Highs and lows of Sonic in the 2010s

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

Because why not. Personally, I'm going to limit myself to 3 biggest high points (in my opinion) and 3 biggest low points (in my opinion), and others can follow that too if you want to, but you don't have to.

High Points

For me and probably millions of others, two of the biggest high points of this decade Sonic-wise were Sonic Mania and Sonic Mania Adventures. I don't think I even need to explain why.

Personally, I'm also going to list the Archie Sonic reboot as a highlight, and I'll explain why. The Ian Flynn era of Archie in general was great and probably one of my favorite pieces of Sonic media, but thanks to lawsuits and fun like that, it eventually became wracked by legal issues. Impressively, Flynn and the team managed to make lemonade out of these lemons by giving us a reworking of the Archie continuity that, while deprived of many years of continuity and characters established by the comics, made good use out of Western media lore and little-known classic elements while also being much more in line with the games. All this was backed up by writing and artwork that was usually excellent and some solid redesigns and reworkings for classic western characters. I'm not saying that Archie Sonic being rebooted and losing all those years of continuity was completely a good thing, because it definitely wasn't. A lot was lost and there's no way to replace a rich continuity built up over twenty years. But at the same time, I won't deny that there's also a positive side to a lot of baggage being shed because most of us know that for many years, Archie Sonic was a bit...nutty and just bad, and it's definitely not entirely a bad thing to have a lot of that weird stuff excised from continuity. It wasn't perfect, it had its low points and flaws too (cough cough...WORLDS UNITE...), but overall there's a lot to love.

Low Points

I think from an "objective" perspective, the biggest low point was Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. I never played it myself (a fact which I have no particular interest in changing), but there's no arguing that releasing a game that has been compared to Sonic 06 in terms of badness is not a good thing.

On a personal level, what I personally consider the biggest low point of the 2010s may seem rather bizarre and extremely minor to some, but to me, it genuinely makes me have a much lower interest in any current or future official Sonic projects other than Mania follow-ups. It essentially is a significant factor that makes me consider myself more of a fan of past Sonic media than someone who's that interested in Sonic's present or future. And that is Sonic Forces establishing Classic Sonic as being Sonic from another dimension rather than the past.

I don't want to spend too long explaining why something so seemingly small makes such a huge difference to me because honestly I don't want to get myself too worked up. But let me explain it this way. "The Principle and the Pauper" is one of the most hated Simpsons episodes ever for revealing that the Seymour Skinner viewers had been following for years was an imposter. To me, the idea that Modern Sonic, aka the Sonic who we've been following for decades, is not the same person as Classic Sonic, the original Sonic, is essentially saying that he's an imposter. So it stings to me as much as that episode would for Simpsons fans...except in this case, it's not just a side character who's an imposter. It's the main character of the franchise. Actually, it's every character who exists both in the Classic and Modern era who are now essentially "imposters"!

Now, there are circumstances in which it's justified to split off different incarnations of characters as being from different dimensions. For example, the Golden Age Superman and the Silver Age Superman have many irreconcilable differences in terms of personality and background, so it makes sense (though I'll always be annoyed that Golden Age is "Earth-2" even though it came first). But with Sonic, no such thing is remotely necessary because he doesn't have much backstory and his personality, while always in flux, has not undergone any changes radical enough to justify something like this (especially when you consider that in the classic era, he didn't have much dialogue in the games and a lot of his personality was informed by manuals, marketing and non-games media). Heck, Sonic's classic and modern designs don't even LOOK that different! They have to give Classic Sonic a lighter fur color he was rarely actually depicted with just to make him look more different from Modern Sonic!

Beyond this, though, what I hate about this "retcon" (or whatever it is) is that it cheapens both the Modern Sonic and Classic Sonic. As I explained before, Modern Sonic is no longer the same person as the original Sonic, and as for Classic Sonic, he gets demoted to essentially being a side character in his own series. And both of them lose each other's legacies. It's just making both Sonics weaker.

To me, there are no advantages to splitting Sonic into two and plenty of disadvantages. It just makes Sega seem really incompetent and full of bad ideas when it comes to their direction for the series. It's just plain stupid, and honestly, it's a bit upsetting to me on an emotional level for the same reason that I imagine "The Principle and the Pauper" was upsetting. Some may find it cringey, but it's inevitable that when you're a fan of a series for many years, you form a "relationship" of sorts with its characters. Now my "relationship" with Sonic is fractured because, to put it plainly, he's not who I thought he was. It's just awful to me and until Sega throws this bullcrap into the garbage bin, my interest in any future or present Sonic media is GREATLY reduced.

My third and final lowpoint of the 2010s is also a really big deal to me, and it's Archie Sonic ending. Just like the previous low point, I could easily go on and on about why I hate this so much, but I'll try to keep it relatively quick. It's no secret that for many years, Archie Sonic was bad. Real, real bad. But instead of ending the series when it was a furry soap opera or when Knuckles turned into a green demigod for over a year, they instead chose to end it when it was really good and closer to the games than ever before. That irony by itself is almost bitter enough to earn it a place on this list, and I already have established that I love the Archie Sonic reboot, so that should for the most part explain why this event was so terrible to me. But there's also the fact that the cancellation was so horribly dragged on and so shamefully unceremonious. There's the fact that there's something inherently sad that such an old and continuous part of Sonic's history being axed in such a matter. And of course, there's the fact that the last official presence of the western lore of Sonic is gone. To some, this is a cause of celebration, but not to me and many others. To some, the Freedom Fighters and such were just lame vestiges of a bygone era, but you have to keep in mind that these characters had been appearing continuously in Archie Sonic for twenty years. Love them or hate them, they weren't insignificant and many people had gotten very attached to them. Heck, I'm not even a truly "die-hard" fan of the Freedom Fighters and sometimes got annoyed by them being more important than Sega characters, but I still consider it an utter tragedy that they are likely gone forever. Maybe they'll appear in IDW, but honestly, personally, my hopes aren't that high.

I feel like I need to spend a moment on why I don't consider IDW Sonic a suitable replacement for Archie Sonic. Honestly, I've never read IDW Sonic. And a big part of the reason why is that it's forced to follow Sega's current continuity and ideas for Sonic, including the awful idea that I just spent several paragraphs complaining about - the idea that Classic Sonic is "Sonic from another dimension". I'm not sure if that's ever explicitly mentioned, but I know the comic takes place after Sonic Forces, and I've heard that mandates prevent any Classic Sonic concepts from being involved in the comics. That's enough to essentially establish it as being the case in the comic, and that's enough to make me not want to read it. And in general, I'm just plain more interested in Classic Sonic concepts and western media concepts than I am in the Modern Sonic "continuity" (which has been so poorly handled by Sega that the word "continuity" barely even fits), so a series based on the premise of "only Modern Sonic stuff allowed" is a hard sell for me. So all-in-all, I'm just not that interested in IDW Sonic. It's not so much a problem with the comic itself as it is a problem with Sega's current direction for Sonic that to me, infects everything they touch.

---

So that's my list. Most of that post was paragraph after paragraph of complaining about things that probably don't seem that significant. Oh well.

[Sean]

I'll make a proper response later, but right now I wanna say I fully agree with your hatred of the modern/classic split and your post has articulated it better than I could have. The reason why I hate it is because up until recently, nobody was aware of modern Sonic being a continuity reboot of the classic era. Anyone following the series for any amount of time reasonably assumed that it was all the same series and the only things sectioning off the current games from the old ones were the basic gameplay and the character designs. If Sega had been more upfront about this, and I mean REALLY upfront about it by going on immediate record around SA1's release that this was meant to be a fresh start for the series (as opposed to some of us simply assuming it to be the case) then maybe it would have smoothed over better, but the idea of rebooting the series at all was dumb in the first place, so I don't like it either way even if Sega could have handled it better. Mania is considered a "side" game by some even though was the main damn gameplay of the series in the 90s, imagine if they made a Sonic Adventure 3 that was regarded as a spin-off to the other 3D Sonic game that came out that same year. It'd be ridiculous.

[Kuzu]

I wish I could be as upset about the whole dimension stuff, and don't get me wrong, it's fucking stupid. But I'm so disengaged with this series that I find it difficult to get upset about it. Especially since I know its only used as an excuse to justify for Classic Sonic merch in the future,. 

[Big Panda]

While I would indeed consider the Archie reboot a high-point, I would also, simultaneously, consider the actual end of the old continuity a low point.

The plot threads the original continuity had going on at the time were some of the most interesting the series had had; King Naugus, Geoffrey St. John finally becoming an interesting character, the break-up of the Freedom Fighters, and the state of Silver’s future. Not to mention all the new details revealed in the official encyclopedia that were ripe for exploration.

I remember being among the Archie fandom this time seven years ago: just before Christmas, the second chapter of the long-anticipated “Endangered Species” arc had just come out. After the troubling amount of last-minute dialogue edits in part 1, part 2 saw the arc completely hijacked by legal hassles that very suddenly took the story in a completely different direction. The echidnas, a fan-favourite of the Archie community, were unceremoniously dumped into another dimension off-screen, and the fans waited out the remaining two chapters hoping that *maybe* they’d come back (spoiler: they didn’t), making for a very somber end to one of the comics most noteworthy concepts. The Sonic Universe arc happening concurrently, “Chaotix Quest”, faired a little better at least. Last-minute Rob’O expy notwithstanding. After that, every lingering plot thread was erased from existence, with no closure.

The fandom shift that came about was pretty damn huge too. Many who were attached to the old canon and couldn’t deal with the change jumped ship, with new fans coming in to take their place. Sure, both the comic and the fandom recovered in the end, but it was one hell of a bumpy ride.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

My high point is definitely Generations. I think that marked the game where I really enjoyed a Sonic game in a long time. I remember the pre-release hype, and remembering following the news coming out on the game every single day. I loved seeing what got datamined, and hacks on YouTube showing off Modern Sonic's level during that 20th Anniversary demo we got that only allowed access to Classic Sonic's Green Hill stage. I just remember being so hyped for the game, being super excited for the level reveals, and loving the game when it released.

I'd throw my hat into the ring with my low point being with Classic's appearance in Forces as well. Your post describes perfectly one of the major reasons - I hate the Classic/Modern split. Two worlds was one thing, but retroactively changing Classic/Modern like that, as if the entire modern series was some kind of cancer that just had to be cut away from the Classic part of the series was just annoying as hell to me, especially since I grew up with the tailend of the Dreamcast era with Heroes, and played basically everything Modern wise, and it's utterly pointless because the Classic games have their own fair share of clunkers that aren't really good either. 

