Oh, Sonic Team, what have you done? There used to be a time when I looked forward to seeing a certain little blue hedgehog racing across my TV screen. My ears were fond of that little “blingâ€? noise for every ring picked up. And my hands twitched at the thought of every button on the controller making my hedgehog jump. Alas, those days are gone.

A couple of months ago, I had the misfortune of trying out the Sonic the Hedgehog demo for the Xbox 360, the newest title thrown into the slew of 3D Sonic games. Of course, every game has a catch, and this one was that the game was supposedly going back to the basics – platform / exploration based gameplay, juggled in with enemies, bosses, and of course, pure speed. But as is seemingly the new norm with games based in the Sonic universe, I was treated to a game with lousy sound work, questionable graphics, and touchy controls, where accidental deaths are apparently part of the experience. Granted, the demo I played was not supposed to reflect the final quality of the game, but judging from some of the reviews I’ve seen for the game thus far, I am not in a minority in my distaste for the game.

I’m sure some of you are thinking to yourselves at this point, “Who cares about Sonic the Hedgehog?â€? Well, I do. I grew up when Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario were constantly dueling. Mario was well-established, and had huge games. Sonic was the cool new kid, with unparalleled speed. I liked them both, and to me, the competition between Sega and Nintendo seemed to make each of their software teams put all the little extra touches they could into their first party games, in order to better sell their respective systems.

I played the hell out of those games. I loved the Sonic series, from plain old Sonic the Hedgehog (the one that came packed in with the Sega Genesis) all the way up to Sonic & Knuckles. The simplicity of the gameplay, the creative graphics, and the memorable music and sound effects all just worked.

Skip ahead a decade and a half, and what has Sonic Team done to the series since the original? To their credit, the graphics have taken a turn for the better. Despite the occasional glitch here and there, the Sonic games of today run blindingly fast, are colorful, and usually detailed. Aside from the visual treats, the rest is trash. Unmemorable, generic techno music in the background. Lame sound effects. Enemies that are not engaging. Controls that make Sonic go from standing to running with an immeasurably small amount of movement on the analog stick. Strange characters that look kind of like Sonic, but not really. And weird “special movesâ€? that make you fly all over, mid-air.

Sonic Team / Sega are ruining their most famous mascot. I know they can do better than this. They need to take a breather, look back at what made the old Sonic games good, and come up with something better than this generic, on-rails, pseudo platformer. I wouldn’t even mind if they just remade the old games with a 3D platformer engine… If that’s what it takes to get this series back on track, then so be it. I’d much rather see that than have my beloved Hedgehog fall by the wayside because, despite the power of the systems his games are released on, and how much time is spent on said games, his games stink.

Oh well… here’s hoping for next time. If history repeats itself, however, I will anxiously download and try out the new Sonic demo months / years from now, only to be yet again disappointed. Anyway, I think I hear a game of Gears of War calling me from my living room. Maybe chainsawing a few people online will cheer me up, heh heh.

Thanks for reading!