No matter where you stand on the Sonic scale (I personally think Adventure 2 is not a bad game, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 used to be the best 2D game, and Sonic Advance 3 is lowkey one of the best Sonic games ever), it’s hard to deny the success and praise of Sonic Mania. Many are hailing this as the “return of Sonic” with some calling it the “best Sonic game ever made”. That said, Sonic Mania means a lot more to the gaming industry than just being the best Sonic game.
By far the biggest takeaway from Sonic Mania’s reveal trailer was the team behind the game. Of course Sega was publishing, but what raised eyebrows was the announcement of Christian Whitehead, Headcannon and Pagoda Games as the team behind the game. If you don’t know these names, that should tell you everything you need to know about Sonic Mania’s unique development in the first place. Not to gloss over the incredible work they did, I will breifly go over the background of these names for the sake of the article.
Christian Whitehead had worked with Sega in the past on mobile ports of classic Sonic games, but what makes his work so special is that he built the games engine (the “Retro Engine”) from the ground up based off of previous fan games he created in the past just for fun. Indie studio Headcannon included Whitehead’s friend Simon Thomley who worked alongside him on previous fan games. Tee Lopes of PagodaWest Games was known for his incredible remixes of classic Sonic tracks which he would post online. For all intents and purposes, Sonic Mania should be classified as an indie game, or at least a fan game, despite its support and publishing from Sega.
There’s a term in the industry known as Nintendo Polish*. Fan games try to capture the sense of “Nintendo Polish” as they are often passion projects made purely out of love for a series rather than profit. However, unlike Nintendo, they tend to be a little rough around the edges due to the lack of resources needed to give the game the kind of polish fans would believe the game deserves. Sega took a passion project by fan-game and indie minds and provided the developers with not only greater financial support, but also access to a treasure trove of legally obtained assets straight from the source materials…source.
Alright enough rambling, lets get to the question this poses. Is Sonic Mania the start of a trend of AAA studios inviting support from indie developers and fans? Companies like Bethesda and Valve are incredibly supportive of thier fan comunnity to the point that they advertise the creative mods fans are making as selling points for their games. Capcom and Disney trusted thier remaster of the classic Duck Tales NES game to indie developer WayForward, known for thier work on Shantae. The relationships between indie developers and AAA studios is as strong as it has ever been and the future may be fan-game and ROM hack makers.
Fan Games are often shut down by the companies that own the rights to a series, some as early as thier release such as Another Metroid 2 Remake and Pokemon Urainium. Those games will continue to be shut down, but developers may be wise to mutually benefit rather than just punish the fan game creators. The team behind the Super Smash Bros Brawl mod, Project M, went on to form thier own studio, appropriately named Wavedash Games, and have been working on a spiritual successor to Melee called Icons.
We’ve seen a lot of remasters and spiritual successors recently, some because a franchise went dormant, and others based on pure nostalgia. It’s incredibly hard to do what Nintendo does in terms of love and care and polish for each game they make. That kind of commitment often is rewarded with praise and financial success, but it also requires a ton of passion and resources. In a recent episode of Game Grumps featuring Dan Harmon (creator of Community and Rick & Morty), Harmon joked while playing a licensed Cat in the Hat game, “Who would be passionate about adapting the physical form of Mike Myers into a F#@% video game”. The hilarity of that statement aside, Harmon is right in that part of why that game was so bad was that the people behind it weren’t passionate about the subject matter. Fan-Games are fuled by passion alone, most not profiting at all financially.
Fans are passionate. Some fans might even know more about the series than the developers who worked on it. What Sega has done could be revelutionary as to the way games are made. What do you think? Could we see more fans being taken in by AAA studios for games? Let me know in the comments and be sure to check out some of our other articles at The Game Corner.
You *“Nintendo Polish” is a feature of a game that generally does not revolve around game mechanics but was added out of pure love and attention to detail by developers.
