jean, just stayed on forever after that. There's a single Mike Scully episode in Season 14 ("How I Spent My Strummer Vacation"), and it's way better than anything else post Season 13, even though it's not great. That's the only episode from Season 13 or later that you're allowed to like.

>>1756016 It's justified with Touhou since the fan content is 10x better than the actual games.

>>1757316 I know what you're talking about. I thought it was good to add a trivia. >>1758875 >It's justified with Touhou since the fan content is 10x better than the actual games. I also know yours and I understand what you're coming from. Since ZUN did fucked up currently, especially the whole Beast Pack shit, but to me, before PCB it was truly special. Yeah they're not "masterpieces" but they're solid and memorable in it's own right, especially the retro ones. They're like Super Metroid, timeless classics which you can enjoy even to this day. They had charm and passion, which I can't say to the recent titles, with the whole same face copypaste portraits (except 20 turned out really fun).

>>1738262 >IRL they are evil for NO REASON The cognitive dissonance some people have, treating reality like fiction and vice versa, absolute lunacy. >>1757247 OH BUT ANON, NOTHING EXISTS EXCEPT THE MOST RECENT ENTRY ERGO YOU'RE WRONG! I hope that trend dies one day, just so there can be a tiny bit more honesty in the world, like as you said they could just confess to only playing the latest game and I wouldn't have as much of an issue. I also really want that mindset to cease for fighting games, but that would be going against an industry mindset rather than a community mindset, which is a lot harder to fight back against >>1758678 >It's by law the official continuation Penders lost any "legal jurisdiction" over the series once Sega gave him the boot, nobody sane would disqualify someone for not reading that. >Ratchet & Clank 2016 Definitely doesn't count, it's not Nu-Trek or Nu-Wars levels of bad, but it's clearly inferior. >The Simpsons Seasons 13+ That was probably my first exposure to the series as a dumbass kid, couldn't remember any off the top but I'd probably rewatch and go "oh yeah, uhmmm, 6/7 outta 10, I guess". You think people will start pushing back the start date of "Zombie simpsons" once they get older, maybe to the first post Movie seasons? Hell most "megafans" I hear from point to S9 being the start of the decline already.

>>1758678 Thank you for the input anon, I mostly agree with what you said, and yes the length of the series does matter. For instance, if it's just one game, like say Undertale, then I think the minimum required for someone to be a fan is to have played the game, at least for one ending. Now I think there should be two more criteria for someone to be a fan. First is to actually enjoy the game you are playing, or at least play the games out of enjoyment. Now why would anyone play all the games in a series if not out of enjoyment? Maybe they have to because they are game journos, or want to make a series retrospective on jewtube, or in other words money is involved. They might end up liking them, and become fans, but they could also end up indifferent or hating them. For instance, me and a friend have decided to go through the Bungie Halo games and do the co-op campaigns. None of us had played Halo, so there is no nostalgia, I mostly suggested doing it, to see what the fuss is about the games. We already decided to play the games, so it doesn't mean we will actually like them. As such, liking something is very important, even you said that someone who likes post-Disney Star Wars is not a real fan and you didn't just say "watch", but "like". Now I think it's fine to dislike some entries in a series, or even be critical to the entries you do enjoy, as that is the only way devs could improve, it's just that it has to be honest critique. Second of all, to distinguish between someone who just finished the games, and a fan, that person should be able to describe in some words what he liked about the games, or what was good/bad with them, without having watched some jewtuber explaining it to them. It's fine to watch or read what other people think of X series, and it's also fine to agree with them, but you should also be able to form your own opinion. I gave the personal example with Armored Core, I haven't played gen IV and V yet, so I don't consider myself an AC fan, but I can talk about how the games evolved through Gen I to III, or how it's a bit sad that VI simplified the AC building a bit too much, with the removal of the radar unit, or a unit to mitigate the stagger mechanic, the same way you had the Radiator to mitigate the Heat mechanic in Gen II - III, or those floating mines you could throw. On the other hand, I can also understand how they tried to remove a lot of the fat, though I think they cut some of the meat as well, as I do understand why they removed the hover legs, as they weren't all that good and I only ever used them for some niche missions that involved water. I could go a bit more on this, but I think you get my point. I am also sure you could write paragraphs describing Sonic and Mario, but you don't have to, I believe you. I am sure someone will also complain that I called them gens with roman numerals, instead of the indian ones, because only with 5 and 6 did they use the roman ones, or that I even used the term "Gen", my defense is that I got corrupted by Pokemon discourse.

