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Wii Suck @ Video Games - Episode 8 - Sonic And The Secret Rings

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Sep 28, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.022

TL;DR

Hosts review Sonic and the Secret Rings (Wii) and rate it poorly due to bad controls and uninspired design.

Summary

The Poor Man's Pinball Podcast episode covers the hosts' recent acquisition of retro video games from a yard sale and a private collection, then reviews Sonic and the Secret Rings (Wii, 2007), which they found to be poorly designed with frustrating controls, uninspired music, and broken gameplay mechanics. They rate the game 4-4.5 out of 10, significantly lower than Metacritic's 6.9 average, and express frustration with Sega's apparent lack of care in the game's development.

Key Claims

  • Sonic and the Secret Rings was released on February 20th, 2007

    high confidence · Mal stated this as factual information when setting the stage for the review

  • The game has unplayable controls and broken gameplay mechanics

    high confidence · Both hosts consistently stated the controls were frustrating and the game was unplayable after multiple play sessions

  • The music is corporate, uninspired, and repetitive

    high confidence · Mal described the music as 'extreme alternative' corporate rock with only one or two songs, with one possibly played in reverse

  • Games developed for Wii that use sideways controller mode indicate the developer 'didn't know nor care' about proper Wii implementation

    medium confidence · Mal stated this as a hypothesis/theory after experiencing Sonic's awkward motion controls

  • Man with No Name is sending a Sega Sonic collection for GameCube to the hosts

    high confidence · Mal mentioned this as part of discussing an incoming collection of games from a private source

Notable Quotes

  • “The land of mystery meets the legend of speed sonic races through the exotic world of the Raven Knights to harness the awesome power of the secret rings before they fall into the hands of the evil genie Eraser.”

    Mal (reading game box) @ early gameplay section — Official game description that establishes the game's narrative premise

  • “And then it went to hell.”

    Craft Brew Sally @ mid-review discussion — Summarizes the Sonic franchise's quality decline after the original Genesis game

  • “As soon as they take the Wii remote and say turn it sideways and use one and two as the action buttons you're like oh no i'm screwed. That means this developer didn't know nor care enough to make this game correct for the wii.”

    Mal @ design criticism section — Articulates a broader complaint about lazy Wii game design

  • “It was more infuriating than anything and boring like they didn't care about putting any new crap rock in there they had that one fart rock crap corporate crap rock that they just dumped all over it.”

    Mal @ late review section — Summarizes frustration with both gameplay and audio design

  • “I wonder if Sega did this on purpose because they hate Nintendo.”

    Mal @ post-gameplay reflection — Speculative commentary on whether poor game design was intentional sabotage

Entities

Sonic TeamcompanySegacompanyMalpersonCraft Brew SallypersonMan With No NamepersonPress Start GamescompanySonic and the Secret RingsgameNintendocompanyEpic MickeygameThe Guy of FirepersonSuper Diego Legoperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_concern: Sonic and the Secret Rings exhibits fundamental control and gameplay problems that make it unplayable and frustrating, according to both hosts who attempted to play through it twice

    high · Both hosts stated independently that the game was unplayable, and they returned to it a second time expecting it to be better but found it 'just as shitty'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Mal articulates a theory that Wii games requiring the controller to be held sideways indicate developers who 'didn't know nor care enough to make this game correct for the wii'

    medium · Mal states: 'As soon as they take the Wii remote and say turn it sideways and use one and two as the action buttons you're like oh no i'm screwed. That means this developer didn't know nor care enough to make this game correct for the wii.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Sonic franchise perceived as declining sharply in quality after the original Genesis game, with hosts expressing frustration at multiple uninspired sequels

    high · Craft Brew Sally: 'And then it went to hell.' Mal compares to 'Pac fever' where original was great but sequels degraded in quality

  • ?

    collector_signal: Hosts acquired multiple game collections through yard sale (5-6 games for $5-7) and private collection from acquaintance (26 games including GameCube/Wii/Wii U titles valued at ~$350 on PriceCharting)

    high · Mal discusses negotiating ~$250 purchase price with Man With No Name for their portion of the larger collection; also planning to sell remainder to Press Start Games in Menasha, Wisconsin

