93: The decline of the Sonic series and Sega in general
For two decades, Sega's legacy for quality games far outweighted their commercial success. The Master System, Saturn and Dreamcast sold jack sh*t but they were great systems.
Their only true commercial success was the Genesis, thanks in most part to Sonic. When a new Sonic game came out it was worth getting excited about. I don't think any video game character was as big a part of my childhood as Sonic, not even Mario. I watched the cartoons, read the comic book, anything with Sonic. Sonic was the bomb, and his old platformers still stand out as some of the best 16 bit games ever made.
I'm still a Sonic fanboy at heart, I still play Sonic games old and new all the time. Now notice my choice of words in the title, I could easly have said "All the new Sonic and Sega games", but that's the problem, some of the new Sonic games actually are good, if flawed. The Sonic Adventure games were great, the Sonic Advance games were excellent, and some of the newer ones are still decent, but dosen't help a reputation that's been nearly destroyed by sh*tfests like Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (06). I think the real decline in the series began with Sonic Heroes. They had to cram every character in there, and for some reason they have to create a new character for every new game. If you ask me it should just be Sonic (the hero), Robotnik (the bad guy), Tails (the cute sidekick), Knuckles (the antihero) and Amy Rose (the damsel in distress/possible love interest), they all fill the basic character roles and they were the original characters in the series. Shadow is a very popular character with the younger fans though, so unlike everyone else I don't think they should get rid of him, just reinvent him as the evil twin kinda role that he originally had before they turned him into the lame "amnesiac looking for answers" archtype starting with the Shadow game, all this Maria crap dosen't belong in the Sonic universe.
One thing I really hate about the new Sonic games is the canonical changes made starting with Sonic Adventure, for one they changed Dr. Robotnik's name to Dr. Eggman, even though that's what he was always called in Japan it's not the point, in North America we always knew him as Dr. Robotnik, and we won't accept anything else. But one change I really hate is that they changed the setting of the series, since Sonic made his debut, it's been made clear in the western versions of the games that Sonic was the inhabitant of another planet, which the manuals, tv shows and comics all called mobius, and we always accepted that as a canonlical part of the series. Because us Sonic fans grew up on the cartoons and the comic just as much as the games, we embraced the idea that Sonic lived in a planet inhabited only by anthropomorphic furry animals. Then Sonic Adventure changed all that as well, by depicting Sonic's homeworld as none other than present day earth.
Which makes no goddamn sense, when was the last time you seen a bipedal blue hedgehog walking around? That's one thing that makes the new Sonic games so ridiculous, they have him coexisting and reacting with humans (and not the cartoony kind like Robotnik) who don't seem to be too bothered by the fact that he's a GIANT TALKING HEDGEHOG, and Sonic 06 even sunk so low as to formulate a romantic interest between Sonic and a human girl. What the hell? What kind of Sonic game is that? What happened to Princess Sally? She may be a squirrel so it's still interspecies mating, but that's not quite as disgusting as a human bumping uglies with a hedgehog.
Look at this.
Does that look like a Sonic character to you? Well it is.
WHY f*ck with what we grew up with? Changing mobius to earth is like if the writers of DC comics decided right now that Superman is no longer from krypton. It's insulting, I don't care if it was always supposed to be earth in Japan, here in the western world it's f*cking mobius dammit.
Anyway. I could go on about what's wrong with the new Sonic games, but Sonic is not the only thing Sega should worry about, they focus on Sonic too much, that's why theres a new Sonic game almost every couple of months, and because they're rushed they tend to range from being bad games to just very flawed ones, with common problems being bad camera, stiff controls and lame gimmicks. Sega have left so many of their great licenses to rot, Shinobi, Ecco the Dolphin, Alex Kidd, Vectorman, Shenmue. Maybe if they actually focused on games other than Sonic, Phantasy Star, Virtua Fighter, f*cking Monkey Ball and crappy movie tie in games people would actually start paying attention to them again, it also wouldn't hurt if they didn't worry so much about getting Sonic games released for a specific date and actually let the developers f*cking finish them.
I don't know why Sega have lost their f*cking minds in the past few years, the Dreamcast had some damn fine software. So why have Sega dropped the ball as soon as they became a third party developer? It might have a lot to do with Yuji Naka's departure, whatever it is, I wish they would get their act together. Back in the day, Sega were one of the best game developers period, it's shameful to see what they have become.
That being said, I am interested in Sonic and The Black Knight.