That said, that's the first part of the reason I hate Classic Sonic in Forces, but the other part is that it somewhat empathised to me how soulless things had managed to get between 2011, and 2017, and on top of that - killed a lot of the good will Mania garnered months earlier. It was the point to me where it showed me how absolutely and utterly aimless SEGA was with nostalgia pandering bullshit, despite how absolutely and utterly damaging it can be to the game from a story and gameplay standpoint. 

Classic Sonic in Generations comes off as a well-meaning love letter to the history of Sonic, and plays fairly well. Not 1:1 to the Classic games, but well enough that he is a ton of fun to play with. He works the one time because he presents a gimmick that's actually very clever and was well integrated into the game.

But as the Boom initiative ended up dying, and Lost World ended up failing, SEGA went back to Generations and took the absolute worst things you could possibly take from it to try revive the series. They bring back the Boost mechanics, but don't bother with any actual decent level design for it. Generations and Unleashed primarily got away with it by making you have to replay levels and earn better rewards through them. You can get through a level quickly enough if you take a lower path, sure, but you need to have good reflexes and good split second decision making in order to get to higher pathways, and better rewards and secrets. But in Forces, it's just...nothing, there's barely any hidden paths, the levels are utterly short, where at least Generations started ramping up the level length by the time you got to Rooftop Run and especially Planet Wisp.

But even at that, nothing shows it off more than Classic Sonic. What was a well-meaning love letter six years prior is now an terrible gimmick haphazardly thrown in for no good reason other than to nostalgia pander, and the levels reflect it with it. Green Hill is back again, and now it's dusty, Chemical Plant is back, again, and now it's snowy, Death Egg is back, again, and it's the same as ever. It's all just level revamps yet again for no good reason, and to make it worse, it was months after Mania already released with the level revisits and remixes, and did it fifty times better than Forces could hope to do. 

To me, the game shined strongest when it tried to do it's own thing, and gave levels stunning visuals. Like Egg Gate, the majority of the level is a boring Death Egg level, sure, but then you get outside, and you're greeted with this utterly stunning visual of Sonic rail-grinding in space, as Earth is shining in the background, and Eggman's security bots are flying around the place trying to stop you, it has heavy vibes of Final Rush in SA2 but it actually works this time because it's the first time we get to see a full technical upgrade for that kind of level. 

And the thing to me is I don't even mind as much bringing back the levels if they served a purpose. Chemical Plant, to me anyway - despite being a reuse works fairly well because the new snowy area works to show off how the place has become inactive, and become a storage base for Eggman and his forces more than anything else, but even then, Modern and Classic Sonic gets rid of that vibe entirely by making you run through Chemical Plant exactly how it's usually depicted, except neither do anywhere near as good a job as Gens or Mania did prior. Grand Metropolis to me is a lot more boring than it was in Heroes, comparatively speaking, but at least it's a reused level that wasn't used before.

Luminous Forest to me shows it off best how I really wish SEGA would've stuck to their guns and worked with original stuff more than bringing back older levels. Yes, it's a reuse of the casino trope that's usually depicted in Sonic, but it uses it with a completely different twist that gives it a huge spark of life. You've got Sonic dashing through a darkened forest surrounded by rivers and water slides, and broken ruins, that's been lit up and glamoured up by Eggman deciding to make a massive casino base in the middle of the whole thing. I really wish we could've gotten more like this. It's probably the one level trope in the whole game to me that stands out among the other fairly bleak level tropes, or reused tropes.

But even all that said - I could get over the reused levels. I don't think they're great, and I think it would've been much better used if they were changed up a ton to empathise Eggman's rule - instead of minor stuff like Green Hill being filled with sand, or Chemical Plant basically being the exact same for Classic/Modern's levels, but whatever.

But Classic Sonic is just the worst part of the game. He's a needless, boring addition that feels like a afterthought, and a chore to play as. As if he wasn't at all planned to be present, only for SEGA to force him in at the eleventh hour. He harms the game in so many ways. His gameplay is awful, the mechanics and physics have been so badly messed up that he somehow slows down from running straight down a hill - the infamous slope at the beginning of his Chemical Plant level requires you running down it in a very specific way, and doing a spindash as well to simply get enough speed to go up a small slope at the end to reach a shortcut, and it is so inconsistent that it makes S-ranking the stage a nightmare. The music in his stages are an awful attempt at replicating the music found in Genesis games, and there is such a huge misunderstanding of what made the Classic soundtracks so good that it's not even funny, and it's definitely not helped by Mania releasing a few months prior and having one of the best soundtracks in the entire series.

Then we get to the story, where Classic Sonic barely has an effect on anything. Tails ends up losing a lot of his agency and having a pretty confused story in order to justify Classic's appearance, because they needed someone for Classic to travel with for awhile, which means Tails had to be separated from Sonic, and the other resistance members to justify it. You can basically write Classic Sonic out of the game, and barely anything of a difference would be made. He's randomly plopped into the game thanks to the Phantom Ruby, and he's randomly gone again, thanks to the Phantom Ruby.

I don't know, maybe it wouldn't feel like such a low point if Generations and Mania hadn't released prior to it and done this concept a whole lot better. But they did, and they did it in a way that felt well-made, well-crafted, and had active effort in making Classic Sonic and everything that comes with him feel important. Gens had a reason for him to be there, and had good gameplay that felt like it was a core part of the game, as opposed to an afterthought, while Mania was lovingly crafted by long-time fans of the series, filled with in-jokes, references, and coupled it with great new characters, great level remixes, fun new level tropes, possibly the best Classic gameplay in the series to date, and a brilliant soundtrack on top of it. 
Forces took the bright spot that Mania gave the series, and just somewhat dimmed it. I don't know if I'd say it was enough to kill the goodwill Mania garnered, but it definitely didn't help when Mania was getting love from tons and tons of reviewers, and fans alike, and then it all died back down again after Forces came out less than six months later.

Do I think removing Classic Sonic, and all of the classic-pandering nonsense from Forces would've fixed every problem? Absolutely not. There's problems that are at the core of Forces, three out of four years of the development period was squandered developing Hedgehog Engine 2, and getting core ideas for the game down on paper. It was being created by the guy who came out with Colours, which is one of the other controversial games in the series in terms of level design, and on top of everything else, it was being worked on with the majority of team members being new and likely inexperienced IIRC. 

I do think at the very least, removing Classic from Forces would tightened the story up, and allowed more time for polishing Modern/Avatar's gameplay, and helped not make his inclusion just feel so utterly soulless, as well as not leaving a black mark on Mania's ending by forcing it to tie into Forces by the end, as well as not causing an needless and bad split between Classic/Modern. 

[Multikaris]

The decade started very strong with Sonic clearing its mind of needless concepts with Colors and Generations, but then it never quite did anything from there, instead adding worse concepts in Lost World, before attempting to recuperate. Archie was on the right foot for quite some time. Well, Mania was fun, I guess? There's stuff like comics and shorts? Forces was an honest attempt to return to form, even if it felt short. Half of the music this decade has worked well, too. 

 

I could sum up the lows in song:

 

(to the tune of "They'll Never Stop the Simpsons")

Pendergate, Sonic Boom,

Donut stage, Deadly Six,

McNosehair, Gacha wheel,

Giant tarp, Archie died,

Hooters stuff, Jazwares toys break

Storm gets a toy before Blaze

Jazwares cancelled, Tomy steps in

And soon after Jakks-Pacific

ASRT guests are bupkis

Blaze is not in Sonic Forces

Nor even in SEGA Heroes

Why’d they listen to the critics

IGN, Game Informer, and more

Sega Forums goin’ down

 

 

[Pengi]

15 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

(to the tune of "They'll Never Stop the Simpsons")

We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

[Almar]

Classic Sonic getting dumped into another dimension is extra bad considering how there's actually no difference between him and Adventure One's Sonic in personality. Just compare the OVA's Sonic with Adventure One's Sonic.

It frankly makes you wonder if ST is a little too influenced by fanon/meme interpretations, not in a good way anyway. It'd especially work for Two-Worlds too considering the "what what how did sonic end up around humans (eggman doesn't count he's special) ugh elise go planet of the furries" crowd.

[TheOcelot]

The most significant low-point in this decade which finished with an amazing high-point started with Sonic 4 and finished with Mania.

I'm not a fan of Sonic 4 (which I've made perfectly clear countless times on this forum), but I am grateful it exists, because I'm firmly in the belief we never would have gotten Sonic Mania (with the amazing amount of love, care & attention and it's deserved success) if it wasn't for Sonic 4 and the massive backlash which ensude.

Whilst Sonic 4 Ep1 was everything I didn't want in a hyperthetical sequel to the classics, if it wasn't for SEGA deciding to bring back Metal Sonic-teasing his return at the end of ep1, we never would have gotten a new release of Sonic CD (as SEGA wanted to link Sonic CD to Sonic 4's backstory). What was originally gonna be a crappy emulation/port gave Taxman (Christian Whitehead) the chance to show-off his Sonic CD mobile proof of concept, which led to the release of the definitive version of this game (improved physics, 16:9 widescreen, unlockable Tails). Then we got Sonic 4 Ep2 which was an improvement over ep1 but still flawed. Taxman who obviously made a good impression with SEGA for his work on the CD remaster then teamed up with Stealth to make the mobile remasters of Sonic 1 (with unlockable Tails & Knuckles) & Sonic 2 (Boss Rush mode & Hidden Palace reimagined etc). Then submitted the 3K proof of concept which was not taken up by SEGA and then they got the chance to make Sonic Mania in 2017. Thanks to Mania's success they then got the chance in 2018 to add missing/scrapped content with a new release along with a gorgeous physical release, and the brillaint Sonic Mania Adventures created to help promote Sonic Mania Plus and the three or four Mania Adventures extended remixes done by Tee & Jun.

So for me as a classic fan, the decade started with a terrible low point (classic Sonic's gameplay in Gens not being much better than Sonic 4's didn't help either), and ended on such a high with Mania's success.

Whilst classic Sonic ended the decade on a high, Modern Sonic has gone in the opposite direction. What started well with Colour & Gens (which is considered a decent game even though I'm not it's biggest fan), went down-hill with SLW, Rise of Lyric (which could have been a decent game if SEGA hadn't fucked over Big Red Button who developed it) and Sonic Forces which was meh at best. Team Sonic Racing was at least decent and I like the Overdrive animated shorts. 

 

 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

16 minutes ago, Almar said:

Classic Sonic getting dumped into another dimension is extra bad considering how there's actually no difference between him and Adventure One's Sonic in personality. Just compare the OVA's Sonic with Adventure One's Sonic.

It frankly makes you wonder if ST is a little too influenced by fanon/meme interpretations, not in a good way anyway. It'd especially work for Two-Worlds too considering the "what what how did sonic end up around humans (eggman doesn't count he's special) ugh elise go planet of the furries" crowd.

