Left to right, top to bottom:
Sonic Spinball, Sonic Adventure,
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic
Colours, Sonic The Hedgehog 4
between Sonic and
Knuckles and the next
instalment in the main
series, Sonic Adventure
(1998) for the Dreamcast, Sega skipped a
console generation in
the form of the Sega
Saturn. In that time,
Nintendo had released
Super Mario 64, a
game which revolutionised 3D platformers.
Though it isn’t perfect,
Sega have arguably
never designed anything of comparable
quality. More than a
dozen 3D Sonic games
have been released in
the intervening years,
but only a couple have
reached the heights of
that title.
Sonic Adventure introduced new game
mechanics and broadened the cast of supporting
characters,
each of which had
their own storyline.
Unlike Mario 64’s
brief framing device,
the lengthy story sequences proved uninteresting, and, apart
from Sonic, all of the
supporting characters
played terribly, with
the controls ranging
from unpolished to irretrievably broken. The
most maligned was Big
the Cat, whose levels
consisted entirely of
fishing. What was exciting about Sonic, as
always, was speed,
something that Big the
Cat and the other characters were lacking.
Crucially, the game
was the first of many
to fall foul of numerous
camera angle issues,
and a lack of well-designed levels. Follow
up titles for the Playstation and Xbox failed
to fix the problems.
Both Sonic Heroes
(2003) and Shadow
the Hedgehog (2005)
failed to address the
camera and level design issues, with the latter also alienating fans
by equipping the characters with guns.
Recognising
this,
Sega promised that
Sonic the Hedgehog
(2006) would draw a
line under the previous
games, and return Sonic to its speedy roots.
But in every respect,
the game failed to deliver. It was sluggish,
had major framerate issues, poor camera angles, and even worse
level design, featuring
huge expansive areas
with little indication of
where to go. A decade
after Super Mario 64
and still they couldn’t
get it right.
In 2008, Sega tried
again with Sonic Unleashed. Though the
graphics were remarkable for their particularly beauty and freshness, a new mechanic
which involved Sonic
turning into a Werehog and the game
reverting to a God of
War style beat ‘em up
was less well received.
Like night and day,
the night levels turned
out to be boring and
overlong, with forced
enemy encounters that
slowed the frame rate
considerably.
And so it has been
that every time a new
Sonic game was announced, the press
informed us that this is
the return to form. And
granted, they haven’t
all been bad. Sonic Colors (2010) and
Sonic
Generations
(2011) were partly successful because they
were able to implement
interesting twists while
also providing a fastpaced Sonic experience. But we’ve also
seen highly criticized
titles such as Sonic and
the Secret Rings, Sonic
Lost World, and the recent Sonic Boom: Rise
of Lyric.
Even Sonic 4 Part
1 (2010) and Part 2
(2012) failed to meet
with unqualified praise,
in spite of the designers’ deliberate attempt
to create
a spiritual
sequel to
Sonic and
Knuckles.
The poor
re c e p t i o n
given
to
Sonic
4
was puzzling. Critics stated that
the levels were uninspired, and too easy,
but this glosses over
the fact that Sonic was
never that difficult. It
was always relatively
easy to breeze your
way through a level just
by moving fast.
Perhaps then, the
decline of Sonic is
down to something
more fundamental than
simply poor design.
Compared to Mario,
Sonic’s character was
never fleshed out, and
he was never given
a personality. From
the very early days of
the Nintendo, Mario
was designed to be a
figure of fun – a bumbling overweight Italian-American plumber
transported to a magical kingdom. Sonic on
the other hand, was intended to be fast, slick,
and cool. Put down the
control pad for long
enough, and Sonic would tap his foot,
eager to get back up
to speed. But what he
represented was a very
1990s style of cool,
and one that was not
easy to update.
We do know that if
enough effort is put in,
Sonic has been able
to succeed in a 3D
environment, but the
mechanics of the character mean that special
care needs to be put in
to ensure that the main
selling point, the speed,
is fully functioning. And
while Sega appears
ready to give Sonic
chance after chance,
you never know when
the next quality title
might be. Let’s hope we
don’t have to wait too
long.
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