Genesis, Adventure and Modern - which era had the best Sonic games?

[Semi-colon e]

13 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

And who's your favorite Samus, 2-D, Gamecube or Modern Samus? Ow wait, no one splits Metroid like that.

 

 

Yes they do. I assure you they do. Only it's "2D, Prime, and Other M/everything else".

[Hyp3hat]

Ok, going through it in Generations markers - Megadrive, Dreamcast, Present Day. Actual post in spoiler tags, as it'll be hueg otherwise.

Megadrive Era

Spoiler

 

The Great

Sonic 1-3&K. Ridiculous classics. Not much wrong with them, although Sonic 3 is much harder than I remember - I got a Time Over on Carnival Night, how the hell is anyone supposed to beat Act 2 in under 10 minutes, the boss alone takes five! But then there's Sonic 2, which is a literal masterpiece of videogames.

The Meh

Spinball - I'm sure it's the game for someone, but it's not for me. Toxic Cave is my jam though.

Sonic R - CAN YOU FEEL THE SUNSHINE? But yeah, I can't believe I unlocked all the characters in this as a kid. My dad must have helped me do it, this shit is impossible. But LIVING IN THE CITY, YOU KNOW YOU HAVE TO SURVIVEEEEEE

The Bad

Sonic 3D Blast - the only thing in any media ever to make me feel sick. It's literally horrible to play for me, it's so weird to look at and the gameplay sucks.

The Game Gear Games. Literally everything on the Game Gear is unplayable. I feel sorry for those 90's kids who first played Sonic there. Jesus christ. There were loads of them, and they all sucked. They gotta drag the score down a bit.

 

Dreamcast Era

Spoiler

 

The Great

Sonic Adventure - viewed with some kindness, there's a lot to love in SA1. It's a big goofy mess of a game, and the Sonic storyline is probably some of the most fun you can have playing these games. It's aged poorly, but there's still a good game at it's heart.

Sonic Adventure 2 as well, although it barely scrapes into this. The writing shits the bed, but the core gameplay is still solid. What I get from the experience is that they felt the need to fix something that wasn't necessarily broken - fans supposedly didn't like hubs, but I did like not being forced to play Knuckles levels unless I wanted to.

Sonic Advance 1 & 2 - these are amazing things, especially the superfast Advance 2. Nailing a level in that game is loads of fun.

The Meh

Heroes. A nice core mechanic, but dragged out into infinity with horrible alternate stories. It doesn't inspire revulsion, but the repetitive level design and boring combat means it's just.... ok. What's worse is that Sonic Team picks up a lot of bad habits here, but it's not all terrible yet.

Sonic Riders - I remember trying this and just sucking at it immensely. The Spinball of this generation.

The Bad

Shadow The Motherfuckin Hedgehog - everything just collapses here in the franchise at this point. I'm almost looking forward to getting my new laptop that can run this on Dolphin, just to see what I put up when I was 14, but dear god. This game sucks on a fundamental level, with everything just failing to work. At least it's not buggy.

Sonic Advance 3 - what if you had Sonic Advance, but with literally everything getting in your way, killing you, crushing you, boring you... You get the sense playing this that Dimps were a bit burned out on these.

 

Present Day.

Spoiler

 

The Great

Generations - They finally did it. With mods.

Colours - They actually did it a year before. If it was on the Xbox or PS3 people would have lost their minds at Colours. I need to play it with a controller, because fuck a wiimote and nunchuck, but yeah. Sonic is funny, the gameplay is tight, the presentation is great, and the wisps feel good to use. Nearly everything in this game is dope.

Sonic Rush & Rush Adventure - When cybernetic brain implants become an affordable reality, I will heighten my reflexes to the point that I can actually do well at this game. But they are so much fun, and Hideki Naganuma is Jesus.

Sonic 06 - it's hilarious. You can fly into space and die trying to attack a giant robot dog.