  • ?

    community_signal: Hosts introducing new show segment where community is invited to provide memories and feedback on newly acquired games before they are played

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.064

0:00
oh my gosh and we are back on air can you believe it we've made it this far who are we and why are we and what are we my name is foghorn leghorn no wait my name is mal and with me as always craft bruce alley and this is we suck at video games big show number eight what makes it big it's number eight the seven before it that's good all right wacky week this week we got um we got a deal in the making we found some pretty good deals uh for the we happened upon some um a yard sale that had some uh what do we get six games for seven bucks yes not a bad deal five games for five games a little less of it i should have i shouldn't have oversold it so it's still a deal yeah we got three that we didn't have before and two i just got because when you're just buying a deal you just make the whole deal because it's epic mickey and you have to buy it i know so we got an epic mickey and we got a george of the jungle and the search for the secret i don't know the secret and the search list yeah that's it so i got those two and then what do we have over there we got so our new games are the uh arctic tale yes and the chronicles of narnia prince caspian i thought that was prince of persia because that sure looks like prince of persia but it's not but then the other one we have is a zoo zoo pets featuring the wild bunch i hope i hope i can take the wackiness i am very excited to find out what the wild bunch is i don't think you are no i am it was great you know we also got a bunch of beer steins but we're not gonna talk about that no we'll talk about that on our other show possibly what other show might you be talking about pinball junk drawer yes if you like this show and you like our inane banter then you should go over to search out the pinball junk drawer you'll be glad you did okay so oh and another we got a longtime friend, friend and show participant over the years, man with no name, reached out to me and said, hey, I have a bunch of games I found in a box. And I thought, those are my favorite. When you find a big pile of old games in a box, in a closet. And when he sent me the pictures, my jaw hit the drawer, hit the floor, not the drawer. It might have hit the drawer. on the way down to. Yeah, I was at work, so it probably bounced off the drawer. Because it was all like these heavy hitter titles from the GameCube. Wii and Wii U. And these are primo games. It's like the Zeldas. Because man with no name takes care of his games like Foghorn or Mal takes care of his games. Almost. I think I'm a little bit more obsessive compulsive. Possibly. But he did. You know, they're complete. they're nice so i i said well let me let me look at the prices and then i'll get back to you so i went on price charting and i kind of was like oh these are so expensive this is going to cost me so much money so of the 26 he had we needed 12 i think it's down to 11 now but it might be 12 total uh ours equaled like 350 of price charting which i you know and then i said well you know if you take them to a retro store you're gonna get about 60 of that so we still haven't like figured out a price for ours i don't think neither of us is supremely worried about it you know as far as we will we'll be fine both of us you know like i'm not gonna rip anyone off and and i and then i know he's he's good with it too so what we landed on though was he's gonna send them all to me and i'm gonna go to take the other portion to the retro gamer what's the what's the press start Press Start Games in Menasha, Wisconsin. We do plug those guys because the owner is a really good guy, and I don't say that often about retro game stores. I mean, he's a nice guy. He is very nice. And he's super fair. It's not like, I mean, he's going to tell you, look, I'm going to give you like 60% of price charting or whatever he does, or it'll be, you know, he's just very, he's fair. You know, I like dealing with the guys. So man with no name is going to mail the entire box up, and then at some point we'll figure out what we own.
Nelly Furtadoperson
Dave Navarroperson
Carmen Electraperson

high · Mal and Craft Brew Sally discuss creating a feedback group (tentatively called 'BOD group' or 'peanut gallery') to solicit community input on games before episode recording

  • ?

    content_signal: Hosts mention a secondary podcast/show called 'Pinball Junk Drawer' for additional content discussion

    medium · Mal references: 'We'll talk about that on our other show possibly. What other show might you be talking about? Pinball junk drawer. Yes, if you like this show and you like our inane banter then you should go over to search out the pinball junk drawer.'

