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Vertical Slice: The Fact and Fiction of Sonic Boom

Michael Westgarth
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As is the case with many of Sega’s controversial releases, the development of Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric for the Wii U is shrouded in mystery. However the lid was lifted ever so slightly when Tamaki, of unreleased videogame archive Unseen64, published a Youtube video describing his conversations with former employees of Rise of Lyric developer Big Red Button Entertainment.

Long story short, Tamaki claims the following:


      1. Big Red Button were originally developing Rise of Lyric for “unspecified next-gen hardware”.



      2. Sega’s 2013 Wii U exclusivity deal saw Big Red Button having to port this “unspecified next-gen hardware” version of Rise of Lyric to the Wii U in a minimal time frame.



      3. The original Rise of Lyric announcement trailer showed in-engine footage running on “powerful” PC hardware, and not Wii U hardware.


There are more details to go with the story than what’s surmised above, and I strongly suggest you read TSSZ’s related report and watch Tamaki’s video before reading the rest of this article.

Back in February of this year I published an opinion piece detailing a handful of Sega’s numerous blunders of late – Vertical Slice: Sega of America – Why I’m Not Surprised – many of which involved Sega utilising a similar marketing strategy to that used with Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric: generate hype for a new title, push for pre-orders, release a sub-standard product.

That’s not to say Sega is the only publisher using this tactic – it’s a industry-wide problem that’s only getting worse – but in the last five years Sega’s reputation has plummeted from that of a mediocre publisher of semi-decent content, to a greedy and mismanaged mess of a company. It was only a few months ago that TSSZ published a collection of comments from former Sega of America employees that painted the head office’s managerial staff as little more than efficiency-obsessed, money-hungry bullies. And now we’re hearing that Sega hamstrung what could have been a solid 3D platformer in Rise of Lyric for the sake of an seemingly unalterable release date and a lucrative exclusivity deal?

That’s so Sega.

Then there’s the Rise of Lyric announcement trailer that showed visually impressive gameplay footage that wasn’t running on Wii U hardware, but was kinda sorta presented as if it was running on Wii U hardware. Interestingly, this very same trailer has mysteriously vanished from Sega’s Youtube account days after Tamaki’s video was published. What has Sega got to be afraid of? Doesn’t the vague and forgettable disclaimer at the trailer’s start absolve them of any misconceptions drawn by their loyal and paying customers?

Again, underhanded tactics by Sega, but hardly surprising considering it’s responsible for one of the most overhyped and underwhelming games of all time – Aliens: Colonial Marines. In that case we had King Charlatan Randy Pitchford of Gearbox showing off impressive demo footage at E3 2012 of a game no one would ever get to play. And although I recognise that Sega weren’t entirely responsible for Aliens: Colonial Marines‘s catastrophic release, it’s still shocking to learn that Sega themselves tried the same misleading trailer stunt Pitchford did less than a year and a half earlier.

Even if I’m to assume that Tamaki’s information is true, I’m still not surprised. I’ve long since realised that Sega is an untrustworthy publisher willing to deceive its customers, misuse its talent, and tarnish its strong and iconic intellectual properties in order to turn a transient profit.

But while I’d like to think that Tamaki’s findings are accurate, there’s aspects of his sources’ claims that don’t quite piece together.

While no one knows when Sega’s plans for Sonic Boom were first laid out, the general consensus among fans is that Rise of Lyric had been in the works alongside the Sonic Boom cartoon for some years before the February 2014 Sonic Boom announcement event in New York. Tamaki’s sources refute this, claiming that Big Red Button had a very short, yet unspecified, window in which to both develop the game and then port it to the Wii U.

But even if we assume that Rise of Lyric was designated as the third Sonic Wii U exclusive sometime between Sega’s and Nintendo’s exclusivity deal in May 2013 and the aforementioned Feb 2014 announcement in New York, that would still have given Big Red Button a bare minimum of six months to port the game. Considering Tamaki’s statement that “most of the work was already done” on Rise of Lyric when porting began, this speculative six month window, while small, should have been enough for Big Red Button, a team of industry veterans, to finish the port to a satisfactory level.

