Worst period for Sonic?

[A Peep]

I mean worst point for the franchise, in your opinion.

 

For me, it’s around 2004-2007

 

i can’t imagine how fans (especially kids) felt at the time

 

"why is this new sonic advance game worse than the old one? that’s never happened”

“where is sonic and why am I holding a gun?”

”I CAN’T MOVE SONIC PROPERLY”

”wait this is that game on the sonic mega collection but worse”

”oh these new rush games are fun and fas-AHH I HATE THIS NEW NEXT GEN GAME”

 

Unleashed was basically Jesus for the franchise 

[Tracker_TD]

8 minutes ago, A Peep said:

Unleashed was basically Jesus for the franchise 

Personally speaking, for me the worst period was around 2014 when Boom basically took over the franchise for a bit. At that point I just dipped out and went full on into Hatsune Miku hell. Not even because I particularly hate Boom as a concept, but Rise of Lyric didn't grab me for reasons that soon became obvious. 

...but then Mania happened, so hell yeah. 

[Wraith]

From like 2012 until now, personally speaking. There are a lot of Sonic games that just don't even Ignite my curiosity or hold me long enough to keep playing.

I was too young to care when the franchise went into a critical tailspin and still put in dozens of hours on games like Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic and the Secret Rings. I can't imagine doing that for Lost World and Forces both because my tastes in games have changed a lot since then and I don't even find them as ambitious or interesting as games like Shadow anyway. 

[Rabid-Coot]

June 23 1991 - now.

[Myst]

I've been around this franchise since the beginning. 1995-1998 were the worst years for Sonic, period. 

Both Sonic cartoons had been cancelled and Ken Penders was running amok with the Archie comic. 

The 3D era had come and while Mario had a big hit with the N64, Sega had abandoned Sonic for the Saturn, with the exceptions of some rereleases (Sonic Jam) a clunky racer that looked terrible even by 1997 standards (Sonic R) and a port of 3D Blast.

Underground came and mostly flew under the radar since Sonic's popularity was at an all-time low.

Sonic Adventure breathed new life into the franchise in 1999 and while there were a few misteps, (Shuffle, 06, Shadow) Sonic still was going strong, thanks in part to Sonic X's popularity and the fact that Sonic was now able to reach wider audiences on the GBA, DS and GameCube.

The second 'dark age' for Sonic in my opinion, came in 2010 with Sonic Colors. and the juvenile, goofy writing by Pontac and Graff (and the annoying new characters OrBot and CuBot) Lost World continued to go in an infantile route, pandering to younger audiences. I enjoyed the Boom TV show, though. 

Sonic's.. In an okay spot right now. I like the IDW comics and I'm looking forward to the movie. More merchandising shows Sonic is gaining popularity again. Haven't played Mania or Forces.

[DabigRG]

"Whatever the current period happens to be at any given time."

[Solister]

I would say Boom (2014-2016) because it was the time when I started following Sonic religiously. But would say Sonic lives from high and lows since it's begging

• Classic Era (1991-1998): SEGA lived the highs (1991-1994) with the success of Sonic 1. It stayed alongside Sonic 2, CD and 3 & Knuckles. Dropped in the transition to 3D and cancellation of X-Treme. Things like Labyrinth happened in that period (1995-1998).
• 3D Transition (1998-2007): With a formal transition to 3D with Sonic Adventure, the game had its glory but Adventure 2 and Heroes went sorta mixed (1998-2003). Later things like Shadow and Sonic 2006 happened on what many says it was the bottom of the series (2003-2007).
• 7th Generation (2008- 2013) Passed the re-boot fail, and As you said, with Sonic Unleashed (And might add Colors and Generations concreting the idea), the series stayed established until late 2000's (2007-2013).
• Boom (2014-2016): Lost World came with mixed reviews and now we went to a period I have vivid memories of. Moments after of Lost World (Or even in the development of the game, if my memory don't fail), leaks of a possible Spin-Off and redesign pop-ed in the internet. Then, badly approved, Sonic Boom ROL was released. Many thought SEGA was crazy letting things like that being approved and a massing investment on it (Toys, TV Series and etc.). Specially that, with all hate, a sequel for 3Ds was announced (Which wasn't that bad at all, but completely forgotten by the low performance of the sub-series as well everyone already was with their eyes only in Mania.
• Mania, Forces, TSR and Present (Mid 2016-Present): With the series in a low and the near 25th birthday of the hedgehog, SEGA made what many still think the best announce of the series. A new 2D Classic Sonic game made by fans, for the fans. With that, many forgot or really wasn't caring what just happened with the series, it was classic, dude! And that what many just wanted to mind. Still then, Forces went a bit mixed too and TSR was pretty ok, despite many saying was just a update on SASRT.

