Why Sonic has lost his appeal: A Cracked style look (AKA an ode to Leeds guy!)

[Lee]

Yes considering I'm a massive Nintendo fan this would only be a matter of time before this cropped up. However there was a point I absolutely loved Sonic and the first two games were two of my favourite games of all time so it surprises me that I am writing about the demise of one of best characters in this field. So what happened?

6. Speed

Whilst officially a platforming game Sonic had something that Mario didn't have, it had speed. Now Mario was all about adventuring and finding secrets, Sonic was rushing through the level timing everything to perfection so much so that on my last play-through of Sonic 2 there were a number of secrets that I had accidentally found that I hadn't done in other play through. Ever played Sonic 3D? They took speed out, heck there were even parts of S&Knuckles and Sonic 3 where you had to stop the speed side of things to do some random gimmicky thing like using a see-saw (or there abouts) to move up the next part of the level. Take the speed away then what's the point?

5. Stupid additional characters

Now this may be one of those points that you expected (just like speed) but seriously what's the deal with the random characters? Before we get to that I'll get it out of the way...Mario has a ton of random characters but they're usually used on the spin-offs, they keep with the same sort of characters for the main game. So who do we have? Tails. Amy Rose, Knuckles, Espio, Vector, Blaze, Shadow, Rouge, Jet, Storm, Wave, Big the Cat, Froggy, Mighty the Armadillo, Cream the rabbit (lmao), Fang the Sniper oh I give up...there's a huge list! Some have an appeal (like Tails who has the appeal to the younger gamer, and Knuckles who I'll get to later) but come on...the rest hold no real love do they?

4. Soundtrack

I'm pretty sure you're now humming in your head one of the amazing pieces of music from Sonic 1 and how it added to the overall game or you're like me and singing the Dr Robotnik now Eggman theme from Sonic 2 . In fact if I showed this piece to a hundred people I doubt anyone would give us a rendition of one of the “modern” Sonic games attempts at a Soundtrack, they easily add to the dated feel of the game...I mean just listen to it.

 

[Decarow]

Yet again, Lee, great post.

I only want to touch on the Knuckles comment right now though. I think you're right. Knuckles was the decline of the Sonic games. He could have easily just been a villain, or a sub-boss. He could have just been Sonic's parallel villain. Like Wario to Mario. Or Mewtwo to Mew.

Knuckles is the kind of character that tools like (no offense). He's everything they want to be (or who they think they already are). He's not the main hero (who most people look at as a "goody goody" superman), yet he still stops evil and is his own echidna. Everybody wants to be "that guy".

If Knuckles was a real guy, he'd drive a red 1992 honda civic, wear nothing but Tap-Out shirts and hats (backwards), and act like a douche around women.

 

[The Rob]

As much as I adore the original Sonic games on the Mega Drive, I can't help but feel your absolutely spot on. Sonic has massively declined, and Sega has only started getting him back on track with Sonic 4. Sonic The Hedgehog on the 360 from 2006 was literally Sonic digging his own grave.

I try not to remember the latest Sonic games, as all in all (with the exception of Sonic 4) they absolutely suck in comparison to the original titles. My memory of Sonic will always be from my childhood, wasting hours upon hours of my life playing the originals. I'll remember the cartoon series' they had on TV at the time, which just continued to fuel my love for Sonic. I had Sonic curtains, Sonic bedsheets, Sonic rucksake, Sonic EVERYTHING when I was young. I was addicted. These are the memories that will stick with me and I'm very grateful for that, as looking back three things defined my childhood:

1) Formula 1
2) Sonic The Hedgehog
3) Disney.

 

[Dagger Dias]

Sonic was awesome for the first three games (I count Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3 as one game for obvious reasons). However, everything went downhill after that. I definitely think that the addition of all the random other characters was a bad idea. That's half the issue. Going 3D was the other half. Sonic BELONGS in 2D. Period. The point is to go as fast as you can, grabbing items along the way. That's much more difficult to do in the more recent and 3D games. In the old games it was more original because they stuck to what made them fun in the first place. Tails and Knuckles were great additions for multiplayer or altering the main story of Sonic & Knuckles a little depending on who you played as. Shadow is cool too, come on. Admit it. Amy is.... tolerable. The rest? Not needed at all.

None of the other additional characters were needed. I can name a grand total of one time that they made a difference. An RPG starring Sonic on the DS. Yeah, that's one that isn't talked about much. Come to think about it, even in that game a party of Sonic/Tails/Knuckles/Amy would have sufficed. Robotnik could still have appeared in it, and maybe a couple of the new characters exclusive to that game, but some of the more pointless characters of the series (looking at YOU, big the cat!) just flat out suck and are not needed.

Sonic declined due to additional pointless characters no one's heard of or even care about. Going 3D was also a bad idea due to gameplay issues. Those two problems are why Sonic declined and will likely never see the popularity the series had in the early 90's again.