Yeah, honestly whenever I look at Sonic Forces' cover and see Classic Sonic there, it's just so cringeworthy to me, like it's one of those old Sonic fan comics or other low-quality Sonic fan material where Classic Sonic is portrayed as a separate character. Even as a kid, I thought that was silly because it's obviously the same character. And Sega chooses to follow that ridiculous idea...

[Multikaris]

6 minutes ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

Yeah, honestly whenever I look at Sonic Forces' cover and see Classic Sonic there, it's just so cringeworthy to me, like it's one of those old Sonic fan comics or other low-quality Sonic fan material where Classic Sonic is portrayed as a separate character. Even as a kid, I thought that was silly because it's obviously the same character. And Sega chooses to follow that ridiculous idea...

Generations making him Past Sonic was still rather awkward, as it opens up the question of why Cream lacks those black eyes. 

[Almar]

I might have said this at some point before, but there's honestly not a huge gap between Adventure One and the Genesis Era at all. AO's only jarring for someone who's too influenced by Westernized Sonic with its Kintobors and Mobius (the already mentioned Planet of the Furries). I already pointed out how OVA Sonic's personality is really the same as Adventure One Sonic's. I'll also point out that we see Sonic running around a city with plenty of humans in Man of the Year.

My ultimate point is that there would've been no really big gap between Classic and Adventure if the character designs stayed how they were in Genesis. Station Square's honestly not that much more jarring than the city in MotY accounting for its game's graphics limits.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

7 minutes ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

Yeah, honestly whenever I look at Sonic Forces' cover and see Classic Sonic there, it's just so cringeworthy to me, like it's one of those old Sonic fan comics or other low-quality Sonic fan material where Classic Sonic is portrayed as a separate character. Even as a kid, I thought that was silly because it's obviously the same character. And Sega chooses to follow that ridiculous idea...

Being fair, I think part of the problem is that the perception of Classic Sonic has shifted in between years, at least from Sonic Team. In the OVA, he is very clearly defined a lot like Adventure!Sonic, and still holding some of the attitude of the 90s. He's heroic, but he's also someone who also wants to relax when he's not adventuring, someone who questions a lot of stuff (Namely, why should he bother to agree to work for Eggman when it's likely another scheme, especially when he's making this request while holding the president and Sara up with robots), irritable, and what have you. OVA Sonic to me at least still seems drenched in that "edgy punk" style to me.

But in recent years, Classic's moved into two personalities, which shift depending on who is writing him. You've got Hesse, who portrays him as mute, but also expressive, irritable, smug, and not in the mood to put up with crap, among other things, and you've got SEGA...who basically portray as a happy go-lucky guy, or determined. Gens plays around with it a little bit, since Classic can still have a few annoyed expressions when freeing some of Sonic's friends, such as Amy, or even a little hurt when Knuckles and Cream criticise his spines and weight, but Forces especially seems to portray Classic as mainly that. It really does feel confused because Sonic Team/SEGA seem to want to differentiate the personalities somehow by making Classic happy and/or determined/curious, while Modern Sonic has the snark and attitude, while others like Hesse write him how Classic really should be - Sonic himself, snark, attitude and all.

[Plasme]

The 2010s has been the best decade for Sonic since the 1990s. We got some great games (Generations, All Stars Racing Transformed, Mania), great extended media (Sonic Boom TV show, Hesse shorts, Sonic crossovers) and a great social media team presence. It's hard to argue against the increased quality of the franchise this decade.

However, the 2010s has also been the decade of truly awful games being released (Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric), a bunch of mediocre ones (Lost World, Sonic and Mario at Olympic Games, Forces) and long periods of radio silence on the games front. So it's been very mixed and frustraring.

I'm okay with only receiving a few great games in a franchise every decade though, what is worrying is that it's very unclear if we'll ever get another Mania or Generations. SEGA doesn't seem to care about utilising its talent well. Even the All Stars Racing games got worse because TSR was made by a completely different team.

So even though the decade has been good for Sonic, the future still looks bleak, because teams who make great Sonic games never seem to get the chance to improve on their projects.

[FReaK]

I'm gonna keep it short.

My personal High was by far Sonic Mania. I love this game so much.

My personal Low...well, anything modern Sonic since Lost World. And Sonic 4.

Lost World was terrible. everything Boom was sh*t and even Forces was so bad that I didn't even bother playing it in any way since my first playthrough..welp.

[batson]

Much like Monkey Destruction Switch, my personal biggest low of the decade is the revelation that classic and modern Sonic are different characters. It destroyed my interest in Sonic as a work of fiction.

[Marco9966]

Someone send this thread to Aaron Webber! Let him show SEGA we don't want classic Sonic as a side character in modern games!!

[Natie]

Given the acknowledgement of the 90's games still having happened in the modern timeline, I assumed the "other dimensions" thing was due to a new timeline split starting at the end of S3&K (probably so they could continue making as many classic adventures as they want) either leading into Mania or Sonic 4/Sonic Adventure. Maybe it's like Dragon Ball time travel logic and the timeline being fucked with in Generations made classic return to a now split off and separate universe lol.

[DryLagoon]

I agree about the Classic and Modern split. I think they could still have Adventures in both versions and sell Classic Sonic merch without having to say Classic Sonic is from a different dimension. I don't really get the need to split Classic and Modern characters either. Sure Shadow being in Classic for example would make no sense, but why can't the Classic characters come back in a Modern version if they wanted to? It'd be fine if they said they wanted the games casts to feel different, but it seems a bit off when some Classic characters can be used again and not others.

I really think this made the Classic and Modern split among fans even worse. I was into the Modern version more, but I always really enjoyed the side content and spinoffs for Classic too. I don't get why both can't exist at the same time as equals instead of shoving one into the other. I hope Sega can turn things around this decade as I do think it's possible to recover, but it would mean tidying up confusing plot points. I also think game wise they need to not only bring in new staff, but give those new staff time to grow. I'm not completely sure what that would involve, but I wouldn't mind something like Rush or Advance where you get the characters but it's not seen as a "core" huge title like Adventure or Forces. Not every title needs to be a giant epic, but when that title comes after a 4 year gap, it's natural fans are going to be upset.

[Plasme]

I'm not so bothered about the Classic/Modern split because I lost interest in the story of Sonic games a long time ago.

Part of it is down to age. When I played SA1 and SA2 as a kid, both games seemed to be really badass partly because I was young. By Heroes I was already outgrowing the narrative, but still enjoyed it, and by 06 was laughing at how po-faced the games had become.

However, the games have also declined gradually in writing quality for a long time now. Heroes was fun but worse than SA2, and then Shadow and 06 jumped the shark. The 'serious' writing hasn't been 'good' since SA2 and Forces shows that it's a bad avenue to take for modern Sonic Team.

Colors gets a lot of flak for making the games more tongue in cheek and comedic, but the game was like a breath of fresh air compared to what came before. It started to get predictable by Lost World and the brand took upon a self-referential humour around Generations which I find really grating and inane . Especially because there's a strange combination of self-congratulation and self-loathing mixed in it. 

When Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric came out I had lost all interest in the narrative of the games and so was already deeply disillusioned when Forces' awful story and dimension splitting took place.

And I'll be honest, for as great as Mania is, it's story presentation is awful. The levels progress with more focus on variety than narrative sense and the Titanic Monarch, while an original idea, is horribly communicated. It's totally vague and I only realised a year later that Act 1 is set outside and Act 2 inside. In fact, without the Plus update cutscenes I didn't even realise that Titanic Monarch was a huge robot station. Sonic Mania also has an absolutely terrible ending, far worse than any of the classic games.

Stories have declined so much in Sonic games that I don't really care about the continuity, because it's already shot to all hell. The only way I find the Classic/Modern split annoying is that it fragments the cast for spinoffs. Mighty and Ray couldn't be in the 'Modern' dimension TSR for example.

[LukA8]

As much as I hated Classic Sonic in Forces (and everything about the game for that matter), I always interpreted the dimension thing less as him being a different character and more as Generations changing his future by leading into Mania. It's essentially about Sega being able to make more Classic adventures independent of the modern games and contradicting their ""canon"". Modern Sonic's not an imposter because of it and still went through Sonic 1-3, and everything else wouldn't make sense considering how addicted to Green Hill & co they are.

[DabigRG]

5 minutes ago, LukA8 said:

As much as I hated Classic Sonic in Forces (and everything about the game for that matter), I always interpreted the dimension thing less as him being a different character and more as Generations changing his future by leading into Mania. It's essentially about Sega being able to make more Classic adventures independent of the modern games and contradicting their ""canon"". Modern Sonic's not an imposter because of it and still went through Sonic 1-3, and everything else wouldn't make sense considering how addicted to Green Hill & co they are.

Essentially. That's how time travel can work, especially when it happens so frequently and totally.

[Polkadi~☆]

12 minutes ago, LukA8 said:

As much as I hated Classic Sonic in Forces (and everything about the game for that matter), I always interpreted the dimension thing less as him being a different character and more as Generations changing his future by leading into Mania. It's essentially about Sega being able to make more Classic adventures independent of the modern games and contradicting their ""canon"". Modern Sonic's not an imposter because of it and still went through Sonic 1-3, and everything else wouldn't make sense considering how addicted to Green Hill & co they are.

Perhaps they could have better communicated that idea. No one in the game mentioned anything of the sort, and the conclusion was made outside of the game by Sonic fans. Sonic Team could not communicate the idea effectively and fell flat on their faces because of it. I still hold to the idea that Classic Sonic is still from the past because it's the only thing that makes sense about it all.

I have plenty of likes and dislikes about Sonic from the past decade, but character assassination and muddling what should be easily understood concepts have bothered me so much.

Still, Generations and Colours are good fun, as is Mania. Plenty of good things for Sonic has happened, with Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed being one of my favourite kart racing games. Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games is a game that I've also enjoyed a lot, with memories of Dry Bowser wiping the floor with me in a campaign mode, but I still beat him through sheer willpower and determination.

I could go on and on about the good and the bad, from Archie and IDW and more.

Ultimately: Sonic 4 is everything but what it wanted to be, Colours is great, Generations is great, Lost World is weird, Sonic Boom is squandered, Mania is great, Forces did a thing. Comics did a backflip into a void and bounced out somehow, but didn't stick the landing. No idea what the hell Sonic was trying to do this decade.

[Sean]

The low points of the decade for me were Sonic Boom and the movie. I still get annoyed thinking about and seeing the movie everywhere online as the release date approaches, and both were the kind of disastrous franchise redirections I had hoped died out in the late 2000s after '06.