>>1759471 Simpsons fans are extremely autistic and shouldn't be taken seriously. People should make their own judgments on what's good or not, deferring to a circlejerk's opinions is just a cheap way to outsource critical thinking. I found a good amount of episodes to enjoy up until season 15 (Swartzwelder's last season of working on the show). After that it was just tolerable until the season 20-somethings, 2014 was probably the last "tolerable" year for the simpsons imo before it started being full-blown propaganda (not to mention the voice actors clearly started showing their age at that point onwards).

>>1759471 >Penders lost any "legal jurisdiction" over the series once Sega gave him the boot The whole reason why he even won the lawsuit in the first place was because Archie lost the contract. Allegedly, Penders took it to sweep the case. Even then, most of Penders' characters are just recolors, meaning that Sega can make 100+ Knuckles if they want to. I'd rather have Penders than Flynn tbh

>>1759471 >I also really want that mindset to cease for fighting games, but that would be going against an industry mindset rather than a community mindset, which is a lot harder to fight back against Especially now that fighting games are all about online, and have practically given up on single player content, the whole point is to just follow the trend of whatever everyone else is playing, which is almost always going to be the newest entry. I like games from this genre, but I suppose that with its inherent focus on multiplayer, it was always destined to become total cancer. >Penders lost any "legal jurisdiction" over the series once Sega gave him the boot Penders never worked directly for Sega, he worked for Archie. But actually, due to Archie losing the original copy of his contract, he managed to convince a court that he was a freelancer who merely sold his comics to Archie, which meant he owned the copyrights, and therefore any characters invented in them. The recent book he released was actually mostly reprints of Sonic comics, and somehow Sega hasn't sued. Maybe they figure it's just not worth the Streisand Effect. But the point remains that it does have an original story at the end, continuing from where Penders left off. And according to the courts, it's legal and legitimate. >nobody sane would disqualify someone for not reading that. We're talking about hardcore Sonic fans here. Do you consider people with extreme cases of autism to be sane? Call me insane if you will, but I would disqualify myself if I just ignored it. After reading every other comic, including every Sonic related comic Penders worked on, and then hearing him talk about this new comic for over a decade, of course I had to check it out. And the original stories in it are extremely short, so it's not like it takes long. Penders' last story was set in the future, and is largely about Knuckles' daughter, Lara-Su. But at the end King Sonic has to go back in time to save the day and the timeline gets warped. This was followed up on in one arc by the next (and current) writer, Ian Flynn, and honestly that arc is fucked up and sucks too. In that new timeline, Shadow is king instead of Sonic, meaning he married Sally. Anyway Shadow is a despot, so Sonic has to overthrow him and become king again. But it's not like he goes back in time and makes it so Shadow was never king. He just takes over the kingdom and marries Sally, but now has to live with the knowledge that Shadow fucked his wife for 25 years. Also his kids from the old timeline were erased so he has them again but now they're younger since he wasn't king anymore in the time when they were originally born. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is the worst story Flynn ever did, but he is mega autistic and wanted to wrap up the future storyline, and he did. And to be fair, Penders loves having Sonic get cucked, so I suppose this was a thematically faithful continuation. Luckily, this entire future timeline gets erased from history a few years later. Penders' follow-up to his own story, which we waited almost 20 years for, was actually only the intro to a story. A prelude. The vast majority of the book is reprints of old issues, and then he threw in essentially a backup story at the end. But the main thing he does is establish that the timeline getting warped at the end changes everybody to be legally distinct. Those disgusting character designs? They're on purpose. Everyone got warped so they don't look quite as much like Knuckles anymore. And Rotor Walrus, who is a main character in his story, but originally from one of the 1993 Sonic cartoons (and thus Penders cannot claim to own him) gets turned into a rhino instead. Why he did this, when he still has the audacity to publish reprints of old Sonic comics, seems a little baffling to me. If he can publish old stories with these characters, he might as well publish new ones as well. I'm sure neither would actually hold up in court if Sega bothered to sue, so maybe he does understand that and is trying to not push them too far. Luckily for Penders, he is not at all interested in actual Sonic characters. They were always just springboards for his stories about Lara-Su and Knuckles' other