Wouldn't say the series will suffer some kind of re-boot soon, but I think something big/good might be on the way, despite we haven't reached the bottom at this era. People already mention (And I don't doubt at all) in a 30th anniversary game, but I don't think we can live just celebrating birthdays. But who knows? I just think will take way more time to main line games be released with these advanced technologies.

[Johnster4]

For me it's from 2009-currently.

• Every game from that point besides Generations and Mania has been try to appeal to people who aren't sonic fans, with Colours, Boom, & Forces appealing to casuals and Lost World appealing to Mario fans.
• Story's and character development having the lack to depth compared to the adventure games but instead being replace with joke's that they expect only young kids to laugh at, I'm not asking for Kojima or Yoko taro to write a Sonic Story and over complicate thing but the current writer's need to do better to make us care about the story and characters.
• The dumbing down of Sonic Team games, having linear level design become too obvious, less and less 3D platforming, & less of a challenge, and having less content and replay value.
• If you look at the quality of Sonic games from 2009 to now  you can see that the Sonic series at this point has been relegated to a budget series when Sonic is suppose to be the Mascot of SEGA.

[Menace2Society]

Personally for me, I'll go with 2005 - 2006, because Shadow and 06 were just that fucking atrocious (Boom: Rise of Lyric was just really boring if you asked me), but honestly? You could potentially make an argument for almost every other period in the series. The series is such inconsistent mess in terms of quality that you can probably point out major missteps even within the series' better periods without much issue. The series is seriously begging for a full-on reboot at this point.

[Tornado]

Sonic R was a much better looking game than MK64, which was the game Sega was shooting for. DKR looked better, certainly (and both of them played far better), but most games on any of the three platforms didn't look as good as DKR.

[Diogenes]

It's kinda more like, what periods have actually not been bad for Sonic. Whenever it manages to have a couple of good games it ends up shooting itself in the foot soon after.

If I had to pick a "worst", I'd have to say the mid-00's. I don't think anything has done more damage to the series than the one-two punch of Shadow and '06. By that point they had broken everything about 3D Sonic gameplay that had ever worked and made a complete joke out of the story and characters, and sometimes it feels like every bad decision since has been either directly or indirectly a response to that period.

[Multikaris]

Any of the outright lulls the series has had, like the one from 2015-2017. It was a period of nothing but mobile titles, alternate media, cameos, etc, that ended with the end of a lot of those (Archie had the license yanked from them, GE let it expire, and Boom was shunted off to die). RoL, in fact, was so bad that this lull was feared to be the end.

 

Special mention to this very year, as it has been yet another dry spell, with the movie as the biggest thing on the horizon...

[Razule]

I think everyone can agree that the darkest period was between 1991 and 2019. Maybe all of it, maybe not, but definitely somewhere in there.

[Cayenne]

Another vote for 2005-2006. Sonic had some bad games before, but none of them damaged Sega's reputation and the franchise so much like Shadow the Hedgehog, GBA Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic 06 did. To add to the injury, 2 of these bad games were released in the year of Sonic's 15th birthday.

I usually see fans complaining about 06 (and sometimes Shadow) still being mocked on the internet after 13 years, but if there's one thing I've learned is that the internet doesn't forget big blunders so easily. Nintendo's current reputation didn't stop the Youtube Poops and video edits with cutscenes of the horrid Phillips CD-i games, for example.

[Spooky Mulder]

I'd say Lost World to the present. We had one broken attempt to revitalize the franchise followed by a years-long break ended by one of the worst produced games in the series. Oh plus a failed spinoff!

Sonic Forces has really spooked me about the franchise. After that long, there's no excuses for why SF reused so many assets from the previous two games while having even lazier level design.

Mania has been a great silver lining in this dark age, but it's not apparent yet whether it will actually change the direction of the main series. Even if it does, I'll still probably look back on the 2013-2019 period as the worst for the franchise in my life. Yeah Heroes-Secret Rings was bad but hey at least they were releasing games back then.

[dbzfan7]

2014-2017. The era about Boom and just before Neo Classic Sonic age. Was my living hell for the Sonic series. Everything it stood for then I hated, and everything I liked was mocked for being bad. Was about to fuck off this franchise til Sonic Mania reminded me to care again. 

[Tarnish]

2005-today and still going.