Although I haven’t had the opportunity the play Rise of Lyric myself, from what I’ve learnt from TSSZ’s Ryan Bloom’s video review and elsewhere, it’s hard to believe Tamaki’s claim that “most of the work was done”, and that the game’s flaws are a side effect of the porting process. Bugs and glitches aside, Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric is, by all accounts, a poorly designed, poorly written mess of gameplay mechanics and ideas that aren’t properly utilised – problems that run far, far deeper than those arising from a bad port.

The idea that Rise of Lyric had an exceptionally short development time is also confounded by the information divulged during Radio Sega’s The SEGA Lounge (Episode 20, 11-Dec-2014), which featured Sanzaru Games’s Mat Kraemer – lead designer for Sonic Boom Shattered Crystal for the Nintendo 3DS. During the programme Kraemer explained that Shattered Crystal had a “pretty short development cycle”, and that when this cycle started, Big Red Button’s Rise of Lyric was “much further along”.

It’s certainly plausible that despite Big Red Button’s impressive origins, the studio was simply incapable meeting Sega’s deadlines for Rise of Lyric‘s development, regardless of how strict or lax those deadlines were. But Tamaki’s sources specifically attribute Big Red Button’s Wii U woes to CryEngine 3, stating that the engine’s supposed incompatibility with the Wii U, combined with the short porting time, resulted in broken game we have today.

However, Crytek were supposedly working on the Wii U version of CryEngine long before news of Rise of Lyric‘s Nintendo exclusivity. Back in 2012 Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli told CVG that CryEngine 3 “runs beautifully” on the Wii U [IGN, originally CVG], and Big Red Button were even working with Crytek to implement non-native CryEngine features into Rise of Lyric, such as split-screen [NeoGAF: originally Official Nintendo Magazine]. With that kind of support at its disposal, its hard to believe Tamaki’s source that the Wii U version of CryEngine is to blame, rather than Big Red Button’s inability to utilise it.

Whether you question the validity of Tamaki’s sources or not, the fact remains that Sega mismanaged Rise of Lyric‘s development big-time, and it doesn’t want us to know how or why. Because Sega is a company that aims to make money despite these cock-ups; deceiving customers with promises it knows it can’t keep, and dangling “Limited Collectors Editions” and pre-order DLC in our faces. And when the smoke and mirrors fall away and we’re left with the likes of Aliens: Colonial Marines, Rome II: Total War and Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric, Sega sweeps the aftermath under the rug with a smile on its face and money in its pockets.

Sega thinks you’re stupid, and customer stupidity suits it just fine.

—

I find myself thinking of Konami Digital Entertainment; the videogame development and publishing arm of Konami proper; a division that’s currently bursting at the seams with internal drama and a division with its fair share of recent blunders. As of this moment, the Konami mothership seems content to watch Konami Digital Entertainment tear itself apart from the inside out. It’s irresponsible, but it makes sense. After all, Konami’s Japanese gambling machines are making a killing.

Here’s looking at you Sega Sammy.

—

#ThatsSoSega is Michael Westgarth’s original hashtag – DO NOT STEAL. Read Michael’s previous columns via his TSSZ author page and check out his blog at MegaWestgarth.

Tags Big Red ButtonBorn In The USASEGASEGA SammySonic BoomSonic Boom: Rise of LyricSonic Boom: Shattered CrystalSonic The Hedgehog (Series)Total War (Series)TSSZ NewsVertical Slice
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Michael Westgarth

Michael Westgarth

Michael Westgarth is a freelance writer known for his former Sonic fan column Vertical Slice on TSSZ News. Read Michael’s previous writing via his blog, MegaWestgarth.

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40 Comments

  1. I’m not surprised by this at all, but at the same time, I am. It’s pretty unfortunate to what happened to BRB. Good article Westgarth.