relatives, who were actually characters he wanted to write about before, and only made them Knuckles' relatives as an excuse to sneak them into the original comic. Rotor is the only one left over, and it wouldn't surprise me if Penders kills him off rather quickly, assuming he ever gets another volume out. He claims he is going to soon, but it took him ten years last time. And we'll see how much of the next volume is just reprints instead of original stories. >(Ratchet 2016) Definitely doesn't count, it's not Nu-Trek or Nu-Wars levels of bad, but it's clearly inferior. Yeah it's inferior, but I wouldn't say offensively so. Some of the original levels it has are okay. I'd say it's worth playing as an epilogue to the series. But I'm not bothering with Rift Apart given how insufferable modern Insomniac is. >You think people will start pushing back the start date of "Zombie simpsons" once they get older, maybe to the first post Movie seasons? I'm sure people try now. I never missed an episode until like 2015, but eventually I had to admit that I was lying to myself for over a decade. But when I looked more closely, I realized that you really could tell a difference between the different showrunners, and it was Al Jean, who took over as Showrunner for Life in Season 13, who really sucked. >Hell most "megafans" I hear from point to S9 being the start of the decline already. This is true. They don't like the showrunner before Al Jean, and I can understand their sentiment. But I'm choosing to be a little more forgiving. I'll give the show a few extra years. I can still enjoy Season 9-12, even if not as much as before. The thing is, at the time I thought The Simpsons declined slowly, but in retrospect, I can see a clear dividing line. Many dividing lines, whenever showrunners changed. But even being generous, I have to admit Al Jean is too far for me. He sucks. >>1759912 I remember when they switched to HD in like 2009 I tried to convince myself it was getting better, but really that was just when they decided to start referencing old episodes more, which made me think they gave a shit and were trying again. Of course now I realize that referencing old things doesn't mean you're like the old things, or even that the people who made the references really liked what they were referencing. >2014 was probably the last "tolerable" year for the simpsons imo before it started being full-blown propaganda Yeah 2015 is when I gave up, so maybe you have a point that that's when I couldn't even tolerate it anymore. But I still argue that the same problems all got way way worse with Season 13, and just kept declining from there as Al Jean just got more and more into his ass-groove. >>1760271 >I'd rather have Penders than Flynn tbh Hey, come on, let's not say things we can't take back. I get how it's easy to criticize the current guy, and easy to forgive the guy who got fired 20 years ago, but let's be serious here. Sure, Flynn had Sonic get cucked one time in an alternate future timeline that got erased, but that was only because he was wrapping up a Penders story. Penders, the very first time he got to write an extended arc, invented Geoffrey St. John, a character whose entire point was to cuck Sonic, and make Sally all excited about it. This is the guy who had Sonic cuck Tails. Who had Anti-Sonic cuck Antoine, and Anti-Antoine cuck Sonic. (Why didn't he just have Anti-Antoine cuck regular Antoine and Anti-Sonic cuck regular Sonic? Wouldn't that have been simpler?) You know what's fucked up, though? That story that got Penders fired, where Sonic cried on the cover with an invitation to Sally's wedding in his hand? I actually think it's Penders' best story. It involves all that cucking I was just talking about, but after 200 issues I was Stockholm Syndromed into it. It did effectively utilize a great deal of the comic's history, of different character arcs. Unfortunately, that's just because he was effectively setting up the cuckoldry for about 200 issues. But since that's apparently what Penders likes to do, this was his best attempt at it. I do think Flynn has gotten too slice of life lately, and focusing too much on OCs, but a lot of the actual problem is with Evan Stanley's issues and characters. Similarly, sometimes Penders gets credit for things that Karl Bollers wrote, since they both wrote stories at the same time, and Karl Bollers was a much better writer, even if he also did absolutely insane stuff sometimes. Also I don't like that Flynn dedicated two years of stories (2011-2013) to having Sonic and Sally back together, when they had been broken up for like eight or nine years by that point (which was very good since it kept things closer to the games' status quo), but luckily the Penders lolsuit made Sega squash that idea right before it could finally come to fruition. It's weird, because Flynn also did a story where Eggman determined that Sonic is a personification of chaos, and alters his plans accordingly. And I do think that that's a proper understanding of the character that not many get. But he didn't really know what to do with it, and then started writing Sonic like a little bit of a pussy instead. But again, a lot of that perception is really from when Evan Stanley is writing.