The Meh

Sonic Unleashed. That fucking Werehog. You spend the majority of your time playing as this sluggish, underpowered fuckboi. They also nearly get it right with characterisation and plot, but they have a sidekick that makes Charmy Bee look like Oscar Wilde. It's such a shame. And the day stages are super fun! They're amazing! But the only way to experience Unleashed is through the Unleashed Project mod for Gens.

Sonic + The Black Knight, for polishing the turd that was Secret Rings into a playable game. So I hear, I never got the chance to play it. But it deserves a nod.

Lost World - terrible writing, functional gameplay, and ...OK level design. Hard not to feel like a let down after Colours and Generations, but it's not shit.

The Bad

Sonic 06 - Everything is terrible. You can fly into space and die trying to attack a giant robot dog. But it's really Shadow The Hedgehog 2.

Sonic + Secret Rings. A mountain of hankerchiefs, people. With motion controls and a bajillion missions and unlockable good controls.

The handheld games - Dimps were really bored at this point, Colours DS and Gens 3DS proved that. Uninspired.

Sonic Chronicles, The Dark Brotherhood. Actually a sleeper candidate for the worst Sonic game, and the actual worst Bioware game.

Boom, because what Sonic needed was to be a boring slug fest with scarves. Although it does have one amazing joke (Knucks slapping Sonic on the back and him losing rings), but, y'know, that games a mess. 

 

Anything I didn't mention, I haven't played or watched an LP of to form an opinion on.

The highs on the Present day era are really high, but they also correspond with the lowest lows of the franchise. In terms of consistency, it's probably gotta be Classic, because whilst the Game Gear games suck, they are really secondary. You're not going to accidentally pick up Sonic Blast in a used bin. But then there's Sonic 3D Blast, which is excruciating. 

I'll come back to this, I think.

 

[Jar Jar Analysis 1138]

The Adventure Era has the least amount of bad or average titles. Console games didn't do well after Heroes but the handhelds got that Tender Love And Care. Sonic 06 and Shadow didn't warrent that era to be horrible. 

All of them are about equal honestly, with Adventure edging out.

 

[TailsTellsTales]

I will say the classic and adventure era were decent and nice. Classic because it was the original, and adventure because it broke into 3D.

[Dr. Detective]

I was the most wide-eyed and happy during the era where I discovered Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, Heroes shortly after, and was watching Sonic X on TV.

Seriously, one day I was just flipping through channels because I was bored one Saturday morning and I flashed by something that I could have sworn looked like Sonic the Hedgehog's face. Then I mashed the button back to see if my eyes were playing tricks on me and I found it again and I watched the second episode. He had the scouter and he was trying to save this... weird looking bunny girl (hadn't played Heroes or Advance 2) and then at the end I got the biggest grin on my face when Sonic realized who was helping him and he just said "The Tornado..." and I was like "Tails...!"

And then Tails showed up and saved them because he was cool like that.

If that counts as an era, then yeah, that was the best one for me.

That's got nothing to do with how the games themselves were of course but fuck it. It's the era where I was the most happy. 

[Wraith]

On 4/22/2016 at 3:36 PM, Josh said:

The classics outdo the Adventure era through sheer quality and the fact that they've aged way better. Both the Adventure and Modern era are huge mixed bags with about as many misses as there are hits. I'd still pick the worst classic game(Sonic CD) over most of the dreamcast era and a few modern titles if given the chance. 

I'm still right, but this question is kind of weird now because I'm not sure if Mania would count with the Classic games or the Modern ones. If it counts as a modern Sonic game then Modern just got a huge leg up over the Adventure era, but if not, the quality of the Modern games are starting to become as big of a problem for me as the Adventure games were back then, and they don't seem to be getting better.

 

[Salamander]

I'm not sure you can fairly bracket Mania under either "Classic" or "Modern" eras.  It's clearly not a Modern Sonic game on any level save chronological; that is, it was made in the Modern era, but it's not in 3D, it doesn't use Modern design standards or controls, it's not even made by Sonic Team.  (Boom, for instance, does fall under a few of the previous criteria.)  But it'd be pretty controversial to call it a true Classic title, because although it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it wasn't made by the same team or in the same time.  It uses Classic gameplay, but it's not historically speaking a Classic game.  Along with the fact that games like the Advance series don't really fit the mould of their supposed era, I'm not sure a purely chronological classification of the series is really that helpful.  Gameplay has tended to vary depending on where you look for a long time now; that in itself might be counted as part of the general Sonic "problem."