    • 4:49
    I'm almost thinking I'm going to just bounce and say, how about if we buy ours for $250? That's kind of fair. It's a chunk of change, and we're getting some real solid titles that will bolster our GameCube collection for sure. Only one Wii title. I almost feel like keeping that Excite truck just so we have a spare. I don't know. Just in case the first one breaks. We have a long history with Excite Truck Yeah But so exciting news I mean it be fun to do this and fun to get through And I hoping that we score some good money for Man With No Name And also that we'll have a real nice addition to our collection. Yes. As it continues to grow and grow. Yes. A lot of Wii U games. Yes. Coming in. That's cool. Yeah, it is. I was on the fence about the Wii U, but I'm like, just do it. then we can put we you we you suck at video games after we're through all 490 of the we games that i have oh i don't think we're gonna do anyway that's okay so that's exciting news and uh we also did figure out a new segment for the show that will be going forward after this show yes so going forward from here we are going to send our new title to our bod yes group an exclusive I was thinking of calling them the peanut gallery. I don't know. We'll figure that out. I don't like the BOD group. We'll figure it out. Yeah, we'll figure it out. But... Well, if you have a good idea for the name of this group, that's going to just like kind of... We're just going to send out the name of the new game and ask for everybody to send us what they remember about it. They feedback one way or the other if they have any dealings with it, they have any fun memories of it or whatever like that. So also, you know, we probably will also loop in a couple of maybe Dan the Man or maybe Toucan Sammy Yosemite Sam? Yes. Was that right? No. Toucan Sammy Yosemite Sam. Yeah, you did get it right. Nice. Yes. Good job. Yeah, I'm on point. I'm bringing my A game today, Beavis. So,
    6:54
    as this kind of moves forward, we'll keep people in the loop on how that's going. So, uh-oh. Wait a minute. I have something coming in on the fax machine.
    7:08
    Gotta go. Hey, guy, you're the first serious gamer I've seen all morning. Check this out. Brand new 16-bit Super Nintendo and Super Mario World. Wow! What's this one? Oh, this is Sonic the Hedgehog from Sega Genesis. Look at these radical colors, huh? Wow, Sonic's fast, too. No, over here. I like Genesis. And it costs a lot less. We can't. That game. I'll take Sonic and Genesis. I knew that. Sonic the Hedgehog. More action, more speed. Sega Genesis. It's a whole lot more for less. Wow. What was that? That might have been a teaser for the game we got this week. Oh. So, Craft Brew Sally, what game are we doing this week? This week we are doing Sonic and the Secret Rings. Yes. Sonic and the Secret Rings. Now, this was released, as we always do, we like to set the stage. This was released on February 20th, 2007. Wowzers. Yes. Who was with us at 2007? Was that Tao? I believe our exchange student Tao might have been with us. Maybe not.
    8:23
    What was the top song you have? I have Say It Right by Nelly Furtado. I do not know that. That is correct. I do not know that song whatsoever. what was our top movie the top movie was ghost rider do yourself a favor and stop immediately and go watch ghost rider if you haven't seen it then come back you'll understand what 2007 was all about now for fun facts did you find any i didn't have a fun fact i my fun fact was that carmen electorate divorced dave navarro after three years of marriage and i believe that was probably a good thing for dave navarro i don't know i don't know her personally but i don't know what are you gonna do so i'm gonna read the back of the box we already established that apparently sega and sonic are pretty fast and they're pretty extreme too so hang on to your hats everyone okay the back of the box says the land of mystery meets the legend of speed sonic races through the exotic world of the Raven Knights to harness the awesome power of the secret rings before they fall into the hands of the evil genie Eraser. Not Eraser from Arnold. Eraser. The blue dude is unstoppable with his new ability to slow time and boost forward faster than ever, but he's never gone up against a genie before uh-oh that sounds like a pretty exciting time wow what do you think do you have any do we have any before we get into the review do you have any history with this game i have never played this game before no me either if i did my mind healed you are correct ma'am i will now we neither of us have any experience with it i will say in general i I remembered Sonic fondly from the Genesis era.
    10:21
