1991… a year to remember for all Sonic fans, as that furry little hedgehog sped his way through the Green Hill Zone and straight into video game stardom.
1992… Miles “Tails” Prower provides much applauded variety to one of the best video games sequels of all time, proving that you don’t need wings, magic, or jet engines to fly.
1994… Knuckles the Echidna shows that nobody really knows what an Echidna is, all while providing a bad-ass counter-hero to our lovable blue savior.
2010…?
Sonic is an immortal figure, worth of a place in the All-Time Video Game Character Hall of Fame without question. However, after three solid commercial hits, this hedgehog among hedgehogs has been forced to play the lead in bomb after bomb, slowly but painfully diminishing the amazement of the original trilogy of games. One can’t blame Sonic himself for these failures. The series has been constantly, and sometimes drastically, moving away from its roots, giving Sonic everything from beautiful princesses, to big-ass guns, and even a feral “werehog” form (one would think to give him a kitchen sink next time).
Now we come to the proverbial last stand: Sonic returns to his roots in 2-D with several technical improvements (and in HD!). This is what can only be described as sink or swim for the great hedgehog, as failure here means that even returning to the basic formula can’t save the historical series.
From the looks of it, Sonic 4: Episode 1 seems like a solid title, harking back to the days when taking out enemies was as simple as jumping on their heads. Actually, in keeping with that sentiment, the beginning of Sonic 4 begins right after the events of Sonic & Knuckles defeat of the Death Egg, beginning with a brand new plan for world domination by Eggman.
Not everything is the same however, as the new development team has taken it upon themselves to add some attacks from newer Sonic games (No werehogs allowed though…). Most notably is the homing attack from Sonic Adventure, giving the player not only a speedy ground course to navigate, but a whole sky of routes to find and explore. Also making a comeback is the old style shield from the original games. While it only protected against one hit, the scores of gamers and millions of rings it’s saved makes it a classic favorite among both new players and old dogs.
Will this latest installment be the great savior of Sonic? While we won’t know till this summer, this is setting up to be a sure hit among the old-school sonic fans at the least.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh God, please don’t remind me of the werehog. The worst part is that game might have been fun without those levels. I’ll never know though, because I couldn’t bring myself to play past the second werehog stage.
If they can just make Sonic Rush on a home console, I’m sold. It’s too bad we’ll never know what a good 3D Sonic game could be, because Sonic Team refuses to stand behind their mascot and release a game that doesn’t feature crappy levels with worse gameplay mechanics and annoying side characters, instead of an all Sonic game like they started out making on Genesis.
/Rant
Probably a bomb. The animation looks terrible, and the mine cart level looks intensely frustrating.
I’m looking forward to trying it. With a lot of games that are re-makes, innovation takes away from basic game play and enjoyment. I grew up on 2-D games and will still gravitate towards them. Look at the new Super Mario Bros game for Wii and DS. Both are great ‘return to form’ games. I enjoy them a lot more than Galaxy or Sunshine. And with the resurgence of the 2-D mega man games and the Xbox Live Arcade 2-D games (Braid and P.B. Winterbottom), I still hold out hope that bringing it back to basics might just be what this series needs. I’d rather take Knuckles hi-jacking Sonic 2 over the werehog any day.
In defense of Sonic 3D Blast – I thought it was a very solid game, and the music more than made up for the slightly frustrating physics of Sonic’s movement. As for the other ones…well…I’ll play them simply because I’m a die-hard Sonic fan. But if we’re picking up where Sonic & Knuckles left off (because that was probably the most epic of the franchises), count me in.