Every Sonic The Hedgehog Video Game Ranked From WORST To BEST

Yes, we’re doing it, and we’re not even saving  it for New Year’s Day. We simply could not wait   to speed our way over to Sega’s mascot, play  every last one of his games, rank them from   worst to best and, of course, learn once and for  all how quickly we’d yearn for our own deaths.   Pretty quickly, as it turns out!Still, with the  release of Sonic Origins, we thought it was a   good time to look back at the blue blur’s  many adventures and share our opinions,   so that you could dismiss them because they  differ in any way from your own. Oh, what fun.  Sonic had his home console debut in 1991,  created to be a true competitor to Mario and,   by extension, Nintendo. Those who were around  in those days know that competition between the   two companies was fierce. The rivalry  between Nintendo and Sega was like the   rivalry between Coke and Pepsi, if Coke focused  on making great products and Pepsweaccidentally   drowned itself while taking a bath. Still, before it dedicated itself   to making exclusively poor business  decisions for the rest of time(apart   from Yakuza and publishing Persona games), Sega  was a genuine thorn in Nintendo’s side. That was   entirely thanks to Sonic, who singlehandedly  gave the company a mascot that people actually   enjoyed. Apologies, Alex Kidd. Your games were  fine; WEjust keep forgetting that you exist.  In the 30-plus years that Sonic has been  around, he has appeared in a lot of games,   and they truly do run the gamut of quality.  Mario has been in weirder places, for sure, but   Sonic has certainly been in worse places. Often  for years on end, the poor guy. For this list,   we tracked down every last one of them, played  them, wept a bit, and ranked them from worst to   best. Simple, right? You’d think so! Instead,  however, we need to lay out a few ground rules.  For starters, we aren’t counting  ports, remakes, or collections.   That’s good; otherwise you’d hear us  talk about Sonic 1 around 40 times.We   also aren’t counting pachinko machines, prize  dispensers or anything along those lines.   And while we did count mobile games on our  Mario list, we aren’t counting them here,   because there are at least 85 of the flippin’  things, and that’s if you don’t count the ports.   Mario had three. I’m sure you can appreciate  the difference and the fact that we would   like to sleep at some point in the next week. We also aren’t counting plug-and-play games,   because this is hideous; LCD games, because this  is ludicrous; or browser games, because this   is rubbish. We also aren’t counting fan games or  anything else that wasn’t officially released by   Sega. I’d like to be very clear about all  these things so that you don’t ask why we   didn’t rank the Knuckles Baseball Happy Meal toy. And that’s all! So, everyone, grab your rings,   and let’s rank ‘em. Actually, wait, do not grab  your rings, anyone. WEdidn’t think that through,   so please do not do that.Unless you’re into that. I’m Ben and I’m Peter from Triple Jump and this is   Every Sonic the Hedgehog Video  Game Ranked from Worst to Best. #94: Sonic Jam (1997) Game.com  You know what was great? Sonic Jam,a Saturn  compilation of the four main Mega Drive games.   That’s good enough to warrant a purchase, but toss  in the fact that the games were completely rebuilt   with new tweaks and features? Now you’re talking.  Oh, and there was a whole Sonic World mode, which   was a completely 3D environment full of secrets to  find and missions to complete. Ah, lovely stuff.  You know what wasn’t great? Sonic Jam on the  Game.com. You might as well be playing it on   a sheet of notebook paper. This one  is neither a compilation nor a port,   though we sure wish it were so that we wouldn’t  have to talk about it. On the bright side, it’s   easy to tell how many frames per second you’re  getting, because you only need to count to three.  Sonic Jam is just a handful of levels with  superficial similarities to the originals.   If you choose Sonic 2, you play through a  crappy reimagining of Emerald Hill Zone.   Choose Sonic 3 and it’s a crappy reimagining of  Angel Island Zone. Choose Sonic & Knuckles and   it’s a crappy reimagining of Mushroom Hill  Zone. If you ever wanted a compilation of   Green Hill-like levels but wanted them to be  barely playable and nearly impossible to see,   then you’re in luck, we suppose. Speaking of Green Hill, why did we   skip Sonic 1? Because this game skips it,  too. Unlike us, however, it just hoped you   wouldn’t notice. There. Now we officially have  more integrity than Sonic Jam on the Game.com. #93: Sonic Eraser (1991) Mega Drive  What would a bad version of Tetris be like?  Well, Columns. But what would a bad version   of Columns be like? This, my friends. Exactly  this. And it plows right through “bad” and ends   up somewhere in the region of “playable night  terror.” Sonic Eraser was a downloadable title   released for Sega Game Toshokan, which was  a cartridge used with the Mega Modem and the   Sega Meganet online subscription. If you  owned all of those things, you too could   have been punished with Sonic Eraser. The game seems to revel in how little   there is to it. Match two shapes and they  disappear. Not three, not four, not five,   but two. This means that, yes, you can  create chains and develop a strategy,   but that strategy will be about as deep as…well,  Sonic Eraser. It’s a puzzle game that doesn’t   even try to be interesting, and because both  parties only need to match two shapes in order   to stay alive, the matches drag on endlessly. Things get far worse when you hear the soundtrack.   It’s less music than it is a pile of sound effects  layered over each other with no sense of melody,   sounding like a song thatspace aliens might  listen to while committing ritual suicide.   On Earth, I’m not sure we have an equivalent.  Possibly a digger full of nails and glass,   rolling end over end into a ravine. I’m fairly  sure this only exists so that nobody can use the   “at least Sonic always has good  music” argument in good faith. #92: Sonic the Hedgehog (2008) Didj  It’s impressive that Sonic ‘08 could  actually make us yearn for Sonic ‘06, but   what can we say? We’ve been doing ranked lists  for years now, and edutainment has taken its toll.   Sonic the Hedgehog for the LeapFrogDidj –  which must be the least-promising collection   of words possible – is a game about spelling. It  involves platforming, yes, but ultimately Sonic   is a cursor that allows you to select letters in  the world’s most overcomplicated game of hangman.  To be fair to the game, it doesn’t look bad,  and it featured unlockable remixes of tracks   from previous Sonic games. On the downside,  those remixes come out of a speaker attached   to the Didj, which isn’t great. That’s not  just me picking on an edutainment console;   the low-quality speaker causes genuine  problems when playing the game. Because   you’re being asked to spell words, you have to  rely on spoken instructions without subtitles,   and the naff speaker makes it difficult to  hear the difference between similar words,   such as “letter” and “litter.”  Not much of a learning tool, then.  It’s ultimately a Sonic game that runs like  crap, isn’t fun, and interrupts the action   frequently so that an artificial voice can  recite longwinded instructions to you through   a speaker that sounds like it’s stuffed full  of socks. DLC was available in the form of   additional word packs. Unfortunately, those  don’t appear to have been archived anywhere,   so we’ll just have to assume that all of the words  I’d use to describe this game weren’t included. #91: Sonic X (2005) Leapster  In 2003, the Sonic X cartoon series made  its debut. It ran for three seasons and   covered multiple plot arcs, but none of them  were about Sonic having to learn arithmetic.   Nevertheless, that’s the plot of the  cartoon’s only tie-in game, so we   really hope you love addition and subtraction. As the game begins, Eggman introduces what he   calls his “greatest invention ever”: maths robots.  Sadly, whatever brain disorder Eggman suffers in   this game goes undiagnosed. It’s up to Sonic to  rescue the world through the power of maths. Lest   that accidentally sound too exciting, let me be  clear that “maths” refers to touching the numbers   you are told to touch and solving basic equations. At first, the game seems superficially interested   in celebrating Sonic’s history. Its first level  is Station Square from Sonic Adventure, and its   second level is Angel Island from Sonic 3. Then  the game just whips up some forgettable Eggman   level for the third and the game stops, because  the developers got tired of their own idea.We   suppose we could talk about how it controls, but  the Leapsterlooks like this, so you already know   how it controls. The most interesting thing about  it is how long it arrived after Nintendo realized   that plopping its mascot into terrible edutainment  games was bad for the brand. Here, well after   the rest of the world learned that lesson, Sega  couldn’t resist the allureof a few quick bucks. #90: Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car (1991) Arcade  We would like you to indulge us for a moment.  Look at this. Gaze upon it. Pause the video if you   must, and soak it in. This is what you have made  us review, because it has a video game inside.   This thing – which looks about as pointless  and unassuming as a little car or airplane   for children that you might find outside of a  corner shop – has a video game inside. And,with   no regard for our feelings, our sanity, or  our very souls, you’ve made us review it.  The game takes two minutes to finish. It genuinely  took longer to write this entry about Waku Waku   Sonic Patrol Car than it took to complete it  100%. (It was a no-damage run, too; not to   brag…) You steer with the wheel and hit buttons  to either activate the siren or jump. There;   I’ve also just given you a full walkthrough. The story is that Sonic is a policeman officer.   “Gotta go fast?”Gotta go the speed limit,  more like. Rules for me but not for thee,   eh, Sonic? You class traitor. Anyway, while  patrolling the streets, he finds Eggman,   who is comically murdering people and blowing  things up. Jump into him a few times and…he   just sort of jogs away. Arrest him, Sonic!  You wanted this job, now do it! But, no;   Eggman gets off with not so much as a warning.  You’re a disgrace to the uniform, Sonic. #89: SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter (1993) Arcade  It’s another children’s ride slash video game,  but this time, it has actual gameplay. It only   took Sega two years to hit upon the idea,  but credit where it’s due. The primary goal   of SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter is to get children to  climb inside of a little spaceship and deposit all   of their spare change. The secondary goal is  to shoot at Eggman as he flies through space,   or something. We don’t care and neither do you. Look, what matters is that, this time,   you get to move around and shoot things like you  do in actual games that are worth actual money.   Eventually you chase Eggman down for the final  encounter, and he pilotsa gigantic mech with a   goblin face on it. Why not? There isn’t much  in the way of challenge or strategy, but you   do get ranked at the end on how well you did.  That’s…really it. You can play the entire game in   around three minutes, but you’ll actively regret  wasting your money for the rest of your life.  Oh, and, let’s just get this  out of the way while we’re here:   We’re not counting the SegaSonic  Popcorn Shop. It’s a snack machine. Yes,   it has a little interactive display with what  can generously be referred to as a minigame,   but we need to draw the line somewhere. If you  want our full review of it: You turn a crank.   Or you don’t. Either way, popcorn comes out.  10/10. Would pop corn again. Now leave us alone. #88: Sonic’s Schoolhouse (1996) PC  In 1991, humanity dodged a bullet when Sonic’s  Edusoft was quietly cancelled. It was a collection   of educational minigames featuring a hedgehog who  eats chilidogs, and let’s just take a moment to   consider how utterly bizarre that entire concept  is. Flash forward five years, when humanity was   a little older, a lot less spry, and unable to  dodge the bullet called Sonic’s Schoolhouse.  You don’t play as Sonic in Sonic’s Schoolhouse.  Of course you don’t; that might have accidentally   led to some small degree of fun. Instead,  you choose some hideous, computer-generated,   anthropomorphized abomination and wander  around a schoolhouse, answering questions on   chalkboards. It’s targeted at children between  the ages of 5 and 9, which is good, because no   10-year-old would be caught dead playing it. You answer questions by chasing down letters   and numbers bouncing around the hallway. Sega’s  then-CEO Shinobu Toyoda described the game thusly:   “Sonic’s Schoolhouse is like Doom for kids, but  instead of being in dark hallways fighting bad   guys, kids are in a brightly-colored 3D  schoolhouse challenging their friends to   see who can answer questions first.” In other  words, it’s literally nothing like Doom, but it is   very much like a tall mountain of cat feces. And, yes, the game did have split-screen   multiplayer, which must have been great for  the two kids who tried it and then never   spoke to each other again. If you thought  Mario’s edutainment games were bad…well,   okay, they were. But this is  bad, too. May we move on, please? #87: Sonic the Hedgehog the Screen Saver (1996)  PC The line between “games” and   “digital entertainment products that are not games  but sort of fall into the same bucket” is hazy.   At least, that’s what we’re allowing  ourselves to believe; otherwise,   I’ll be extremely cross at Philip for making me  talk about Sonic the Hedgehog the Screen Saver.  It comes with some extra gubbins, such as Sonic  wallpapers, sounds, and icons that you could use   to customize Windows. But the main appeal is, of  course, the screensaver. Which is…a screensaver.   Those used to serve the important purpose of  preventing images from being burned into your   screen forever, and Sonic the Hedgehog the Screen  Saver accomplishes this by letting you watch Tails   meticulously scrub away some ancient promotional  art. Sorry, but I’ll stick with the flying   toasters. And if you have any idea what we mean  by that, it’s time to get you to bed, granddad.  Admittedly, having promotional art is  what passed for “high quality” in 1996,   and some of the images were even more rare, having  been created by Naoto Ohshima for in-house Sega   magazine Harmony. Very few fans would ever have  seen those illustrations before, so that was a   nice bonus.If you didn’t own Sonic the Hedgehog  the Screen Saver but are experiencing déjà vu,   it’s possible you saw these images as bonus  content in Sonic Jam on the Saturn. But that   didn’t come with those super sweet Windows icons,  now did it? We thought not. Jog on, Sonic Jam. #86: Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio (1994) Mega Drive  It would be so easy to just pretend we didn’t make  eye contact with Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio.   Sonic’s name isn’t even in the title. He’s  on the box, but so is Ecco the Dolphin.   Surely we could just pretend that this is an  Ecco game, promise to include it on our eventual   Every EccoGame Ranked list, and then never  actually make one, right? Everybody would win.  Sadly, I’m stuck with it. This is quite often  considered a Sonic spinoff, and also God hates   us all. Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio is…well… we  suppose it’s a creativity studio, but I’m glad the   title made that clear because the game doesn’t.  