I kind of felt like making a blog about my thoughts on Sonic, due to the recent death battle. The series has def had ups and downs, but I’ve always been a big fan of it and I always see so many people talking about how they want to “fix” the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Such as people saying you need to go back to the adventure formula, or that sonic should have never gone 3d, etc. But I’m gonna be honest in my personal opinion the problems with Sonic have nothing to do with gameplay style or mechanics. I’ve played Sonic Since the 90s and it’s always been clear to me that the problems the series has faced are systematic of larger problems at sega itself. This has always been clear to me when you see how the franchise's main issues developed.
Hopefully, it doesn’t come off as to ranty
Why are so many of the game's buggy, loosely controlled, or riddled with poor level design.?
It’s because Sega has a bad habit of poor management, rushing developers, and not giving people the resources they actually need to develop the games correctly. It’s something they’ve done since the original genesis trilogy, but it became harder and harder to manage when the series moved into a 3D space.
Sonic X-treme: Had numerous problems with running on the Saturn due to the platform being inherently difficult to develop for. Had a lot of miscommunication about what engine the game was going to be built on and had a massive Christmas release crunch that almost killed its lead director. The game also had its death warrant signed by Yuji Naka himself, because he didn’t want the team to use his game engine from nights into dreams, despite the game clearly being important to the Saturn's success.
Sonic 06: Its team was split into half partway through development to work on Sonic and the secret rings. The game was also Christmas rushed and the final version was made from a less polished build to mismanagement on the PS3/360 versions.
Sonic Boom: The team was forced to bring the game to the Wii-U despite the game originally being developed with an engine that was really only compatible with PC/PS4/ONE. Big Red Button was also constantly told by sega to change aspects of the storyline or gameplay. Then had a hard deadline placed on top of it due to an exclusivity deal with Nintendo. The game also had to be altered to tie in with the cartoon series that got planned partway through development.
Sonic forces: The team working on this were literally mostly newbies. The level design leads in particular were scaled back significantly compared to Sonic generations. Most of its 4-year development was also spent building the engine rather than the game.
Why do so many Sonic games go in odd directions in terms of mechanics or gameplay?
It’s because Sega has a really bad habit of following popular trends without really understanding the context of why they work in a given situation. Additionally, the teams that work on these games often get burnt out and try to experiment to alleviate that boredom.
Shadow the hedgehog: This game came out in an era where video games were becoming a lot edgier and bringing in stuff like gunplay was the norm. Shadow feels like an attempt to cash in on popular platformers at the time like Jak 2 or ratchet/Clank.
Sonic unleashed: This game had a major leak before release were an insider who knew about sega pretty much outright said that Sonic team was tired of constantly going from Sonic game to Sonic game. The Invention of the Werehog was a means of experimentation because the team wanted to work on other projects. The original blog this was posted has been deleted, but you can still find it archived, and I myself vividly recall reading it. https://web.archive.org/web/20141219201642/http://web.archive.org/web/20070408161400/http:/bossrush.blogspot.com/2007/03/nights-2.html
Sonic Lost World: Clearly tried way too hard to alter Sonic’s formula to appeal to Nintendo fans. Particularly by slowing him down and making the platforming more blocky.
Sonic forces: Classic Sonic is clearly just in the game because he was well received in Sonic Generations. He doesn’t have a narrative “need” to be there and his gameplay is redundant when Sega was aware Mania was coming out shortly before anyway.
This happens with characterization and story as well. For example, Sega has been trying really hard to make characters like Shadow act like an arrogant Saiyan Saga Vegeta because they think that kind of characterization will be more popular. Despite many fans pointing out how incongruent this is with his character development and show intense dislike of that characterization when it shows up in IDW.
Sega has also tried to ret-con classic Sonic from being the past version of Modern Sonic and prevent characters from that era from showing up in modern comics or media. Mostly because they want to make classic Sonic a separate universe after his resurgence in popularity, despite it not really making much sense. They’ve even barred any classic-era characters from mixing in the modern games or media.