[Stephen Rodriguez]

I'd say that the first worst period was 2005-2009. Heroes (2003-2004) got some polarizing reviews, but I don't think it really damaged the franchise's rep as much as some of the games that came after it. Shadow, '06, and Sonic 1 GBA failed hard that they washed Sonic's reputation down the drain. It didn't even help that Sonic GBA and Sonic '06 were both released to comemmorate the series 15th anniversary. The Werehog half of Sonic Unleashed didn't seem to do much to stop the Internet from trashing Sonic, despite the daytime levels getting praise from most fans. Secret Rings and Black Knight's stories and wonky controls also didn't help either.

Generally, those four years weren't very kind to Sonic. Ironically though, that part of the 2000s was when the online fan community was also at its biggest and greatest thanks to YouTube, and plus we did get the Sonic Rush games (which are two of my favorite 2D games in the series) maybe that's why I feel so nostalgic for that period of Sonic despite what happened with the series. 

The second worst period was from 2013 to 2017. The series was back on its feet with All Stars Racing, Colors, Generations, and All Stars Racing Transformed all getting generally positive reviews, and things looked pretty good for Sonic. But then that changed when Lost World was released and got average to mediocre reviews. I didn't think the game was that bad, but I played the 3DS version and was underwhelmed by it. Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystals were both panned, Fire & Ice was more divisive, and Runners, despite having good gameplay, was a commercial flop and was bought down by pay-to-play elements and a bunch of pop up ads. Archie also ended up losing the licensing to the Sonic comics.

Thank God Mania managed to restore a lot of goodwill towards the series, although it does annoy me that several reviews of the game kept pushing the notion that every Sonic game released after the Genesis era (or almost all of them) was met with utter disappointment, which isn't even true in the slightest. Yes, this series has had some missteps over the years, but come on, you don't need to make the series look a whole lot worse than it really is.

So yeah, that's my response on this topic. I think Sonic is doing alright at the moment. Yes, we did get Forces, but then there's Mania Plus, the IDW comics, and Team Sonic Racing (even if it got overshadowed by CTRNF and was thought to be inferior to the last two racing games, but reviews were still overall positive at best and mixed at worst). We're also about to get a new Mario and Sonic game that's already getting a lot of positive feedback, so that's pretty nice. Here's hoping that the next mainline game actually makes things right.

 

 

[MetalSkulkBane]

Yaaay, Sonic self-flagellation topic. *takes a shot*

And quite pointless at that, Shadow and 06 are and always will be the moment where franchise broke. The quality of games is almost ignorable comparing to damage the did. No latter game did more damage to our reputation, it's downfall caused the drastic shift in tone and split of the fandom. Who knows, maybe Classic/Modern split wouldn't be as strong as is now, if 90s kids didn't want to cut themselves from latter games. Case closed.

....and yet there are things I liked from that period. I like Silver and Mephiles or Shadow in 06. Heck, Flynn took over the Archie in 2006. If only from story perspective, there are few positives for me in that period. Plus, I re-joined the fandom around 2012, I missed the outrage. So when I played 06 for fist time, I knew the backlash and my opinion could only go up.
So for me it's more like the 2 worst moments rather that period. 1 Rise of Lyric 2 Cancellation of Archie
Again, 06 left permanent scar, but I joined right after Generation. "At least Sega learned" I though. But quality and style of writing wasn't for me, and Forces aside (yes, I call it improvement) it stays like this till now. And then RoL came out and I learned 2 horrible things
1 That Sega officially didn't learned and will never learn. Mania was better, Forces was (gameplay wise) worst, so we can never trust them again to keep Sonic good. it may take 10 years or 20, but another 06/RoL will happen.
2 That backlash was still smaller then for 06. 06 tried, it had ambition, scope. It had few good things. But it also had hedgehog kissed by a human, so it's made by Satan. RoL feels almost soulless, but that makes it 'inoffensive' and gets a (comparatively ) small hate.
So that kinda broke me forever, but at least I had Archie Sonic, Sonic Universe, Mega Man and even Boom tittle. Maybe after they close it, they'll change it to Shadow book. And there are talks about Mega Man X, awesome. And then everything dies.

And those few months after RoL and Archie but before announcement of IDW, Forces and Mania were probably the worst time for me.

[Marco9966]

2011 to today of course.

During this period SEGA buried a great and intricate storyline of mysteries and mythologies like Chaos, Shadow, Gizoid, Master Emerald, connecting SA1 to Shadow The Hedgehog.

[Red Hot Jack]

Both '06 and Boom were epic failures, and losses for SEGA so I'm going with that. 2014 definitely wasn't a good period for Sonic.

