Instruments of SATAM

Thanks to my neurotic limit-of-one-per-day posting habits, you've probably now already heard that Sega just announced that their top secret Project Needlemouse is, in fact, Sonic 4, in the most confident series misnumbering since Grand Theft Auto. The title seems to be an indication that this time they're determined to ignore the entire direction of the series after 1994 and to go back to what people who grew up with the Megadrive (as I sort of did) thought made the game special.

You might as well not bother with the video now

There really isn't much to the video linked above, apart from showing a brief glimpse of the game being rendered in 3D but actually played in 2D, almost Donkey Kong Country style - fortunately the notoriously mental fan community has naturally got to analyzing ludicrous things such as the tiny reflections in bits of the video like they're on CSI, to reveal some more theories about the game.

If other indications are to be believed it'll also have 16-bit-styled music (listen to the Z80-style brave attempt at a snare drum sound!), which is something I'd look forward to immensely - nostalgia service on recent things I've played has been very high indeed. I did feel a pang of apprehension at the "Episode 1" bit because of the number of ways it's possible to abuse piecemeal-downloadable games, but then I realized that my favourite games ever were all episodic, so that's probably all right. And they accidentally pioneered the concept in cartridge form with the third game anyway. So, for the moment, we can confidently repeat the Sega mantra of the last ten years and just say "This is looking like it might not be terrible".