The high points were Mania and the mobile remakes of CD, 1, and 2 which paved Whitehead and Thomley's working relationship with Sega. I'm a huge fan of the recent trend of Sega commissioning animated shorts for the series, both classic and modern, and I sincerely hope that it leads to bigger and better things in the 2020s. I'd also say that the Archie reboot was another one, but that was dampened by its unceremonious cancellation, another low point that has left me so bitter that I have very little interest in reading IDW.

On the fan side of things, Sonic Robo Blast 2 has had two major revisions this decade, one in 2014 and another just last month, and both revitalized my longtime interest in this game which I have been following since 2001. It's exciting seeing how far it has come after two decades; 2.2 is the best and most substantial update yet, incorporating multiple new characters, working slopes and rolling physics in the Doom Legacy engine, and improved level design that is unparalleled by other fan games. It's by no means perfect and I have my fair share of complaints toward some questionable design choices and lack of accessible control schemes (but at least there's always this camera mod which makes controllers a legitimately viable alternate to mouse and keyboard - if you have ever been put off by SRB2's FPS-based tank controls, I strongly recommend that you give this a shot to see what you think of it), but it's one of the most amazingly complex fangames I have ever played with endless replayability and a wealth of mods to keep it going. Along with Mania, SRB2 2.2 is the most fun I've had with Sonic in years.

[Dr. Detective]

Oh my god. What to say. Where to begin. 

I guess I could just lay out my overall feelings on this decade. As far as the games are concerned, overall, it's been the most bland and uninteresting Sonic's ever been in my eyes. What's been good about the games are things that cater to a side of the fanbase I'm not explicitly apart of (I literally JUST got Sonic Mania Plus for Christmas of THIS year as a gift from my mother) or things that are good from a basic standpoint. Generations is a great game but the best thing about that game is how much it borderline perfected Modern Sonic's gameplay that was established in Unleashed and how it was nice seeing a few of the older environments from past games get a neat little visual upgrade. All the stuff I personally value the most in character, story, world-building, and whatnot just wasn't there. Team Sonic Racing is a similar case where the game is a ton of fun but it's missing SO much stuff that everytime I play it I can't help but feel myself put that mental asterisk next to it.

However, Sonic's had a real resurgence in pretty much everything that isn't the modern 3D games. Seeing Sonic embrace so much in terms of art and animation has been breathe-taking and its proof that this is where he shines the most. In my opinion, the animated shorts they've been putting on their Youtube channel have been spectacular, the IDW comics have been excellent,  Sonic Boom was amusing and funny in its own right, and the OK. KO episode was a stand-out in terms of embracing fan-service and the love for Sonic in a adorably positive and fun manner that I desperately needed in this sea of cynicism. 

So I guess I'll just run down all the stuff that happened and put the High Points in GREEN and the Low Points in RED for a smoother ride.  I'll put things I have mixed feelings towards in YELLOW.

2010

Ken Penders Claims Copyright to Archie Characters and stories for THE LARA-SU CHRONICLES IN ALL CAPS - Archie is really goddamn incompetent. It's actually a little surprising they're still around at all considering the farce that happened here. This went on forever but the major news of this officially happening hit in 2010 and from then on it was just a spiral of embarrassing nonsense that saw Archie firing their legal team and getting a new one. I had to remind myself that Ken didn't sue Archie, it was the other way around and Archie still lost. Then later they lost the Sonic license anyway. Fucking hell.

Ken started his rumblings by making it known that he didn't much care for one Ian Flynn. Here's just some of what he had to say:

"I haven't commented on any of this earlier because I believed it was too soon and I didn't want to be accused of sour grapes or stealing Ian's thunder. The fact is I get e-mail all the time asking me about this character or that storyline, and it leaves me scratching my head wondering if Ian has ever attempted going beyond what any of us did, if he's created a character like a Julie-Su or a Geoffrey St John, or if he's written something like an ENDGAME or THE DARK LEGION that people are still talking about years later."

"The fact is I never relied on any other Archie-Sonic writer's material for any of my stories, not even when I was working with Mike Kanterovich. I would always come up with basic plots and Mike would throw in bits to improve them, then we would work on the dialogue. I didn't rely on Mike Gallagher's material to drive my stories, nor did I ever pay attention to anything Karl was doing beyond supplying him with bits of info whenever he was incorporating one of my characters into his stories. A thorough check of my work will show I never used a Karl-created character until I used Mina in SONIC #150, due more to a conversation with Mike P when working out the plot."

"Ian on the other hand, hasn't done any of that from what I see and hear. In fact, many of the stories that appeared in issues #160 through #175 were based on an outline I submitted to Mike Pellerito around the time I turned in the script to SONIC #157. I didn't pay attention until I caught the issue where Antoine married Bunnie, which was either the exact issue I slated the story for or off just by an issue or two in the outline I submitted. I never bothered to mention it until now because I didn't see the point. All I had was an outline that could be claimed by some to be written after the fact, resulting in a pointless flame war because some would claim I was jealous or resentful."

"Not everyone gets the experience I do directing a film in Hollywood with real stars and trying to sell it to the studios and networks."

"So from where I sit, all Mike and Ian are doing is living off the work done by others that came before them instead of allowing SONIC to grow and evolve in a similar organic manner when I was on the book. I especially don't consider anything either does with any of the echidna characters - especially Locke - to be canon as neither created the characters nor established them in stories as the viable fan favorites they've become. No matter what Ian writes, he can never alter the fact that in MY universe, the events of Locke's passing as depicted in SONIC #143 is canon. Anything he writes can easily be counter-written by a better story with an alternative solution."

When Ian responded to this, he merely clarified that Bunnie and Antoine getting married was just a follow-through of the logical set-up that was happening with the story at that point and didn't say much else. I can understand why he wouldn't touch any of the rest of this self-indulgent puss because what the hell can you say about it that it doesn't already say for itself? I mean, good God.

After that came the dreaded LARA-SU CHRONICLES IN ALL CAPS announcement and more devastation for the Archie books down the line. However, this particular fiasco I just remember being an incredibly embarrassing and unpleasant display for both competing parties, separate from what it leads to.

Even more sad is how when the legal stuff picked up steam, Ian felt the need to assure everyone that this was just a small storm that would eventually pass. It passed alright... and took the whole farm with it.

 

The Embarrassing Project Needlemouse Character Countdown - An interview with Iizuka came out for Sonic Colors where he outright says the fans only want to play as Sonic. I didn't even remember this until I did research for the stuff that happened in the past decade but I'm honestly a little shocked by how blatant it's spelled out in that news report. You can find it on this site still if you search through the news stuff for 2010 but I bring this up to give some context for the insulting Project Needlemouse bullshit they pulled back in 2010.

Here they had this board of characters and the internet was supposed to guess who would be appearing in this new project. Each day a fucking REJECTED stamp would go over the characters that weren't to appear in it.

I knew from the get-go that this was nonsense and that Sonic was going to be the only playable character. I had no idea why so many people were reacting to it and arguing about which ones should get in as if any character aside from Sonic seriously had a chance. However, they eventually found out when it was revealed and the numerous articles from news sites of people whining about characters they didn't like suddenly were vindicated. They had a cheap marketing ploy that seriously tried to use the negativity towards their OWN cast of characters as a show of good faith on their game. How backwards is that? What other franchise would seriously try to market LESS playable characters and less content as a GOOD thing? 

There's an article on here that goes even deeper into all the stuff that happened but this was the stuff that affected me the most. The other thing I remember was the infamous Richard Kuta video where he goes off about Sonic having green eyes in the Sonic 4 trailer. That IS where the " Sonic has green eyes" meme originated from by the way. Oh God, and then there was his SATAM movie garbage.

 

Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing - Did you know that all three of the great Sumo Digital racing games for this series came out THIS decade? Yeah. February of 2010 saw the release of the first in the series and it ended up being the biggest hit for me that year. Today there's people who look back on it and while acknowledging it was good say it's of a lesser standard then what came after and I have to wholeheartedly disagree. I just feel all three of them take a different approach to how they handle themselves. This one, more than any other, I feel had it's focus on being zany and crazy and you could totally feel that with the way the All-Star moves just exploded onto the screen. A lot of the representation of the SEGA franchises here got me really interested in a lot of the other SEGA properties. It's the reason I discovered the awesome Jet Set Radio soundtracks and even bought Samba De Amigo for the Wii. I have nostalgia for SEGA as a whole now and it's thanks to this game. 

 

Sonic 4 - Episode 1 - The actual Sonic 4 came out and everyone hated it. Well, critics liked it because it was called Sonic 4 and Sonic was the only playable character. It had the full 2D and the no-Sonic's-shitty-friends and everything. I never played Episode 1 because everything it looked like it was, didn't appeal to me. Just a slapdash way to appease the people who wanted a proper follow-up to Sonic 3 and Knuckles and a cynical way to cater to the critics. The critics fell for it and ate it up... until they didn't anymore.

 

NEW Sonic Voice Cast - Did you guys know that Roger Craig Smith and all the current voice actors we have (aside from the ones that were replaced) actually got their start at the beginning of the decade? Roger's been voicing Sonic longer than any English voice actor has ever voiced the character. It's officially been 10 years!

Rumors began circulating in July of 2010 that Jason Griffith may be out as Sonic but then it became clear that the entire cast was getting the boot as the 4kids well dried up. We got to keep Mike Pollock, thank God, but everyone else was replaced. I still remember how weird it was, first hearing Roger in that first released scene of Sonic Colors. What's funny is despite the mixed reception at the start, Roger didn't get anywhere near the same amount of vitriolic hatred that Jason did when he replaced Ryan Drummond. Literally a website called "Save Sonic" was created that was dedicated JUST to getting Ryan Drummond back as the voice of Sonic. 

I also remember the released voice clips of the characters for Colors DS. It was all so exciting because, even though Jason had gotten a lot better by Sonic and the Black Knight, I wasn't bothered by the idea that we'd have to say goodbye to the 4kids cast. I think the cast we have now is far better overall.

 

Sonic Free Riders - The one and only Sonic Kinect game. Also, the game that houses the ballad of Angry Joe's nightmares. Free is actually a nice enough song but Free Riders is kind of an example of that creeping feeling I started to get during this year that Sonic was changing in ways I wasn't too fond of. The previous Riders games did so much with their presentation and stories and this one resorted to stills and a generic as fuck competition plot that didn't at all rely on the mystery and intrigue that the other games had. I never played this but looking up the game on Youtube made me glad I didn't. That said, every-time I saw it on the rack in GameStop I would always check the box to see if it was a magical, new version that I could play using a controller and not with the Kinect.

The Kinect is dead and thank Christ for that. I don't blame Sonic Team for never touching it again after this. This was also the first game released with the new voice cast in it.

