Sonic Superstars' Release Date Might Have Already Been Revealed

If its the same week as Mario, thats bad timing, but I'll absolutely be buying both on launch day, no question. I'm equally excited for both, and might as well cancel all plans for a solid 2 week period as I won't be able to concentrate on much else, knowing these exist. Its like a return to my most anticipated games of childhood

If those dates are correct, thats 3 solid days to play Sonic before Mario comes out. I'm cool with that. If they both launch on the same day, I don't even know which I'd play first! lol

So it’s like the sonic forces and Mario odyssey thing all over again.

Oh, so is it one of those “two completely different companies make different movies based around the a similar premise which release at the same time and the audience has to decide which one is better” types of things? Like those Volcano and Asteroid disaster movies?

@Greatluigi, those are nowhere near comparable, my friend…

I’m getting both games day 1.

I know Sega might be trying to pull a “nostalgic console war” marketing plan but I would push that a week if I was them.

I hope it's great, I hope people buy it if it's great. I doubt it's great.
It will be really interesting to see people fuming about the 9 or 10/10 reviews for Mario versus the 6.5 or 7.5/10 reviews for Sonic. Like always...

3 days before Mario? The rivalry returns!

Same time frame as Mario and Spiderman 2.

Probably be a bad idea. But Sonic is big enough to actually compete unlike say Rayman Legends on WiiU releasing the same day as GTA5.

Both games look amazing, and Mario is especially refreshing! I can’t wait to play both!

Feel like if this comes out the same week as both Wonder and Spider-Man it's going to get completely killed. Probably make up the difference later through discounts and stuff but it'll seriously hobble it out of the gate.

Meh, I’m grumpy .. neither appeal to me. Certainly not full price for a 2D platformer anyhow.

I’ll stick with nsmb if I want to play that.

October is STACKED

I’ll see how Sonic does with this outing and ill pick it up day one if it looks decent, Mario I’m sure will be a must.

Pre-ordered Superstars already. Mario will have to wait! ☝🏻😌

That Sonic game is going to be on sale for 20 bucks a couple of months after release. The Mario game will never be on sale. It’s a no-brainer.

I'm interested in both games, but Sega must be pretty confident to go toe-to-toe with their former rival on said rival's own platform. I wonder how they both will stack up in reviews. 🤔 Wouldn't it be the shock of the century if the new 2D Sonic game reviewed as good as, or even better than, the new 2D Mario game? I doubt it, but it could happen.

Ahh, two WONDERful SUPERSTARS!

Oh god will I have a stacked week with this, Mario Wonder, and Spider-Man 2

That’s not going to be good for Sonic then. Should have release like a month before.

Does anyone actually think this new Sonic game will be good? The only good Sonic game ever made was Generations. All the Genesis games were awful.

There is no way they keep that release date if it goes head-to-head with Mario lol. I bet they move it up a week or two.

I’m definitely getting both of these on release day. There’s room for both Mario and Sonic on my Switch!

Mario fans are the ones making a huge deal around this curiously enough.

Ouch.

Au revoire, Sonic.

@Waluigi-Donut : I don't think Sonic has ever given Mario a run for his money.

With the sheer quantity of mediocre to outright bad games that Sonic has produced, Sega is lucky that they have enough rose-tinted fans to keep the brand afloat at all, and I say this as one who used harbour a certain fondness for Sonic.

Gosh, that'll be fun to watch. Just like old times. Sonic vs Mario in shop stores, battling for marketplace supremacy...
But which is better!?!
Only one way to find out!
FIGHT!!!

I will definitely be getting both and I am excited to be getting two new 2D Mario and Sonic games at the same time and it feels like the 90s with both series having new 2D games out except they are on the same console this time which means you no longer need to have 2 different consoles to play them. That was always the downside of being fans of both in the 90s and I am glad Sonic is now on Nintendo.

@Moonvalley That's your opinion. Sonic Frontiers was a success and is getting a sequel and there are a lot of us Sonic fans that have liked a number of the games which is why they keep making them. Personally I liked Sonic the Hedgehog 1, 2, 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic CD, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Sonic Mania, Sonic Frontiers and the Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing games and still enjoy playing the old games every now and then.

@somnambulance don't forget Spider-Man 2

Personally I like 2D Sonic gameplay more than 2D Mario. However I can't deny that Mario Wonder will absolutely be the better game. However, if this happens I'll probably get Sonic first and then save Mario as an awesome Christmas game. For regular people though, Sega should probably consider delaying the game to November if this is true.