You control Sonic, who rides around in a UFO,   which I’m sure has all sorts of fascinating lore  implications. If this is reminding you of Mario   Paint, that’s because both games have a lot in  common. For instance, Mario Paint came with the   SNES Mouse, and Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio  came with the Sega Mouse. Mario Paint had great   music, and this game…technically has music, too. Weirdly for a “creativity studio,” there isn’t   much room for creativity. You basically  choose a backdrop and position some digital   Colorforms wherever you want them to stand.  They’re animated, which is nice, but you   can’t actually do much else, beyond change the  colors of the sprites and manipulate the music.   My personal favorite way to manipulate the music  is to turn it off. Mario Paint wasn’t all that   robust, but Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio  certainly helps us appreciate it a lot more. #85: Sonic the Hedgehog’s Gameworld (1994) Pico  Can you believe we used to gloss over  edutainment games in these lists? Oh,   the folly of youth. These things are always weird  andsometimes charming in their own special way.   They are also uniformly rubbish, and they  give us excuses to come up with synonyms   for “poo poo.” Sonic the Hedgehog’s Gameworld  is indeed classified as an edutainment game,   and like many other edutainment games, we have  no clue what anyone is meant to learn from this.  It’s a minigame collection, and one must wonder if  Sega simply dumped it on its edutainment-focused   Pico on the grounds that it was garbage  rather than because it had any educational   benefits.There’s a racing game. There’s a  basketball game. There’s a whack-a-mole game.   Hey, did you know that carnival games are  educational? We didn’t either, until Sonic   the Hedgehog did his level best to convince us. According to the Sonic Wiki, there are evidently   a good number of localization differences.  “Games featuring gambling, fortune-telling,   fantasy violence, rock-paper-scissors, and other  noneducational elements were omitted from the   North American version,” they say. Wait, so this  was originally even less educational? What, did   it actively siphon existing knowledge out of your  brain?Of course, you’re wondering how it plays,   right? Like utter plops. Like absolute steaming  plops. It was a stylus game released in 1994;   how else could it possibly play? The only  thing it taught me was to welcome death. #84: Tails and the Music Maker (1994) Pico  “We are the music makers / Andwe are  the dreamers of dreams.” So begins Ode,   by Arthur O’Shaughnessy, and I’m glad it does,  because it means we have to come up with 13   fewer words about Tails and the  Music Maker. Ooh, 46 fewer now!  We’re ranking this above Sonic the Hedgehog’s  Gameworld on the strength of its novelty alone.   That was a profoundly soulless minigame collection  that seems to have ridden into existence on a bolt   of pure apathy. Tails and the Music Maker isa  bit more focused, and it putssome kind of effort   towards justifying its presence in the world. Do  you think we should have ranked these the other   way around? Fine. We could live to be 500 years  old and we wouldn’t ever find the time to care.  This one is still full of minigames, but they at  least share a common theme. There’smusical chairs.   There’s Breakout. There’s pinball. Only now,  they involve music. And by music, we mean shrill   bleeps and bloops from the bucket of metal shards  that the Pico calls a speaker. There is, perhaps,   some loose educational value here. Tails can  show you how to play a few notes of simple songs,   and then you repeat them. Granted, that’s “rote  memorization” more than it is “learning to play   an instrument,” but, good lord, it’s something.  And who hasn’t wanted to learn “Ah! Vous dirai-je,   maman” from a literal freak of nature?  Yes, we know we’d recognize it as “Twinkle,   Twinkle, Little Star,” but what  can we say?We’re traditionalists. #83: Sonic Free Riders (2010) Xbox 360  Considering how far Sonic had sunk by 2010,  did he really think it was wise to strap   himself to the anchor that was the Kinect? That  thing never worked. We’reconvinced that any time   it did seem to accurately register an input,  it was an accident. And we can assure you that   no human being experienced the horror that was  the Kinect and thought, “I bet this would be a   great way to control Sonic the Hedgehog.” Let’s be fair; a racing game is by far a   better fit for the peripheral than a platformer  would have been. God knows what we’d have been   asked to do with our bodies in order to execute a  spindash. Sonic Free Riders relies on you leaning   and using your arms to control your racer,  which sounds simple enough, but even that   is too confusing for the Kinect, which can’t  work out if you’re trying to grab an item or   turn 90 degrees and crash directly into a wall. We can gab all day about whether or not it looks   nice, whether or not the music is good, whether  or not it had enough content, but the fact is   that Sonic Free Ridersdidn’t work. Playing this  gameis like shouting commands at a dog whose name   you don’t know, and which doesn’t have any legs.  It’s an embarrassing marriage between a property   that had no credibility and a peripheral that  was about as welcome in the home as a dead skunk. #82: Sonic Brain Ranking (2013) Arcade  Sonic Brain Ranking exists. Well, technically  it doesn’t anymore, but it did. That’s about all   we can say for certain. There’s no way to play it  that we were able to find, and only a small amount   of footage and photos circulate. A few games on  this list were considered lost until a ROM or a   disc image turned up somewhere, so maybe in a few  years’ time, we’ll know more. For now, however,   we can’teven begin to understand this thing. From what we can gather, nine players would   compete while the 10th would read questions aloud.  Seems like that person would have had the smallest   amount of fun by far, but who knows? Maybe the  questions were truly terrible and reading them   was preferable to being forced to think about  them. What kind of questions? We don’t know.   Sources simply describe it as “trivia,” but  there seem to have been sliding puzzles and   logic questions as well, so we can’t really say.  We don’t even know if all of the questions were   Sonic-themed. Whatever this game was,  I’m sure that me and my nine closest   friends would have hated every second of it. Sonic Brain Ranking was created for Tokyo   Joyopolis, a sort of department store slash  game center. It must not have been very fun;   in its five years of operation, very few people  have deigned to share photos, information,   or their stories of playing it. We’re going  to assume that we aren’t missing much. #81: Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (2008) DS  We refuse to believe that any human  being has completed this game. We tried,   dear viewer. We really did, but Sonic Chronicles:  The Dark Brotherhood is criminally boring.   Sonic has been a laughing stock for…let me  just check here…right, statistically speaking,   Sonic has been a laughing stock for longer  than you have been alive, but even his   worst games tend to have some degree of charm. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, however,   is distressingly dull, and we doubt that anybody  who tried playing through the whole thing didn’t   die of boredom around the 10-hour mark. Perhaps  most puzzlingly, this game was made by BioWare.   Yes, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Knights of the  Old Republic…thatBioWare. Why they decided to   make a Sonic the Hedgehog RPG of all things,we  can’t understand. How it turned out to be this   brain-meltingly boring, we understand even  less. Navigating the overworld is tedious.   The conversations are tedious. The minigame-style  combat is tedious. The soundtrack is absolutely   appalling. And yet – and yet! – it has a 74%  average on Metacritic. This game, which we can   personally assure you is worse than being stung by  a scorpion, is three-quarters perfect, apparently.  Maybe it’s just us. Maybe we are the  ones who are wrong, and Sonic Chronicles:   The Dark Brotherhood is a misunderstood  masterpiece. All we know is that this game   manages to take abonkersconcept and turn it into  the most padded, mindless experience possible.   That’s not technically a crime, but we demand  the immediate imprisonment of everyone involved. #80: Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (2014) WiiU  We assume that a few of you clicked this  video only to see whether this or Sonic   ‘06 would rank lower. As far as we’re concerned,   there’s not even a question about it.  Both games similarly mortified critics,   but Sonic Boom has far less merit. Yes, less  merit than Sonic ‘06. We know what we said.  Sega allegedly chose Big Red Button due to its  cofounder Bob Rafei, who worked at Naughty Dog   on the Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, and  Uncharted franchises. We’re fans of those games,   but it’s rather clear that none of them are  anything like Sonic the Hedgehog. What’s more,   focus groups told Big Red Button that the  game should be slow, because it’s difficult   to keep up with fast things. Somehow, entire  groups of people who knew nothing about why   anyone liked Sonic were shaping the game’s  creative direction. Could things get any worse?  You bet they could! Sega also pushed the studio to  rush development of the game and hit them with the   demand that it be a WiiU exclusive after it was  already in development for more powerful hardware,   leading to a lot of scrapped work and friction  between the companies. The result was a buggy   mess of a game that couldn’t even compare to  Sonic ‘06 in terms of its music, ambition, or   unintentional comedy. Sonic ‘06 was terrible, but  it’s easy to see what Sega wanted that game to be.   Nobody knew what they wanted Rise of Lyric to be,  and so we ended up with a whole lot of nothing. #79: Sonic Labyrinth (1995) Game Gear  Sonic Labyrinth only takes around 30 minutes  to finish, but fret not! It will ensure that   those are the most irritating 30 minutes of your  entire life.The concept of the game is that Eggman   has snuck into Sonic’s house during the night  and replaced his shoes with Slow Down Boots.   For some reason, he didn’t take this opportunity  to reenact the ending of One Flew Over the   Cuckoo’s Nestinstead. Anyway, that’s just an  excuse for Sonic Labyrinth to have a slower   pace than any Sonic game we’d yet seen. And  while there’s nothing wrong with slow games,   it’s odd to design one around a character  who, famously, “gotta go not-slow.”  You can still spindash but, with a tiny screen,  it’s impossible to know what’s ahead, making it   far too easy to collide with things you need to  avoid. It’s so easy to lose control, in fact,   that you probably shouldn’t spindash unless  you’ve memorized every inch of every level.   And if you have done that, why have you done that? Instead of…you know, doing anything fun…you are   tasked with exploring various isometric  mazes and collecting keys. Why? Flip you,   that’s why. It’s full of repetitive, empty  environments that make it difficult to know   where you’re going and the isometric perspective  makeseverything feel needlessly confusing.   Right down to being named after an  infamously hated zone from the first game,   Sonic Labyrinth seems to give you every reason to  not play it. Who are we to go against its wishes? #78: Sonic x Vapor (2012) Xbox 360  Sadly not a game about Chris Thorndykevaping,  Sonic x Vapor is an advertisement.   Sort of. In 2012, shoe company Nike launched the  “My Time is Now” campaign, which consisted of a   number of interactive elements across different  forms of media. Some of these contained hidden   content, most of which has been lost to the ages.  A genuine loss for fans of shoe adverts, there.  One bit of hidden content was Sonic x Vapor,  a game accessible through a video on Nike’s   YouTube page and through ads on the Xbox 360.  So far as we can tell, the game was identical   on both platforms, but we admit to not being  Sonic x Vapor scholars and you are welcome   to correct us.It was an endless runner based on  Sonic’s Mega Drive years, though it allowed you   to kick footballs and perform two-thirds of a  triple jump. The game also had checkpoint posts   that didn’t do anything; it’s impossible  to continue after death…so…thanks anyway.  It’s not a high point in the hedgehog’s career,  shilling for sneakers he’d never wear again,   but he did the same thing in Sonic Adventure 2,  so at least he’s not an inconsistent sellout. The   game itself manages to be exactly as fun as saying  “Sonic starred in an interactive shoe advert.” You   play until you die, and then you compare your  high score with your friends, who beat you up   for talking about Sonic x Vapor. Then you move  on to better games. In fact, let’s all do that. #77: Sonic Shuffle (2000) Dreamcast  Fans rarely speak of the Sonic Dreamcast  Trilogy, because they prefer that we   pretend it were a duology instead. Sonic  Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 are good,   right? And people love the Dreamcast. Can’t we  just leave it at that and let everybody be happy?   No. We cannot. Because between those two games,  Sega released a bag of old teeth that they found   on the bus and called it Sonic Shuffle. On the surface, Sonic Shuffle should   work perfectly well. Even if it’s not great, a  Mario-Party-style game with Sonic characters is   prime spinoff material. It was even developed  in part by Hudson Soft, the same company that   made Mario Party games of that era. So what  went wrong?Well, how much time do you have?   Just about everything feels poorly considered.  Minigames and boards are under-explained, leaving   a lot of important information unsaid and forcing  you to learn by failing. And while randomness is a   big factor in party games overall, the fact that  you’ll already be struggling to understand what   to do means that Sonic Shuffle might as well be  selecting winnersat random and saving us the time.  The worst part? The AI,  even at the easiest setting,   cheats. If you have better cards than it has,  it will steal them to ensure that it always has   the upper hand. Yes, Mario Party usually  has AI that is too easy, but that doesn’t   mean the solution is for it to shove you down  and steal your dinner money, Sonic Shuffle. #76: Sonic Drift (1994) Game Gear  The first of many Sonic racing games, Sonic  Drift didn’t see a release outside of Japan   until much later, in various collections.  Fortunately, the rest of the world   wasn’t missing out. The game features Sonic,  Tails, Amy, and Eggman racing in circles   to…accomplish something very important, I’m sure.  Much of the game’s lack of depth can be attributed  to the meager hardware of the Game Gear. That’s   fair, and it explains why we won’t find a  20-character roster, an arsenal of items,   and complicated track layouts. But surely Sonic  Drift could have included something more than   driving in six different circles. At the very  least, it could have tightened up the controls,   which are nowhere near responsive enough and  work against the game’s limited draw distance.   The on-screen map helps, but not in any kind  of way that makes the experience more fun.  The most creative thing in the game is the  fact that each of the six tracks is based   on one of the main zones from the first Sonic  the Hedgehog, but even that feels more like a   concept than a feature. The tracks don’t feature  enemies, level hazards, or music from those zones;   it just changes the background. The lone  saving grace is that you can play the game   with a friend via the Gear-to-Gear cable,  but even then, that’s only worth it if you   can’t think of anything more fun to do with your  Game Gears…such as clubbing each other to death. #75: Tails’ Skypatrol (1995) Game Gear  There’s a whole trilogy of Tails games out there,  and they’re worth playing if you’ve ever wondered   what it’s like to witness the end of the world.  