Why does Sonic have such a fractured fanbase?
Sega poorly managed the series image ever since its inception. Not only have a lot of aspects of Sonic’s general world and cast always been in flux, but the tone of the story in each adaptation is almost never consistent. A lot of versions of Sonic also have fan-favorite characters that Sega never took steps to fully utilize..
For example, Fleetway Sonic has a very specific origin story based on a western promotional comic, where Sonic and Robotnik were initially friends, by a lab experiment turned the latter evil. Super Sonic was also portrayed as more of an evil super mode. These interpretations of the franchise were almost never shown in any other country, but people who grew up in the UK during the 90s saw that interpretation of Sonic was canon.
In America Sonic essentially got 3 different continuities with widely differing tones at the same time. Adventures of Sonic was a slapstick comedy with its cast of team rockets like villains called Scratch, Grounder, and Coconuts. Satam was this more serious action-adventure series with a cast of freedom fighters, the most prominent being Sally Acorn. Sonic Underground gave Sonic siblings named Sonia and Manic and had a tone that was a mix between adventures and Satam. All 3 of these continuities heavily established the concept of Sonic’s world being “Mobius” and being inhabited by “Mobians”, with many people in the US still using that terminology because they grew up with it.
The Sonic OVA is basically a one-off, and while it doesn’t have many original characters outside the president and Sara, it does change the setting a bit. This version of Sonic takes place on the planet Freedom, an post-apocalyptic earth with a floating landscape everyone lives on.
Sonic X is probably the closest any Sonic adoption has gotten towards being “canon compliant”. All the game characters are present and it even has adaptations of several of the games. You do have Chris and his family as characters, but they’re pretty negligible. The biggest deviation for this media was having earth and “sonic’s world” be separate planets, but this was “technically” confirmed to be canon in the games, so it’s congruent retroactively. The main thing is when you get to season 3. Season 3 introduces a lot of villains and allies that never existed in the games, particularly Cosmo and the metarex.
Sonic boom is very far removed from the rest of the franchise and is mostly a comedy/sitcom type show. The game backstories of characters like Shadow and Knuckles don’t exist, and the world itself isn’t earth or Mobius. It does create a few original characters, but the only one that seems well-liked is probably Sticks.
Then you have the Archie comics that a massive amount of characters in two incarnations pre and post-reboot. It builds on a lot of the Satam lore and goes off in some weird directions at times, but is mostly fairly serious. That said you get a lot of popular characters like Scourge, Shard, Nicole’s avatar form, and Eggman’s Dozen from it.
This isn’t even getting into the games themselves, which go from having basically no story in the 90s, to having a shohen manga tone in the early 2000s, to having a more kidly Saturday cartoon interpretation in the 2010s. Along with the more recent IDW comics which seem more game-centric in tone and setting, albeit with little direct references outside of forces.
It's no wonder to me that Sonic fans can’t agree on the tone of the series and constantly argue about wanting certain characters back into the limelight. The series is all over the place depending on your personal history with the franchise and it’s mostly sega’s fault this happened.
Ideally, all of these massive shifts in tone and cast should have never happened. But even then sega could have mitigated the problem years ago. In a healthy franchise, you can generally take aspects of adaptations that work, and then integrate them back into the main cannon without too much difficulty anyway. This happens a lot in comic books with characters like Harly quin. Spiderman PS4 is also a good example, as it merges together aspects of the comics, the Rami trilogy, the MCU, various cartoons, etc.
Sega could have better integrated/merged most of these interpretations of Sonic in the late 90s before Sonic got story-heavy, but never capitalized on that opportunity. That said they could probably still introduce individual characters or concepts from those media into the modern media like the recent IDW comics and there wouldn’t be much complaint(Despite the constant debate I can’t imagine Cosmo or Sally showing up in even minor spin-offs like Sonic dash or the IDW comics would be that controversial. Nor would say Sega using the term mobian for animal creatures when fans have no alternative anyway).
But sega doesn’t really want to do that, either due to choice or legal problems they themselves caused.
