Disclaimer : I dont necessarily agree with the video, just posting to spark discussion :)

So youtuber HippoCrit recently posted a video called "Sonic Mania's Fatal Flaw"

To give a short summary : 

In it, he says that he is not a Sonic fan, but that Sonic Mania is a good game. However, to him there is a fatal flaw in it. The game over system. The game over system, originally used to produce more money from arcade machines, is outdated to him as part of a home console experience. He sites things like the speed of sonic, the camera, and the enemy placement as issues that make the game over system a bigger derailment of the game's quality. 

With the recent controversy of Dean from Venture Beat, and many other gaming journalists, sucking at video games, I expect a lot of people will just chalk this up to Hippo sucking at video games. 

My thoughts : 

Personally, I can see where he's coming from. My experience prior to Sonic Mania, was playing a little bit of Sonic and the Black Knight as an 8 year old, and playing a little bit of the Genesis games a few years back on the 360. So Sonic Mania is really my first big experience with Sonic, and i've been absolutely addicted for the past few days. Yet, I haven't beaten it. Part of it is due to me wanting to replay the first few levels, but 2 or 3 times I got a game over. And it's not because I sucked at the game, it's because of Flying Battery Zone!!! On the 2nd act of Flying Battery Zone I kept dying underneat the ship. There was this one part near the end where you go under this garbage and you grab onto this pole. A few times I died because when I jumped onto the upside down ramp Sonic didn't grab on the pole! But for the most part my death's started at the 2nd part. You see, you have to jump onto this spring that takes you into this windy underside of the ship. So I thought "Okay, I have to press on the dpad to keep up my momentum". I died a bunch of times and got a game over. Later I started the game up again and forgot about the section, so I tried the same tactic. Got a game over. It wasn't till the 3rd time encountering it that I looked it up online and it's like a scripted event, where touching the D-pad would make you die. The entire game up to this point was teaching you to use the dpad on ramps, and now it's a bad thing! And I still got a game over because by that point I had like 2 lives for the Spider boss. 

It's an interesting question though. Do lives systems work for modern games like Sonic Mania? Personally, I don't think it matters to much one way or the other. But I don't think it adds anything valuable to the game. I imagine some games work well with it though. I'm surprised Cuphead doesn't have one.

I don't really have an opinon on whether or not the game should have a game over system. But I'll say that for me, I replayed stages because I wanted to get better and faster and find more secrets and explore. I don't think the game's game over system really incentivises getting better, since it's not that hard to begin with. I think losing your rings is closer to the actual incentive than a game over system. 

Old school design = you want to see later stages, you learn to "get good" at the earlier stages. Older games under current game design would be disappointing two hour affairs, as they use challenge and replays rather than trophies, chores & other bloat to keep you playing.

I personally think that gamers nowadays have been too babysitted by the last gen games and as a result, didnt develop the pacience needed to enjoy a game that has difficulty as one of its pillars.

Having a game over and lives are necessary because it gives meaning to what you are doing.If you fail, you lose your progress and go back to the beginning.If you succeed, you suceeded over a difficult task and feels that much more rewarding.Game overs arent a legacy of the arcades, its a legacy that was built with the foundation of any games.In Sports, you win or lose.If you lose, its game over.Someone needs to lose for the winner feel satisfaction, otherwise there are no stakes involved.

Plus his Dark Souls example is just plain terrible.At the very least, Dark Souls is much less forgiving with its game overs.If you die and didnt reach a bonfire, which there arent that many, you lose every single thing you have obtained, and exclusing bosses, everything you achieved, and you go back to the previous save point.Much like Sonic, you learn by your failure.

Are gamers so used to playing easy games that they can't take a game over every now and then? Maybe it is because I play old games and new games at the same time but game overs do not bother me. I see it as a way for me to improve my skill. If I win all the time is it really a game?

Also Sonic is not even that hard of a game. I beat the game in one sitting multiple times when I was in middle school. I am pretty sure grown people are better than that.  

I pretty much agree with everything you said. Even though I can see where he is coming from, his dark souls example was pretty bad. Plus,thinking about it now, I imagine for some bad players, game overs can help teach the game to you. 

It's major flaw to me is a lack of physical copy.

I agree, however I think it has less to do with being babysat and more to do with casual players.  Especially with a classic IP like Sonic, some people who don't really play games anymore are just messing around to see if the new Sonic is good.  Point being, they probably aren't very good at the game, but should they be punished for that fact?  They paid the entry fee just like good players, shouldn't they get to experince the entirety of what they paid for?

I guess what I'm suggesting is a casual mode, or perhaps a free "Super Sonic" box appearing next to a checkpoint pole, like in recent Mario games.  Good players can ignore it, while the less skilled can progress on a tough level.

Also, in Dark Souls, you only lose your souls and enimies respawn upon death. You also have one chance to get those souls back. So it's not quite that punishing :p

I do think it's somewhat backwards thinking even for a retro revival game. It also sucks that no matter what you have to start from act 1 if you just want to play through the game from a certain point.

His argument is fatally flawed due to the premise being completely false. Game Overs are almost non-existing in arcade games, but highly prevelant in non-arcade console games; particularly platformers, like Sonic.

Also, even if he is not old enough to have experienced arcades (writing this from mobile, so I can't view the video to verify his age), Game Overs would not encourage spending, but rather discourage it, as it meant an end to the gaming experience.

If anyone remembers mall arcades, arcades on cruise ships, resorts, etc... The popular games often had a lineup of kids wanting to play, and part of the encouragement was how far the current game was. For example, if you were playimg Terminator 2, and someone was at T-1000, there would always be a lot of kids hanging around for their shot at the polyalloy machine. Many arcade games began easy then became ludicrously hard toward the end to exploit that pinch.

The reason console games had Game Overs is not because of some fictitious Arcade convention, but rather because console games originally were originally roms for the most part - RPGs like Dragon Warrior, and action adventures like Legend of Zelda were among the early exceptions. In addition, they were generally short in content. Some games utilized a password system (like Metroid, and Faxanadu's mantras), but many, like the Super Mario Bros series, had nothing (well, warping). Rather than giving players a short game to finish and put away, they had Game Overs after failing to achieve the goals in a certain number of tries. It's a simple mechanic, and it exists in other games too that aren't video games (let alone arcade) - Pen and Paper RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons, for example; and in the same essence: Monopoly, Risk, and Chess - all of which existing long before the arcade industry.


In short: whether or not Game Overs are a good or bad thing in this game, the argument he makes against them is complete bullshit.