  2. I still find it hillarious that the last few sonic team sonic games have been generaly accepted as being good. Then BRB, this all star dev team comes in and everyone is expecting it to be even better and they drop the ball setting sonic teams reputation back so much, sux 2Bthem

    2. Did you so quickly forget Sonic Lost Originality? That game is a poor man’s Mario Galaxy ripoff from start to finish with multiple control mechanisms that don’t match up together, constantly rewrite how the game is supposed to be played, and despite running on a superior hardware system to the original Wii has even less content than Sonic Colors.

      Sonic Team is just as flip floppy as anything else involving the blue blur.

      I’m starting to wonder if we all collectively just hallucinated Sonic Unleashed – Generations into existence.

      1. Originality is NOT Sonic’s strong suit in ANY arena except level themes.

        I straight up do not give half a shit about originality in this case. If Lost World had simply been GOOD or engaging, it could have been the most unoriginal game on the planet and I would have still ate it up.

        Lost World’s significant flaws have nothing to do with copying Galaxy, and everything to do with not doing it WELL.

        1. I SAY “except level themes” with full knowledge that Colors is essentially the only main console game to really capitalize on this strength possibly since the Genesis days /oldschool grumpypants

        2. This. “Copy Super Mario Galaxy, add in Blue Blur” should have been a recipe for instant success, but Sega still screwed it up. This coming from someone who considers Lost World “OK”.

  3. BRB wasn’t good enough? The world may never know……. but that what we assume

  4. Interesting perspective. Thing is, you have to keep in mind that a Wii U is a much different console from, say, a PS4. To port a game over from the PS4 to Wii U, you’d have to redo a lot of stuff to fit the WiiU’s specifications. Which would take much longer than six months, compounded by the fact that the engine, even if it is possible to use, was largely untested on the console. What was Sega thinking? Yet again, it didn’t seem like BRB had much planned in terms of taking advantage of the combat system or Enerbeam, or making Lyric a decent villain. I can’t help but feel that BRB never stopped making that non-Sonic game its proposed, even if its formula isn’t fitting for Sonic and so was screaming for a retool. And keep in mind that Sanzaru worked under similar conditions as BRB with less time, yet came out with a much better game.

    As for “Sega doesn’t want us to know because its all about the money!”, eh, I don’t really see its silence as that. I see it as more as the fact that its very well aware that anything it says at this point, whether its an apology or an excuse, will just get twisted by the media as a reason for its doom. So its just quietly working on its next games, knowing that better games in the future are the best damage control for it at this point. Same with the idea that people thinking its a horrible company being a recent development– people have been very on and off about hating Sega since at least 06 if not earlier.

    1. 100% agree with everything said on that post. All sides are equally responsible for this train wreck.

    2. Oh hey, that’s my post! Never expected it to be linked here, let alone anywhere else.

  6. How are we still talking about Sonic Boom? Seriously, the Worlds Unite comic crossover and even the upcoming M&S Olympic Games deserve more scopes and/or editotials.

    2. Sonic Boom is merely the most prominent symptom of a chronic disease that’s eating away at SEGA as a whole, which puts Sonic in danger.

    3. Because people deserve to know why it was…I can’t even think of the word. Rise of Lyric was an insult to all of us that have stuck by Sonic and made excuses for SEGA’s behaviour when it comes to him. A great big middle finger to us basically.

      It’s not a matter of Boom being old news, it’s the fact that we deserve, as SEGA’s costumers, which is what we are at the basic level, to know why Rise of Lyric was so, so bad and why they had the cheek to publish something that was clearly unworkable.

      While I’ll always be a fan of Sonic I’m getting tired of SEGA’s attitude to it’s most famous franchise and, for a lot of us, Rise of Lyric was the last straw.

    4. It’s not a case of it being old news, it’s the fact that the game was so bad that it was an insult to the Sonic fanbase. Like a giant middle finger. And the fanbase, who have stood by the franchise for a long long time and put up with so much crap over the last decade, deserves to know why it was so bad.

      1. But this literally are old news, I didn’t learn anything new that hadn’t read in previous articles, it was good to know what happened behind the curtains but this article is a waste of time if you read the previous news.