According to Ian Flynn, a long-time writer on the Sonic comics, Sega is not keen on giving spotlight to older aspects of the franchise not currently in circulation Sega does own the rights of the various cartoon DIC characters. I’m also relatively sure they own the Sonic X original characters and I know they own the Boom characters. They specifically chose to not bring any of those concepts back.
Other Sonic properties and media exist in a legal black hole due to a lack of forward-thinking on Sega's part. I’m pretty sure the rights for a lot of the Fleetway characters aren’t straightforward, as Ian Flynn has hinted at this before. The legal copyrights for the Sonic OVA characters aren't clear to me either.
Likewise, many Sonic fans are aware of the legal battle Ken Penders had with Archie comics. Basically, any character made by him or writers other than Ian Flynn pre-gen are off-limits. There’s also a good chance that even post-gen characters have some legal issues, as for some reason Sega doesn’t own the redesigned versions of the freedom fighter and the post gen character are off-limits for IDW. Archie/Sega only have themselves to blame for mismanaging the paperwork of Ken and other writers. Let alone hiring Ken in the first place, since his social media and interactions with others like Ben Hurst or Karl Bollers make it clear he was probably a problem before he resigned.
Why don’t fans agree on gameplay styles?
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think there’s any one gameplay style that’s “superior” to another when it comes to adventure, classic, or boost. I just don’t think Sega does a great job at delineating the formats in the eyes of most fans and a lot of the games have hit or miss quality that creates additional friction in the fanbase.
That lack of quality control is also probably why it’s hard for the series to have spin-offs in different genres. It’s harder to sell people on the idea of an RPG, racing game, puzzle game, etc if the main series is floundering.
On that note why is there so much infighting in the Sonic fanbase?
Most fan bases have a tendency to get toxic the larger they get and Sonic’s has more infighting than usual again because of the varying quality and differing concepts. That said a lot of that toxicity just comes from certain secs of the fandom not liking the “fans” of other secs, rather than disliking those secs in themselves.
Sega also has a problem with overcorrection?
When something goes wrong, Sega has a tendency to go in the extreme opposite direction. They never seem to understand any problem in a nuanced fashion. For example
Sonic doesn’t have “that many” core characters in the game continuity for a series that’s been going on for 30 years. Many of these characters are also relatively interesting when written well and have legitimately cool designs. But because the series tried too hard to give all of them massive roles in a lot of the games in the early 2000s and the failure of Sonic 06, Sega basically responded by permanently gutting the entire cast from playable status. Every mainline 3D title after Sonic 06 only has Sonic playable, and this didn’t change until Sonic forces, over 10 years later. Almost no character but Sonic and maybe Tails could have a role in the plot either, basically regulating everyone into being cheerleaders. The fact the general public turned “to many friends” into a meme for years hasn’t helped.
There was a shift in tone in the main games after 06 failed. 06 is the reason why any more “involved” stories in Sonic were cut.
Why are there so many strict mandates on how Sonic can be written? It’s likely because of everything that happened with Ken Penders. To be frank the Archie comics got out of control at times in regards to melodrama, additional family members, darkness, etc during his run.Given all the bad press and attention sonic side media got due to those lawsuits, sega got increasingly more controlled about how characters could be written. A lot of the worldbuilding was also scaled back significantly, which is apparent in IDW Sonic. Obviously, some oversight should have been given earlier on in Archie’s history, but reading the mandates Sega went way overboard.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/SonicTheHedgehogIDW
Sega's need to overcorrect is also probably why there’s an increased reliance on nostalgia in recent years. The one thing Sega knows people like is the old Genesis games and that pandering to nostalgia in Generations paid off. Pandering to nostalgia is seen as a safe bet. So you get old stages in Sonic Mania even though the game would clearly be better having 100% new consent. As well as general locals like Green hill and chemical plants being used over and over. Nostalgia is used as a crutch because it’s easy, but what Sega doesn’t get is it has diminishing returns.
Why doesn’t Sega seem to understand Sonic?