 

Sonic Colors - Sonic Colors is quite the oddball game for me. Unlike Unleashed and Generations, I don't remember being the slightest bit excited for this game. I recall only watching a trailer for this game once and then forgetting about it fairly soon after. It might have just been the same mentality I had towards Secret Rings where I knew going in that it was going to be an adventure where Sonic was the only playable character. Around that time, I recall that being the cause of instant hype deflation. After a decade of Only Sonic, I think I've loosened up a tiny bit on that but the feeling still stands.

Colors was also the first time I had beaten a Sonic game the very same day I bought it...  

That was a VERY strange experience to me. It's actually not as egregious in that department as some of the games that came later but man did it take the wind out of my sails. Everyone LOVED it so much and I remember telling myself that I could accept it if this was just a break from the cooler, more adventurous stuff until they were ready to go back to that. Unleashed had so much promise and Colors was kind of billed as Unleashed without the Werehog.

No. Goodness no. That's not what Colors was at all. If that's what Colors was, than Colors would have been one of my favorite Sonic games ever. As it stands and as the years go by, I can't help but look back on it as the start of the decline in all the stuff I found so appealing and alluring about the Sonic series. It wasn't completely gone with this game but this game does kind of exemplify what this decade of Sonic was all about: Mostly just Sonic. Wisps in every game. No more substance in the story telling or the cheerleaders  characters; all the stuff that made being on the losing team kind of worth it. They lost their way with 06 by making it too dark. Then they corrected themselves with Unleashed and Black Knight. Then they over-corrected, for no reason, with Colors. I still don't get it.

The only reason it's not in the red is because I don't think it's a bad game. It's just a game that relies on doing the antithesis of what I liked about Sonic to get by. At least it actually DID function pretty well. Plus, regardless of what I think, it DID do a lot to get the public perception of Sonic back on the right track. Although, people ignoring the groundwork Unleashed laid out for it got on my nerves. 

 

Orbot and Cubot - Aosth had Scratch and Grounder. Underground had Sleet and Dingo. Sonic X had Bocoe and Decoe. SatAM had Snively and... Snively. The games have Orbot and Cubot. It was a very interesting instance of taking something that worked well in Unleashed and transmogrifying it so that it could function as a staple for the franchise. Although opinions on them vary and have gone up and down over the years, I do rather like the fact that they're around. I was even happy for them when they got to appear in their first Sonic TV show with Sonic Boom (something that still hasn't happened for Omega, Silver, or Blaze which is kind of sad).

Apparently Eggman stranding them in space in Generations was SEGA trying to get rid of them but Pontac and Graff vouched for them to return, which is why they show up in Lost World without any real explanation. That's fine though. Eggman getting out of the void in Generations had no explanation... which is odd since they felt the need to explain how he got out of space in Colors and... nevermind. 

 

2011

Ken Penders sues SEGA over Copyright Infringement - So the Penders saga continued this year, this time with Penders sueing SEGA over some of the elements in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, a game that seems to only ever do consistently bad things. Thankfully, he lost this one but still... I mean, for God's sake. 

 

Sonic Generations - You know, despite my heavy gripes with the direction Sonic has taken this decade, it still wasn't enough to completely hover a dark cloud over this game. Sonic Generations is a fantastic game. Unlike Sonic Colors, I remember vividly looking over the trailers for this one. I still return to the trailers for this game sometimes, honestly. Hearing the news about the main cast returning was good (until I saw what their roles were of course) and the incredible experiment of bringing back Classic Sonic so that he could experience Modern stages and vice-versa was an excellent idea for the 20th anniversary. It's a game so good, I bought it twice for two different systems.

I could go on and on about all the fixes I would have made to it. The two biggest things were a better story that took advantage of having commentary for what had happened over the past 20 years and honestly, just more OF the game in general. I remember holding the box for Generations in my hands the day I bought it and being strangely unhyped to play it. I eventually figured that the reason why is because I knew everything that was going to be in it. The only thing I didn't know was the reveal at the end and how the Time Eater final boss was going to work (it sucked). Generations was and still is the perfect candidate of a game that needed DLC and... goddammit. They had DLC for Unleashed, Lost World, Forces, and even Sonic 06 but Generations? It got a Casino Night pinball table thing. 

Damn.

Still, love this game. It's a great game. Don't let my sour grapes over the direction of the series get you down. This one is a keeper.

 

Iizuka says he wants to create a new "standard" Sonic rather than continue with what Generations did - Okay, so after Generations happened, a couple of interviews and news pieces were coming out around the time, some of which I had forgotten about until I researched things for this retrospective. However, one of the things I forgot about entirely was Iizuka saying that first, there were no current plans to bring back Classic Sonic after Generations (boy HOWDY did THAT ever change) and two, he wanted to make a new "standard" Sonic. Generations wasn't supposed to be a new beginning but rather a culmination of the past 20 years and the next game was supposed to bring in something new. 

I don't... entirely have a problem with the idea behind this in general but it does exemplify the problem they have where they come upon something that works and instead of organically letting it sit and evolve over time they just kind of... abandon it in favor of whatever new thing they want to do. Maybe a new direction really IS what Sonic needs but I don't know if doing Super Mario Galaxy but worse was necessarily the right way to go about it.

 

Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games - I think this might be the Olympic Games title that I played the most. It's certainly the one I feel had the best collection of stuff in it. I think I may want to go back and revisit it sometime because I remember my siblings and I having a good amount of fun with this one. It's certainly where these Olympic Games peaked before interest was reinvigorated into me with Tokyo 2020... and honestly it's really only because of the presence of a story mode and some of the neat clothing changes.

 

2012

Iizuka says that Big the Cat will no longer be used - Holy moly. Remember THIS? I don't think anything quite so... odd has happened before or since but, this was the year Iizuka stirred up the fanbase when he said they were shelving Big the Cat. Big isn't one of my favorites or anything but I do remember feeling a sense of unease back then. The act of shelving characters is a bit of a scary thought. If they thought to do it to Big, then what if they decide Omega's no longer popular enough? What if they decide the Chaotix are too much of a hassle? It even threw off my equilibrium concerning Big's tenure as a cast member. 

Now, obviously this turned out to be horeshit. Big got a trophy in the trophy room in Generations just the year before and had cameo appearances in other stuff before being full on playable again in mobile games and eventually Team Sonic Racing. I don't know if memes saved him or not but I can't help but feel they had something to do with it.

 

Sonic 4 - Episode II - The episode of Sonic 4 that I actually DID play. It's also the only Sonic game to come out after Sonic Adventure that I refused to finish. I hate this fucking game and it's weird because it's not even a game I was looking forward to. I was completely neutral on the existence of Sonic 4. I truly could not have given less of a shit... but I was so desperate to play a NEW Sonic game at around this time and this was a game that had been out for a while that I hadn't played. Plus, Tails was playable in it (sort of). I managed to get a bit far into it but rage quit at the Oil Ocean Oil Desert level. There was an obstacle that I couldn't overcome and probably could have if I had worked at it but I didn't want to because at that point, I was having so little fun that I didn't care anymore. It's somehow not even on my X-Box 360 anymore, which is strange because I don't remember deleting it but it's okay because I never get curious about returning to it.

Also, the horrible boss battle music! My goddamn ears! Just looping the same shit over and over and over and over...! It took me so long to beat one of the bosses, I swear I was actually hearing this shit for a full 30 minutes.

Fuck this game.

 

Wreck-It Ralph - Sonic's first meaningful, on-screen presence in a hit movie. He's probably appeared by happenstance in other stuff, maybe, but this is the first time it mattered as far as I'm concerned. God, it was so cool seeing him on the big screen. I appreciate that he somehow got more lines and screen time in the sequel despite the fact that that movie was about the Internet. Eggman was also there and I also spotted a picture of Tails in Tapper's bar. What a neat gift.

 

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed - What some would claim is the best of the All Stars racing games. I go back and forth between this one and the first one, though, it's not hard to see why people prefer this one. It has a better selection of stages, dramatic shifts in the stages so that every lap was different, the transform gimmick which made it so there was never a dull moment on land, sea, or air, and for the people who liked challenge... they got it. This game was balls to the wall HARD as hell. Even going back to it to see if I can try and complete some of the challenges I left uncompleted only saw me maybe beating one or two of them for an S rank. The others I just couldn't. You need to be an expert driver in order to make it through some of this. Once I unlocked AGES, I was pretty much done with that though. The All-Star moves also weren't as intense but it was forgivable considering how much they boosted the quality of all the other stuff. 

If I could take some of the elements of the first game and mash it together with this one, I think I'd have the perfect All-Star racer on my hands. Whichever one you think is better, they're both great so it doesn't matter at the end of the day. Thank the lord for the Burning Rangers remix though. Hell yeah!

 

2013

Sonic and Mega Man: World's Collide - This was awesome. It was the first time I had ever really gotten a chance to experience a crossover event in comics due to how little of comics I actually read. I know very little about Mega Man but that didn't stop it from being cool to see the two series crossover with one another. The first crossover did it the best. Had the best character selection, had the right way to tackle the story, and had a neat finale that lead into the next new thing...

 

The Archie Sonic Reboot - Like @Monkey Destruction Switch, I too consider the Archie Sonic reboot to be a highlight. Although, I do, admittedly, come from a different point of view on the Archie stuff entirely in this regard. While, I do find it a shame that the story centered on Naugus, Geoffrey, and the echidnas never got a proper resolution as that had been some of the most interesting the book had been for a long while in my opinion, the fresher take on its universe that incorporated things I was more familiar with as a fan just did wonders for my enjoyment of the book.

I was NOT a fan of the way the Chaotix were handled before the reboot happened. Everything that was wrong with them actually came right out in the open when they finally got a Sonic Universe arc about them... in that it actually WASN'T about them. It was about Mighty and his long lost sister. The Chaotix were always props and lackies that worked under Knuckles. Going through the earlier books now, it's even more evident that this is the case. There was so little purpose to them there that when the reboot happened, all of a sudden, they were appearing more often and ended up having prominent roles in two Sonic Universe arcs before the book was wrapped up despite the reboot going on for significantly less time. 

There were other quality of life changes that happened but ultimately, it was just a neat little hodgepodge of what worked best about the Archie books without a lot of the baggage that was practically begging for some house cleaning. I didn't think it was perfect but my enjoyment of the book definitely skyrocketed. I still wasn't too fond of the Freedom Fighter system and the Sky Patrol thing but what are you gonna do? Cancel the book? Bwahaha-Oh...

 

The Three Game Wii U Exclusivity Deal - Get excited! The Sonic brand is in full swing now. Riding high off the success of Generations, they decided to get everyone hyped for Sonic in the coming years with a exclusive deal that would see three Sonic games coming out for the Wii U, a console so not in demand that even Smash Bros. couldn't save it... Still, the fact that I now HAD to own a Wii U if I wanted to partake in this exclusive deal was not a happy moment of realization for me. I especially wanted nothing to do with the touch-pad. I like normal controllers quite a lot. 