This game is sometimes referred to as a scrolling   shooter, but that’s only because “scrolling” on  its own isn’t a genre. It’s a strange, poorly   designed oddity that defies classification, which  is good, because if it did belong to a class,   that would mean that there were more of them. The game sees Tails squaring off against the   villainous Witchcart. If you ever thought Eggman  was a stupid name, please take a moment to absorb   “Witchcart.” And by “squaring off against”  we really mean “endlessly floating towards.”   Tails moves ever forward through a whopping five  levels, each more annoying than the last.The   game is rarely clear about which stage  features are deadly and which are ornamental.   Hazards and enemies move more quickly than Tails  does, and trial and error is often the only   way to progress. It’s impressively irritating. This game also never left Japan in its original   incarnation,so Sega probably knew it was a bit of  a stinker. Playing it with as forgiving a mindset   as possible, it’s a clunky novelty that can be  comfortably completed twice in the course of a   lunch break. Back then, on the power-hungry Game  Gear, we’d have called it a waste of batteries.   Now it’s just a waste of time. Which isn’t all  that much better, now that we think about it. #74: Sonic Athletics (2013) Arcade  Our two favorite things in the world are “Sonic”  and “athletics.” Only joking; we’ve always hated   one of those things, and this list is quickly  causing me to hate the other. We’reprobably not   the target audience, then, for Sonic Athletics.  Actually, we’re definitely not, becausewe don’t   live in Japan or frequent Tokyo Joypolis. The game consists of eight actual treadmills,   which you use to control the speed of your  character. As expected, the events are   speed-based, though at least one requires jumping.  Thankfully, you do that by pressing a button,   and not leaping into the air above a moving  piece of exercise equipment. Is the game fun?   If you like running on treadmills, then I’m  going to say yes. If you don’t, staring at an   animated .gif of Sonic’s posterior while you do  so probably won’t win you over. Unless it does,   in which case, I’m not judging you. I’m just  more of a Vector the Crocodile guy, you know?  Also, just to get it out of the way, we aren’t  going to cover Sonic Ghost Shooting on this list.   It’s often listed as an arcade game, but it’s more  of an attraction or activity. At the very least,   it’s not a video game; you sit in a little cart  and shoot at projections of ghosts as you pass by.   We don’t live anywhere near this game, either,  but it seems like we can play it while sitting   on our behinds and eating crisps, which therefore  means we’d enjoy it far more than Sonic Athletics. #73: Flicky (1984) Arcade  We are including games based on and named  after Sonic’s friends, so we might as well   count Flicky. He predates Sonic, but I’m  sure many of your friends predate you,   and you don’t hold that against them,  so there.Flicky was the result of Sega   wanting to create a game that could rival  the popularity of Mappy, and we assure you   that we’re the first people in almost 40 years who  has uttered the phrase “the popularity of Mappy.”   During development, the game went  through several names, including Flippy   and Busty. And please, as a favor to me, never  name your children’s video game mascot “Busty.”  As Flicky, it’s your job to find baby birds  scattered about the levels and guide them to   the exit. Deliver more birds, earn more points.  As expected from a score-attack game like this,   the difficulty ramps up quicklyand the game  keeps looping until you run out of lives.   It’s easy to see exactly how it inspired  the larger Sonic the Hedgehog series. Right?  Not right; this has the square root of Captain  Jack Squat in common with the larger series,   but Flicky does cameo in many of the games,  particularly the early 2D adventures that   saw Sonic rescuing animals at the end of  stages. Flicky also appeared in Sonic R,   Sonic Rush, and, most notably, the very  next entry on this list.Did we cover this   game only so we’d avoid dozens of YOU FORGOT  FLICKY comments? Yes. Now leave us alone. #72: Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island (1996) Mega Drive, Saturn  Hello again, Flicky! Known as Sonic 3D Blast in  North America and SonikkuSurīdīFurikkīAirando   in Japan, we can all at least agree that –  whatever it was called– this game sucked on toast.   As you can tell, it has a lot in common with Sonic  Labyrinth. It even has a similar goal: tracking   down Flickies rather than keys in each level. It looks and plays better, yes, but it’s still   not very good. This game increases the  emphasis on platforming, which is not   easy from an isometric perspective. It also isn’t  helped by the disorienting visuals and the fact   that it is often hard to see where Sonic’s  shadow is. The repetitive colors and tilework   made sense on the Game Gear, which could only  handle so much, but here it just makes things   feel unpolished, as though you’re playing  through placeholder levels in a beta version   of a game that’s nowhere near finished. It’s not completely fair to fault Sega for   releasing a subpar Sonic game on the Saturn. That  console had released two years prior, and it still   hadn’t shifted a single unit. The company needed  a new Sonic game for the system, so we understand   why they released this, even if it wasn’t quite  up to snuff. What we don’t understand is why they   released it the same month for the Mega Drive  as well, meaning nobody needed to buy a Saturn   in order to play it. Feels like you might have  missed the point of your own plan, there, Sega. #71: Sonic Blast (1996) Game Gear  Despite the name, this has  nothing to do with Sonic 3D Blast,   unless you count the fact that they’re  both rubbish. If you do count that,   though, then Sonic Blast has something in  common with a whole load of Sonic games!   This one pulls inspiration from Nintendo’s  Donkey Kong Country, but that inspiration,   sadly, didn’t run any deeper than its character  models. Even then, it doesn’t compare favorably;   Donkey Kong Country’s characters still look quite  good. Sonic Blast looks like somebody scanned some   Polaroid photos of clay models and compressed  them to the smallest possible file size.  The game seems designed to answer the question,  “What if Sonic’s Game Gear adventures were even   stiffer, more annoying, and looked terrible?”  It’s packed with exclusively bad ideas,   the most serious of which was the impulse to zoom  the screen in even closer than usual. The biggest   problem with the Game Gear games wasthat you  already couldn’t see far enough ahead of you;   Sega’s solution, bafflingly, was to show you even  less. There’s also a wealth of lag, hit detection   issues, and poor programming, all of which are  on particular display in the Blue Marine Zone.   It’s a game that is destined to make a  terrible first impression, and the best   possible outcome is that you leave it at that. There was a Master System port of Sonic Blast in   1997 – yes, a Master System port well into the  Saturn’s lifecycle – but, for whatever reason,   it was only released in Brazil. On behalf of  the rest of the world, we’re sorry, Brazil. #70: Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox  Was this the first truly terrible Sonic game?  Well, it came out after 17 of the games we’ve   already discussed so, no, clearly not. It might,  however, have been the first clear, irrefutable   evidence that the franchise was in decline. Shadow is a strong character. That’s something   you might find hard to believe if you’ve  played…Shadow the Hedgehog, but it’s true.   Of course, he completed his entire arc in  Sonic Adventure 2, so was it worth bringing   him back for more story?This game answers that  question with a loud “NO,” backed by the sounds   of screeching guitars and an exploding  orphanage. There’s little story here that   was worth telling, and none of it is told well. In fact, it’s incomprehensible depending upon   which path you take. You can side with one faction  during a level, and then begin the next level   at war with them. You can be partners  with a character who then, for no reason,   suddenly challenges you to a boss fight. Much  ink has been spilled about how needlessly dark   the story is, but the bigger problem  is that it isn’t even told coherently.   You can even get conflicting answers  on how Shadow has returned from the   dead…which is the central question of the game. The weirdest part?Mechanics such as the   light-speed dash and triangle jump,  which failed so often in previous games,   work just fine here. Of all the Sonic  3D games that needed better programming,   it’s Shadow the Hedgehog that got it. That’s  disappointing and insulting in equal measure. #69 (nice): Mario & Sonic at the Rio  2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition (2016)  Arcade How likely are you to watch the Olympics?   Whatever your answer, surely you’d be more likely  to watch them if the participants were dinosaurs,   robots, and hedgehogs, right? RIGHT? It’s a weird  concept for a minigame collection and maybe an   even weirder concept for an arcade game, but here  we are. As you might expect, Mario & Sonic at   the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition is an  arcade version of Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016   Olympic Games. What? We’re not padding out this  entry, we promise. We have loads to say! Loads!  Such as…well, it was released in Japan and  the USA, but seemingly nowhere else. Unless   we overlooked it.Which we might have done.  Listen, we’ve got a lot of these Olympic   games to talk about so we need to strategically  spread out the observations we make.The game is   understandably similar to the console version in  terms of content, but it does have a few unique   events of its own. Hammer Throw, 100m Hurdles,  Long Jump, and Trampoline are…things you can do   here that you can’t do on the WiiU. Are you glad  we committed to reviewing each one of these games   individually now? We’re not, but you might be. The Japanese version had Aimecard functionality,   which stored your records and allowed you to  compete for spots on national leaderboards.   You could also unlock characters that way,  which was certainly a welcome treat…for   all those die-hard fans of Mario & Sonic at  the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition. #68: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games  Tokyo 2020 - Arcade Edition (2020)  Arcade Remember during the Mario list,   when we’d basically have to stop dead every  couple of minutes to scrape together some   words about yet another Mario Party game?  Well, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games is   this list’s equivalent. If you’d like to get  a snack whenever you hear us say those words,   feel free. We wish we could do the same. This one did get a wider release than the 2016   arcade game, coming to Europe and Australia as  well as the USA and Japan. It was an unprecedented   gesture of goodwill that brought the world just  a little closer to harmony. I’m lying; we had a   pandemic that year and nobody was going to arcades  no matter where they lived. Thanks anyway, Sega.  Compared to Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic  Games Arcade Edition, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic   Games Tokyo 2020 Arcade Edition has a smaller  amount of truly unique content, with most of it   being similar to events in the Switch version.  And one nice bonus of having the Switch version   is that you’re allowed to keep it. The new unique  events here are for the 1964 mode: 110m Hurdles   and 10m Diving. I’m sure you will agree that  those are fantastic events. Or terrible ones.We   can honestly say that we’ve never thought about  either of them before and will never think about   them again. Still, it’s fine. It plays well. It’s  a weird game. And we are already so very tired. #67: Sonic Battle (2003) Game Boy Advance  Sonic Battle is a very bad game. Yes, some of the  art is nice. Yes, Emerlis a welcome addition. Yes,   his ability to learn moves from opponents is an  interesting gimmick. No, none of that changes   the fact that Sonic Battle is a very bad game. The main problem is that it’s a fighting game   that combines 2D characters with 3D environments,  which never feels right. Lining up an attack in   three dimensions when the characters exist in only  two is not a fun prospect. The game has generous   hitboxes and accounts for the fact that it’s  difficult to know if your attacks will connect,   but that’s an admission of a flaw in the game’s  design rather than a correction for it. We suppose   it’s nice that the game cheats on your behalf  rather than lets you struggle with its own   problems, but we’d rather play a better-designed  game that didn’t have those problems.  We’re tempted to say “the game shines in  multiplayer,” but that would be overselling   it. It’s more accurate to say that “the game  is marginally less awful in multiplayer.” The   Game Boy Advance was perfectly suited to cartoony  platformers and, by this point, Sonic knew that   damned well. Why we got a Sonic game in a genre  that wasn’t suited at all to the GBA is beyond   us. And…good. Keep it far, far beyond us. There  are some things we would rather not understand. #66: Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal (2014) 3DS  Rise of Lyric singlehandedly tanked the Sonic Boom  name, which is unfortunate, because not everything   that bears that name is terrible. The handheld  games are better. The television show was fun. And   the character designs weren’t that bad; if they’d  gotten a stronger debut, they’d certainly be held   in higher regard. Not those blue arms, though.  Those are clearly worth getting upset over.  Shattered Crystalis a step in the right direction.  A much larger step would have been preferable,   but, hey, it’s something. As in Rise of Lyric,  you switch between various characters to progress,   only the stages are 2D here and  things feel better, more refined,   and more familiar. The game is more playable,  which is good, but it still isn’t as fast or   thrilling as Sonic games typically are, taking  a more explorational approach that never quite   gets fun. The levels are far too long; you can  finish an entire Game Gear game in the time it   takes to fully clear some stages here. Also, you  need to revisit them multiple times with different   characters to collect everything. That’s a  tall ask for a game that isn’t that great.  It works, but it’s not engaging and  it still wasn’t what anybody wanted.   The developer for this one was Sanzaru Games,  who must have impressed Sega by making both the   worst Ratchet and Clank game and the worst  Sly Cooper game. Why they didn’t stick with   Dimps – a company that made good handheld  Sonic games–is a mystery for the ages. #65: Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) PlayStation 3, Xbox 360  Well, what can we possibly say about this? “It’s  higher than we expected it to rank,” perhaps.   “It’s as terrible as we remember,” certainly.  “Humans only sometimesmake out with animals   in it,” yes. But, really, everybody knows  it’s bad, and everybody knows why it’s bad.   Nobody doubts that it’s bad. It always has  been, and Sega should be ashamed of itself.  