I firmly believe that people are entitled to their own opinion, everyone has their own tastes, and its wrong to argue with someone just because you disagree with them.

But to this day I'm always seriously shocked whenever I see someone say that 2D Sonic games are bad or have never been good. 3D Sonic games, sure, that makes sense that they are a very mixed bag, each is an aquired taste, and you can argue that they've never had the quality of Mario games. But the 2D ones? To me, most of those titles are self evidently some of the best designed and most polished games of all time. My brain can't quite parse any other opinion, it makes no sense to me 😅

Again, not arguing. I just can't fathom it.

I love the idea of a rivalry but they should change it to 2 weeks before. Definitely won’t buy them that close to each other, not to mention October and November are PACKED with new games.

@Sisilly_G In the early 90s, Sega had half the market share of the industry, largely on the back of sonic 1 and 2.

The company may be a shadow of that these days, but back then (before internal strife and a rapid succession of flopped consoles) they really did have Nintendo sweating it out.

With Spider-Man 2, Mario, and Sonic coming out that same week, I might need to use some vacation days.

@Sisilly_G I may not be old enough to remember, but I think most of that goodwill can be traced back to the original games and Sega’s rivalry with Nintendo in the ‘90s. Which is kinda what is being replicated here, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

A new Mario, and Sonic game releasing in the same week? Oh man, October is shaping up to be a good month of gaming.

My wallet is gonna be drained when all these games coming out on the same week.

No matter when in the fall it releases, it will be competing with Mario Wonder regardless. This might be one of the biggest Mario vs. Sonic releases to ever line up, and its crazy in just how similar both game concepts are at that.

I might not be able to buy both at the same time but I'll eventually get both as long as they come out with no major problems.

Probably get sonic
But maybe a no for mario

Disappointing to see it's a full price game. This is going to be 12 zones, so safe to assume 3 acts each makes it up to 36 levels. About standard for a Sonic game but most platformers have upwards of 50 levels if they're asking top buck. Mario will likely have nearer to or over 100. Sega need to start putting more content into their Sonic games or charging less.

I'm getting both but first Sonic. This is the first time in years that new Sonic and new Mario 2D titles are released. It doesn't matter if it is the same month and I honestly think it is coincidental. These two games are going to make millions of people happy around the world.

A new 2D Sonic and and new 2D Mario... good times. I was a SEGA kid from the Master System onwards, but I'll be planning on getting both. I just hope SEGA don't mess up the Switch version of their game with 30fps and blurry graphics...

Sega: Look! It's a new 2D Sonic game that actually looks really promising! I hope it sells well!
Nintendo: Look! It's a new 2D Mario Game that looks a lot different from previous ones! It's going to sell well!
**releases the same week**

@Greatluigi I was thinking, movies. Back in 2011. When Disney released a Winnie the Pooh, movie, the same day, as the final Harry Potter, movie.

As long as this one reviews well, my family and I will be enjoying this one thoroughly. A four-player co-op Sonic The Hedgehog game with modern visuals, and old school gameplay with added features in each level sounds like a great recipe to me. And to be able to have Amy as a playable character is a huge win. My daughter will enjoy using her.

@MrModerate If they came out the same day, I'd probably have to flip a coin 😂 I'm equally excited for both. The fact Sonic comes out 3 days before means I'll have had plenty of time to complete it a few times and feel I know it well enough to have an opinion before I start on Mario.

I'm lucky in that I'm mostly self employed / freelance so can make my own schedule - though even if I wasn't, for news like this I'd pull like a solid week of sick days if I couldn't book a holiday. Having a brand new 2d Sonic and Mario release in the same week is literally a once in a lifetime thing and I couldn't be more excited! 😁

@Banjo- Totally agree! 🥰 Its a shame they coincidentally chose the same week as it may reduce the sales of Sonic somewhat - although its the cheaper game and I think most hardcore fans will pick up both.

It does severaly ramp up the pressure for Sonic to meet expectations though. If Mario wasn't releasing the same week, I think many would be perfectly fine with a 7/10 experience... but if Mario is a straight 10/10, whcih lets be fair, is very likely, people will unfairly criticise Sonic by comparison... or maybe no-one cares about seeing them as rivals and is just happy for both.

To be clear, for me, I'm sure Sonic will be a 10/10. But I'm very biased. Its of course unlikely to be as large, as varied or as polished as Mario, the budget is lower and the team are less experienced. But from everything we've seen, it looks perfect to me. I'm guessing a solid 8/10 or maybe even a 9/10 from most outlets who aren't still in that "we think its 2006 and cool to unfairly criticise Sonic" phase.

