>>150188691
I think Sega's idea for an "episodic" game changed significantly after the first part's release. The initial plan was clearly to just churn out a new set of stages every so often for what was supposed to be a mobile game done on the cheap, which would have worked well for them, financially.
Then after Episode 1 was a big success, they shifted into framing each episode its own standalone game, basically turning Sonic 4 into a multiple-game "saga" sort of like how the 2000s had the Advance trilogy alongside the console releases, with each release planned as being bigger than the last (Episode 3 was apparently going to be even bigger than 2, potentially had Whitehead involved, and made by Sega Studios Australia instead of Dimps before the SSA was shut down).
So instead of making Sonic 4, 5, and 6, they'd just label them as a trilogy of episodes instead. From a marketing standpoint, this is what was truly dumb, because all it did was make people question both why a single episode took around 2 years to release (which also caused people to lose interest), and why there was such a significant difference in presentation between each "part" of the same game.
Overall, still very dumb, but I can kind of see what Sega was trying to do with their continued "Sonic 4 as you truly imagined it" spiel by eventually aiming to make it into something like S3&K but even bigger.