It was developed to celebrate 15 years of  Sonic the Hedgehog, but all it really did   was bury him alive for the next 15 years. The  series has yet to shake the stink of this one,   however much it’s tried. The soundtrack is great,  of course, and some of the visuals are good.   Beyond that, what’s the nicest thing you  can say? It’s difficult to accidentally   decapitate yourself with the disc? From terrible design to a worse story   to copious glitches to endless loading screens to  gameplay features that literally do not function,   Sonic ‘06 is an appalling product made by a  company that had no excuse for releasing this   in the state that it was in. Aside from  greed. So we suppose they hadone excuse.  The cherry on top is that it was released the  same day as a port of the first Sonic the Hedgehog   to the Game Boy Advance…which was also a broken,  unplayable mess. It’s just that it was a broken,   unplayable mess of a game that everyone had  previously loved. The hedgehog’s future and   his legacy were tarnished on November 14, 2006.  Happy birthday, Sonic! We hope you like crap! #64: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) Master System  When you think of what defines Sonic 2 in  relation to its predecessor, two things   quickly come to mind: Tails and the spindash.  The Master System version of Sonic 2, however,   doesn’t have those things. At least, not really.  Tails does appear, but he’s kidnapped by Eggman   at the start of the game. Well, except that he  also appears by your side in the zone intros,   implying that he is with you? In  or out, Tails, make up your mind!  We’ll get to the Master System version of  Sonic 1, but for now we’ll just say that it was   limited by the hardware and made an admirable  attempt to craft a game that suited it.   Here, however, there’s almost nothing  that’s admirable and even less that’s   any actual fun. The game is a frustrating gauntlet  of blind jumps and platforms that are sometimes   impossible to distinguish from background  elements. The bosses are artificially difficult   and level gimmicks are implemented so poorly  that they feel like intermittent punishment.  Funnily enough, this version of Sonic 2 beat  the Mega Drive version of Sonic 2 to shelves.   Not by much, fortunately, so very few people were  likely to believe that this was the true sequel.   That game’s earliest release was November of  1992, while this one plopped out in October.   Pity all the grandmothers that year who remembered  that little Suzie asked for Sonic 2 for Christmas,   but couldn’t recall which version.  Actually, pity little Suzie even more. #63: Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007) Wii  How can we rebuild Sonic’s reputation after  the legendarily awful Sonic ‘06? How about   a motion-controlled Wii game? We can’t imagine  many people would have felt that that to be the   correct next step for Sega’s mascot, but all of  the people who did were on the development team   of Sonic and the Secret Rings. Oh, and it’s for  some reason based on One Thousand and One Nights.   Well, the only two or three things from One  Thousand and One Nights that anyone recognizes.  Reviews weren’t great, but in our opinion  they were far too kind, and the fact that   this represented a step up from one of the literal  worst games in history should not have been met   with as much relief as it was. A box full of  wasps would have been better than Sonic ‘06,   but that doesn’t mean that anyone should buy  one. The game plays horrendously. There’s a   reason that most of the best Wii games either used  very basic gestures for the WiiMote or relied on   its pointer functionality; the motion sensitivity  was nowhere near reliable enough to build   entire games around. It would be like playing  Spyro the Dragon by pelting rocks at a DualShock.  It’s difficult to work out who this game was  even for. Fans of Arabian Nights who wished   the stories involved Eggman and prefer their  games to be impossible to control? If so, kudos   for knowing your audience, but is this really  the best way to treat your struggling mascot? #62: SegaSonic the Hedgehog (1993) Arcade  SegaSonic the Hedgehog is less of a platformer  than it is an isometric sprint game.   Is there a better term for that? If so,  I’m perfectly fine with not knowing it.   It was a multiplayer arcade game in which each  player had a trackball and an action button,   and the goal was to outrun whatever hazard was  making your life hell in any particular level.   Due to the oddness of its controls, it’s nigh  on impossible to play properly today. Indeed,   perhaps it’s more fun with a trackball. A filthy,  grimy trackball that somebody’s dripped chocolate   and snot all over just before it was your turn  to play. Yes. That was probably much more fun.  The game is a straightforward adventure without  much to recommend it, and its biggest claim to   fame is that it introduced two sidekicks for  Sonic: Ray the Flying Squirrel and Mighty the   Armadillo. Gee, if only Sonic had other yellow  and red sidekicks, they could have appeared in   this game instead. Okay, yes, I’m mostly joking.  Sonic 3 didn’t debut until the following year, so   we can forgive Knuckles sitting this one out, but  why not include Tails instead of Ray? Regardless,   Sonic’s two fair-weather friends wouldn’t share  a playable appearance with him again until   2018’s Sonic Mania Plus. Weirdly, nobody missed  them while they were gone. Nobody’s going to miss   them now that they’re gone again, either. Otherwise? Well, the animations are nice,   and the music is good. And Sega’s never rereleased  it, which we think qualifies as a positive. #61: Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball (1993) Mega Drive  Sonic Spinball (1994) Game Gear  Yes, we are covering both versions  in one entry, but hear me out,   because we have a very good reason for  doing so: we hate this game and we would   like to forget about it as quickly as possible. Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball for the Mega Drive   is a fine concept. One of Sonic’s most notable  features is that he can curl up into a ball,   and some of his most memorable stages involve  pinball flippers and bumpers. Why, then, is Sonic   the Hedgehog Spinball such a load of horse apples?  Well, mainly because it just doesn’t feel good to   play. The physics are both stiff and inconsistent,  and while it’s possible to get a handle on the   individual quirks and gimmicks of each table, it’s  never really much fun to do so. Some of the music   is memorable, and it’s a solid idea for a game,  but it’s quite clear that this was rushed through   development in order to plug the gap between Sonic  2 and Sonic 3, and not because anyone involved   was particularly passionate about the idea. The Game Gear version is not the same game,   but since the main differences come down to  the specific arrangements of pinball tables,   we couldn’t really warrant talking about the  game for two successive entries. To be honest,   we could barely stand playing both versions.  If you’re wondering which one to pick up, go   with whichever one is cheaper. You’ll regret your  purchase either way, so just regret a smaller one. #60: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I (2010) PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360  Sonic fans have appended the unofficial title  of “the real Sonic 4” to everything from Sonic   Mania to Sonic Advance to Sonic Adventure,  and that’s because they’re desperate to   remove the realreal Sonic 4 from existence. Like The Phantom Menace before it, Sonic 4 was   advertised and anticipated as a glorious return  to a beloved trilogy, and ended up disappointing   fans by being a piece of actual rubbish. They both  even have Episode I in the title! Still, there is   one crucial difference between this game and The  Phantom Menace: Nobody, under any circumstances,   ever talks about this. We don’t blame them.  It’s more fun to plan one’s own funeral.  Sonic 4 Episode I is a far worse retread of the  original Sonic the Hedgehog. Much has been made   of the fact that the physics aren’t true to those  found in the Mega Drive games, and that’s a fair   criticism, but an even more fair criticism is the  fact that they aren’t even true to themselves.   Sonic frequently glitches out or reacts improperly  to things, as though the developers couldn’t   decide how anything was supposed to work in  the first place. The entire thing feels like   a low-effort fan game. It’s stiff, it runs poorly,  the levels are appallingly designed, and it looks   positively hideous. It’s even shockingly low on  creativity, relying on lesser retreads of old   stage ideas. Remixing familiar concepts would  work well in Sonic Generations and Sonic Mania,   but those games were made with love. This  game barely feels like it was made at all. #59: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (2008) DS  The portable version of the first  Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games…game   is, to be fair, what anyone should have expected.  It’s a minigame collection, like the Wii version,   only this time it’s portable. We’re not giving  it extra points for low ambition, of course, but   we also should acknowledge that there wasn’t all  that much in the way of expectation to begin with.  The game also looks significantly worse, but  we’d be lying if we said that there weren’t   some degree of appeal in the thick polygons.  It’s charming, even if it makes all of the   characters look like arts and crafts projects.  We will say that there’s notably less appeal   in the reliance on touch controls. We get it, of  course. It’s a collection of minigames on the DS;   of course it will have touch controls. And the Wii  version certainly wasn’t without its gimmickry.   But dragging, flicking, and tapping gets old  very fast when all you’re doing is helping   our belovedVector the Crocodile do gymnastics. It’s a competent game, and that may be enough   for people, but we certainly can’t pretend  that it’s much more than a weird oddity that,   as a series, eventually lost its weird oddness.  If you’ve always wanted to see Mario characters   and Sonic characters compete in the Olympics  and you’ve always wanted to see that on the go,   this was right up your alley. We like to keep our  alley just a little cleaner, though, thank you. #58: SegaSonic Bros. (1992) Arcade  SegaSonic Bros. is often referred to as  being one of Sonic’s many unreleased games,   but it was actually released in Japan…briefly. It  was location tested and, evidently, it performed   poorly enough that Sega quickly recalled the  machines. So here we are, writing about another   falling-block puzzler that just happens to  have some Sonic imagery slapped over it.  It’s…okay. It’s clear enough why it didn’t  grab the public’s eye. How could it? It’s an   extremely superficial experience that can be  rather fun in multiplayer, but you could say   that about any puzzle game. Instead of simply  matching colors, you need to create rings of the   same color, which will remove any of  the blocks contained within the ring.   ROMs of the game do circulate, so while its  time in the rising sun was brief, it’s at least   not lost. You can try it yourself and marvel at  the fact that, yes, the blocks look like Sonic.  Actually, they are Sonic. All of them. You’d be  forgiven for assuming that the differently colored   hedgehogs were different characters – that’s  usually the case, isn’t it? – but this game   doesn’t even have that much creativity. It’s just  Sonic, Red Sonic, Yellow Sonic, and, eventually,   White Sonic. If you absolutely need to play  a falling-block puzzler with Sonic in it,   this is a better option than Sonic Eraser.  Then again, so is losing a knife fight. This   is not the worst game Sonic’s even been in, but  it might be the one with the least imagination. #57: Tails Adventure (1995) Game Gear  The best of the Tails games, simply because it’s  the least psychologically destructive of the Tails   games, Tails Adventure is okay. In fact, if it  weren’t on the Game Gear and had been developed   byanyone other than the people who made Coca-Cola  Kid, it might have actually been good. Tailsworks   well in a slower-paced puzzle platformer. It  wouldn’t make sense for Sonic to methodically   comb through environments, and it wouldn’t make  sense for Knuckles to track down upgrades rather   than bash his way through obstacles, so Tails  is a perfect fit for this particular approach.  Sadly the design…isn’t great. You  can only hold fouritems at a time,   and you must choose your loadout before entering a  level. If you didn’t bring the item that you need,   you have to physically walk all the  way to an exit, return to Tails’ house,   choose four different items, enter the stage  again, travel to the obstacle, and see if you   brought the right thing this time. If not, repeat  until you’ve tried everything. Oh, and there’s   always the chance that you actually need to  be in a different stage entirely. What fun!  At times there are flashes of potential, but  the Game Gear is not the right system for large,   sprawling mazes that must be explored multiple  times. It’s impossible to see what’s coming,   let alone remember where everything is. Tails  Adventure is a good concept that falls down   in its execution. Still, “good concept” puts it  well above many of the things we’ve seen so far. #56: Sonic Drift 2 (1995) Game Gear  The original release of Sonic Drift was exclusive  to Japan, but Sega made the decision to bring its   sequel westward. They certainly chose the  better game to receive a wider audience,   but that’s not to say that Sonic Drift 2  is great. In fact, it’s mainly just…more.  That in itself is fine. Yes, we’d love it if Sonic  Drift 2 compared favorably to Mario Kart or even   Sega’s other racers, but that’s the world of  fantasy and, in case you haven’t been paying   attention these past few years, we emphatically do  not live there. What we got instead was a beefed   up version of the same game, providing more  content without significantly improving the   overall experience. There are new items and the  roster is expanded…a bit. You can now race as   Metal Sonic, Knuckles the Echidna, and Fangthe  Sniper. Everyone’s favorite animal, there.  Most importantly, there are more tracks…and  they’re not all circles this time. Sega,   with this actual attention to track design you  are really spoiling us. The Death Egg track even   looks like Eggman’s beautiful face! If you’ve  ever wanted to leave skidmarks in his moustache,   have at it. Many of the tracks even have  environmental hazards or other tweaks, which   make them feel far more distinct than they did in  the previous game. All in all, it’s a perfectly   competent little racer for the Game Gear, even  if it’s not all that memorable. Sonic racing   games got much better from here, but Sonic Drift  2 was evidence that Sega was willing to improve. #55: Mario & Sonic at the  Rio 2016 Olympic Games (2016)  WiiU Mario & Sonic   at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games was the  second game in this subseries on the WiiU,   and one might expect that it would have  built and improved upon its predecessor.   That’s what happened on the DS and Wii, after  all. It can take time to get used to new hardware,   and with a series like this, it’s reasonable  that it might not reach its fullest potential   right out of the gate. And yet, this one  doesn’t feel like it’s trying very hard.  The game lacks content, with fewer events overall  and no dream events. What are dream events? Well,   you’ll hear about them later in this list, because  they are things that people actually enjoy.   We’re not keen on referring to developers as  lazy – that’s very, very rarely the case – but   this doesn’t feel like a decision that  was made in order to benefit the consumer.  