Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Update: Old trailer was removed from YouTube, so we scrounged up this replacement.

In a lot of ways, Sonic Unleashed looks like a traditional Sonic title. That is, until you peel back the outer shell and find that half of the game is pretty generic and crappy. To quote my partner in crime here at E3, JC Fletcher, "isn't of making more crummy friends for Sonic, they made him his own crummy friend." It's a statement that could not be more true.

So, half of the game is played in the daytime, which has Sonic doing his usual thing: running fast and collecting rings. During the night, however, he transforms into a beast and the game becomes a generic button-mashing brawler/platformer. It's sad, because the promising daytime stuff really got us excited about Sonic again.

[Via Go Nintendo]

The current edition of UK magazine GamesTM has a bunch of new details for Sonic Unleashed, mostly gleaned from chatting to lead designer Yoshihisa Hashimoto. In the four-page piece, we learn that the game eschews traditional Sonic locales in favor of nine different worlds, each set in a themed geographical location -- so instead of Green Hill Zone, we'll be guiding the blue one through levels based on The Great Wall of China, an African plain, New York City, and a Spanish villa.

Stages are short (apparently, no stage lasts more than five minutes), and will contain both 2D and 3D sections that last for around 15 to 30 seconds each (this snappy level design, explains Hashimoto, is intended to prevent players from growing bored). Perhaps most importantly of all, the 3D sections will only use techniques that have proved successful in the past -- so there's the rail grinding from Sonic Adventure, and the ability to switch lanes, a la Sonic And The Secret Rings.

Of course, the Wii version is being outsourced to Dimps, so we'll just have to wait and see how much of this applies to the game on Nintendo's console.


[Via videogaming247]

Gamekyo (formerly known as Jeux-France) posted up some new scans for the Wii version of Sonic Unleashed, which show us a handful of new screens for the blue hedgehog's upcoming title. Considering that the images are based on scans, they actually look pretty nice. There's only a handful, but they show Sonic doing what he does best -- attacking robots and collecting coins.

We're curious to see what the "very different" Wii version of the game will be like when compared to the 360 and PS3 ones, but at least it looks like it's going to be okay. We'll just have to wait until this fall (specifically November, according to Gamekyo) to find out for ourselves.

Our overlords at Joystiq recently got their hands on some titles Wii lovers care about, taking the time to write up their impressions as is their job. And, we'd be neglecting in our job if we didn't do our best to present you with anything and everything Wii-related out there on these great big internets. So, if you've yet to check out their coverage on these Wii titles, then be sure to hit up the links below.

• Sonic Unleashed impressions: all Sonic, no Unleashed
• Joystiq hands-on: Rock Revolution
• Platinum Games: MADWORLD eyes-on, first trailer and screens
• Joystiq hands-on: Skate It (Wii)

Hidden deep within Matt Casamassina's eyes-on preview of Sonic Unleashed on the PS3 and 360 is the news that the Sonic Team Dimps-developed Wii version would not only support a Wiimote/nunchuk combination, but also the GameCube controller, and possibly the Classic controller.

Being the outrageous cynics that we are, we initially suspected this meant we'd be getting a downgraded port of the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 game, but Casamassina also points out that the stages in the Wii iteration are "very different." So now we don't know what to think -- heck, maybe Dimps just believes the game feels nicer with the Cube controller.

We'll have to mark this as rumor, since the source is Kombo's writeup of a Play Magazine article, and thus a little too far abstracted for comfort. According to Kombo, a recent interview with Sonic Team's Yoshihisa Hashimoto about Sonic Unleashed revealed a bunch of stuff about Sega's latest attempt to refresh the franchise. What he had to say put basically everything we thought we knew about the game into question.

For example, the Wii game is being outsourced. Given the identity of the developer (Sonic Rush's Dimps), that's mostly a good thing, but it's still surprising to learn that we've been misled into thinking Sonic Team was simultaneously developing all three versions. That means that the "Hedgehog Engine," which we thought was being used for all three games, is not being used for the Wii. Furthermore, Dimps is doing not only the coding, but also level design for the Wii game, which means it's a different game.

