Sonic Generations/YMMV

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• And the Fandom Rejoiced: There were numerous examples shown between its initial reveal and its release. One notable example is the initial teaser trailer that revealed Classic Sonic.
• Ass Pull:
  • Classic Tails randomly shows up out of nowhere without any explanation after you finish the battle after Death Egg Robot/Big Arm. Of course, it's explained from Word of God that they were unable to make a cutscene with Classic Tails' first appearance, due to time constraints.
  • Blaze, who lives in Another Dimension, somehow came over to Sonic's dimension for his birthday without any explanation. No one questions this, either.
• Base Breaker: The confirmation that a large number of the supporting cast will return. There are the people complaining about it and saying it'll ruin the game (despite the confirmation that they'll just be NPCs coming at the same time), the people pointing out that it makes sense and that the people complaining that are forgetting that the game is celebrating 20 years of the Sonic franchise. Oh, and let's not forget the people that have been waiting for those characters to make a reappearance in a main Sonic title.
  • As with Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Colors, fans will often argue over which version is the "superior" version of the game.
• Best Level Ever: This game was pretty much meant to reimagine all of the series' best levels ever.
• Breather Level: Rooftop Run, sandwiched in between Crisis City and Planet Wisp.
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: Many! It deserves its own page.
• Crowning Moment of Funny: It has its own page.
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: This image, showing his fellow supporting cast celebrating his birthday.
  • Right at the end of the credits, the 20th Anniversary badge comes up, and the voice of a crowd of people yells "Happy Birthday, Sonic!". The voices? It is the voice of the fans; it's a combination of 2 recordings from the Sonic Boom and Summer of Sonic events from the same year!
• Crowning Music of Awesome: It has its own section on this page.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Final Boss fight in the HD version has received its share of criticism, with the primary complaints centering around the visual design being very confusing and overall vagueness about how to beat it.
  • Don't forget the voices! Oh, dear mercy, don't forget the voices. The main problem is that everyone talks constantly without giving any hints on how to win.
  • This isn't limited to the final boss. The last part of the game has levels that take a huge spike in difficulty, and both Classic and Modern Sonic have to drag themselves through really long levels at the end.
  • Whereas most levels are exctually expanded upon, making them more grand and interesting, it can be said Planet Wisp (the last proper level before the final boss) suffers from the opposite. Wherein Sonic Colors most stages had two to three different Wisp powers on average, each stage (Classic or Modern) only uses a single Wisp power-up. If that's not bad enough, the levels are also some of the longest in the game, making sure to overuse the gimmick Wisp power well before you reach the end.
• 8.8/They Panned It Now They Suck: Game Informer's review for Sonic Generations gave it a 6.75 -- equal to |Sonic 2006. And the main reason for this was because the reviewer wanted to bitch about how the stages from the newer games and the presence of newer characters made the game suck regardless of actual gameplay. This only cemented Game Informer as one of the most vocal outlets for the Sonic Hate Dumb.
  • Wouldn't be the first time. See their Sonic Colors review.
  • Even worse is their review of the 3DS version, a 5.25!
  • Fans are also complaining that IGN gave it an 8.5, which isn't even a bad score in the first place.
    • They're complaining more about IGN's reasons for giving that score (IGN's only real complaint was that the boss battles were underwhelming, and that there weren't any real Special Stages for getting the Chaos Emeralds).
• Fanon: There's a prominent sector of the fandom that believes the Time Eater has some kind of connection to Mephiles/Solaris from Sonic '06. Ian Flynn of Archie/IDW Sonic fame fully believes that they're one and the same, and that SEGA intended this to be the case due to many "hints" in the Time Eater's design: its monstrous visage and purple smoke brings Mephiles' own design to mind, and like Solaris it's an Eldritch Abomination with power over time itself. His theory paints the Time Eater as a remnant of Mephiles that managed to escape 06's Cosmic Retcon by slipping through a crack in time, causing it to develop into yet another powerful time-warping abomination.
• Flanderization: The truck in City Escape. Although in Sonic Adventure 2, the main purpose of the truck was probably to catch Sonic despite collateral damage. In Generations, it basically wants to kill and maim Sonic without any care for its surroundings (Because why on earth would a truck need three buzzsaws, rocket jets, and the ability to drive on the side of a freaking building?)
  • Because Rule of Cool happens, that's why.
• Game Breaker: The Spin Dash for Classic Sonic from the first demo. Or the Spin Dash overall.