@samuelvictor Thanks 🥰.

Even if the quality is the same, Nintendo games get higher scores than third-party games. Scores are often biased and depend on the publisher. In any case, both games look promising and I think that both titles will satisfy fans because Sonic Superstars looks like a classic Sonic game with updated graphics and not something like Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and Super Mario Wonder looks like an evolution of New Super Mario Bros. U and not something like New Super Mario Bros. 2, a game that is worse than Sonic the Hedgehog 4, by the way 😁.

@Banjo- While I'm not sure I can agree that NSMB2 is worse than Sonic 4 (which I hate with an undying passion and try and forget it ever existed because it makes me irrationally angry and sad! 😅) it was NSMB2 that made me just complete not care about the "new" games. I bought it, played it for less than an hour and just thought "maybe I don't like Mario games anymore".

The "new" series just got so samey and I didn't particularly enjoy any of them in the first place, they were always just "ok". Which is crazy as I LOVE Super Mario Bros 3, Super Mario World, and even the Super Mario Land games. I also love the Yoshi games, DKC games, Warioland games, Kirby platformers. But "new" series made me kinda meh on 2D Mario.

I did buy New Super Mario Bros U (and New Super Luigi U in its cool green packaging!) and out of all of them, its definitely the best. Theres some great level design and some actually creative backgrounds and stuff compared to the blandness of the previous games. But I still didn't love the game. The overall style and feel felt kinda "phoned in", despite the occasional high point. Sadly, I felt like 2d Mario was "dead" and Nintendo was out of ideas for the series.

But then Super Mario Maker came out, which was great, as it allowed the community to really mess with pushing the boundaries of whats possible with Mario levels. I had a LOT of fun with it, and the sequel. But still in the back of my mind was the niggling feeling of "but Nintendo isn't making these fun levels" and I still prefered the retro pixel style graphics to the "new" ones.

By contrast, this new "Wonder" game made me overjoyed at how beautiful it looked, how creative it seemed, all the risks it was taking, bringing in a wide roster of characters including Daisy which means hopefully they've listened to fan feedback... its 100% rejuvinated my interest in 2d Mario. Nothing about it feels obvious, lazy or "phoned in". If they'd have just released another "new" game that looked and sounded the same, I'm not even sure I would have bothered buying it. I've still not "upgraded" my Wii U versions on NSMBU/LU to Switch, even if one day I buy it I'm not particularly sure I'd play it. But now, I can't wait for Super Mario Bros Wonder and future 2d Mario games 🥰

@Baker1000 That's a point I never considered. Mario games have a ton of levels in them.

A fun fact that my wife pointed out is that Mario runs a lot like Sonic in the Wonder trailer. Look at how fast his legs are moving

@NotoriousWhiz @Baker1000 However, Sonic levels are more complex, bigger and with lots of paths, that's why there are only two or three levels (acts) per world (zone). They are infinitely replayable. It's completely unfair comparing Sonic and Mario levels 1:1.

@samuelvictor Hm, I can't say I was as excited as you about Super Mario Bros. Wonder because of the silly music and New-like graphics but watching it with more attention I noticed more detailed and more beautiful graphics compared to the New titles. Super Mario World still looks and sounds better but Wonder can also be a nice thing and hopefully the level design is good. I don't want to play a game designed for 3-year old 🤣. We'll see! I will get it and I want to enjoy it. I'm moderately positive. In between, I really hope that Sonic Superstars is a great game. It looks promising, unlike Sonic the Hedgehog 4 that looked wrong right from the start because of the truck physics, although Episode II is better.

@NotoriousWhiz @Baker1000 Yes as @Banjo- says, Sonic levels are MUCH bigger & the point is to really explore them, map them out in your mind, plan the best route. That does mean they can at first rely on leaps of faith or dead stops. That doesn't mean they are badly designed, it means you are expected to play them differently.

I love 2d Mario games & 2d Sonic games (my two favourite series!) but for me Sonic games have more replayability because of this. This especially applies if you are a speed runner or if you like to replay levels trying to have the most elegant or spectacular game - trying to get the perfect run where you can use momentum & never slow down or stop & bounce off everything possible - I do this in all 2d Sonic games trying to shave milliseconds off my best time or to master the most beautiful smooth run.

Theres near infinite replayability in this sense, like in Tony Hawks trying to get a better string of tricks, or in Tetris trying to play the perfect game. In the later games like Sonic 3&K, even though I've played them through hundreds of times I still have new things to discover - for example Banjo & I were discussing that we still aren't entirely sure where every single hidden ring is in order to enter every bonus stage - thats nothing to be ashamed of, the maps are ENORMOUS & when running through them in a hurry you likely only see 10% of whats there.

