#team ladybug

When the past catches up to you in various forms, desolation becomes strength.

To clarify about the "branches" ask (not because of you, I always worry about my phrasing) basically I mean anything substantially different from other elements of the franchise. Sonic 1/CD/2/3&K/4/Mania would be one subset, but Chaotix is far enough away to be its own thing in my opinion. Adventure follows after the Genesis games but plays drastically different, 3D Blast and Labyrinth are close enough to be paired up, etc. Though of course it's all up to interpretation.

Give Tails another solo game. Heck, hire an indie developer to make a new Tails Adventure game. Get Team Ladybug to do it. Even though Takashi Iizuka says pixel art is a dead end, I don't care. Let them do it with pixel art.

Team Ladybug seems like a safe bet. But I was talking about this on stream... gosh, I think it was the last time I streamed, when I streamed part 1 of Freedom Planet 2...

Create like a fandom partner program. Deliberately relax quality standards a little bit. Just a little. Let fans make official Sonic fangames. Give them a special label so the mainstream public knows they are community projects, but with a little bit of official Sega backing. Let fans sell games released through this community program. Cultivate the future.

It is so easy to release a game on Steam. It is so cheap. Lean into that. Don't bother with Playstation or Xbox or Nintendo certification licensing. Do it PC only*. These are Sonic fangames with Sega's stamp of approval on them. They don't have to be huge grand scale type projects. Maybe an hour long would be good. Put a couple of those out a year for $6.99 or whatever. Kick start some careers.

If Sega wants another surprise success like Sonic Mania, this is how they find the team to build it. Short, experimental little Sonic fangames, with a little bit of oversight and some guidelines to prevent people from getting too violent, or weird, or doing other things that are off-limits.

It would be bold and revolutionary and it would kick every ass anyone's got.

If Sega wants to look forward and truly shift some paradigms, spending a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars on some nebulous metaverse "super game" isn't going to do it. Something grassroots and community forward will. The community has carried Sonic before. Might as well throw them a bone.

Selecta Play will release “5-Year Anniversary” physical standard and limited editions for Touhou Luna Nights for PlayStation 5 and Switch in North America and Europe later in 2024, the distributor announced.

The standard edition will include a printed color manual and special sleeve. The limited edition includes a printed manual, an original soundtrack double CD, three alternative inlays, a serialized certificate of authenticity, and a SteelBook case, all housed in an oversized collector’s box.

Touhou Luna Nights is currently available digitally for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam.

Watch the physical edition announcement trailer below. View a set of screenshots and package shots at the gallery.

Physical Edition Announce Trailer

North America

Europe

I'm very excited to review this, this is the third game of Team Ladybug, a developer team I am quite fond of, they made 2 of the best Metroidvanias out there and it might seem weird that their next game following 2 Metroidvanias was a shoot em up, but if you take a look at their 2 previous games, it does make sense.

Touhou Luna Nights is basically a fangame of the Touhou games, a bullet hell series, and Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth had elements that were heavily inspired by shoot 'em ups, specifically, the element change system, which is similar to how Ikaruga works.

So them making a shoot 'em up seems very logical to me.