Worst of all is the news that Sega has already started downplaying the 2.5D aspect of the game. We believed that the whole game played as a sidescroller, but Hashimoto said it'll be about half 2D and half 3D. Great!

None of this means that Sonic Unleashed on the Wii or any other platform will necessarily be bad, it just means that it won't be what we thought it was.

The latest edition of the UK's Official Nintendo Magazine comes with an extensive eight-page preview of Sonic Unleashed, complete with gameplay details, fresh screenshots, and an interview with the project's lead designer, Yoshihisa Hashimoto. There's also new information aplenty on Sonic's darker alter-ego (dubbed "Were-Sonic" by the magazine). Apparently, this character only appears at night, can traverse stages using his longer arms (ONM describes this as "Donkey Kong-esque"), and is slightly slower (yet more agile) than regular Sonic. Oh, and he's not evil. Just ... different.

Speaking of being different, Hashimoto appears super keen to disassociate the game from more recent Sonic outings, insisting that Unleashed will have "more in common with the older Sonic Adventure games" and "no relation to Sonic the Hedgehog (PS3/360) or Sonic and the Secret Rings." Hit up French site Wiiz for the rest of the preview.

Or lyc-hedgehog-py, or whatever. You know, the werewolf thing that we all knew was coming, because we all saw the leaked screenshots? It's real! Sega's latest trailer focuses on this aspect of Sonic Unleashed, giving us a sneak peek at the thing we've already totally seen. Of course, we don't yet know how this figures into gameplay. Soon we'll find out whether a (cartoon) wolf (who is also part hedgehog) is faster or slower than cartoon hedgehog.

As a bonus, you get to hear how the Sonic voice actor (sorry, Sonic voice-acting aficionados! We can't tell which one it is!) interprets the sound of a hedgehog turning into a werewolf. Do they teach that in acting class?

It's official: the hedgehog is back, in what many Sonic fans are already starting to call a possible return to form. But every new Sonic game gets called a return to form, because they always look great in initial screenshots -- and because fans' goodwill for the character has yet to be fully eroded.

We're not going to go too far into our personal opinions about Sonic and his recent games -- we'll just say that previous 3D Sonic the Hedgehog games have failed to meet many fans' expectations. Are you ready to give him another chance? Does the new trailer and the promise of side-scrolling gameplay resonate with you? To be honest, it totally does with us. That trailer worked, and we don't want to be the only ones who thought so.

Update: Trailer!

While we had no trouble believing that Sonic Unleashed was a real game and that the leaked screens and video were really that game, we had no solid evidence that it would show up on Wii. Sega of Europe has confirmed the existence of the game in a press release, and announced the platforms on which it will be released: pretty much all of them, including the Wii!

Sonic Unleashed will use a new "Hedgehog Engine" and will feature side-scrolling gameplay rendered in 3D graphics, as Sonic battles Eggman and attempts to reassemble the broken world (by running over it?) The werewolf thing also seems confirmed, as the press release says "As the sun sets in Sonic Unleashed, a different type of adventure will awaken in Sonic's newest quest ..." unless they just mean the type of adventure in which you can't see anything. Check out the first two official screenshots of Sonic Unleashed (but still not the Wii version) after the break.

Some video and screens came out of what looked like a new Sonic the Hedgehog game, identified as Sonic Unleashed. After this leak, Sega issued a press release to a German magazine called Sega On confirming the existence of the game -- and then Sega On removed it. Which means that we don't know what's real, if anything. We also don't know which platform or platforms the game will come out on -- the information out there says 360 and Wii, at least.

Sega On now says that Unleashed is an unprecedented collaboration between Sega teams in Japan, Europe, and the U.S., designed to "rebuild the Sonic brand and prove that it could work in 3D environments." It involves a werewolf-style Sonic, either as a player transformation or as an enemy. It's all very confusing, but we can at least say with some certainty that some Sonic game is coming to some system. Check Gamersyde for a bunch of (likely) screenshots, and hit the post break for a video! It looks ... really cool, and mostly 2D -- which the game was described to be in some possibly fake gameplay details.