I eventually did get a Wii U and... boy were those three Sonic games not worth the intended hype. Well, at least it came with a free copy of Wind Waker HD... oh wait. I lost the code for it and Nintendo's help center couldn't help me recover it...  sigh.

 

 

The Day Sonic Boom Was Announced - Now I'm not talking about Sonic Boom in general. Just the DAY it was officially announced. THAT day was wild. I remember it being one of the most fun times I had ever had being a Sonic fan on the internet, regardless of whether or not the news was well-received or not. A new Sonic TV Show was being announced, new merch was being announced, Buffles was a thing that was going to happen, a new game was going along with it; SO much information was coming out so fast. One article was being put out, one after the other and keeping up with all the new shit was remincient to the feeling you get when you're running a marathon. I mean who could forget that first image of the Sonic Boom cast projected on a wall with shadows that showed off what their new designs were?

Knuckles looked like that one ape-man from that one Monkey episode of Dexter's Laboratory.

 

Sonic Lost World - This was the game that showed off what the new standard Iizuka wanted was basically supposed to look like and... honestly, it had a bit of promise. With enough tweaking and fixes, it could have worked probably. However, when the game came out, despite the mixed reception, it wasn't overall loved and that therefore meant it needed to be scrapped. As such, the game nowadays just feels like a weird tech demo. I personally think it's just okay. I don't have a problem with the idea of revisiting it from time to time but it's safe to say that whatever Iizuka's plan for the new standard of Sonic was, there wasn't too much artistic integrity there to keep it going past this point.

It is a bit weird that this game got all the DLC and attention that Sonic Generations should have gotten though. There was the Nights into Dreams level. The free Yoshi's Island DLC, the free Legend of Zelda DLC, and even a patch happened that fundamentally changed how the game functioned. Getting a hundred rings suddenly gave you a life again. Motion controls for the wisps were no longer mandatory which meant I could actually properly USE the fucking asteroid wisp. Items even started appearing on the world map. It was appreciated... but still odd that THIS was the game they did it for. I guess if it was supposed to be the new standard, it makes a little more sense, I suppose.

 

The Deadly Six - My opinions on the Deadly Six have shifted and done backflips over and over, to the point where I'm not even sure if the opinion I have of them now will remain the same down the line. Hype for new villains turned to fondness which later turned to indifference a short time after the game came out which has now, somehow, circled back around to being fondness... I don't know. Something about them, I DO actually find a bit charming. I really like the fact that they have a master and that the master ISN'T the leader of the team. I like how crazy Zazz is. I like Zor's weird gimmick. I like how Zomom reminds me of Gluttony from Fullmetal Alchemist. Even Zeena had an amusing interaction with Zavok that I like to recite a lot of the time.

Zavok himself was actually a fairly effective villain in terms of what he managed to accomplish. The fact that it was undone because Zomom, uncharacteristically, left a sandwich with a toothpick behind on Tails' operating table is kind of unfortunate. They also were responsible for making me FEEL like something important was happening when Zavok gloated about turning Tails into a robot, accompanying a scary version of the Deadly Six theme and following a level with haunting but soothing music with Dragon Dance, all the while Zavok taunts you in the sky. 

I can't hate them like everyone else. They did legitimately entertain me. I do find their lack of proper development and clarification behind what the Lost Hex IS and why they're so evil to be frustrating but I'm perfectly willing to embrace them should someone come along and fix it.

Also, they're theme kicks so much ass. It's such a perfect tune.

 

Mario and Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games - Waste of money. I consider this to be an even bigger waste of money than Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. It's just the Winter Olympics again except with even less content and far more annoying motion controls. The Wii U gamepad SUCKS for motion controls in my opinion. The only interesting thing was seeing the neat animations for the characters at the end of the tag-team races because some of them would react differently depending on who they teamed up with. I watched all those on Youtube though. Played this for about 2 hours on the day I bought it and have not touched it since.

 

2014 

2014, otherwise known as "The Year of Sonic".

This was what  SEGA had to say about 2014 before it happened: "2014 will mark a renaissance for Sonic the Hedgehog. Please Join us to be the first to hear about SEGA's exclusive announcements and plans for the Sonic brand".

So, of course, 2014 ended up leading towards, what was then, one the biggest fucking disasters for the brand that down the line ended up just being largely forgotten.

Sony Announces Sonic Movie - The Sonic movie used to belong to SONY. In a pre-Spider-Verse world, this was the literal worst thing ever. It turns out that things were actually going to get way worse before they got better though. It still wasn't, and isn't, a good sign that a movie coming out in 2020 was announced in 2014 and at that point in time was owned by a completely different studio. 

 

Sonic Boom - The Comic - The comic came to be first and it was good. Had a rocky start but it picked up eventually... but much like Sonic Boom as a brand, it's fall was swift and instant.

 

Sonic Boom - The TV Show - The premiere of the TV show happened and boy, was it exciting. It had been so long since I had seen a Sonic show on TV and I thoroughly enjoyed the first episode. I thought it was better than the second episode, despite liking that one too, but people had the reverse opinion at that time. I'm used to that by now. Either way, it was an undoubtedly fresh take on Sonic that is actually somewhat respected today, even if it debuted amongst a sea of negativity and disappointment coming off of the bad vibes people were getting from the game. Of course, the TV show had its fair share of scrutiny too. The reveal of the first scene where Sonic is chasing Eggman through a gorge and we see Burn-Bot for the first time had the typical, hyperbolic overreactions of "This is how Sonic fucking DIES" attached to it. If Sonic 06 couldn't kill Sonic, then I don't see how a TV show would.

 

Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal - Never played it but apparently it's just okay... what I do find strange is how it's got a completely different story from the Wii U version of the game and is one of the examples of how poorly handled this Boom franchise was because of it. There were A LOT of press releases and information being pushed about Sonic Boom. Remember Stephen Frost? Yeah... him... I'm not a huge fan of him, we'll just say.

It was stated that these games were supposed to be prequels to the TV show, which is strange in and of itself, but the fact that both the Wii U and 3DS versions of this game have two completely different stories with two completely different handlings of Lyric and Shadow just baffle me. Stranger still is the fact that the tone of the games are completely different from the show. It's somehow inconsistent with its own brand ON TOP of being inconsistent with Sonic as a whole. And even STRANGER than that is the fact that it's totally unnecessary. None of what happens in either of these games is necessary to know about in order to understand and enjoy the TV show. Not even when it came to the supposed backstory for Sticks... oh and by the way...

 

Sticks the Badger - A character introduced as an exclusive for Sonic Boom. She exists to promote Sonic Boom. She was put in one of the later Olympic Games to promote Sonic Boom. When Sonic Boom stopped being a thing, she stopped being a thing. There was no Harley Quinn moment where she transferred to the main series despite her getting artwork from Sonic Channel and even a Sonic Channel comic for the 25th anniversary. That was all because, at the time, Sonic Boom was still a thing that existed. 

One of the press releases said that Sticks' backstory was that she used to be a loner but made friends with Amy Rose and that helped her to form more friends and what not. None of this is ever talked about or explained within the show proper. It's not brought up in Rise of Lyric and it's not talked about in Shattered Crystal. There's no real development to work off of for Sticks. Sticks' character has a gimmick. She's a crazy jungle girl who believes in weird conspiracy theories (that somehow almost always turn out to be true) and people call her crazy for it. It works in a comedy TV show. I'm not sure how much it'd work in the games though. 

Sticks is a character I never hated but I also never fell in love with. If she got into the games or not, I'd be pretty neutral on it. Though, I would have a bit of increased concern for how they'd handle her when they can't even get a handle on the cast they have now. It'd probably just be like "Welcome Sticks. Here are your Pom Poms. Go stand in the corner and cheer on Sonic like the rest."

 

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric - Ah, but alas, we've come to the big one. The reason this was hyped up as the Year of Sonic. The Final game in the Wii U exclusivity deal. Right off the bat, I want to say that I enjoyed aspects of this game. I enjoyed the bare-bones story, if only because of the character interaction and how much of it felt like an active adventure compared to some of the games we were getting at the time. I also enjoyed the way some of the environments looked. I also found that the animation was actually really impressive. The expressions and movements of the characters is FAR better than in something like Forces where it looks like Sonic is one bad movement away from falling apart like a pile of sticks. The characters are SO stiff in Forces but so fluid here. It's amazing.

All that said, this game was a pile of shit. The dreaded horror story behind the development of this game over at Big Red Button is a very astonishing and sad one. The fact that they're still around is both surprising and good to hear. The way SEGA screwed them over with their weird demands concerning sudden shifts in game engines and time crunches was not at all justifiable. It was ultimately in service of a game that overshadowed any and all good will that could have been built up by how good the show and the comic were. Sonic is a game franchise first and as such the games are what people are going to pay the most attention to. 

It was quite the overwhelming failure at the time. Nowadays, because of how bland and forgettable it is compared to something like Sonic 06, it does feel largely forgotten except for when people need to bring up how bad Sonic games are. The so-called "Year of Sonic" turned out to be the "Year of Sonic Boom" and Boom itself, as a push to create a completely new sub-section of the Sonic brand, fell through. At the time of it's reveal, SEGA had to put out a statement that said that Boom would NOT be replacing Modern Sonic because people were so concerned that it would. Nowadays, the idea that it could is laughable. It came and died so incredibly fast that it's just a weird blip on Sonic's history. 

They came out firing on all cylinders like a hillbilly who won the lottery. They didn't quietly invest and spend their money wisely. They just pushed everything out at once. T-Shirts, keychains, toys, a comic, a TV Show, two games at the same time with two completely different stories, the works! 

What did it lead to? The lowest selling Sonic game in the franchise's history, a comic that was cancelled after 11 issues, and a TV show that had a good run but was killed off because it was kicked to Boomerang for its second season, ending sadly on a joke that made it seem as though there was more to come. Then Stephen Frost returned to his home planet, never to be seen or heard from again.

Such a show of excess and an extreme waste of money for something that would have been completely forgotten had the show endured in the popular consciousness.

 

2015

Otherwise known as "The Year Where Nothing Happened" to some.

Sonic Twitter Explodes - The Sonic Twitter was always around but this was the year where it exploded into being more... we'll say "noticeable" than it was before. Aaron Webber came down from on high and ran with it for better or worse. I would say for the better. It does things here or there that are embarrassing or something it REALLY shouldn't do (like making fun of Mighty No. 9) but it's led to more positive stuff than not in my opinion. The best thing to come from it are the Twitter Takeovers. They're so much fun and it's great to see the voice actors get to cut loose like that.