>>1760792 >Hey, come on, let's not say things we can't take back. I don't want Penders to come back making Sonic comics. I'm saying this because Penders' at the very least he made hilarious dogshit. Like the entire cuckoldry saga you mentioned, he's the sole reason why Archie Sonic got such scrutiny for better and worse. Plus, the lawsuit wasn't just out of his "creative differences", but rather how Archie treated their employees like trash, so he and other writers are stand up against them and Sega for not doing something in these situation. Say whatever you want about the guy, I don't agree with rest of his schizophrenia, like how the entire concept of Echidnas are his holy shit. But he had the right call to sue Archie for it. And again, what he claimed were his Knuckles OCs, unlike many Sonicfans and even you would tell so. >when they had been broken up for like eight or nine years by that point (which was very good since it kept things closer to the games' status quo), but luckily the Penders lolsuit made Sega squash that idea right before it could finally come to fruition. Except it was Flynn who scrapped that idea during reboot because he was a huge Sonamy faggot. It has nothing to do with the lawsuit. Here's the thing: Sega OWNS the TV show characters, they even own Archie characters, the ones who weren't made by Penders and Karl of course. Even Scourge is a Sega character. Meaning, someone would pick up a character at their library and would use it if they want to. The whole reason why we won't get other memorable characters is because how they would fit in the story and why they should when there's Shadow or Knuckles. Or make their own characters which is how IDW did. And speaking of which, Flynn did as much of a fuck up with the writing as Evan. He's the one who thought it was a good idea to write a scenario where Shadow is a cocky retard in the middle of a zombie invasion. He's the one who made Sonic into a pussy capeshitter, he ironically made Sonic so out of character, despite he's such a huge sonic game faggot, while injecting capeshit onto him despite it does not belong. And he had the nerve to blame Sega for his mistakes. And it's not the first time he did this. He came up with this "mandate" nonsense when he was at his peak at Archie. To excuse his questionable writing and why Sonic is the way it was during the Meta era. Despite it's all by Sonic Team's awful ideas running through their veins. >But again, a lot of that perception is really from when Evan Stanley is writing. It's an bad excuse, he could had cleaned up her mess like how he did with Penders years ago.