I mean honestly, I’m not entirely sure how much Sega really gets its own series. The last few writers of the games didn’t have any knowledge of Sonic prior to being hired. The execs in charge of the Sonic movie clearly had no idea how to design Sonic initially(though granted that was more paramount's fault than sega). When you add how a lot of decisions Sega makes seem to be made based on trends or reactions, it feels like they don’t have logical reasons for a lot of their choices.
It’s because of that I’m not surprised that most of the recent well-received Sonic media or games have come from passionate fans that work mostly outside of Segas internal politics. When I saw Sonic mania I saw a game made by people who understand the kind of experiences classic Sonic fans were looking for and have an in-depth appreciation of the series due to bringing back niche fan-favorite characters like Mighty, Ray, Bean, Bark, and Fang. When I see Ian Flynn I see a writer who has a deep understanding of the entire Sonic franchise as a whole and has a great interest in revitalizing old characters like Breezie the hedgehog in an interesting way.
I would honestly even say we’ve been getting to the point where actual fans are starting to outclass Sega with 3D sonic projects like Project Hero, the infinity engine, and Sonic Utopia.
Anything else?
It’s a side note, but Sega of America and Sega of Japan seem to have this bizarre rivalry with each other. I would even go as far as to say they’ve historically been known for infighting. A lot of Sega's problems as a company and as a console developer stem from this international pissing contest. You can read about it in great detail in books like the Console wars. I’m not sure how true this still holds today, but it’s still rumored to be a problem and would def explain a few things.
Also, Sega probably can't rerelease Sonic 3 and Knuckles due to problems regarding royalties with its music. Which is another oversight on their part.
Summary
“While I do agree that most people in fandoms nowadays are overly cynical and negative, Let's not pretend that SEGA didn't help create this situation. The Mario fandom doesn't go into every game trying to hate it because the franchise has remained consistently high quality for the most part.
SEGA's inability to have a consistently high-quality track record with Sonic contributed at least 50% to the current situation.”
~Sonic stadium comment
So yeah sorry this blog came off as more of a rant. I do love this series, but to be frank, it has a lot of issues, and Sega themselves are the ones to blame. This most apparent when you compare Sonic to say Mario and see how Nintendo has avoided all the trappings Sega fell into.
Almost no Mario game has been “bad”, let alone a main series title. Nintendo makes sure to put their best people on the Mario projects and delays the game if needed. The same goes for Zelda for that matter. Nintendo generally maintains a good work/life balance and doesn’t have stupid rivalries between their regional headquarters.
Nintendo ignores trends when it comes to Mario and never compromises his identity. They make sure that any gameplay decisions they make actually benefit the core gameplay Mario is built around.
Nintendo has kept the series image consistent almost since the beginning. Even if you look at spin-off media, like Mario’s OVA, the DIC cartoon, or various manga, Nintendo does not allow for major tonal shifts from the main series and does not introduce “major” characters that have never been in a game before. The stars of the Supershow are Mario Peach, Luigi, and Toad.
Nintendo is not averse to having other playable characters but generally only where it makes sense. Wario, Luigi, Yoshi, Rosalina, Bowser JR, and Peach have all been playable in mainline games. Many of the RPGs have playable secondary characters or have characters from the main games show up.
Nintendo makes it much more clear how Mario's gameplay is delineated(2D, exploration 3D, and A-B 3D). The fact the main games do so well critically also makes the spin-offs more palatable.
Nintendo has a much better understanding of the franchise and while they generally focus on the new, they understand how to sprinkle in references without it becoming the focus.
For that matter, while Nintendo also can be overprotective, they generally make sure the people working on the franchise aren't crazy and have their legalities together when they have collaborations.
Now Mario isn't perfect and Nintendo does have its own issues(mainly the treatment of the recent RPGS). But very few will argue Nintendo has been "incompetant" when handling the series.
Anyway, I don’t think Sonic was ever “bad”(in fact he's very important as a gaming icon and people keep forgetting that). But if you wanna fix Sonic, you gotta fix Sega and Sonic team itself.
