Dazzling speed. Spectacular loop-de-loops. A soundtrack that shaped a generation. No matter how old you are, there’s a good chance that Sonic the Hedgehog has had an impact on your life. SEGA’s gotta go fast mascot has been everywhere over the last couple of decades, kicking off a race across Megadrive consoles and eventually ending up in all other of media along the way.
Maybe you tuned in to K-TV to see the origin of bad ping when some disembodied voice yelled at Sonic to go “forward forward up stop forward” or maybe you remember tuning into the animated series adventures that were surprisingly grim at the time. Heck, even the recent film starring a thankfully redesigned speedster and Jim Carrey most likely pulled on the strings that your heart is attached to!
For anyone in the mid-2000s though, it was a terrible time to be a fan of Sonic. That’s all thanks primarily to a single game: 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog. What was billed as a fresh new start for the blue hedgehog in the early days of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era, was instead pure digital hell for anyone that got suckered into throwing actual cash down for this car crash of a game.
Infinite loading screens, a camera system designed to make you suffer and the worst checkpoint system known to man, all came together to create an abomination of gaming at the time. There legitimately isn’t a word that can accurately sum up just how ass Sonic the Hedgehog ‘06 is. Although the Anry Video Game Nerd came close to distilling its misery into a video format:
It’s a tragedy, because with a few mods there was a game underneath all of that grime that was worth a play. A game that Ian “ChaosX” Moris has been remastering inside of Unity, recreating the infamous game from scratch on PC. The torturous loading screens are a relic of the past, the gameplay has been polished, the camera is no longer drunk and you can even change various UI elements to suit your particular tastes. Check it below:
The current demo allows players to try out Dusty Desert, White Acropolis, Crisis City, Flame Core, Radical Train, Tropical Jungle, Kingdom Valley, Aquatic Base and Tails’ Wave Ocean, which is a lot of content. If you want to read up more on the project, Engadget has a breakdown on Moris and his labour of love, which is finally giving Sonic fans a taste of the impossible dream: Playing a Sonic the Hedgehog game in 3D, that doesn’t violate the Geneva convention as a tool of torture.
Last Updated: July 16, 2020
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July 16, 2020 at 14:13
Woah, hold up there, “which is finally giving Sonic fans a taste of the impossible dream: Playing a Sonic the Hedgehog game in 3D, that doesn’t violate the Geneva convention as a tool of torture”. Sounds pretty unprofessional to me. Indeed misinformating and dismising an entire game franchise just for the lols. With this ideas in mind you could even work on IGN!!!.
Sonic 06 is almost 14 years old and you are still babbling, even putting all good 3D games in the same bag just because ’06 iS bAd, sOnIc iS bAd iN 3d’, ignoring both SA, Generations or even Colors.
Please, do everyone a favor and stop writing about a franchise you seem to know little no none about.
The D
July 16, 2020 at 19:40
Fun fact: I do work on IGN. And no, I’ll never stop writing about Sonic. I’m already busy on a post about why the entire franchise is a rip-off of Banjo Kazooie.
SonicSpeedway
July 16, 2020 at 23:33
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH I’M DYING
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July 17, 2020 at 01:01
Of course you are from IGN, no surprise.
Pariah
July 16, 2020 at 14:35
Wait someone remade every Sonic game as one game?
Hammersteyn
July 16, 2020 at 15:02
https://media2.giphy.com/media/6OPbJtEDdy824/giphy.gif
Giuseppe
July 16, 2020 at 21:55
The worst is Sonic Boom