[MetalSkulkBane]

Geez, it's almost like those split into eras are artificial and silly.

Just call it a classic game and be done with it. You know we'll never get more 'classic' game without a time machine.

If people really insist on those god damn eras, then I suggest:

1) Chronology should be a suggestion, nor rule where games fit.

2) We must admit that some game is in grey area. I mean if SA1-06 is "3D, no, boost, serious story, multiple characters eras. And Sonic 4-now is "Graff Pontac, boost, 3/2D and classic elements everywhere, friends into background" era than Unleahesh and both Wii games are changing process. And people will still point RoL or Heroes as slightly different than the other games. Almost like there AREN'T official rules to all of this

3) All spin-off games should be even more loosely classified.

[Emerald Chaos]

I mean, if we're counting spinoffs, then the classic era has masterpieces like Sonic's Schoolhouse...

[EzSonic01]

I think the Genesis era had the best Sonic games. During that time, there were also the 8-bit spinoffs for the Sega Game Gear and Master System consoles, which were also pretty good. I don't think there were any really bad titles back then in general. So for me, it would be something like this:

The Classic/Genesis era (1991-1998):

Good: Sonic 1 (both versions), Sonic 2 (16-bit), Sonic Spinball (16-bit), Sonic CD, Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (both versions), Sonic Chaos, Sonic 3, Sonic Triple Trouble, Sonic & Knuckles (plus its lock-on entries Knuckles in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles), Sonic 3D, Sonic Blast, Sonic Jam. Special Mention: Sonic Mania.

Regular/average: Sonic 2 (8-bit), Sonic Spinball (8-bit), Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Drift 1 & 2, Sonic's Schoolhouse, Sonic R, Sonic Pocket Adventure.

Overall an awesome time for Sonic. The series was on its peak in the 90s: It had a great reputation, top-notch quality games which sold like hot cakes, and was considered a breath of fresh air from Mario. Sonic as a character himself was well-received too.

The Adventure era (1998-2006):

Good: Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Advance 1, 2 & 3, Sonic Rush and Rush Adventure, Sonic Heroes.  

Regular/average: Sonic Shuffle.

Bad: Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic '06. 

This era was pretty nice, and continued what the Classic era gave us, with the franchise continuing having a decent reputation, games, and sales, up until ShTh, at which point, the series as a whole started to decline and we all know what happened with '06.

The Modern era (2006-present):

Good: Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Unleashed, Sega Superstars Tennis, Sonic Riders (first game), Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, Sonic & Sega racing series. 

Regular/average: Sonic 4: Episode 1 & Episode 2, Sonic Riders series, Sonic Lost World, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, Sonic Forces.

Bad: Sonic Boom subseries (Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal).

And this is where we're at now, with mostly OK games, sales (but lower than the former two), and a horrible reputation.

[molul]

<inmyopinion>

The classics are by far the best to me. And Mania has proven that the formula still has its charm.

Didn't play the Adventure games. Advance games were not bad, but not too good either.

From the modern era I think only Generations was actually good. Too many missed opportunities and bad or rushed ideas. And let's not talk about Sonic Boom...

</inmyopinion>

[ZinogreVolt]

I think my favorite era is definitely modern, a good deal of the modern games suffer from some really jarring drawbacks that really makes you wonder if Sonic Team is run by a bunch of hacks. But the highs it has are easily my favorites in the series by a large margin.

Speaking more objectively, though. I think classic is the best for maintaining a more consistent understanding in what makes a good Sonic game, sans Sonic CD. While it does have its share of not great spin-offs, so does every era of Sonic so that part's not really that relevant to me.

As for the Adventure era, I like those games more when I think of them as simply doing their own thing. While they haven't aged well...at all, I still think they're fun games in their own right for their variety of fun playstyles, with some not-so-fun ones here and there.