What is here is serviceable. Some of the new  events, such as boxing, are fun. But none of   them justify another game on the WiiU, especially  one that takes a notable step back in quality.   Scandal very much pending, but we do wonder if  the failure of the WiiU made Sega take this one   less seriously. Rather than invest a load of  resources into trying to make it a must-have,   they slapped together something passable and  called it a day. We certainly don’t know for sure,   and we can’t blame them if that’s correct,  but we can be just a little disappointed. #54: Knuckles’ Chaotix(1995) 32X  Knuckles’ Chaotix is the closest Knuckles has  ever gotten to having a game all to himself,   and the fact that it’s an unloved, largely  forgotten mess might be the reason he’s   been stuck on the sidelines ever since. That’s  not entirely fair to the echidna, as the many   problems with Knuckles’ Chaotix have nothing to  do with him, and everything to do with the fact   that it’s a strange concept executed poorly. The game began development as Sonic Crackers,   and it was intended to star Sonic and Tails,  tethered together in the video-game adaptation   of The Defiant Ones that we’ve always wanted.  Eventually Knuckles got the spotlight, and   he’s regretted it ever since. It’s not terrible,  but it isan ill-conceived misfire in just about   every way. The levels are huge and sprawling past  the point of tedium, and pseudo-randomization   means that you’ll hop between them without any  clear sense of escalation. Most of the partner   characters are fine, but there are somewho exist  just to hinder you. Also, in what feels less like   a “decision” than a “concession made because the  game keeps breaking,” there’s a button dedicated   to snapping your partner back into place. On the bright side, the music is often great   and the visuals are unforgettable, looking  like LSD took some LSD. But the fact that   this was the only Sonic game for the 32X, and the  related fact that Sega has never rereleased it,   probably suggests that they’d rather  we forget it. I’ll start right now! #53: Sonic Dash Extreme (2015) Arcade  Sonic Dash Extreme is an arcade version of the  mobile game Sonic Dash. Sonic Dash was a Sonic   version of Temple Run. So, basically, Sonic Dash  Extreme was like playing Temple Run on an arcade   cabinet. Except that you could actually  play Temple Run on an arcade cabinet,so   Sonic Dash Extreme has no purpose. Yay! To be fair, Sonic Dash was fine, and if all you   wanted to do was speed around for a few minutes,  sidestepping hazards and collecting rings, it was   an adequate time killer. There was a little bit  more to the experience than that, but it was still   just Temple Run. Let’s not fool ourselves. There doesn’t seem to be much difference   between this and the phone version, which is  free, so it’s probably best to save yourself   the money and fiddle with that for the twelve  or so minutes it will take you to get bored.   Also, if you download the game from Google Play,  you can unlock – and we want to be very clear   about the fact that we’re not joking – Andronic  the Hedgehog, a cross between Sonic and the   Android logo. It’s very scary, and we hate it. Strangely, the arcade game seems to   only have been released in the UK. We’re not sure  how many cabinets are still out there in the wild,   but if you know where to find one, let us know  in the comments. We will meet you there and   we’ll try to beat each other’s scores. Just…wait  for us. We’ll join you eventually. We promise. #52: Sonic the Fighters (1996) Arcade  You’d probably expect a concept as weird  as Sonic the Fighters to be the result   of some executive at Sega who sat down,  crunched numbers, determined that Sonic   and fighting games were both profitable, and  then demanded that developers get to work.   In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.  Character designer Masahiro Sugiyama was bored,   so he imported some rough 3D models of Sonic  and Tails into a build of Fighting Vipers.   Yuji Naka apparently saw employees playing  with it and thought, “Hey, why not?”  And so development began on a game in which  Sonic and a very small number of his very   strange friends would beat each other up for  pocket change. Isn’t game development magical?   It’s not a bad game – it can’t be, with Fighting  Vipers DNA in its blood – but it is a very strange   and fairly shallow one. The characters also have  a bouncy quality that’s difficult to describe,   which makes the fighting feel like little  is at stake. If the rubbery characters can   contort themselves right back into shape, does  the fight really matter? We realize that we are   dangerously close to arguing in favor of realistic  hedgehog viscera, though, so we’ll relent.  A port of the game to the Sega Saturn was  announced, but nothing ever came of it. According   to the Sonic Wiki, “No explanation has ever been  offered for the port’s cancellation.” I’m sure   that that’s true, but…come on. You don’t need  to be a rocket scientist to work this one out. #51: Mario & Sonic at the  Rio 2016 Olympic Games (2016)  3DS Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for   the 3DS is not to be confused with Mario & Sonic  at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for the WiiU or   Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade  Edition. I’m just joking; it’s easy to confuse it   with those, and with every other Mario & Sonic at  the Olympic Games…game. There’s not even an easy   way to say that. This whole subseries is a mess. By this point, previous Mario & Sonic at the   Olympic Games…games had covered most of the  possible minigames that one could wring out   of the Olympics. As a result, this release ends  up seeming less interesting and less impressive.   Just about everything feels like a lesser retread  of what we’d seen in the handheld games before,   feeling far less fresh and far too familiar  at once. It’s not bad, and everything works   just fine, but it doesn’t really feel like much  thought went into this one, particularly when   compared to its predecessor on the same system. If you ask us, the main selling points are the   football and golf games, which are decently  robust. We’re not sure it’s worth picking   up the game just for those things –  and Mario Golf: World Tour does exist,   if you’re looking for a great version of that  particular sport on the 3DS – but they are nice   bonuses for the overall package. We just wish that  the package were a little easier to recommend. #50: Sonic Pinball Party (2003) Game Boy Advance  You know, it would be so easy for us to ignore  this one. It’s called Sonic Pinball Party, yes,   but unlike Sonic Spinball, it’s not a Sonic  game with pinball elements; it’s a pinball   game with Sonic elements. Even then, it also  has elements from Nights and Samba de Amigo,   so if it weren’t for the game’s title, we  wouldn’t have to talk about this at all, right?  Not quite right, sadly, because Sonic Pinball  Party has a story mode, and it’s a Sonic story.   How many pinball games have story modes? Not all  that many, and Sonic Pinball Party makes it clear   why: Nobody is going to write a good story  that involves repeatedly playing the same   few pinball tables. And even if somebody did write  a good story, it would necessarily be frequently   interrupted by playing the same few pinball  tables. Have fun slapping the balls around   and racking up high scores, which ends up freeing  your pals from Eggman’s mind control for what I’m   certain are scientifically validreasons. The physics are fine. They’re nothing   earthshattering, but considering the hardware,  they’re more than serviceable. There are only   three tables and a few minigames, and none of  them are especially impressive or memorable.   If you absolutely need a pinball game on your GBA,  Sonic Pinball Party is perfectly fine. But if what   you need is more than five or six minutes  of fun, it’s probably best to keep looking. #49: Sonic and the Black Knight (2009) Wii  Have you ever wanted to see Sonic  meet King Arthur? No, of course not,   that would be stupid. But have you ever wanted  Sonic to be King Arthur? What’s that? That’s   even more stupid? Oh. Might want to steer  clear of Sonic and the Black Knight, then.  It’s…a strange concept. It’s not one that was  inherently doomed to fail, but it’s also not one   that the game works very hard to make worthwhile.  The plot seems to be an excuse for extended   cutscenes in which the characters all dress up  in period garb and talk to each other for far   too long about things that don’t really require  discussion. You know, just what everybody wants   from a character famous for moving quickly.The  gameplay is improved from Sonic and the Secret   Rings if only because you can now move Sonic with  the nunchuck; you are no longer confined to motion   controls. But don’t worry, dear friends; motion  controls still rear their unwelcome head, with   the sword fighting being controlled by waggling. It’s fine, we suppose; God knows it’s far from   the only “waggle to kill things” game  on the Wii, but remember when Sonic ran   fast and jumped on enemies to kill them? Who  on Earth saw that and thought it would be a   better idea if he came to a dead stop to do some  fencing? It’s nice that you can unlock Shadow,   Knuckles, and Blaze as playable characters, but  all three of them deserved a much better game. #48: Sega Superstars (2004) PlayStation 2  Hey, look, it’s the EyeToy! Considering how much  Peter/Ben and Ienjoy Sony at TripleJump Towers,   we very rarely have reason to talk about  the EyeToy. That’s good, because if we drew   attention to it, people might realize that it  was basically an early Kinect. Only it…worked.   So Microsoft had even less of an excuse than  you’d previously thought. Sega Superstars was a   collection of minigames for the device, spanning  properties such as Crazy Taxi, Billy Hatcher,   and Virtua Fighter. As with any collection of  motion-controlled minigames, the quality varies   but, fortunately, we’re ranking Sonic games  on this list, and we get to focus all of our   attention on that one. In all of its…glory. It’s not bad, to be clear. In fact, it works   quite well. The EyeToy’s motion tracking allows  you to move your arms around to control Sonic   as he runs through a long pipe, collecting rings  and Chaos Emeralds. There’s not much else to it,   but the game is a serviceable enough diversion. It  didn’t hold our interest for long, but as part of   a larger package, it doesn’t really need to. If you complete the game on each difficulty,   you unlock the ability to play as  Shadow…which itself is basically just   another, tougher difficulty. It’s a decent  bonus, and the game certainly isn’t terrible,   but it would be nice if Sonic’s lone PS2 exclusive  were something a bit more substantial. Oh, there’s   also a Chao Garden. That’s good news for the one  person on Earth who has ever enjoyed Chao Gardens. #47: Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) Master System  In 1991, Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog  for the Mega Drive. We’ll get to that,   but we’re focusing on another  release from a few months later:   Sonic the Hedgehog for the Master System. It’s  not a port; it’s an entirely new game built   from the ground up for the weaker console.  That’s good, but it’s still quite flawed.  There is absolutely no sense of speed, with  lag and framerate issues making things feel   even slower. The levels are bland and  forgettable. Stage types include vertical   climbs and auto-scrollers. The excellent layered  design of the original game is missing completely.   Blind jumps dot the landscape. The Eggman fights  completely lack challenge, even without rings.And   yet, we kind of like it. Not very much, but  we admire what it was able to accomplish. As   a platformer in its own right, it’s not bad; it  mainly pales in comparison to the 16-bit version.  Interestingly, this game is an early example  of something that would contribute to Sega’s   downfall. This was released for the Master System  three years after the launch of the Mega Drive,   and over-supporting multiple systems would  eventually pose a serious problem.By 1996,   just five years later, Sega would be supporting  the Master System, the Mega Drive, the Mega CD,   the 32X, the Game Gear, and the Pico. Six  consoles at the same time. Todaywe have   roughly enough room on the market for three  consoles, but in 1996, Sega believed that   it could sustain six. Sega’s ambition was one its  defining aspects, but even ambition needs limits. #46: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (2007) Wii  Let’s be clear: Nobody wanted this. We  didn’t want this. You didn’t want this.   Neither Mario nor Sonic wanted this. But starting  in 2007, we’ve been treated to Olympic tie-in   games featuring the former rivals, and it’s  possible that the subseries will outlive us all.  It’s…a strange idea. As a peace  offering between Sega and Nintendo,   it’s fine. As a one-off novelty, it’s weird enough  to succeed on oddity alone. As a long-overdue   official crossover between two gaming titans,  however…well, nobody wanted this. A platformer,   a racing game, some kind of weird head-to-head  puzzler…just about anything would have been a   better fit than an athletics competition between  the fastest thing alive and a man who sweats   just getting out of bed in the morning. It’s a minigame collection on the Wii,   which means you’ll be doing this however long  you decide to play, but it works about as well   as can be hoped, and at the time there was at  least a small thrill in seeing Amy Rose and   Waluigicompeting in the world’s most important  sporting events. Frankly, we doubt that they   put in the training and are only competing as some  kind of publicity stunt, but that’s just one man’s   opinion. Mario and Sonic would have a more welcome  crossover in 2008 with Super Smash Bros. Brawl,   and maybe that would have seemed even more special  if the two hadn’t already met here for a few games   of competitive table tennis. On the bright  side, things didmostly get better from here. #45: Sonic Rivals (2006) PlayStation Portable  Nintendo’s handhelds have had no shortage of  Sonic platformers, but Sony’s handhelds were   far less lucky. The PSP, for instance, had only  three Sonic games: Sonic Rivals, Sonic Rivals 2,   and the Sega Mega Drive Collection, which  contained ports of Sonic and Sonic 2,   as well as Flicky. Remember, we all  agreed that we are counting Flicky.  Sonic Rivals is a platform racer in which the  objective is to reach the end of a stage before   your opponent. A few 2D Sonic games have included  competitive modes, but now it’s the entire point.   Sadly, the characters all play similarly to each  other, despite the fact that they’ve had different   abilities in the past.That was certainly done  for balancing reasons, but just as certainly,   the developers could have designed levels around  multiple abilities, rather than giving everyone   the same basic moveset and repetitive obstacles  to overcome. Aside from their special moves,   playing the game as one character feels  identical to playing it as another, which   defeats the purpose of having a varied roster.  The levels themselves are also extremely lifeless,   and we’d have trouble believing that they  held anybody’s attention for very long.  There’s the potential for a great platform  racer in here – and Sonic is indeed a good   fit for the idea – but Sonic Rivals is an  empty, almost soulless experience. The sequel   does improve upon this game, but not by enough  to really matter. And, hey, speak of the devil! #44: Sonic Rivals 2 (2007) PlayStation Portable  We’re blitzing right past this pair of  disappointments and we’ll never speak   of them again. To be clear, neither game  is particularly bad; they’re very boring,   utterly pointless, and bereft of merit…but with  a history like Sonic’s, that still keeps them   far from the bottom.Sonic Rivals was not the  game anybody wanted from the series on the PSP,   but fans of course bought it in the hopes that  it would encourage Sega to release a proper game.   