>>1760920 >he's the sole reason why Archie Sonic got such scrutiny for better and worse. For better? That's Flynn's doing. Flynn did do great stories on that comic. Back then he seemed to care a bit more about tying into the games, as well as other older adaptations. But then I'm still hesitant to blame him now. I did enjoy the arcs he did about Fang not too long ago. I'm just super bored by everything Stanley writes, including the characters she invents. It seems like many of them may be gone now, but then in the latest issue she invented another new one. I really hope that new one doesn't stick around. >Plus, the lawsuit wasn't just out of his "creative differences", but rather how Archie treated their employees like trash, so he and other writers are stand up against them and Sega for not doing something in these situation. Sega has nothing to do with how Archie treats their employees. But also no, because Penders' claim is that he wasn't a real employee, but a complete freelancer. It's obvious bullshit. And while Archie does notoriously treat their employees like trash, the lolsuit had nothing to do with that. The owner of the company would go around grabbing dudes' junk and brag about how they couldn't do anything because she's a woman. That's right up Penders' alley, he loves that kind of feminism, and it's showcased in his stories. And if you're just referring to wanting creators to own their own work, then Ken Penders is the absolute worst person to use as an example, and a damn Sonic the Hedgehog comic book is the worst possible comic to use. Obviously all of these characters are extremely derivative. They're just Knuckles with different hats on. He claims he owns "Evil Sonic," and even licensed a company to make a new comic about Scourge, because he claims Scourge is derivative of Evil Sonic, and therefore he owns it, but Evil Sonic isn't derivative of Sonic, so Sega doesn't own it. And then the guy who created Mammoth Mogul also claims to own him, even though he's a blatant ripoff of Vandal Savage. He shouldn't be sued by Archie, he should be sued by DC. None of this is like Jack Kirby wishing he got a cut of all the merch from the zillions of characters he created. It's more like if the guy who wrote the episode of The Incredible Hulk series from the '70s where he fights an evil red Hulk then tried to sue Marvel for later making a different Red Hulk, claiming that his red Hulk was a totally original character not at all derivative of the original Hulk, but this different Red Hulk was clearly a straight ripoff of his totally original character do not steal. >And again, what he claimed were his Knuckles OCs, unlike many Sonicfans and even you would tell so. Has anyone ever been far even as decided to do even go want to do look more like? >Except it was Flynn who scrapped that idea during reboot because he was a huge Sonamy faggot. It has nothing to do with the lawsuit. I don't believe you. Flynn is the one who started getting them back together, with the Sonic: Genesis arc in 2011, and just kept building it up further and further until the Super Genesis Wave in 2013, when the entire thing was dropped entirely. I've seen no evidence Flynn is a Sonamyfag whatsoever. Under his watch, Amy has shown less and less romantic interest in Sonic, and this began in the comics and then later filtered to the games and other media. He turned Amy into a "girlboss," again first in the comics, and now it's filtering to other media. Flynn kept Sally and the Freedom Fighters as main characters even after the Super Genesis Wave, when he could have de-emphasized them slowly over time, as the entire rest of his Archie run was slowly making that series more like the games. And when he wasn't allowed to use them anymore in IDW, he immediately got to work replacing them with new OCs. The Freedom Fighters just became The Resistance/Restoration, Nicole became Jewel, Sally became Lanolin, Snivley became Starline (yes he has elements of Finitivus, but basically just his teleporting. Really he's Snivley). Flynn clearly loves the Freedom Fighters and Sally. He's clearly the opposite of a Sonamyfag. Bean and Bark also became Rough and Tumble, because Sega said Bean and Bark are only allowed in Classic Stories. But it's notable that Bean and Bark were such clean slates, appearing only in an arcade fighting game with no character bios outside one Japanese magazine article from the '90s which lightly alludes to them being Sonic's friends. Flynn basically created their personalities from whole cloth, first for the fancomic that got him hired by Archie, and then he just continued using those same personalities once he got on the official comic. And now Rough and Tumble have very similar roles and personalities, just with an annoying rhyming gimmick. But clearly Flynn wishes he could use Bean and Bark, so I believe him when he mentions that particular "Sega mandate." >they even own Archie characters, the ones who weren't made by Penders and Karl of course. Not just them. Scott Fulop claims to own Mammoth Mogul and tries to sell stuff with the character. I'm sure Sega is much more confident about anything created by Flynn, especially after the Super Genesis Wave, though. >Even Scourge is a Sega character. Not according to Penders. He licensed a company to make a new Scourge comic, and it only got cancelled because the company immediately saw the terrible fan reception and realized they probably wouldn't actually make money. >Meaning, someone would pick up a character at their library and would use it if they want to. According to Flynn, and this is a case where I believe him, Sega doesn't want them used anymore. And while I personally would enjoy a comic where the entire history of the franchise is utilized and referenced, I can completely understand why Sega wants none of that shit referenced anymore. Ultimately these adaptations are mostly made to get fans of the primary media, the games, to buy other things, like comics or Netflix subscriptions. It makes more sense to keep things closer to the primary media, and not to tv shows that got cancelled 30 years ago, or comics that are only notorious memes on the internet because of how terrible many of them are. >The whole reason why we won't get other memorable characters is because how they would fit in the story and why they should when there's Shadow or Knuckles. Or make their own characters which is how IDW did. It's not what IDW did, it's what Flynn and Stanley did. They were creating tons of OCs in the post-Super Genesis Wave Archie comics too. But yes, you raise a good point that characters like Shadow and Knuckles don't get used nearly often enough. Instead, time is spent on these OCs, and it's bullshit. And yeah, as much as I was mad when Archie was focusing on the SatAM characters instead of guys like Knuckles or Shadow, I would prefer the SatAM characters over OCs clearly made to replace them. At least they have history. >He's the one who thought it was a good idea to write a scenario where Shadow is a cocky retard in the middle of a zombie invasion. He's the one who made Sonic into a pussy capeshitter, I think these are problems, but the Shadow thing was a single instance so that would be relatively easy to overlook. The Sonic thing is a bigger problem, I'd agree it's rather significant since he's the main character, but it's not as big a problem as Stanley's extreme focus on OCs. Almost all that Diamond Cutters nonsense was Stanley. Multiple years long arcs about a club of nothing but OCs, and then at the very end, Silver. Great fucking idea. But yeah, both are problems. >He came up with this "mandate" nonsense when he was at his peak at Archie. Some of the mandates are probably true, but I do agree with you strongly that I think they are overstated, not just by Flynn, but by fans who just make assumptions and excuses for him. >It's an bad excuse, he could had cleaned up her mess like how he did with Penders years ago. No, because Stanley is still currently writing at the same time as him. They switch between writing duties. And Stanley calls herself head writer now, as seemingly Flynn has been promoted to whatever role he has at Sega now, and writing the comics is a secondary thing for him. But he does clean up things a bit when he gets the chance. I'm certainly not giving Stanley the credit for all the Diamond Cutters being put on a bus.