Mario levels are equally awesome but have completely different gameplay style. They are much smaller & more linear - but are extremely tightly designed tests of platforming skill, with clever use of limited range of objects to make ever more fiendish & fun challenges. They rely more on immediate skill & reactions to whats on screen infront of you than exploration & memorisation. Playing through a Mario game will take longer the first time than playing through a Sonic game. But theres less incentive to replay & really master it once you have.

To be clear, I'm not saying either style of gameplay is superior to the other. I love them both. But just saying that there are "more levels" in Mario is vastly misunderstanding the size, scope & intended replayability of Sonic levels. With Sonic, the length of the game is not the point, its intended that you replay over & over, improving your run, more like an olympic sporting event than a long distance run from start to finish & then you're done.

Funnily enough my 2 favourite games reflect these differences in design philosphy & play styles: Nights into Dreams (from Sonic Team) is short but literally all about replaying chasing tricks combinations & elegant flowing movement akin to ice-skating or gymnastics. Mario 64 is about fun traversal through incredibly well designed levels in a world that slowly lets you take on new areas with tougher challenges. Its the MUCH bigger game of the two, but once you have all the stars, theres no real incentive to come back, other than revisting in the future out of nostalgia... which I do, with Mario 3 & Mario World about once a year. But Sonic & Nights I play weekly/monthly in short bursts to hone my skills in the same way I revist arcade-like experiences - fighting games, arcade racers, endless puzzle games, shmumps etc.

I can see how some people only gel with one of these playstyles. But for me, they are two sides of the "fun" gaming coin & scratch very different itches.

@Banjo- Yeah I watched the Direct on a big screen and it was instantly clear how much nicer the graphics were in Wonder over the "New" series, how much extra animation and personality went into them, smear frames, squash and stretch, follow through, facial expressions, movement lines etc, more akin to what you'd see in an animated movie - whereas the New Super Mario Bros characters are just a stiff rigged model. Its night and day. Also the surfaces and lighting give a more "claymation" feel, somewhat remeniscent of the Nintendo Power covers, and many of the keyposes are taken from the 2d illustrations from the front of the NES and Gameboy titles. All of that was very evident to me immediately and goes a long way to making me think that this new game will have extremely high polish and attention to detail.

I really love the art style of Sonic Superstars and the models and environments are exactly how I'd want them to look. But there isn't a fraction of the amount of extra polish thats gone into animating the Mario title, Sega don't have the budget or time for that. It won't affect the gameplay in any way and I still think both games look beautiful. Overall I probably still prefer the look of the Sonic game because I find the characters cuter and more appealing and the colours in the environments more pleasing. But they are certainly simpler and animate less.

They’ve confirmed it’ll have twelve zones, but I think they’d need 3 or more acts each and make the acts longer to justify it being 60 bucks. I was expecting it to be more like $40 to be honest. But yeah, that week is gonna be packed for games— Sonic, Mario, and Spider-Man almost simultaneously!! It’s crazy

@samuelvictor That was a perfect explanation of the Sonic gameplay! Congratulations! The adjective elegant is very well chosen because there are hundreds of ways of playing a Sonic game, especially Sonic CD, 2, 3&K and Mania where it's definitely not the same playing not knowing what you're doing and playing them as a "sport", bouncing, dashing and jumping where necessary and using the enemies as an occasional springboard. I also love Super Mario World since childhood but for different reasons. They're completely different, Super Mario World being the best platformer that Nintendo has made and a timeless masterpiece and Sonic being not the typical platformer but a genre on its own, with elements from platform, pinball and racing and I don't mean the spin-off games but the classic games, where Sonic can not just jump from platform to platform but dash, run in almost any direction depending on the surroundings and bounce using different objects or enemies. The levels are so big and the gameplay is so dynamic that it's very usual even for long-time players like Samuel and me to discover new sections or new ways to go through after years. On top of that, add characters that share Sonic's speed and sliding but vastly differ in other aspects.

I asked here about the different characters, if you want to say something, I'd love that:

https://www.nintendolife.com/forums/other_gaming/sonic_classic_characters_-_pros_and_cons

@samuelvictor That's actually a nice thing, that the Super Mario Wonder graphics are inspired by the classic Mario designers and animators. I still prefer the pixel art of Super Mario World but I'm willing to play Wonder and appreciate it for what it is. That music, though...

@Banjo- Thank you! It really is a very, very different type of experience playing a Sonic level to a Mario level. Both great, but appeal to different types of gamers and aren't directly comparible at all, really.

