FazDude

gangnam style

In Smash, CJ (who I'll be using as the example from here on out) would be a basically all-arounder character, having a few good up-close and zoning options. He wouldn't be as strong as a melee fighter than Little Mac, nor would he be as good of a zoner as Samus; He'd just be capable of doing both in an above-average capacity. This'll be important later.

However, this is where CJ's main mechanic comes into play; the Wanted Level. Inspired by the GTA games themselves, CJ has five stars on his HUD, with each one being grayed out at the start of each stock. As CJ damages opponents, stars will gradually turn white, with a KO causing CJ to gain a full star instantly.

What is the signifigance of these stars? In GTA, the more stars you have, the more vigilant and merciless the police will become in their efforts to take you down. To replicate this in Smash, earning stars effectively makes CJ lighter and easier to KO.

So obviously, you don't want to have too many stars for too long. Luckily, your stars will start fading back to gray over time, just like in GTA, and being KO'd yourself will take away all of your stars, causing CJ to respawn with a clean slate.

This would add a layer of strategy to playing CJ; Do you rush in with CJ's stronger melee attacks and risk spending some time with a heightened degree of vulnerability, or do you play it safe with CJ's weaker, but less risky zoning tools?

Is this the smoothest way to translate the Wanted Level into Smash? Probably not. Should the Wanted Level be translated into Smash? That's a matter of preference. I just felt like sharing this idea because I think it's neat.

If I'm going to be 100% honest, Sonic 1 is an okay movie. I know everyone compares it to Hop and all, but be real; Is anyone THAT harsh about Hop? It's an inoffensive kid's film, and Sonic 1 is an inoffensive kid's film. It's not exactly peak cinema, but there's nothing terrible about it. It's a perfectly servicable movie.

That said, it's not a good Sonic movie. I know I just said it's an okay movie, but that was just based on the actual structure of the film itself. The main problem with the Sonic movie is that it's about Sonic.

Sonic is a character people have passion for. Sonic is a character people were excited to see come to the big screen. So even though I think Sonic 1 is a fine movie, I can't exactly blame diehard Sonic fans for having problems with the movie we got. Sonic shouldn't have gotten a generic buddy cop movie, even if said buddy cop movie isn't terrible.

It's a situation very similar to Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. Technically speaking, the game is solid and can actually be pretty fun (although it does have its issues). The problem stems from the fact that the Banjo-Kazooie IP was attached; It had been years since Banjo-Tooie, so people were naturally upset that N&B wasn't entirely in line with the original duology of games.

(This isn't to say that critique towards N&B or the Sonic movies based on the source material isn't valid; Both products could have done more to be more faithful to their original source material without entirely losing their vision and still being fine, and the former could have been more upfront with its goals during promotion. I'm just saying that I consider the backlash towards the two products comes from a very similar place.)

To try and wrap things up, I will restate that the first Sonic movie, while not a bad film in principle, strayed too far away from the source material without doing enough to justify its deviations from the Sonic games, and it's completely understandable why many Sonic fans are turned off by it. It's a fine movie, but it's not a Sonic movie.

In any case, though, Sonic 2 seems to be striving to remedy this problem at least partially, and I am confident in saying that it'll be better than the first movie.

tl;dr: y'all owe the angry birds movie an apology