Sega responded by making Sonic  Rivals 2 and turning up at each   of their homes to say “nana nana blow raspberry.” This game does make some welcome improvements. It   has more characters, and their special moves  even make them feel more unique…sometimes.   Hey, it’s better than nothing. There are also more  modes, and the stages are better designed overall.   The voice-acted cutscenes are a nice treat for  anyone invested in that deep Sonic Rivals lore,   and now the Special gauge fills up as  you collect rings, giving you something   to focus on other than the finish line. It’s better. But is it good? …have you   not been paying attention? No, it’s not  good. The variety is absolutely welcome,   and there was some additional effort invested  here, but this still isn’t up to the level of   quality we’d have hoped for in the first place,  let alone in a sequel. These games didn’t have   much potential, but they still failed  to live up to what they could have been. #43: Sonic Rush Adventure (2007) DS  Sonic Rush Adventure is a downgrade from 2005’s  Sonic Rush in just about every way. The stages are   less interesting, collecting materials requires  either perfect play or repetitive grinding, and   the soundtrack is…look, we are going to sing the  praises of Sonic Rush’s soundtrack soon enough,   so let’s just say that this is nowhere near as  good. There are a few standout tracks – hello,   Plant Kingdom and Coral Cave – but it’s  such a step down that the loss is tangible.  There’s also an increased reliance on  performing tricks in the air and capping   them off with a finishing move, which isn’t as  fun assimply moving through stages as quickly   as possible. There are also dull seafaring  sections, which absolutely slaughter the pace;   nobody could have believed that Sonic games  would be improved by long sequences of moving   slowly from one part of the world to another,  and yet here we are. And the between-level   missions commit the cardinal sin of making  the game longer without adding anything to   the experience of playing it. What’s more, they  removed the previous game’s auto-save feature,   which is a decision that could only  have been made to irritate everyone.  Then there’s Marine, the game’s new character  who never shuts up and speaks with an exaggerated   Australian vernacular, with a “sheila,” “stewth,”  or “shrimp on the barbie” in every damned line.   She promises Sonic at the end of the game that  she’ll see him again, even if she has to cross   dimensions to do it, and let’s all thank  the Lord that she’s bad at keeping promises. #42: Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice (2016) 3DS  The last of the Sonic Boom games is the  best. It does not achieve greatness. It   doesn’t even really achieve goodness. But it does  achieve…fine-ness. Fire & Ice really does try.   It allows for exploration of levels, but it no  longer ties collectibles to progression, leaving   you free to…y’know…play it like a Sonic game. The main gimmick is switching between the   fire and ice elements, which is required to  overcome certain obstacles. It works well,   actually, and can be done on the fly so that  it doesn’t interrupt the flow of gameplay.   None of the elemental puzzles are difficult,  but we don’t think they were intended to be.   We get the sense that it was just one more way  to challenge players to keep their momentum   going and, in that regard at least, it works  well. It’s barely more than a wrinkle in how   the game is played, but it is something. And that was it for Sonic Boom. Nobody   wanted it and nobody misses it, though it did  reach some level of competence by the end.   We hope to do the same one day! Interestingly,  Sonic Forces is said to have begun development   as a sequel to the much-loved Sonic  Generations, bringing Classic Sonic,   Modern Sonic, and Sonic Boom Sonic together. Due  to the fact that Sonic Boom was received like   a slap in humanity’s collective knackers, Sonic  Forces featured a custom avatar instead. Brave of   Sega to admit that literally anyone could create  a character better than they could at this point. #41: Rad Mobile (1990) Arcade  Yes, we’re stuck including this one because,  if we didn’t, every other comment would be,   “Didn’t you know that Sonic’s first official  appearance was in Rad Mobile??” Sorry! You’ll just   have to try to make us feel stupid some other way. Rad Mobile is not a Sonic game. It does, however,   feature Sonic consistently, all throughout  gameplay. See? There he is! Dangling from the roof   of the car as though his little hedgehog cries for  help were never heeded. Okay, that was more morbid   than we intended to get. It’s just a plastic charm  of Sega’s mascot, even though he wouldn’t get his   first proper game until the following year.  For 1990, Rad Mobile looked fantastic, and   the changing times of day and weather effects were  impressive. There are even police who will attempt   to pull you over. If they do, the game says that  you are under arrest, but this is not what being   arrested looks like. Or, at least, it shouldn’t. Are we assigning too much significance to Sonic’s   appearance here? Yes, but it really is a major  part of the game’s appeal. When it was ported   to the Saturn in 1994 as Gale Racer, Sega not  only retained Sonic, but added more charms,   including Tails, Amy, and Eggman. That’s nice,  but I’ll never forgive them for leaving out Ray   the Flying Squirrel, and we will not rest  until every last Sega employee is…oh, they   did include him? I…wow. We didn’t expect that.  Right. We’re sorry we ever doubted you, Sega. #40: Sonic R (1997) Saturn  Sonic R occupies a strange place in Sonic’s  history, as it manages to be exactly as good   as it is bad. It’s an impressive balancing act.  Many of these games are boring. Many of them   are only notable for their strangeness. Some  of them, of course, are good. But Sonic R is   worth seeking out simply because it exists. It’s a racing game, as you can surely tell,   but nearly all of the characters are on  foot. That’s fine, except that they control   as though they are in vehicles, with braking  and acceleration and wide turning. Of course,   characters who control like vehicles is fine  when you’re actually racing; it takes a bit of   mental effort to reprogram your brain, but it does  work. Then, all at once, it doesn’t work, because   Sonic R introduces platforming, exploration, and  collectathon elements within its races. It’s not   enough to finish first; if you intend to unlock  all of the content and complete the game fully,   you will need to seek out the various hidden  trinkets at the same time that you win the races.  It’s a strange mix that we do  not want othergames to attempt,   but this one handles it quite well. It  is possible to explore the secret areas,   collect all the goodies, and finish  first. It’s not easy, but it’s also not   oppressively difficult. It’s a strangely  satisfying challenge in a game that really   shouldn’t work as well as it does. Sonic R isn’t  great…but it’s impressively far from being bad. #39: Mario & Sonic at the Sochi  2014 Olympic Winter Games (2013)  WiiU  The subseries makes its HD debut with Mario &  Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games,   and we couldn’t be happier. Sorry;we misread  that: “And we can never be happy again.”   This was the precise point at which the world  collectively realized that Mario & Sonic would   keep competing in the same Olympic events until  our great grandchildren are buried in the cold,   cold ground…so, hey, it’s fitting that it’s  another game about the winter Olympics, at least.  In terms of the visuals…well, they are improved.  Are they improved by enough to matter? I’ll say   no. It’s not for want of trying, but cartoon  characters have looked great in video games   for many years. They’re sharper in HD, yes, but  since these critters were never meant to look   “real,” the upgrade really isn’t as important. Like many WiiU exclusives, Mario & Sonic at the   Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games relies heavily on  the Game Pad. Previous titles were no strangers to   control gimmicks, but staring down at the Game  Pad is significantly less fun than watching the   action on your television. Also, many of  the minigames still require the WiiRemote,   so you’ll be swapping back and forth between  controllers, sometimes even during the same   event. It’s by no means impossible to do that,  but it also isn’t very much fun. It’s a needless   complication to a series that had, up until this  point, been a simple experience. If you really   need a minigame collection on your WiiU, you  could do worse. But that sure isn’t saying much. #38: Mario & Sonic at the  Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 (2019)  Switch Boy,   remember the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo? Oh, what fun  we had. All of the…sporting events and…Olympians.   The medals! Can’t forget the medals. And all of  the…yeah, just all of the general Olympic joy.Oh,   my mistake;we had a pandemic that year  and nobody was doing anything, ever.  Yeah, weirdly enough, this game came out  in November 2019, and the actual 2020 Tokyo   Olympics never took place. Tokyo did belatedly  host the games in July 2021, but to this day,   Sega has not come around my house to fix  the box art of my copy. It’s like they   don’t even care about their customers! Sega even wanted this game to celebrate   Tokyo’s history with the Olympics, including  retro-styled 1964 events, based on the previous   year that Tokyo had hosted the summer games. It  was a nice idea, scuppered slightly by the fact   that the “modern day” 2020 events didn’t happen  at all. Still, the game is fine, but it could   be much better. A lot of the content feels stale  after having been featured in the previous games,   and while the 1964 events are great, we can’t  pretend that they have much depth. Which we   suppose is fitting, since they’re two-dimensional,  but you get the point. There are also fewer dream   events – only three, in fact – making this  feel less inventive than its predecessors.   It looks good, but it feels as though the  series was starting to run low on ideas. #37: Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (1993) Mega Drive  It certainly seems like we’re always having to  find new ways to talk about PuyoPuyo on these   lists. Let me be clear; PuyoPuyo is excellent, but  the games kept getting released under different   names, so we keep havin’ to rank ‘em all over  again. This particular version is a reskin of   the 1992 Mega Drive port of the original PuyoPuyo  arcade game. It also, interestingly, ties into   the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon as  opposed to the video game series. You can tell   because it features characters exclusive to that  show and also because Robotnik’s head is obscene.  It’s your job to manage blobs of varying colors,  positioning them so that one match will trigger   a long chain of other matches and you’ll bury  your opponent under a veritable deluge of slime.   Alright, that sounds disgusting, but it is fun.  It’s a bit less fun if you’re playing against the   CPU, as those opponents are incredibly fast and  difficult. If you want a game that’s going to ease   you in to its mechanics, too bad; Dr. Robotnik’s  Mean Bean Machine will quite gladly curb-stomp you   into submission should you dare challenge it. Weirdly, the later ports to the Game Gear and   Master System might be a better place to start.  They’re the same game, but they have a unique   Puzzle Mode that will help you learn the best  way to set up chains for maximum blobbage. And   now that I’ve said “maximum blobbage,” I  would very much like to move on, please. #36: Sega Superstars Tennis (2008) DS, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360  Are we stretching by including  this game? Yes and no.   No because Sonic and pals are definitely the  focus, even if the title doesn’t bear his name.   But yes, because it’s still just a tennis game  that happens to have lots of Sonic stuff in it.   We did want to include it though because  this list seemed a little empty without all   of the athletic diversions of the Mario list.  That guy really gets around. Sonic, though,   usually stays out of sports. That’s one thing that  we have in common. Well, that and the fact that I   am also not wearing trousers at the moment. Sega Superstars Tennis is a title in which   “superstars” can only be interpreted  sarcastically. There’s Alex   Kid, Gilius Thunderhead from Golden Axe, some  of the Super Monkeys from Super Monkey Ball, and   other characters who are even less notable. Sega,  you’ve got bigger properties, you know. Your back   catalogue doesn’t consist of “Sonic” and “other.” The other modes pull inspiration from more series,   such as House of the Dead and PuyoPuyo,  and those modes are indeed the highlights.   Otherwise, the game is mainly…tennis. It’s good  tennis, but it’s tennis, and if you don’t already   love tennis, it won’t win you over. We know,  because we already don’t love tennis. The DS   version is surprisingly faithful to the console  version by the way. There are a few tweaks and   it clearly looks worse, but it’s an impressive  feat, and it’s notable for that reason alone. #35: Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble (1994) Game Gear  It should come as no surprise that the best Sonic  Game Gear game is the sequel to Sonic Chaos,   the best Sonic Master System game. Triple Trouble  doesn’t quite rise to the heights of the best 2D   Sonic games, but it comes remarkably close,  especially considering the hardware. In fact,   the hardware is about the only  thing working against this one.   The tiny screen of the Game Gear means  that you can’t see very much at once,   leading to cheap deaths. The speaker, as well,  doesn’t do justice to this game’s great music.   Itstill soundsrather good;we just want it  to sound better, because we are selfish.  Really, the game is fun; it’s just that the  limitations of the console hold it back;   Triple Trouble could have been so much better  realized on the Mega Drive. The sprites look nice,   but not nice enough. The colorful environments are  great, but those colors should pop so much more.   The new ring system – in which you lose only some  rings upon taking damage, because the Game Gear   couldn’t render them all – is an unfortunate  concession, even if it was a necessary one.  Triple Trouble is very good, to be clear, but  that’s also what’s frustrating; if it’s this   good on a weak handheld, it could have been great  on a console. Oh, except for that train boss at   the end of Sunset Park. That thing can suck  a very big egg. I apologize for my outburst. #34: Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure (1999)  Neo Geo Pocket Color The joke that everybody makes   about Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure  is that it got a perfect score from IGN,   as though that’s inherently absurd. And…right,  okay, it sort of is, but at the same time,   context is important. This was a handheld game in  1999 that looked great, sounded great, ran great,   and had a great sense of speed. Reviewers were  comparing Pocket Adventure to handheld games   that came before it; they couldn’t have known how  much better handheld games would eventually get.  All of which is to say that Pocket Adventure is  only good for a handheld game of its era, right?   