Yes, when Sonic released it was completely unique - of course, immediately after, many companies started to try and copy it. However the problem with most of the early Sonic "clones" (popular ones that spring to mind are Zool, Jazz Jackrabbit, Bubsy, Super Frog, Awesome Possum, Aero the Acrobat) was that they copied Sonic's controls, momentum and speed, but had level design more similar to a Mario game, and therefore often felt slippery, too fast, and you couldn't ever enjoy the speed and fluidity of the movement because you kept reaching dead ends, falling in traps, or bumping into enemies you had no chance of seeing as you were moving too fast. Nowadays we have Sonic "clones" that understand the level design better, and do a more convining job - like Freedom Planet, Spark the Electric Jester, ‎Kaze and the Wild Masks.

I don't use forums much, for fear of getting sucked in and losing too much time when I should be working (I mostly work from home so getting distracted is deadly!) but I'll have a look at your post

@Banjo- As for the animation in Mario Wonder (and Sonic Superstars by extension), I agree that personally I will always prefer good pixel art, especially at or around 240p vertical resolution, as for me thats the sweet spot of the aesthetic of the retro games I grew up with, and taking that and giving it extra colours and extra frames of animation to make it "modern-retro" (like Sonic Mania did) is my absolute 100% perfect ideal for what a videogame "looks like" in my head. For example, I VASTLY prefer the graphics of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (& Risky's Revenge) to the "smooth" look of Half-Genie Hero (& Seven Sirens). Its not even a question.

All of my own personal games that I develop are made as modern games but at 240p (which upscales perfectly to 4k and you can togglable add retro filters etc like in emulators if you want). I even go to the extent of having ALL menu assets, text, ingame cutscenes etc be at the same resolution (like Mania and Whitehead's Sonic CD) and I don't really like it when those kinds of assets are at a higher resolution than the base game (like I don't like the text and menus in Origins, or in Shantae when the character profiles and text are super crisp) as for me, that takes away from the "perfect" pxiel aesthetic.

Essentially I think I like modern 2d games to feel like they could be running on extremely powerful retro hardware, like the Sega Saturn or Neo Geo, but with even less memory restrictions.

However I'm very aware that this is a personal preference. There are of course instances of high resolution 2d games that look incredible and nail the art style that they are going for. Cuphead would be the perfect example of that.

For a modern audience, and kids who are perhaps new to 2d games, I can see how 3d graphics in a 2d perspective would be more appealing, and because there are many famously bad examples of lazy/cheap/non-artful pixel graphics, they might associate even very high quality pixel art with cheap indie games. Funny thing is, when you have "bad" graphics, the higher resolution can make things look MUCH worse where they could have been masked somewhat with being at a lwoer resolution - Sonic 4 is a perfect example of that, where it ended up feeling like it was made of stock assets and drag and drop clipart a lot of the time. Euch.

I can definitely see why Mario Wonder and Sonic Superstars are going for a more "modern" art style, and while its not my personal preference, I think they both do it extremely well, and look stunning. I'm 100% happy with how both look, and if thats the future of both series, I'm happy. Us indies can keep making retro styled pixel art games

@samuelvictor Please do, it's just a question about the different classic characters.

Nothing wrong with Sonic Superstars and Super Mario Wonder graphics, they look like a HD translation of the classic pixel graphics. In other words, I agree. Other examples of HD 2D platformers that look great are Rayman Legends, which also has outstanding gameplay and Wario Land The Shake Dimension.

@Banjo- Yeah I really like the look of Rayman Legends and Wario Land Shake Dimension. Tangent, I'd sad Nintendo seems to have given up on Warioland games, I've enjoyed all of them, even the Virtual Boy title.

I answered your forum post btw

@samuelvictor Virtual Boy was never released in Europe. Wario has a lot of personality. I've played all his games but I think that the best is the first one for GB. The Shake Dimension/Shake It is great, too. What's your favourite. Thanks for replying on the thread, I'll read it carefully 😁.

@Banjo- I own a Virtual Boy for the pure novelty factor but I don't like playing it, its uncomfortable! However you can easily emulate the Wario game from it on PC (probably even phones nowadays) and its well worth doing, its very good. You don't need the 3d effect. By far the best game on the system, though thats not saying much as there weren't many! lol

I really like the first game too, I have a lot of nostalgia for the 3 "Super Mario Land" titles. I think my favourite is the colour version of Wario Land 2... but honestly I think all of them are good.

@samuelvictor I'll check it out on PC 😁.