        1. Thanks for the comment Raw. It’s important to note that this is an opinion piece, not a news article, commenting on the Tamaki/ Unseen64 video from a week and a half ago. This article was actually ready to publish a handful of days ago, but due to a communication issue between myself and Tristan (both of us are super busy: days fly by, emails get buried etc.) it was only recently published.

          I’m glad you took the time out to read my article, but I’m afraid my opinion pieces will always be published some time after the news I’m commenting on. if straight news is what you’re after, you’re better off sticking with the TSSZ articles designated as news.

          With regards to the World’s Unite crossover and the new Olympics titles: neither of those have actually happened yet, and I don’t personally have any opinion on either. But that may change in the future.

          Thanks again for the comment.

    5. The good thing about op-eds is it’s never too late to publish them 😉

      1. Though they may lose relevance if they take too much time to get published wouldn’t you agree?

  7. All major players involved in the game’s development are equally responsible really. The horrible management of the game led to the current disaster we know as Sonic Boom. And it still baffles me how people defend the game.Just because it’s a spinoff, it doesn’t excuse it for being a horrible game.

  8. > what could have been a solid 3D platformer

    Haha, no. Even if the game was running glitch-free on powerful PC hardware, it’d still suck.
    Also, it’s common practice that trailers don’t reflect the final product. Take the Star Wars Battlefront Reveal Trailer, for example. It says “Game Engine Footage” – yeah, that’s definitely not final in-game footage either.

    1. Well, yeah, trailers tend to be different from the final product. Stuff changes rapidly in game development– the main issue people have with Boom is that the trailers showed a better game and cut content, thereby deceiving them into thinking that they were in for something epic when the actual game is just painfully boring.

      There was definitely a reason not a lot of actual gameplay footage was shown in the trailers. The core gameplay bears an uncanny resemblance to the Night stages from Unleashed, except incredibly watered down.

    2. It’s true that glitches weren’t Rise of Lyrics’ only problems, but with more time Big Red Button could have (in theory) fleshed out the game. It might now be the Sonic games everyone wanted, but I do think think it’s be a “solid 3D platformer”.

      Thanks for the comment.

    4. Agreed! My biggest issue with the game was the core concept of the gameplay, it was a very simple beat em up, very easy and way too repetitive, even glitch free the game would be boring to death, but is understandable since from its inception Sonic Boom has been targeted to kids from 8 to 11 years old unilke common Sonic ganes that are targeted to everyone, that’s more likely why they designed the game simple and easy.

      1. You can’t honest believe Sonic Boom turned out as badly as it did purely because of the game’s intended audience, can you?

        Ratchet & Clank, Jax and Daxter, Sly Cooper etc. were all targeted at the same age range. If you want to get picky, so were Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.

        1. Not really, those games were always targeted to all audiences, one can easely tell by their difficulty and content, meanwhile Sega specifically stated they wanted to get more young fans with Sonic Boom, and correcting myself from the previous post their specific target audience are boys from 6 to 11 years old and I think that is obvious when looking at the game’s tone and difficulty.

  9. “Sega thinks you’re stupid”
    good for them…but I’m not. Now I’m glad I don’t have a wii u or I would had bought sonic lost world on day 1. When I eventually get it and the wii u (I got a beef with nintendo too) they will be used.

    They only games that may see a future full price purchase from me are shovel knight and freedom planet because most of the AAA publishers/developers are no longer trustworthy.

    1. Really? So it’s not any of the great games on it that held you back but it’s fucking Sonic Lost World?

      God you fans are stupid sometimes with your monetal decisions.

  11. So this article is more or less a summation of facts? Boo, I was more looking for opinions. I never noticed the conflicting truths though, so there’s that. On the one hand Sega rushed another project, on the other BRB couldn’t cut the mustard on bringing a Cry 3 game to a Cry 3 ready system given 6 months to a year. So pretty big screw ups either way you slice it, pun not intended. Thanks for the write-up sir.

    Also, I found two typos Mr. Westgarth: “..regardless of how strict of lax those deadlines were.” Of should be “or” right? In the next paragraph, you misspelled Tamaki’s name as “Tanaki”.

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