>start a game, visual novel, or anything >wastes too much time explaining the lore instead introducing the characters >when it finished of telling the whole history, it starts the actual story >at this point, I'm bored and I don't care about meeting the characters Why doing that? Isn't supposed that the first moments is for hooking the players/readers to continuing instead boring them?

>>1761309 This is such a good point. It's possible to have an interesting prologue, I suppose, like how the Lord of the Rings movies begin with a prologue that I think does hook the audience, but on the other hand, you have things like anime, where the average anime fan says they'll watch a new one for multiple episodes, even if they aren't enjoying them, just because they know they might not be good at first. No, if something isn't good when it starts, it isn't good. Maybe it gets better later, but it needs to start well. But to bring it specifically to video games, I can't stand when games have extremely long intros with either no gameplay or practically no gameplay. I sit down to play a game only to find myself watching a sub-par movie, and by the time I'm finally allowed to play, if I'm not literally out of time to play, I probably don't want to anymore. I'm fucking sick of it. I'm not opposed to stories in games, but space that shit out. It's a game. The point is to play. Don't make me go too long without playing.

>>1761545 What did he mean by this?

>>1761309 >>1761545 lol just press the hecking skip button

>>1586638 I wish Sylvanas have never stopped bieng a High Elf

>>1677981 Why is BoF there? Even without lines Ryu was pretty charming as a character i fucking loved how you can just 1vs1 one of the big bads in BoFII,especially how it also recognizes Ryu achivement after beating it.

>>1761545 >you have things like anime, where the average anime fan says they'll watch a new one for multiple episodes, even if they aren't enjoying them, just because they know they might not be good at first. No, if something isn't good when it starts, it isn't good. yeah definitely. I followed that advice of watching 3 episodes before dropping a series for about 12 years. in that time, there were exactly 2 series where watching 2 more episodes after the first one resulted in completing a series that I liked, and I can't even remember the name of one of them for the VAST majority of the series that I watched over those years, if I didn't like the first episode, watching 2 more was just a waste of my time. the 3 episode rule was worthless for me

>>1761545 >>1769201 The 3 episode rule exists for the older ones that take a bit longer to establish the intro or do the fakeouts like Madoka. It doesn't particularly apply to the newer big budget productions because they wouldn't take the risk to pull stuff like that in the first place after anime production became a multi-company comittee thing. Hell it's only "3 episodes" because end of ep3 is when Madoka pulls the trigger.

>>1769201 >>1770207 I feel like half the reason the 3 episode rule exists is because of lucky star.