    The very first Sonic was a really great game. Correct. And then after that- And then it went to hell. That is the eloquent way of saying it. Yes Sonic kind of suffers from like Pac fever a little bit like Pac fever Pac was awesome right Yeah Oh we all love Pac It's so fun. And then Ms. Pac-Man came out and was like, this is even better. She has a bow. And now the thing changes. This is awesome. And now Pac-Land and Pac-Mania 17 and then Ultra Pac-Man 34, 68, 92. Yeah. And you're like, oh my God, stop. You had two good games. And that 100 Pac-Man game. Well, that was fun. yeah okay but still yeah like you know sonic was good but it and there i'm sure there's some very people that love sonic yeah and good good good good for you yeah good for you and like do you want to buy a sonic game 4.95 or best offer no i know i never sell any games that's a problem i know that is a big problem i have so yes no but yes so we started playing this game and um Very quickly. It was just annoying. It was like the music was very like extreme. Just like in your face extreme. But like that corporate crappy extreme. Yeah. Like, dude, I just chugged a dude. Now I'm going to make some awesome rock and roll. Yeah. Extreme alternative. Meow, meow. Yes, that. Bear and air. That dude, Guy Fieri drove by and was like, yeah, dog. He was like, I'm making this thing bear and air. that's exactly how it went it's like sonic yeah and then it went it got worse and then we got to the tutorial and you can't get past the tutorial you can't skip it like to be fair a lot of games are like that but this one was just like oh you know and i was like okay it's gonna get better this is the dumb tutorial and you gotta do the moves and then we're gonna go have fun then the adventure is gonna start because it starts off it also starts off where the genie is telling the story. Like some gal shows up and she's like, hey, you're that blue dude who's really fast and you're really extreme. And he's like, oh, gnarly. And then he's like, she's like, well, whoopsie doodle the razor is stealing the Arabian Nights. All the pages are going away. And he's like, oh, that's bogus. And then Cowabunga dude, and he was, no wait, that's a different one. And then he got sucked into the book and he's like, wow, that's really weird. And then he's like, now, then that guy shows up. And you're like, uh-oh, now it's gonna to get real oh tutorial time you're like yeah and it's like some of the things that they did in the tutorial they started off doing like more things and then the next tutorial was like one of the things that they just taught you in the one before so like they're teaching you all the things but then they're teaching you one of the things yes and yeah and then the other thing i noticed this is kind of a theory now my hypothesis if you will it's i haven't proven it yet but this is what i think anytime well not anytime because i think wario does it too as soon as they take the wi moat and say and say turn it sideways and use one and two as the action buttons you're like oh no i'm screwed yeah that means this developer didn't know nor care enough to make this game correct for the wii right they're like nah just turn it sideways it's like a controller then no and you went oh crap it should be it should be a controller it's just turned sideways but it's never that way it's no use the nunchuck and the other thing yeah i guarantee it would have worked and this one was like you had to like push it forward to like rolling it forward yeah it was like oh my goodness needless to say we then we finally got past the tutorial and we're like okay now we're in the game well that game well we got through the first the first one the first one no it was well yeah okay i think we're three in and we just were like this there's you just get to a point where you can't get past anything and it's just broken garbage yeah total junk town and like and i'm not dissing it because it's i mean i dropped in that genesis thing because obviously as a nintendo fanboy you know that those are comical now yes but if you were a sega fanboy they're not so comical so it's okay but like this game was just bad yeah you know it was it was not a great game and we have like because man with no name is sending up a sega collect sonic collection for the gamecube and we already have it and i know we and i guarantee we played that and we're like okay I got it because you loved Sega I loved the first one and I guarantee you I was like well yeah Crafter's Side is going to be really loving this and then you probably played it and you're like okay I remember the 90s and you're like ugh this is gross so it wasn't fun it was more infuriating than anything and boring like they didn't care about putting any new crap rock in there they had that one fart rock crap corporate crap rock that they just dumped all over it. And they were like, good enough. And then there was a second song, but I think it just was played in reverse for the second song. Guy Fieri came in and he was like, donkey sauce. Yeah, donkey sauce.