 

Sonic Runners - Uh. So this games existed, I think? It was pretty neat in terms of a lot of the elements and concepts it had but it ended up being shut down because of incompetent handling which is a shame. 

This was also the year where SEGA admitted to "betraying" the fans. I don't know if you guys remember that but it was a pretty big deal at the time. The second Megaman crossover happened in the comics, the Sonic Boom comics were cancelled, and Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice was delayed. Mostly just a lot of stuff ending or being pushed to different dates. What little we did get wasn't very good.

 

2016

Eggman's Dozen - I'm just giving a special shout-out to the best Sonic Universe story arc ever. Eggman's Dozen is just a marvel. I love stories that focus on villain teams. It was also one of the few Universe arcs where the ending didn't dissatisfy me. The Case of the Pirate Princess began this year which, as we now know, is the final Sonic Universe story arc. Either way, you'll remember this as the year that Eggman's Dozen came out and you will all rejoice and bask in the glow of its brilliance.

 

Mario and Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games - The only Olympics game that I completely skipped over. The only thing about it that enticed me in any way was the fact that it had boxing in it but I wasn't about to spend 60 bucks to amuse myself by having Tails punch Sonic unconscious. The guest characters could have been the thing that did it but then I found out they were only around for a single event. Plus, some of the ones they picked ticked me off. Wave but no Storm. Espio but no Charmy (although he was still IN the game), and spots for two of the Zeti but no Omega? I'm speaking purely about the Wii U version of course. The 3DS version, I'm sure was its own bag of tricks. However, the big thing I couldn't get over was that, yet again, there was no story mode for the console version and on top of that, no Dream Events. Fuck off with that.

After I wasted my money with Sochi, a game I played for two hours and never touched again, I knew it'd have been a mistake to get this one so I didn't. When I thought there would be no more Olympic games I considered getting it at a discount but Nintendo never drops the prices of their games so it's STILL 60 bucks. Even having not played it, I know that's a rip off. Now, there's literally no reason to because Tokyo 2020 is out and it has boxing, as well as a story mode and 3 Dream Events. 

 

Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice - A game that when it was announced I said was going to come out and be completely forgotten. If you've bothered to read this far you probably are surprised to be reminded of it because that's exactly what happened, despite some minor push back I got for daring to suggest such a thing. Still, I do have to say that I admire Sanzaru for giving it another go. They made the better of the two Sonic Boom games but weren't content with that and tried their hand once more, even delaying the game to make sure it was as good as it could be. I don't own any handheld games but I heard it ended up being for the better. It got good reviews, which was nice. It was a little amusing seeing a weirdo online get upset at it getting good reviews, literally just because it was a Sonic Boom game. 

The fire and ice jokes the internet made at the trailer's expense was also kind of fun. Also, the story actually felt like an offshoot of the TV show this time and not some weird disconnected thing like the last two games did. This was also around the time Season 2 was about to happen and when Sonic Boom got kicked from it's awful time slot of 6/7am to Boomerang, a channel where it's entire point is to showcase cancelled or completed cartoons...

 

Sonic in LEGO Dimensions - Another neat little surprise for Sonic, the LEGO Dimensions cutscenes did for Sonic what Sonic Generations should have done for Sonic back in 2011. The writing wasn't perfect. There was one awful segment in particular where Sonic and Eggman are rapid firing disgustingly horrid jokes at each other but for the most part, it was a really well done, fun little escapade. For some reason, Tails in LEGO form is the cutest thing ever. I don't know why. This game also featured Big the Scrapped Character Cat for the first time in a long while. He was played by his 4kids voice actor here. 

I can't speak on the game itself because I don't own it but the whole toy collection thing seems to have gone the way of the dinosaurs now. Not even Disney could keep Disney Infinity alive. It seemed like the perfect way to scam more money out of kids but I guess it was just too cost effective.

 

2017

Archie Comics CANCELLED - Okay so, despite my love, love, LOVE for the IDW Comics... I can't in good faith say that the Archie Comics cancellation was in anyway a thing I was so-so on or happy about. The idea that I wouldn't get anymore Sonic comics at the time was a viscerally hard thing to accept and even though it was immediately rectified the next day or so when the IDW comics were announced, that doesn't really change the fact that a comic I was engaged with, ended unceremoniously. At the very least, I wish both continuities could have had a proper ending but being a comic that was designed to be ongoing kind of left it with too many open doors for it to really feel all that satisfying. At least the reboot ended at a more appropriate spot than the Pre-Reboot did by virtue of actually wrapping up the Unleashed storyline and being in the middle of an escapade with Classic Sonic that I didn't care about. There's also a tiny bit of comfort in knowing that the final page of the book was a full-page spread of the Chaotix chilling in their agency. 

 

The Classic and Modern Sonic Split - Classic is from Another Dimension - The Classic and Modern split isn't something that gets under my skin on its own. It bothers me in the sense that it's yet another example how how wishy-washy this series is with it continuity but the act of splitting them in and of itself is something I don't care too much about. One of the reasons is because I kind of already did that in my mind anyway. Whenever I talk about or get excited for something with regards to Sonic it's always something in relation to the Modern continuity. 

On top of that, a lot of the elements in Classic Sonic still do exist in Modern Sonic. There still is a Green Hill Zone in Modern Sonic. There still is a Chemical Plant Zone in Modern Sonic. There's still a Death Egg in Modern Sonic. I'm willing the bet other classic zones still exist within Modern Sonic as well. Everything that happened in the Classic games I still view as having happened in the Modern continuity just with different colored eyes for the characters. It really didn't change much of anything to me.

Whether Classic Sonic is Sonic from the past or from another dimension, I don't mind it. I can even see the benefits of having him be from another dimension. You can do a Sonic Mania and continue the story of Classic Sonic without worrying about when the timeline interconnects with Modern. This is all mostly because I'm indifferent to Classic Sonic. I tolerated him in Generations but whenever there was an Archie storyline focusing on him or a new line of merch that featured him I just couldn't get into it. I assume it's the same for people who love Classic Sonic and don't care for Modern Sonic. Then there's people who like both and I do wish I was in that camp because it would mean there was more Sonic for me to enjoy. As it stands, it's whatever.

 

The Human and Animal World Split - THIS however, is some bullshit. I understand it's one of those things that may or may not have always been a thing that's been there (which explains why Sonic X did what it did despite the fact that there were humanoid looking people who lived in Sonic's dimension in the third season) but it doesn't matter because the games never once told us this. Even now that we know it, it still hasn't provided an explanation for how this is supposed to work. We don't know how they go from one world to another. We don't know WHY they randomly switch from one world to another. We don't know why Angel Island was in the human world in Adventure or how the Mystic Ruins... makes sense. We also don't really know how Silver can come and go from the future which is just another example of them just doing shit without any regard for how it connects to anything.

I'm so sick and tired of the relevance the characters and the world used to have just being sucked dry by these very bad attempts to explain away things that were better left well enough alone. What purpose does this serve, if only to enrage and confuse people? 

 

Sonic Mania - It's a game that I literally just got for Christmas of 2019 and still haven't actually played but I know more than enough about it to know it was an extremely positive shock to the system that the Sonic series was in desperate need of. Even if it's a game that caters to a section of the fanbase that I'm not a part of, a high quality, largely celebrated and beloved game coming out for the Sonic franchise can only ever be a good thing at this point. Even as a game that doesn't appeal to me, it serves as a reminder of how good Sonic can be to a lot of people and even exemplifies why some of the arguments against what used to be positive elements in Sonic's series are STILL positive elements. Like other playable characters, for example. 

Tails and Knuckles are both playable in this game and then later Mighty and Ray were playable in Sonic Mania Plus. I can't stress how great it is to have another example of "It's not the characters fault but the gameplay they're given" out there. One can only wish they take heed of its success in the CORRECT way by incorporating this philosophy into the 3D games. Hopefully, it's done in a way that isn't them seriously believing that Modern 3D Sonic needs even LESS 3D and more Classic Sonic. There's truly no hope if that's what happens. At least for the people currently in charge.

 

Omelette -  So this happened. It's a cute little thing that blew up amongst the Sonic fanbase. While I don't feel one way or the other about her, I do tend to enjoy it when new phenomenons result from something spontaneous and seemingly mundane. I would never put her in any of my fan made stuff but I can't help but enjoy other people's enjoyment of this. 

 

Paramount Takes Over the Sonic Movie - Development hell was in full swing with this thing at this point. Shrug.

 

Sonic Forces: Speed Battle - The first mobile Sonic game I ever allowed myself to become fully invested with... which is odd considering it deals with playing against other people across the world and I typically hate doing that. However, it was just so enchanting how initially easy it was to unlock characters. All my favorites were so easy to unlock so I got gratification rather quickly. That said, I did eventually fall out of love with it when how well you did in races started affecting your awarded points a little too harshly. Even when you won a race, losing one could set you back so badly that it would render your success pointless. I'm glad it's still a thing though. The people playing it are getting constant updates and have what has to be the best roster of playable Sonic characters ever. How unlike the actual Sonic Forces.

 

Sonic Forces - I hate this game.  I hate the way this game is set-up. I hate the way it squanders it's potential.  I hate everything this game stands for which is probably astonishing considering this game stands for nothing. After Sonic Team's tech demo failed to IMMEDIATELY wow the masses, they scrapped it and spent 3 and half years doing nothing and then spent the last half of one of those years cobbling together this piss-pot of a game. All of a sudden, they didn't know where to take Sonic anymore despite still being on the relatively right track with the games that came out from Unleashed to Generations. 

This game is a hodgepodge of shit that SEGA and Sonic Team THINK Sonic fans like and want. Darker elements. Light-hearted elements. More characters but still ONLY Sonic. Classic Sonic. Deviantart fan characters. Wisps. Green Hill Zone. Chemical Plant Zone. The Death Egg. Modern Sonic has shorter quills and is a lighter shade of blue so that he looks more like Classic Sonic, (We split Modern and Classic apart and yet we invoke the name of Classic Sonic SO MUCH in this Modern Sonic game!). The now obligatory Metal Sonic fight where you either use the US or Japanese version of Stardust Speedway as the music and wait to fight him again next game. A collection of villains that aren't actually the villains because that would require something of substance to happen rather than just be something to act as baseless fan-service. 

What's the deal with Infinite? He's a wuss who got beat up by Shadow and hid his face. What happened to him at the end? Dunno. What happened to Eggman at the end? Dunno. Was the Phantom Ruby created with various existing prototypes or did it fall on Eggman's doorstep like the comic showed us? Dunno. Omega's broken but now he's fixed and he joins the final fight to miss all his shots and do nothing. Then it ends on a completely unearned final note and a pair of songs that evoke feelings the game does not deserve.