[Dr Ryan]

Around 2014 for me. All I remember is awful Boom games and crap mobile games being about all we had? Basically around then until Mania got announced.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

From Lost World until now personally. I have played most Sonic games until I met Secret Rings and it’s the first game I couldn’t finish. Secret Rings to me was a blip, as I even managed to finish Black Knight.

Then came Lost World. The 2nd Sonic game I couldn’t finish because I was bored. Then Boom. OMG, it gets worse.

Sonic Mania was alright, I never fell in love with Sonic in his 2D era...but I was eyeing on Sonic Forces. I thought this is the game. PS4’s first real Sonic title and I thought after all these years of wait will return with a top draw game.

I was wrong. Disappointed beyond belief. How could they feck up Forces that bad. Honestly? I enjoyed ‘06 better than Forces, 06 is a terrible game overall but I had fun with it. Forces not so much.

And for TSR, well. It’s the worst Sonic Racing game I have played. R, All-Stars Racing and Transformed were way better than this game.

Everything now is just half-assed. Unleashed is still the last Sonic game with a huge storyline with full CGI cutscenes. The quality of Sonic games has dipped since then. Even though we had good games like Generations, Colors etc. the extra effort found in Unleashed wasn’t found in these titles.

I have came to the conclusion that Sonic is slowly dying now. If TSR was released last year originally, this would have been another year without Sonic. And if I was a betting gal, I bet there will be no Sonic game in 2020 either, except for that Mario and Sonic game (if you want to call that a Sonic title).

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, Ming Ming Hatsune said:

From Lost World until now personally. I have played most Sonic games until I met Secret Rings and it’s the first game I couldn’t finish. Secret Rings to me was a blip, as I even managed to finish Black Knight.

Then came Lost World. The 2nd Sonic game I couldn’t finish because I was bored. Then Boom. OMG, it gets worse.

Sonic Mania was alright, I never fell in love with Sonic in his 2D era...but I was eyeing on Sonic Forces. I thought this is the game. PS4’s first real Sonic title and I thought after all these years of wait will return with a top draw game.

I was wrong. Disappointed beyond belief. How could they feck up Forces that bad. Honestly? I enjoyed ‘06 better than Forces, 06 is a terrible game overall but I had fun with it. Forces not so much.

And for TSR, well. It’s the worst Sonic Racing game I have played. R, All-Stars Racing and Transformed were way better than this game.

Everything now is just half-assed. Unleashed is still the last Sonic game with a huge storyline with full CGI cutscenes. The quality of Sonic games has dipped since then. Even though we had good games like Generations, Colors etc. the extra effort found in Unleashed wasn’t found in these titles.

I have came to the conclusion that Sonic is slowly dying now. If TSR was released last year originally, this would have been another year without Sonic. And if I was a betting gal, I bet there will be no Sonic game in 2020 either, except for that Mario and Sonic game (if you want to call that a Sonic title).

There is the IDW comic and animated shorts. The horizon has been so apocalyptic since the end of the Boom show, though. TSR didn't know if it wanted to be Riders or ASR, and it ended up being Drift.

[Iko]

Every era of Sonic had its own good things.

Even in the mid 2000s, with Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06, there were some nice handheld games (Advance series and Rush series), and the franchise was very popular.

The Adventure games/Heroes had mediocre to bad gameplay with glitches and automation, but they were creative games, with nice settings, interesting stories and all; even if the gameplay was not the best, they were very enjoyable for different reasons.

For me, the worst period started with Sonic Generations. Generations is enjoyable, yeah, but it's just Unleashed with nostalgia zones and no story. The world of the game is literally a white empty space. While I have been able to enjoy all of those games, they still don't compare to the stuff that came out in the classic and adventure "era", and all of those games played very safe on nostalgia and working elements from past games rather than innovation (excluding Lost World that tried to innovate but didn't work that well).

Now, with Sonic Team not being Sonic Team anymore, and all the bashing the recent games have got, the franchise lost popularity and reputation, and the only Sonic-related things that have a bit of success are glorified remake of the classics and a bunch of mobile games with microtransactions, that focus on addict the players and persuade them to spend money on microtransactions (even with unfair trick such as make you lose unfairly or simulate hackers/problems that don't exsist only to make you lose points and want to play again/upgrade your stuff with real money) rather than on offering a nice experience.

Not to mention the Sonic Movie and the S*** that came out of the character design.

The worst period of Sonic is definitely now, from Generations to now, we have yet to find a way out of this nightmare.