Well, no. It’s a solid little platformer in its  own right, and its biggest problem is how little   of it there is. There are six main zones with  two acts each, and then a handful of one-off   zones. At the time of its release, this was  completely understandable. Today, however, you’ll   finish it before you finish a cup of coffee. That’s a valid topic for discussion, though.   Is a great experience less great for being too  short? Is a mediocre experience better if it lasts   longer? Pocket Adventure can’t really answer that  question, as it stops being good once you reach   Aerobase, which has a mazelike layout plagued by  blind jumps, and it never really recovers from   there. The game is fun and it is impressive,  but it doesn’t maintain its quality through   to the end. It’s worth a play, but quit when  you get to Aerobase. You have my permission. #33: Sonic Forces (2017) PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One, PC  Sonic Forces is both undeserving of its  negative reputation and deserving at the same   time. Undeserving because it tends to be lumped  together with the very worst Sonic games and,   as we’ve seen, that’s simply not  accurate. Deserving because…it’s   still not all that good, to be honest. Coming just a few months after Sonic Mania,   Sonic Forces was bound to be comparedto it. That  would be fine, if it weren’t for the fact that   Sonic Mania represented the best game Sonic had  starred in for ages. Even if it were very good,   Sonic Forces would have come up wanting  simply because it wasn’t an all-time   great. And it’s…not an all-time great. It’s sometimes dull and relies far too heavily   on scripted sequences to feel satisfying, but  there is fun to be had here. Some of the bosses   are impressive, the levels are revisited for new  objectives, and…well…some of the music is good?   Okay, we’re stretching, but the point is that it’s  far from the worst game this series has ever had.   The story is absolute crap, and this“world already  conquered by Eggman” seems to have very little to   do with Eggman, so there’s a lot of squandered  potential there, but on its own merits, it’s a   fine platformer. It’s just kind of…empty.The  biggest innovation here is the customizable   player avatar, which is actually quite fun. If  only the story didn’t try to be edgy and serious,   the ability to play as your own custom  homunculus would have been great. #32: Sonic the Hedgehog (1993) Arcade  As we’ve seen, Sonic the Hedgehog has  made a few appearances in the arcade,   but something that often goes overlooked  is the arcade port of his Mega Drive game.   Well, it’s not quitea port, mainly  because of how much it’s missing.   This game only contains four zones: Green  Hill, Spring Yard, Star Light, and Scrap Brain,   with the latter losing 1/3 of its content:Finish  Scrap Brain Act 2 and you’re taken directly to   the final boss. Not that Scrap Brain Act 3  was anything people were hoping to revisit   anytime soon, but it’s interesting just how  much Sega was willing to chop out of this game.  Things were also made significantly more  punishing, with tighter timers and a complete   absence of one-ups. It’s as though Sega took  one look at their hit game and asked themselves,   “What if this were missing lots of content,  were more difficult, and were less fun?”  It’s tempting to dismiss these strange decisions  as being somehow necessary for the game to work   in an arcade setting, but there was also an arcade  version of Sonic 2, and that was so similar to its   Mega Drive equivalent that we aren’t even ranking  it separately. All of the zones were present, and   aside from minor tweaks, the content didn’t really  change significantly. It did remove the special   stages, but otherwise it was the same experience  as its console counterpart…only it was much   less convenient and you had to play the entire  thing standing up.Huh, arcades kind of sucked! #31: Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (2008) PlayStation 2, Wii  Sonic Riders was a good game, and it  understandably had its supporters.   A sequel could have been an easy win. After all,  with racing games, you could tweak the gameplay   and add new tracks and characters, and fans would  have been perfectly happy. They rarely want a   sequel that shakes things up too much; they want  a game they already enjoy, but bigger and better.  That’s not quite what we got here. The tricks  system in that game – which was necessary to   achieve mastery– was massively simplified. Now,  you just press a button on a ramp and watch the   animation happen automatically. Even cornering and  boosting have been reworked to be more automated,   requiring less thought and  resulting in less satisfaction.   The outcome is a game that feels a bit shallow,  with most of what made the first game interesting   now taken out of our hands as players. It’s not all bad; let’s be clear.   The game looks better. It controls well…when we’re  actually allowed to control it. The music is good,   Silver and Blaze are welcome additions, and  the selection of tracks is certainly fine,   so it’s far from a total disaster. It just  seems like a step backwards for a series   that had started out feeling so unique. There  was a real opportunity here for Sonic Riders to   grow into something special, and it  was off to such an excellent start.   Zero Gravity, ironically, is where it started to  fall. And we’ve already seen where it crashlanded… #30: Sonic Chaos (1993) Master System  If you’ve heard anything positive about the Master  System games, it was likely about Sonic Chaos,   which is often referred to as an overlooked  gem. Or emerald, probably. Point is, it’s the   one Sonic game from that console that people tend  to speak about fondly. Is that deserved? Actually,   yes.We may not be ranking it all that high  on this list, but we can’t deny that it’s   impressive. It looks better than its  predecessors, its animations are smooth,   and it’s packed with features that everyone had  assumed at various points that the Master System   couldn’t handle, such as the spindash and  being able to play as Tails. The latter was   actually a headlining feature in Japan,  where the game was called Sonic & Tails.  All of that is great, but it’s still not a  patch on Sonic’s best 2D platformers. The   stages aren’t all that well designed, though we’ve  seen far worse. Also, the music is only passable,   the bosses are mindless, and the game is  very short. But, really, this is by far the   closest that Sonic ever came on the Master System  to the quality of the classic Mega Drives games.   It’s an interesting and admirable attempt. If it  still comes up short, it’s not for want of trying.  The Game Gear version – released a month  later – is the only version that Japan and   North America got. It’s notidentical to this  version, with some tweaks to the level design   and boss behavior, but they’re similar  enough, and either one is worth a spin…dash. #29: Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II (2012) PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC  The worst thing about Sonic 4: Episode  Ibeing such crap is that few people   were willing to play Episode II. And that’s  unfortunate, because it is actually far, far,   far better than its predecessor. That  still only makes it “alright,” of course,   but if both episodes were of this level of  quality, fewer people would try removing memories   of Sonic 4 from their brains with ice picks. The zones are more unique, there are better   stage gimmicks, and the buddy moves with Tails are  genuinely good additions. Red star rings provide   a reason to explore, the music is improved,  and everything looks so much better. Also,   whereas the previous game’s bosses were all  recycled, things are much more creative here.   Episode II’s first boss pokes fun at the very  idea of reusing bosses, and it’s a great fakeout.  Still, it’s not all great, with  half-pipe special stages feeling routine,   and the Metal Sonic encounters are better in  concept than in execution. Also, the first act of   Sky Fortress Zone is just Sky Chase Zone, without  failing to understand that “brevity” was what made   Sky Chase work at all. But this game is a huge  step up from its predecessor, and Episode III   could have been better still. Alas, by this point,  the Sonic 4 name was toxic, and the third episode   was scrapped. That’s Sega’s fault for putting out  a sub-par first entry, to be clear, not the fans’   fault for not giving this one a chance. It’s  worth wondering what might have been, though. #28: Sonic Colors (2010) DS  If you liked the console version of Sonic  Colors, the DS game of the same name will   pale by comparison. If you disliked the console  version, the DS version will…probably still   pale by comparison, to be honest. But we  will be quick to praise it for one thing:   It’s a unique experience with completely different  content and mostly different gameplay. That means   that Sonic fans who bought both versions  ended up experiencing next to no overlap.  The story is similar, but here,  there’s actually more going on.   In the console game, Sonic and Tails  roam Eggman’s completely barren   outer-space amusement park. The DS version  attempts to inject some life into the setting,   with friends and rivals from Sonic’s  past exploring the park as well.   In terms of gameplay, it’s basically Sonic Rush 3.  That’s a good thing, because Sonic Rush was great,   and we don’t speak about Sonic Rush Adventure. The  special stages are very similar to Sonic Rush’s   without, sadly, that game’s incredible music.  “Change my ways,” indeed. Change them back!  The level design overall ranges from  decent to appalling, with the last few   stages in particular being home to multiple  impossible-to-predict death traps in a row,   but more of it is good than bad. All of which  is to say that it doesn’t measure up to either   Sonic Rush or Sonic Colors, but it’s fun enough  and we admire that it played to the strengths of   its hardware. It’s just that the entire endeavor  feels like a lesser shade of two better games. #27: Mario & Sonic at the  Olympic Winter Games (2009)  DS Compared to Mario & Sonic at the Olympic   Games for the DS – and, no, it’s not difficult to  keep the names of all 12 of these games straight,   why do you ask? – Mario & Sonic at the Olympic  Winter Games for the DS is a big step forwards.   For starters, they redesigned a number  of the events from the Wiiversion,   as opposed to just porting them over as  closely as possible and hoping for the best.  There’s still an expectedly heavy  reliance on the touchscreen,   but the controls are much better and don’t just  boil down dragging a stylus back and forth. Well,   they do boil down to that, but less frequently.  The dream events are a lot of fun, too,   with everything feeling significantly more varied  than the minigames did in the previous release.   All of that is enough to elevate Mario & Sonic at  the Olympic Winter Games, but it’s actually the   story mode that really makes this one shine. Not  only does it give players a reason to do more than   plow through the minigames once, shrug, and trade  it in…but it ended up being weirdly prescient.  The game was released in 2009 in anticipation  of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics,   and the story involvesEggman and Bowser sabotaging  the games by capturing all of the Snow Spirits.   Then a lack of real-life snowfall similarly  threatened the actual Winter Olympics in   Vancouver. I’m not blaming Eggman and  Bowser, of course. That would be silly.   Instead, I’m blaming you for not finishing  the story mode. You could have stopped them. #26: Mario & Sonic at the  London 2012 Olympic Games (2012)  3DS The 3DS was a bit more powerful   than the DS, and the jump in processing power  is especially clear when comparing Mario & Sonic   at the London 2012 Olympic Games to its DS  predecessors. Those games looked good enough,   but this one looks genuinely impressive. It’s also  not lacking for content, with a frankly ludicrous   57 events to play. This wasn’t just another  Olympics game on a different handheld;Sega   went out of its way to give us a lot of content  for our money. Is it likely to win over anyone who   didn’t care about the previous Olympic games?  Definitely not, but it was enough to keep people   interested in the subseries just a little longer. They also did their best to make the 3DS   feel necessary to the experience. The touchscreen  controls are still present and accounted for, but   there are now plenty of new effects to show off  the added depth, and even some gyroscope controls.   Your mileage on those may vary, but they worked  well enough for us. They’re a gimmick, absolutely,   but they’re implemented well enough that we won’t  kick up a fuss. Actually, wait, we just remembered   that there are microphone inputs as well. We’ll  kick up a fuss over those any day of the week.  We’re giving this the edge over Mario &  Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games on the DS,   but not by much. So if you disagree…well, it’s  not like we’ll remember which of these games   is which come tomorrow, so just pretend  we preferred your favorite game instead. #25: Sonic Generations (2011) 3DS  The main version of Sonic Generations had  one main gimmick: Fans could play stages   from Sonic’s history in both 2D classic and  3D modern styles. The 3DS version still has   you playing as Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic,  but the differences between the two are minor,   and all of the stages are in 2D. This game  basically removes Sonic Generations’ USP   from Sonic Generations. A bold strategy. The frustrating thing is that the 3DS version   of Sonic Generations knows exactly  what it should have done instead:   adapt levels from Sonic’s handheld games. The  console version reflects Sonic’s console history,   and a trip through his handheld history here would  have been great. And we know that the developers   already had that idea for this version, because  they included the Water Palace from Sonic Rush.  We have no idea why they adapted only one handheld  stage and took the rest from the console games,   but that would have been a far better concept.  They could even have divided it into three eras:   the Game Gear era, the GBA era, and the DS era.  It would have given this version more of a reason   to exist.What we got is not a bad game, to be  clear, and it’s nice that nearly all of the   stages are different from the ones in the console  version. It’s just that this game feels like a   lesser imitation of that one, when it could have  so easily served as a great complement to it. #24: Sonic Advance 3 (2004) Game Boy Advance  Yes, our opinions are completely at odds with  the critics’ when it comes to the Sonic Advance   series. Overall, they felt that the games got  better with each release. We couldn’t disagree   more. All three games are certainly good, but  the first was by far the best, with each of   its sequels taking a few steps backwards from  there.Sonic Advance 3 is far from a total loss,   but we feel that it’s definitely the  weakest, owing to its two main innovations.  The larger levels with hidden Chaos  are often irritating to navigate,   and due to the similarities of stage elements,  it’s almost impossible to remember where you’ve   checked and where you haven’t. Then there’s the  partner mechanic, which sees you pairing up two   characters to use special abilities, but none  of them are as fun as just…playing the game.   The previous Sonic Advance games built their  levels in such a way that you could complete   them with any character alone. This feels  like a clunky and unnecessary complication   to a formula that had already worked just fine. The levels themselves aren’t as much fun, either,   and the soundtrack doesn’t rise to the heights  of the previous games, but Sonic Advance 3 isn’t   bad. It’s not even close to bad. It’s just  a disappointment and puzzlingly overstuffed.   