  • There are several others which are mostly context specific. For example, Classic's Flame Shield skill neuters almost every obstacle and enemy in his Crisis City level aside from bottomless pits, and the jump dash you get from it has ridiculous range. Classic's Homing Attack is also pretty intense because it removes the challenge in trying to aim for an enemy to bounce on to reach higher places. The Homing Attack does have one obvious drawback, though: you don't obtain the same forward momentum you would by doing a regular Spin Jump. Relying on Homing Attack might result in you missing a higher route due to not having enough air.
• Harsher in Hindsight: "Enjoy your future! It's going to be great!" Sonic's farewell to his Classic counterpart isn't cringeworthy just because of how bad the series' reputation would become post-Genesis: after escaping a rather awful Dork Age thanks to the previous game, it would slip right back into one with the very next game. And unfortunately, Classic Sonic's next playable appearance in Sonic Forces would be a part of it.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: However, despite the undeniable existence of a second Dork Age, you could argue that the quote aged surprisingly well. Thanks to a successful movie series, the deceptively good Sonic Boom cartoon, an excellent sendup to the Classic era of Sonic games in Sonic Mania, and the flawed yet overall fun Sonic Frontiers, Sonic's future is indeed pretty great!
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Remember the 3D recreation of Mushroom Hill on YouTube? Sega now did it for real!
  • The composers took one too many cues from Malicious Fingers for the Big Arm boss battle theme.
  • The Japan-exclusive pre-order compilation CDs for the game are titled "History of the First Stage" (White Edition for the PS360 version, Blue Edition for the 3DS). Guess what the level selection for the 3DS version primarily consists of.
  • Shadow being fought in Radical Highway instead of outside Space Colony ARK in the 3DS version of the game suddenly makes a whole lot more sense once you remember that, instead of referencing the final boss of the Hero side of Sonic Adventure 2, recreates that game's intro movie instead (a Missed Moment of Awesome until now). That, alongside technical limitations and the fact that Radical Highway is also the level where you play as Shadow for the first time in the entire series, completely justifies the trope.
• I Knew It!:
  • Tony Harnell announced back in February 2011 a new version of "Escape from the City" was made. A couple months later, it's used for Modern Sonic's City Escape.
  • Classic Dr. Eggman teams up with Modern Dr. Eggman. Further, Classic Tails calls him Dr. Robotnik, but he says that nobody uses that name anymore.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: A few people have been complaining that Sky Sanctuary isn't yellow enough.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Silver's giant trash ball has been compared to Katamari Damacy.
  • On the Sonic Stadium Message Boards, Rooftop Run has received some flak for having a tree on its rooftop, meant to mock the sentiments that the Fan Dumb usually have. A tree on a rooftop!? Ruined FOREVER!
  • Prior to the release of the game: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY RINGS! and any variation of it.
  • It's often joked or speculated that the Time Eater is the personification of the Sonic Fanbase.
    • It was also joked that Time Eater's true identity was the infamous barrel platform from Sonic 3. A trap that is very well known for eating up time.
  • A joke that spawned from Modern Sonic's final line ("Enjoy your future, it's going to be great!") is any variant of Modern Sonic warning his past self that 2004, |2006, and 2008 are going to be rough years.
  • ↑ & ↓ & ↻ (The music for Speed Highway includes the repeating line "Up and down and all around;" the meme itself coming from the original Speed Highway from Sonic Adventure.)
  • From the battle with the final boss, "That looks like a homing shot!" "Be careful, Sonic!", and all variations thereof.
  • "DAT VIOLIN!" for the fantastic remixes of Crisis City and Rooftop Run.
  • Classic Rooftop Run is frequently used in mashup remixes, effectively becoming this game's most popular track.
• Most Annoying Sound: "Time for a CHANGE of PACE!" Eggman will say this damn phrase constantly in the Egg Dragoon boss battle. Grinding on the rails so you can get to Eggman? Pace change. Getting OFF the rails? Thou pace hath changed. Spawns the wall-jumping part of the sidescroll fight? Change of pace.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: Eggman's German voice, on the other hand, is just plain awesome. Even the producers stated Hartmut Neugebauer is the perfect voice for him out of all the different language versions. Of course this being the first Sonic game fully voiced in German (and other European languages) means almost every time a character opens his mouth it's a Most Wonderful Sound...
