We all know who Sonic the Hedgehog is. A blue Hedgehog who can run up to the speeds of mach 1. That's not how it started. This is a basically a biography of Sonic the Hedgehog's Life and Possible Death.
It all started in 1991 with Sega's debut of Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Mega Drive/Genisis. The game was the bomb! The graphics were stunning and colourful in comparison to what the NES was spitting out at the time. It was about this blue hedgehog trying to save the animals of the forest from evil Dr. Robotnik. It also spawned an 8-bit version for the Master System. To be perfectly frank, this is when the guy was perfect!
One year later Sega released a sequal. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Mega Drive/Genesis and it is the best selling game on the system itself! And I'm not really sure if Sonic 1 had this feature but if you collected 200 rings, Sonic would start glowing and turn Super. He'd be faster, invinsable and have a much higher jump! The game had all the colour and speed of its predessesor and was better!
Sega had a bunch of useless attachments to the Genisis. Every game was pretty bad until Sega released Sonic CD which in GT's (game trailers) opinion, the best Sonic game ever made. It made a feature that frankly, I love. Sonic's legs turning into eights when he was fast enough. Also the time breaking cut scenes and the introduction of Metal Sonic, Sonic's first counterpart. It was incredible!
Another year, another Sonic game. Sonic & Knuckles was an expansion pack to Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 (kinda I'm not really sure). Instead of finding the regular 7 Chaos Emeralds, Knuckles could go to new areas in zones and find 7 more. That's 14 Chaos Emeralds! Not to mention you got to control a new character, which was good enough for most! Whether they could find the emeralds or not.
After waiting 4 long years, kids in Japan got the newest true Sonic game. Sonic Adventure. Most people thought Sonic's jump to 3d would ruin him (labarinth, 3d blast) but that's what they said about Mario (Super Mario 64) and Megaman (Megaman Legends) and guess what? All three of them are incredible games! Sonic adventure was everything that was good about Sonic brought into the 3rd dimension. And may I recall getting chased by an Orca which is one of the coolest moments in Sonic HISTORY! It also spawned a PC and Gamecube version called Sonic Adventure DX: Directors Cut which was almost as good as the Dreamcast version but DC is the only way to play this game.
After another two years of waiting for a true Sonic game Sega released Sonic Adventure 3. Most people would say this is the best Sonic game ever made! It introduced one of the coolest Sonic characters in my opinion. Sonic's second counterpart to date, Shadow the Hedgehog. And Rouge the Bat but personally I hate her. Not only was it better than its predeccecor, but it had an incredible story line!
I'm going to skip Heroes and Shadow because really, these games are way too contreversial.
Sonic 06/360/Next Gen was supposed to be Sonic's revival but appearently, those previews were AI controlled and made no mistakes. When controlled by humans, you'd fall off, get stuck and frankly see so many glitches there are only two words to describe this game. Half Assed! If they had like six more months to work out the bugs, Sonic might not be considerably suckish! And the biggest insult to Sonic gamers everywhere (especcialy Sonamy fans), Sonic had a romantic relasionship with a human girl named Elise. Not to mention she kisses him in the end. Also, Sonic DIES, which is super stupid, Elise was right there and didn't do crap! I don't know what's creepier, the fact that she kissed an animal or a corpse?
Sonic's next true game is going to be called Sonic Unleashed. I don't know if you people know, but this was actually going to be Sonic Adventure 2. They just made so many differences, they decided to call it Sonic Unleashed. The current Sonic game you can buy is Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. I guess it was Sega's answer to the Mario & Luigi RPG series on the GBA and DS.
These games really go under the hood, but believe it or not, there are dozens of Sonic games on the handhelds. These are some of them.
The first one that wasn't just a remake of the Genisis versions of Sonic, was Sonic Chaos for the Game Gear, released in 1993. This is basically an eight bit Sonic game that captured everything good about the games.
One of the best Sonic games ever was the Sonic Advance Series and the Rush Series (Sonic Advance 1, 2 & 3. Sonic Rush, Adventure). Mostly because they remain to Sonic's roots, 2d. You get a good sense of Speed and the rush series introduced Blaze the Cat, Eggman Nega and the Sol Emeralds.
Nintendo had their games, and now the series moved to the Sony PSP with Sonic Rivals one and two. The game featured Silver, which was in Sonic 06/360/Next Gen, Sonic, Shadow, Metal Sonic and Knuckles. The sequal included Tails, Espio & Rouge. This was a racing game like Riders and Riders 0 Gravity (I ain't talkin' about them for the same reason as Hereos and Shadow).
Other Sonic games would be Shuffle, a Mario Party copy, Knuckles Chaotix, the first appearence of Vector, Charmy and Espio, Sonic and the Secret Rings, which added another Super Sonic form, R, which is raved as one of the worst Sonic games by GT, Drift & Drift 2, which thankfully never got out of Japan and Sonic Spinball, a pinball game.
Sonic's entire life depends on Unleashed, if it sucks, you can kiss the blue hedgehog good-bye. If Sonic Team could just keep their eye on what makes Sonic good, he'll make a comeback. I hope.
Thank you for reading.