Whatever Happened to Sonic

After Sonic CD, it was all downhill. The poor hedgehog should have been put out of his misery after that. It's been 16 years and they still haven't come close to equalling it, much less topping it. Endless attempts to shoehorn a game mechanic that only works in 2D into a 3D world haven't been kind.

A good Sonic game is a combination of speed and exploration. There should be multiple paths through the levels, lots of hidden goodies, and distinctive set pieces all over the place. And no sidekicks, of course. If they could give us that then Sonic would finally be back.

-edit- And Sonic Boom will always be better than Toot Toot Sonic Warrior. I never really forgave Gamefan for persuading me to import Sonic CD because of the music.

Finally seeing what the intro animation was supposed to look like on the Gamecube was nice, though. The collection was worth it for that alone. :)

James

lol, sonic R. It was ok. I liked playing as metal sonic.

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Originally Posted by James

After Sonic CD, it was all downhill. The poor hedgehog should have been put out of his misery after that.

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Say what you will, but Sonic 3 was pretty fantastic, regardless of where you feel like the series peaked. S&K was the first disappointment in the series.

The 16-bit Sonic games really are among the best platformers ever. It's a shame some shitty recent games have made it more vogue to bash the older ones now, because they absolutely deserve the same kind of esteem the old Marios get.

Rush Adventure made me kind of glad the series is still around, though. I think there's still potential if Sega wasn't married to the idea of rushing them out half finished. The obscene lack of polish bothers me so much more than any new character, mechanic, or any other trite excuse for why the franchise has gone downhill.

It may have been fantastic but it just came too soon after Sonic CD. It was just a couple of months, and I'd had my fill of Sonic. Too much too soon, so a much lessened impact.

The 16-bit Sonics have always been bashed a bit as shallow and flashy compared to Mario. Is there more of that going on now than there used to be?

James

It was 15+ years ago. You've had plenty of time to work up an appetite. Issues like that really fade away as the years advance.

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Originally Posted by James

After Sonic CD, it was all downhill. The poor hedgehog should have been put out of his misery after that. It's been 16 years and they still haven't come close to equalling it, much less topping it. Endless attempts to shoehorn a game mechanic that only works in 2D into a 3D world haven't been kind.

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Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles is pretty rad. You should go back and try them. In retrospect, they are amazing for a cart based game.

I think a lot of people dump on them because the bosses are so much easier and the level design is slightly different from Sonic 2.

Sonic CD is an odd beast. The level layout was just odd. But getting to race metal sonic made it all worth while.

They should have titled Sonic & Knuckles "Fuck Sandopolis Zone, Let's Play Something Else."

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Say what you will, but Sonic 3 was pretty fantastic, regardless of where you feel like the series peaked. S&K was the first disappointment in the series.

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Sonic and Knuckles is just fine. I think people get upset with it because most of the bosses are nonstandard (I'm looking at you, big stone asshole that jumps to his death into a sand pit) and it doesn't have anything new to it. It is just Sonic 3.5+easy. It is better if you go in know it is levels left out of 3. And Flying battery is great.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

They should have titled Sonic & Knuckles "Fuck Sandopolis Zone, Let's Play Something Else."

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I can agree with this. I'd always fuck up the part where you have to let sand fill rooms. I can respect that they wanted to try new things, but fuck if I don't lose at least 5 lives trying to get through that crap.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

It was 15+ years ago. You've had plenty of time to work up an appetite. Issues like that really fade away as the years advance.

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I've never been much of a historian. Generally, if a game doesn't grab me the first time (and I played both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles to completion, good endings) I don't tend to go back without good reason. So far, I've had no reason to revisit them, or even think much of them in the last 15 years.

I still can't believe they left Sonic 3: Sonic & Knuckles off the 360 collection. On the plus side, they saved 3 megabytes of space on the DVD.

James