4 years of waiting for a game that I literally beat again the other day from start to finish on a whim in just a 2 to 3 hours. Maybe the people behind Unleashed and Generations really have moved on and there's no way to recapture that magic again... but if that's truly the case, you need some serious help. Anymore waiting this long for a game like THIS and it's over. 

The absolute worst part is the fact that so much about it had so much potential. It still has the best premise for a Sonic game ever. Dr. Eggman, the main villain of the popular Sonic the Hedgehog franchise and a iconic villain in gaming has FINALLY taken over the world...! It wasted on Sonic Forces...!

The reason this one hurts as much as it does is because it was the first time I was well and truly HYPED for a Sonic game's story leading up to its release. Everything about it's story was selling me on it, from the prequel comics that showcased stuff like the Pachacamac village and sections where the characters got to act on their own without Sonic, to little tidbits about what everyone was doing, to the promise of talking during the levels solely being about what was happening in the narrative and not tutorial advice. It would have been the biggest and best way to capitalize on the characters and the world again but... in the end it was just a game that functioned.

It knows how to function and that's it. 

 

2018

Tangle the Lemur and "Silhouette Gate" - So, close to the launch of the IDW comics we got a preview image of a new character with a question mark over her. Now, because Sonic the Hedgehog character design tends to revolve around a certain body type regardless of how cool and unique they may look, a lot of people were drumming up hope that this new character was Sally Acorn. This was based on literally nothing except the fact that you could tell it was a girl in the image and it maybe, kind of, sort of, resembled a possible re-design of Sally if you squinted a bit. 

I can't speak for anyone else but I was having the time of my life seeing people react to this. Positive or negative, watching and reading the back and forth was far more entertaining than playing Sonic Forces. I've gone back to read through the stretch of the IDW thread where it took place a couple of times. It was amusing the first go around and the second go around was even better knowing that it wasn't Sally but the now beloved Tangle the Lemur. Knowing the punchline at the end of that long ride was grand. 

 

Super Sonic DLC for Sonic Forces - Super Sonic isn't that great of a reward in my opinion. I understand why people wanted it back after so long and they got their wish with Colors in 2010 but it never did much for me as far as the current games go. In Generations his rings drained way too fast, making him practically useless and Classic Sonic's was basically just an invincibility skin. Lost World, he was okay. He functions fine in Forces too but the reason this DLC isn't a good thing is the method initially used to dish him out.

He was originally supposed to be free for a limited time and then, when time was up, was going to be sold to the player for about 2 or 3 bucks. Any money at all for Super Sonic is ridiculous on the face of it but it was even worse considering it had been free for so long. Hell, they made Episode Shadow completely free and that had way more value than Super Sonic. This continues to baffle me even now that it's long since been reversed after the backlash to this weird decision. It's free forever now but even so, the fact that they decided to do this at all when stuff like Yoshi's Island, Zelda, and other DLC that would have been worth paying a little for had been free for so long is really confusing.

 

Sonic Mania Adventures - The return to animated Sonic in an astonishing way. Going off the success of Sonic Mania's animated opening we got a fully animated series for the Sonic Youtube channel that enchanted and delighted me beyond comprehension. It really was a great time to be a Sonic fan. Sonic works so good when the fact that he's supposed to be a lively and well animated cartoon character is taken advantage of. These shorts are the proof. Sonic should get down on one knee and propose to the art of animation.

 

The IDW Sonic Comics Launch - This year also saw the new IDW comics finally hit the scene and it's been everything I've always wanted and more. I had always, always, ALWAYS wanted a Sonic comic that was based on the modern version of Sonic the Hedgehog that I grew up with. Clearly, I enjoyed the Archie comics for what they were but the truth is that I could never fully get into them no matter how much I tried just because of the disconnect between the direction the world and its characters were taking. The Freedom Fighter system that tied the heroes down to a kingdom and later the Sky Patrol thing that felt like the Superfriends in the Hall of Justice just didn't resonate with me at all.

I had a lot of respect for those comics and the method of incorporating as much stuff from whatever continuities they were allowed to use within the book but my heart and soul was yearning for something that just felt like it's focus was on the modern world of the games and would branch out from that with new characters created for just that world mingling with the game cast that I fell in love with when I played Adventure 2: Battle and Heroes all those years ago when I first got into Sonic. 

I suppose some might find it strange to not be all for throwing in everything from every continuity into the same world and utilizing them for one cohesive world and junk but I gotta be honest, I'm really not that kind of guy. It's something I can respect if its done well (and Archie did it well) but this is way more up my alley. The Metal Virus Arc has been and continues to be the most exciting, heart-pumping, and invigorating a Sonic story has been for me since... we'll say since before anything that's happened in this particular decade.

 

Scary Sonic Movie Poster and Sonic's Hairy Legs - The poster for the movie was revealed and the shadowy monstrosity it posed an image of made the rounds as something to fear. The official twitter of the Sonic movie making fun of itself absolutely didn't help matters either. At this point, talk of waiting for a trailer should have been laughed at and promptly ignored but the trailer would indeed come... oh boy did it come...

 

Sonic Adventure - 20th Anniversary - Happy 20th Sonic Adventure. There's not going to be an adventure remake or a return to the Adventure formula, probably, but we still have you and Adventure 2.

 

2019

Team Sonic Racing Overdrive - Confirmation that the animated shorts thing wasn't just for Classic Sonic. This one I love even more than Mania Adventures despite the shift in style, simply because it's in my wheelhouse now. Modern Sonic love is my jam and seeing the characters animated like this does good for the heart and soul. I've watched it so many times now, it's insane. Should have been unlockable in Team Sonic Racing proper.

 

The First Sonic Movie Trailer - This hit the internet like a unnatural disaster. We got to see what live-action Sonic looked like and, surprise, he was a horrible, ugly, abomination. Who could have guessed? Honestly, it was somehow worse than anything anyone could have imagined and the backlash against it was so hard and powerful it launched Sonic back into the mainstream for a brief moment in time. Funny that, at the time of the movie's announcement under Sony, they had to convince us to stop worrying about it being like The Smurfs. Then the trailer comes out and it's got the story of the Smurfs and a design that looks even worse. It also tickles me that Coolio's Gangster's Paradise will now forever be associated with Sonic the Hedgehog. Even Jim "Inasequentiallyrankedhierarchybasedonlevelofcriticalimportancethedisperitybetweenusistoovasttoquantify" Carrey didn't seem like he was able to save this. It was even more doomed than it already was. 

The studio panicked and decided to immediately change it.

 

Team Sonic Racing - The third in the All-Stars racing line-up, only this time it's just Sonic characters. It was the opportunity of a life-time to give some of the spotlight to characters that hadn't been playable in a long time. That chance was squandered when the roster was revealed to only be 15 characters. We had now reached a point where a franchise that was once hated for having billions of "useless" characters would only fill out the roster of a racing game with 15 of them. The game also recycled some tracks from the last All-Stars racing game and the new ones either highly borrowed assets from the last ones or were yet more stages we've seen too much of lately, like Rooftop Run. There were little surprises here and there like the return of the Sand Hill music and King Boom Boo but that was ultimately it.

All that said, this game is a hell of a good time and I'm actually a little obsessed with it. It's so much fun to play. The most ironic thing about it is that the team mechanic was the thing I worried about the most leading up to its release and yet it ended up breathing such new life into the game that playing it without it feels like it's missing so much. The mode I wanted so badly where I could race on my own left me missing my teammates (as well as the cool team ultimates we'd pull off together). This game and it's tracks were not designed for you to race alone, that's for sure.

The lines the characters drop in the races allow them all to cut loose here as well. They were all so boring and interchangeable in Forces but here you've got Tails saying he was kicked out of the casino for counting cards, Zavok saying that bouncing is undignified, and Eggman being a loveable bastard. It really makes me wish more than anything that Espio and Charmy could have participated.

Hell, the dialogue exchange between Sonic and Silver in the story mode where Silver doesn't understand smack talk finally bumped Silver up into my Top 10 favorites. I was already turning around on him but that direction for his character as well as Bryce Papenbrook, the anime protagonist voice actor, just made him so adorkably endearing.

It's a shame that it's not another All-Stars racer and that as a Sonic racer it couldn't capitalize on the opportunity it had to really use the world and its characters to its advantage but... it's still a great game. It's really, really fun and this is actually a case where I would have been more than happy to pay for some DLC. Just not Super Sonic DLC because that would be dumb.

 

SatAM Season 3 Crowdfund - Stop.

 

OK K.O.! Crossover - Let's Meet Sonic - This was a pleasant surprise and a really neat treat. Kind of the opposite of Sonic Boom in terms of what it does to poke some fun at the series, it's got a much more positive and fun outlook on what it means to be a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. Even though it takes most of its inspiration from AoSth and the OVA, tidbits from the other parts of Sonic's history are there too. What's really gratifying is that it's not just a vehicle for fan-service but it tells a story that, in my opinion, shines a light on why Tails is so awesome and how the idea of him being jealous when it comes to Sonic's affection isn't a bad one at all. Also, the voice actors really do shine their best when on TV. Sonic sounds perfect here. Goodness me, it might even be Roger's best performance.

 

Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games - Tokyo 2020 - After thinking the Mario and Sonic olympics may have fizzled away and died an unceremonious death, the ceremony begins again in Tokyo for 2020. It's got new clothes for the cast, a ton of new 2D events reminiscent of old NES sports games, BOXING, and a story-mode! FINALLY! I get to play the story-mode for one of these Olympic Games! The dialogue isn't as flavorful as it was for Team Sonic Racing but whatever, I'll take it. It only took the Nintendo Switch taking over the Nintendo handheld market for the stories to be incorporated into a home console. Is it the best one? Probably not. That might still be London 2012, I'll have to go check... but it's a step up from Sochi. That's for damn sure.

Still not jazzed about having the SAME roster of 20 characters and these tiny little guest spots as compensation. I mean, the original Winter Olympics one was in 2009. It's been OVER a decade now.

 

The Second Sonic Movie Trailer and the Redesign - They fixed him! Hurray! Sonic looks like Sonic now and he got to show his stuff in a brand new trailer that uses more appropriate licensed music and even threw in a theatrical sounding Green Hill Zone remix. The scenes they showed were actually better. A few moments were even a little bit funny. The action definitely looks cool. The movie itself.. will probably still be bad but knowing that didn't stop the internet from throwing a party and setting whatever music they wanted to that scene of Robotnik-Carry dancing. I'm expecting to at least have some fun now.

 

That's it. I just covered the entire decade. I have no idea why I did it. No one's going to read this. I guess I just really like to write. Someone help me, please.