>>1586479 "It all was in the main protagonist's head"

>>1761027 I won't respond it all since I know for a fact that 70% of them are just shilling about him and pretending to be retarded. But I am going to make it clear. When I said about Flynn being a "Sonamy" fan, I really mean it. He has a questionable bias towards her. In the beginning of the issue, Amy is now the leader of the Restoration, whereas in the games, it was Knuckles. And I know you're counterargument, Knuckles' plan worked if it weren't for Infinite, which he is a wild card, even in the games tells you this. (plus, she's boring in one of these issues) And it isn't just IDW, even later in Archie, even before the reboot, Flynn would make few characters shit i.e Fiona, he attempted to kill off Sally 3 times, all while this is happening, Amy was a emotional supporter to Sonic, there's even a genuine Sonamy moment at some point. It isn't just because he is a fan of the shipping, but he said in some his podcast that he would consider removing the Freedom Fighters altogether because he genuinely believes that they're "outdated". And we all know the podcast in question, let's not be stupid here. But because of fan backlash that he prevented from killing off these characters; Artoine was supposed to die in pre-boot after he was blown up by Metal Sonic, the entire TV show casts was supposed to be wiped out at the beginning of the reboot. Don't come out of the clockwork and say that Flynn cares about Sonic, he only cares about the Japanese canon and only. Despite the fact that he also has a fetish towards Amy of all characters, and he made her out of character too. Sure, you don't always need her to be a annoying dipshit, but what he made her boring, she's just "sonic if he girl" now. And to add insult to injury, he wrote Sonic in IDW to be more like a tragic superhero with morals, when in reality he's really not, Sonic is not such character, he's not preaching heroism seriously. And it would be fine if the comic didn't based on the games. Yeah, "based on", because the IDW comics are not canon to the games, the pajeet employee was lying out of his ass when he said that. The text itself didn't just stated clear that it's different from the games' continuity. But the lord and savior by thy name of Ian Flynn said in his podcasts that they're BASED ON the games, specifically Sonic Forces. When xhitters will say that it's canon, most chances are, that they never read these issues to begin with. And the alleged "Sega Mandate" comes from a thread at bumbleking forums, and what it wrote here is as believable as your average cuckchan rage bait. It was just that, a fear mongering rumor that almost everyone at the Sonic community, even Flynn himself, pushed it as fact until recently, where the Sonic movies, Prime and Crossworlds was released. A mandate was made by developers so that third parties can enforce a union, to make it unified spiritually and directly. It's usually made for mainline titles, but spin-offs can imply it's own set of mandates as well. Open your ears out, EVERY, SINGLE, IP, has a mandate, every single one of them must has a mandate to follow. Even Mario despite what 4/v/ would tell you, and I assure you that all of them are as basic as "Sonic isn't red". It's there to not break character, or ruin world-building unless the developer decide to do so. (RWBY is very infamous for it for example) No mandate can state as such that you can't have characters have sad moments or have them in a awful situation, it's not there to tell a writer to not do something. The whole thing with Shadow in MVS was all Flynn's fault, he wrote a SCENARIO where Shadow is a fucking retard. It's his writing style since he had a different idea of this character, which Sega didn't approved. If you want to complain the current characterization, then blame Sega for it, but anything else written in this issue is all 100% his fault. I'll repeat, there's no such mandate that states that you can't create new characters, add characters from different medium, have this character get killed, such things. With the Archie comics it's one thing, because they were never taken place or connected to be the same as the games to begin with, not even what it's based on, the TV shows. Is It's own thing, for better and worse. With IDW, it states that it's a sequel to Sonic Forces, meaning that it must have some connections to the games despite it's not canon, that of itself is should follow the games' mandates. I swear you guys are like Paper Mario fans, making a boogeyman so that you wouldn't put your favorite creator under arrest for the things they actually done retarded. 4chan Paper Mario threads are VERY notorious for this, it gotten so bad that not even the /v/ermins over there are entertained by this anymore. Do not put Flynn, Stanley or even Taxman on a high pedestal as gods because they're not, they're as flawed as everyone else in this god forsaken planet. If you found them done something wrong, call them out for the bullshit they done, instead of targeting others and making strawman.

watching two sonic autists argue is genuinely fascinating to me It's like watching two philosophers debate each other's works.

>>1816047 I mean the Sonic franchise did get a renaissance after Forces.