  • Sonic's friends during the Time Eater battle. The worst part probably being that, while they talk constantly, none of them seem to think it'd be smart to say something helpful until the last attack on the boss, which is the only part that tells you what to do anyway. So while you're sitting there pressing buttons to figure out what they do, they're all standing there telling you that "It looks like a homing shot!" over and over and over again.
• Pandering to the Base: The entire reason for Classic Sonic's muteness. Many fans hold the misconception that Sonic's silence in the early games is an innate character trait rather than a result of technological limitations preventing speech inclusion in said games. As a matter of fact, games in the "Classic" era did have Classic Sonic speaking such as Sonic CD and SegaSonic Arcade. The result complicates Sonic's characterization for no good reason by making his younger self mute, all for the sake of catering to the warped interpretations of him that many fans hold.
• Polished Port: The PC version.
  • The PC version's popularity is also due to the modding possibilities...
• Porting Disaster: For some, the Nintendo 3DS version, though it's not really a port.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: |Silver the Hedgehog. He goes from being one of the cheapest and most aggravating boss fights, and an annoying voice actor, to this game, with a very enjoyable rival boss fight, and a pretty good voice actor. Basically, what |Sonic '06 did for Shadow, Sonic Generations did for Silver.
  • Crisis City. While it was a fun stage in |Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 given how bad the game was, it's definitely a LOT more fun in this game. The physics and engine in the Modern stage are far superior to the ones used in '06. Further enforced by some fantastic level design in the Classic stage.
• Ruined FOREVER: In the 3DS version, Classic Sonic having the homing attack as a permanent feature after completing the Classic Era has caused many outcries of this.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Black holes, during versus matches in the 3DS version. There's a reason this is the only instance this gameplay gimmick appears.
• Tainted by the Preview: After the level list was leaked, some fans were disappointed by the lack of variety between them. At least, until it was shown that some levels will be radically different from the originals. Takashi Iizuka saying that the 3DS version will ignore levels from the Game Gear spinoffs didn't help much either.
  • The 3DS version in general is detested by a large portion of the fanbase, mostly because Classic Sonic seems to have Sonic 4 physics, Modern Sonic levels are purely 2.5D, the classic levels have the exact same layout as the games they're from, the graphics aren't very good for a 3DS game, it will have less levels than its console counterparts, the stages chosen almost entirely ignore the handheld history of the franchise, all the stages are first stages in some fashion except Casino Night and Water Palace, and so on.
    • The reaction of the fandom was also groan worthy after finding out that Dimps were developing the 3DS port.
  • The reveals of Shadow and Silver as boss battles. Then it turned out that both Rival battles were incredibly fun to play, and have been a boon to the popularity of the characters, Silver in particular.
  • The Death Egg Robot has been subject to claims of It's Easy, So It Sucks, but it is the first proper boss in the game after the Metal Sonic battle.
• That One Boss: The Time Eater. Awkward controls, lack of clarity on what exactly to do, a cluttered screen, the standard ring-draining mechanic as the rest of the series, and Sonic's friends never shutting up.
• That One Level: |Crisis City. Not because the level is filled with glitches this time, but because it's more difficult than the other levels, as described by fans and many reviews.
  • Planet Wisp Act 1 is also this for many people, for a combination of its incredible length and the clunky mechanics of the Pink Spike Wisp. Not the best of combinations. Act 2 also gets this, but not quite as badly, as the Orange Rocket Wisp is devoid of any control issues the former has.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Many fans feel the plot was too thin, the linking between events could have been done better, and had many missed opportunities regarding character interaction and more nudges or references to previous games in the series.
  • Considering how half the fanbase may end up complaining about how the story in the modern games gets in the way of the gameplay, you can't fault the writers at Sonic Team too much for this.
• Villain Decay: Subverted - Eggman is once again overpowered by the Monster of the Week, two times, after the Death Egg Robot boss and the Egg Dragoon boss, but only after his defeats at Sonic's hands have left him vulnerable. And then it's revealed prior to the final boss that Eggman discovered the Time Eater after the events of Sonic Colors and teamed up with his past self to tame it, leading to the Eggmen putting the events of the game in motion.
• Woolseyism: Dr. Eggman's Western name of Dr. Ivo Robotnik which was incorporated as the character real/birth name to make the transition to the original Japanese name Dr. Eggman as his nickname/alias, was lampshaded by Classic Eggman himself, who derisively tongue-in-cheek notes that nobody calls him that (Robotnik) anymore.