    15:48
    Sonic. And then he got a check and drove away in a Camaro. But it like OK you know you playing this thing and you just like my head hurts And part of me was like you know Like I wanted to be really excited I was excited But part of me is also thinking, I wonder if Sega did this on purpose because they hate Nintendo. Oh. And they're like, maybe. I was like, I wonder if there's a better one out there for the Xbox. But I don't think so. I think it just sucks. They're just, you know, uninspired garbage. You know, it's just, what are you going to do? You know. oh I did say the Sonic I forgot to mention the Sonic team was the developer and Sega was the publisher so sorry about didn't should have led with that yeah so those are our observations I to me it was unplayable it wasn't fun like I wanted to get back in it and do another round of playing it for the show I would have never picked this up again after the first experience I was like this sucks and I hate it yeah but for you so we picked it up a second a second time and it was just as shitty. Yeah. This is, you know. Because like we just saw maybe it was late when we picked it up the first time. Maybe we were just tired. That's what you always think. Yeah. That's what we thought about the bowling one too. Remember? Yeah. We were drunk. Maybe it's fun. No, not. So, OK. What would you give this? I'm saying like a four. Yeah. So I'm going to go 4.5. OK. Metacritic has us at a 6.9. Huh. That's what I thought too. But like we like to do. I'm going to read one or two of the submitted reviews on Metacritic. And where do you fall in between here? We'll see.
    17:33
    So we're going to start with The Guy of Fire from March 13, 2012. Zero out of ten. Most unplayable glitchy failure of a Sonic game. I can't stand the controls. Graphically, it looks horrible. And the physics don't work. Oh, yeah, comma. And it's something that would have been made 10 years ago. Another disaster from Sega. What a pity. Well, it kind of was made 10 years before your review. But, however. Now, on the flip side, Super Diego Lego gave it a 10 out of 10 on September 15th, 2020. Wow, that was COVID year. Sonic and the Secret Rings was my childhood game when I got a Wii. it was the best sonic game ever made it deserves more than a three 6.3 user score it's my favorite sonic and wii game ever made okay well he had covid we beg to differ but that's okay and don't be angry i'm gonna i'm because i'm giving this what did i already say my score yeah four or five right four point five yeah so you know like usual We usually end up kind of hit in between sometimes, but that's okay. To each his own. Now it's time for our... Do we have any final wrap-ups before we pick this week's new game? Any exciting anything? Um, no. No. Yeah, me either. Okay. We were going to pause, and when we come back, we're going to reveal next week's game. Oh, my God.
    19:09
    Oh, yeah. The Hello Kitty chopsticks have revealed. What do we have? I think, oh my God, someone's going to be the most excited person in the history of the world. Oh, no. Guess. Is it Pikmin? No, it's Epic Mickey. We just got a double of that. Oh my God. I'm so excited. I can't wait to play. Well, I have a feeling next week's going to be more Craft Bruce Sally, but that's okay.
    19:35
    Epic Mickey. So how can they find us? If they have anything to write in about the show or if they have anything to write about Epic Mickey, how can they contact us? You can contact us at wesuckatvideogames at gmail.com. So read the whole thing to us? W-I-I-S-U-C-K-A-T-V-I-D-E-O-G-A-M-E-S at gmail.com. And once you write it once, you can save it to your contacts. Then you can contact us every week if you'd like. Nice, huh? Just ask Sam.
    20:12
    Sam? Who the hell's Sam? Yosemite. Oh, oh, Sam. Sorry. My brain. I just had a most extreme brain fart. Sonic, bear, bear, donkey sauce. All right, that's enough of this. Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you've enjoyed our review of this wonderful game. I am starting to think maybe that whole shovelware thing is a joke, because I'll tell you what, we have not had that many. like I'm waiting for one of these zero to ten games. Yeah. There's going to be one. I own many. Where are they? We'll see. All right. Maybe it's a misnomer. Maybe the Wii is actually all highly rated games except for Brawling and Brunswick Bowling and Sonic. Tune in to find out. Next week is going to be Epic Mickey and I promise it's going to be epic. See you next week, everyone. My name is Mau. With me as always. Craft Brew Sally. Play on. We will.
    21:07
    That's it man, game over man, game over!