Echoing Sentiments: A Comentary on the Sonic Franchise

I’m finally writing the Sonic opinion piece I’d been meaning to get around to doing. I was actually inspired by a recent opinion piece over at Wired (http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/03/opinion-a-call.html).

I love Sonic the Hedgehog. His games had a huge impact on my life; the series is responsible for love of the video game. From that series I branched out and continued to explore the game universe. I can thank Sonic Team for some of the best experiences I’ve had in front of a television set.

Not recently however.

After 1994 the Sonic series started to falter. Sonic was virtually nonexistent during the Saturn era, and when he reappeared in 1998 (in Japan) with Sonic Adventure. Super Mario 64 had managed to top the core aspects of this game two years prior. Still, Adventure was a high point for the series. Its anticipated sequel was going to fix many of it’s problems. It, however, mostly failed to do that. Adventure was a hodgepodge of terrible game ideas. Fans of the series should have realized something was up when only a fifth of the game was speed related. I certainly didn’t realize it in ‘99 when I was blowing off junior high school assignments to finish the game. But, fishing? Shooting? Slow “standard” platforming? Treasure hunting? These things have no place in a Sonic game. Adventure 2 cut fishing, and the slow platforming aspects, but kept the shooting and treasure hunting, as well as the trademark speed levels. Both the shooting and treasure hunting morphed into a tedious wreck. The game was built, presumably, as a speed game (Knuckles and Rouge run blazingly fast for their segments).

These elements just don’t belong.

These are two games in which the best fun was reduced to a small fraction of the actual game. Even these sections were plagued with an odd camera and awkward level design choices. Sega dropped out of hardware after Adventure 2 was released. New home console Sonic games were put on hold in favor of ports of the Adventure games, and a ray of hope shined brightly as Sega announced Sonic Advance for the Gameboy Advance.

That series went on to be the best thing to happen to Sonic since ‘94.

That series, however, declined in quality as it progressed. By the third entry Sonic Team’s amazing narrative style found it’s way in. The final entry was also bogged down by a quasi Team mechanic borrowed from Knuckles Chaotix and the just released Sonic Heroes. It didn’t work.

Heroes. Want to talk about series decline? Here’s the real beginning of it.

The Adventure games, despite their flaws are still highly regarded among the fans. Playing them now is difficult, but in their time they were a blast to play. Heroes had plenty of that charm as well, the game even shifted to almost entirely focusing on speed. Still, the team mechanic and the wobbly game play that resulted from that choice, as well as the poorly crafted story ruined the game.

Shadow the Hedgehog was the breaking point for most gamers. Not only did it feature Heroes’ clunky gameplay set-up (except worse, somehow), bland repetitive levels, it also feature guns and some wonky story about Shadow being crafted by alien creatures (which is a rant all in itself. Fucking aliens. What a dumb fucking story choice). It was obvious that this was some marketing ploy to attracted gamers high on last generations big “breadwinners” Halo and Grand Theft Auto. That or someone at Sega had completely lost their mind.

Ironically, one of Sonic’s greatest games launched right along side this abomination, Sonic Rush (which was probably the last worthwhile Sonic game).

Sonic Team just kept tarnishing the series name with the Riders series, Sonic and the Secret Rings (which, for some reason fans seem to enjoy, despite it’s many flaws (ie: terrible story, horrendous level design, and atrocious control scheme), and the graphically pretty Shadow clone, better known as Sonic the Hedgehog (or Sonic ‘06).

Just recalling this history makes me inclined to agree with anyone who says it’s time to just end the series. The quality has dropped, and the Sonic fans that started with Sonic 1 have abandoned hope. Sonic Team has proven time and time again they can’t handle the properties their famous for making (look at their Nights sequel). The team is a shell of it’s former self. They’re probably hard at work on their next failure. Somehow though, it will still sell enough copies for the team to get another chance at reanimating the monster they’ve made out of Sonic.

However, in an odd move Sega commissioned BioWare to develop a Sonic RPG for DS. The game shows promise (despite taking Sonic into a traditionally slow paced genre), but how can any Sonic fan not be skeptical, especially with talk of another alien species making an appearance in Sonic’s world. That element has me scared for the game. And, it’s Sega admitting they can’t handle the property. It’s time to retire the blue blur, maybe just for a while.

It actually would have made perfect sense, story wise, to call it quits with the end of Adventure 2. Everyone, villains included, worked together to save the planet. Eggman was a good guy to me after that; it was very hard for me to see him as evil after what he did at the end of that game. It ended very peacefully, even with Shadow’s death, which could have worked on a symbolic level to signify the end of the series.

Mario is going to face a similar problem in his next game. Galaxy’s theme and ending just make that game the perfect end to the series. These mascots can’t be pushed on forever, despite the money they make their companies. It’s as if dignity has no meaning as long as the cash flow keeps coming, which is a terrible shame. It’s a problem this industry faces, sequelitis, it’s called in some circles. Eventually we will get tired of established series, especially if it seems like their parent companies are just beating life out of them. Even Disney had to put Mickey Mouse on hiatus. He still represents the company, and he makes plenty of cameos all over the place, but he hasn’t had his own major production in a very long time. He’s a dignified icon. Sega, Nintendo, Capcom (yeah, I’m calling you out on Megaman (and Street Fighter), Konami (I love Metal Gear, but Kojima, if I see MGS5 after you called it quits here I’ll be fucking pissed), it’s time to dignify your properties and end this sequel festival. We know your studios can make great games; maybe it’s time for something new.

It is time.