If you’re one of those fans who feels as though  Sonic hasn’t been good since the Mega Drive,   the odds are that you’ve been  overlooking his handheld titles.   Pick them up. Sonic stayed alive,  well, and happy much longer there. #23: Sonic Colors (2010) Wii  Sonic Colors is one game that Sonic fans point to  when they claim that not all modern Sonic games   are bad. Then people who aren’t Sonic fans play  it and say, “Err…yeah…it’s fine, we suppose?”   Sonic games had earned such a toxic reputation  that when Sonic Colors was strictly “competent,”   it felt like a breath of fresh air. And, yes, Sonic Colors is a highlight   of the modern era of Sonic, but that means less  that it was great and more that it didn’t set the   house on fire with your pets inside. The game is  aggressively self-aware, which is grating rather   than clever. The visuals are – appropriately –  colorful, and the soundtrack is very good, but the   levels rarely achieve greatness. And the wisps are  never useful outside of pre-determined locations.   Yeah, you can use them whenever you like, but  unless that specific area is designed to interact   with a wisp, there’s no point; you’ll find  nothing. You never need to think or experiment.  Also, just playing the game is enough  to confuse it. Get behind an enemy,   and it won’t be smart enough to turn around.  Try to backtrack because you missed something,   and you’ll usually hit an invisible wall. Try  to jump over or around an obstacle in a way   that the game doesn’t expect, and you’ll often  be forced into a sequence that plays itself,   because the game doesn’t account for  deviation. When it works, though,   it works well and can be a lot of fun. It should  work far more frequently than it does, though. #22: Sonic Generations (2011) PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC  Sonic Generations – the game so many people tend  to cite as the last great Sonic game – isn’t   great. It’s sometimes very good, and it’s  usually at least fine but, like Sonic Colors,   it should be so much better than it is. The good: Well, the concept, certainly. Three   stages each are pulled from the Mega Drive era,  the Dreamcast era, and what Sega calls the “modern   era,” because that’s the politest way to describe  it. And it doesn’t shy away from Sonic’s stumbles;   Sonic ‘06 gets a stage, and Shadow the Hedgehog  gets a reference with that game’s antihero holding   “that damn fourth Chaos Emerald.” The rest is rather messy. The idea   of providing 2D and 3D versions of each stage is  undercut by the fact that the 3D stages are still,   in large part, 2D. When they do allow 3D  movement, it’s often extremely limited.   The 2D stages are presented as being in line  with “Classic” Sonic, but they don’t look,   sound, or feel much like Classic Sonic ever did.  There’s also little variety in the stages. Two   are factory levels and three are highway levels.  Sonic is a vast and varied franchise, so there’s   no excuse for that. And the less said about  the awful level from Sonic Colors the better.  We tried hard to like this one. We  know this one is held in high regard.   The odds are good that you enjoyed this game  significantly more than we did. We love you,   and we’re happy for you.We just think that  the rest of these games were much better. #21: Sonic Riders (2006) GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox  When people hear “Sonic” and “2006” in close  proximity, they…well, they usually start foaming   and then fall over. But if they do manage to piece  an actual thought together, it will be of Sonic   ‘06, naturally. Rarely do they remember that Sonic  got two other games that year, and one of them   wasquite good.Sonic Riders’ gimmick is that you’re  racing on hoverboards, and you need energy to stay   aloft. Without it, you’ll have to run along the  ground while your opponents McFly right past   you. You can keep your energy flowing either  by using pitstops – which slow you down – or   performing tricks. Of course, the game gets much  more dull once you master the rhythm of tricking   and boosting around each track, but competing  with friends can keep things tight and tense.  There’s also a surprisingly involved story mode.  Usually in racing games, the story mode is just an   excuse to play through all of the tracks and maybe  unlock the other characters. Here, though, it   unfolds across two playthroughs, similar to Sonic  Adventure 2. You play through the heroes’ story,   and then you see what was happening from the  villains’ side. It’s an interesting use of a   mode that could easily have been filler. Also, this is a pretty vague criticism so   we apologize in advance, but there’s something  verystrange to us about the new characters in   this game being birds. We can’t put our fingers  on it. Sonic palling around with foxes, bats,   armadillos, and even robots feels fine to us. But  birds? Why, we just can’t take that seriously. #20: Mario & Sonic at the  London 2012 Olympic Games   (2011) Wii  The third release in this series of twelve games  – wait, twelve? Good God… – Mario & Sonic at the   London 2012 Olympic Games for the Wii is, in  many ways, a reworked version of the first game,   with both of them focusing on the summer  Olympics. That’s a bit disappointing,   as that game was not very good. Fortunately,  Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games   for the Wiitook inspiration from Mario & Sonic  at the Olympic Winter Games for the Wii, rather   than Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games for the  Wii. We think. These are confusing names, okay?  This game may technically repeat events  from the first game, but it builds upon the   superior presentation, controls, and charm of the  second game, essentially rending the first game   obsolete. Which is good, because no human being  needs twelve of these things. The dream events,   introduced in the previous game, are also  great, and are arguably even better than they   were there. We say it’s arguable because if you  preferred the “athletics” side of things there,   you’ll be let down. If you preferred the  “crossover madness” side of things, though,   you’ll be in Heaven. Possibly literally, as we  can’t be sure thatthat’s not what’s happening   here. And yes, we know the stage is based  on Yoshi’s Story. I’m making a joke. You’re   watching a comedy channel. Relax a little, okay? There’s also a London Party mode, which we like,   because it’s the only time we’ve ever  been invited to anything by that name. #19: Team Sonic Racing (2019) PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC  Team Sonic Racing is inferior to its two  much-loved predecessors, perhaps, but its   merits are notable, particularly in the form of  its “team” mechanics. Winning races is, by and   large, about more than finishing first. It’s  about supporting your teammates so that all of   you place well enough to outrank the other teams. And that’s great! It’s also greatly exaggerated,   as most of the “support” you will provide is  incidental. Certainly nobody can or should go out   of their way to nudge teammates who are already  far behind, nobody is going to coast in any   slipstreams unless they’re already right behind  someone else, and passing items back and forth   is an easy mechanic to abuse in order to fill  your Ultimate meter. But even with the overblown   team mechanics, it’s a fun experience with some  interesting wrinkles to the kart racer formula.  There is one puzzling thing, however. Reportedly,  the developers narrowed the focus of the roster   here, removing the emissaries of other Sega games  on the grounds that Sonic alone had a large enough   cast. That’s correct, but there are only fifteen  characters here, notably fewer than the previous   games had. The idea surely should have been  to provide a full roster of Sonic characters,   right? Not a skimpy one? It’s especially strange  because a large number of famous Sonic characters   didn’t make the cut, but some deeply unloved  ones did. It’s a good racer with good ideas,   but it also feels a bit slight, and pales  in comparison to its two predecessors. #18: Sonic Lost World (2013) 3DS  Sonic Lost World just can’t catch a break. Its  main version on the WiiU was overshadowed by the   dual perceptions that Sonic was bad and the WiiU  was bad, meaning that few people gave it a chance.   In truth, Lost World was good. It’s not  likely to be anyone’s favorite Sonic game,   but it’s also far, far from the worst. The 3DS  game had even less of a chance of being taken   seriously, as it was seen as an inferior port of  something nobody cared about in the first place.  It’s not, however; it’s instead a completely  different game. Every level is unique,   built to feel at home on the 3DS in  a way that works genuinely well. It’s   still fundamentally Lost World, but it hearkens  back to classic Sonic more often in its design.   It sometimes seems like a throwback title that  also manages to feel modern. Well, “modern” as   it was 10 years ago. It also runs extremely well  on the tiny little handheld, which feels like   actual wizardry. It’s probably just good  programming, but we don’t understand programming,   so we will call it wizardry and be very afraid. It even, surprisingly, has motion-controlled   special stages that are actually fun. Yes,  “Sonic” and “motion controls” at last came   together to create something enjoyable, and the  game is worth trying out for that novelty alone.   Ultimately, fans willing to trySonic  Lost World have two completely different,   underappreciated games to enjoy. Which is good,  because we’re definitely not getting a sequel. #17: Mario & Sonic at the  Olympic Winter Games (2009)  Wii The second game   in the subseries, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic  Winter Games represents a massive step forwards,   and that’s clear in all aspects of the  experience. Superficially, the game looks   and sounds much better. Granted, the previous  game looked and sounded fine, and we aren’t   casting aspersions at its presentation, but there  was another level of love invested in this one,   and it shows. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll  find that the events are better designed as well.  You heard the word “Wii” correctly, though, so  you know that you’ll be waggling yourself raw,   but there’s more variation in the way that events  are played, and most of them work rather well.   They are even – dare we say it? – fun. As much  as the previous game was content to coast on its   novelty, Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games  does a really good job of making the minigames   enjoyable in themselves. We know that we’re not  asking for much there, but it’s worth celebrating.  Also worth celebrating?The dream events. And, yes,  we know that the previous game had dream events,   but it only had four and they weren’t particularly  inventive or involved. Here, dream events serve as   an excuse to combine athletics with a trip through  the history of both franchises. They offer a real   sense that this truly is a “Mario & Sonic” game,  as opposed to a game that happens to feature   Mario and Sonic. They’re a lot of fun and,  starting here, they’d be a consistent highlight. #16: Sonic Heroes (2003) GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox  Sonic Heroes is an excellent Rorschach test,  with your feelings about Sonic’s 3D years being   reflected back to you by whatever you see in  the game. It’s easy to focus on its glitches,   dreadfully uneven stage design, and unnecessary  bloat. It’s just as easy, however, to focus on its   incredible soundtrack, willingness to experiment,  and how much fun everything iswhen it works.  When the setpieces come together and the  character-specific sequences hit a rhythm,   it’s easy to get swept up in the giddy  excitement, and that does happen often   enough that it’s noteworthy. Then you end up  in a stage like Bingo Highwayor Bullet Station,   which feel interminably long and barely  finished. The latter, in particular,   drags on for ages with few checkpoints and  many unfair deaths occurring because the grind   rails didn’t behave the way they should have. There’s a carelessness behind the game that   ultimately feels very disappointing, because  there are a lot of great ideas here, and the   ones that are executed well are too frequently  followed by ones that are not.Plus, you need to   play through it with four different teams – three  of whom are functionally very similar – just to   get to the final story…and the final story  is pants!Sonic Heroes is a game with huge,   glaring, upsetting flaws…but it still does so  much right. Ultimately,we feel like the many high   points outweigh the significant lows. And yet,  if you don’t agree, we’d understand completely. #15: Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing (2010) DS, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC  It’s safe to say that Sonic has been in a lot  of rubbish racing games, but starting here,   Sumo Digital hit upon a formula that took  them in a much better direction. As in,   they provided actual fun that a human being  might experience. It was a crazy idea,   but it paid off, and Sonic racing games  have been at least “very good” ever since.  Despite his headlining status, of course, Sonic  is just one of many Sega characters to put in   an appearance. You can also play as characters  from Virtua Fighter, Fantasy Zone, Crazy Taxi,   and other great games. And also Shenmue. Different  versions of the game had exclusive characters,   but not enough of them to really make any version  better than the others. It was a good game in all   of its versions, with creative tracks and  fun nods to the company’s larger history.  Even the DS version was impressively faithful  to the console ones. There were some necessary   concessions made for the less-powerful hardware,  but not enough, in our eyes, to relegate it to   a separate entry, so we’re covering it here. In  fact, we might as well also tip our hats to the   later arcade version, released in 2011 – featuring  some tweaks and, in some locations, a prize ticket   dispenser. Unlike the Mario Kart arcade games,  though, this one was basically a port, so we’re   not giving it its own separate entry. It’s just  one more unique version of a really solid racer. #14: Sonic Advance 2 (2002) Game Boy Advance  There’s a lot to enjoy in Sonic Advance  2, even if it doesn’t quite measure up   to the first Sonic Advance. This one looks  better and has an improved sense of speed,   which was already quite solid in the first game.  It also adds Cream the Rabbit, bringing the total   playable characters to five, which is impressive. The game itself, however, isn’t quite as well   designed. It relies more on blind jumps and  impossible-to-foresee hazards, which work against   the speed that the game tried so hard to refine.  The levels have interesting theming – Music   Plant and Techno Base in particular – but they  don’t always live up to their own potential.   Things are unnecessarily complicated, as well;  Sonic Advance 2 includes a homing attack, which   is utterly unnecessary in 2D and is activated  the same way as the insta-shield, leading to   easy mistakes. What’s more, to enter the special  stages, you need to explore each level thoroughly   and find small collectibles, which is tedious  even when you know where they are. The boss fights   creatively take place while running, but the  creativity isn’t worth the headache, as it’s far   more difficult to manage your distance fromEggman. All of which is to say that, no, it’s not as good   as the first Sonic Advance, and its  sloppiness is difficult to ignore.   If you do manage to overlook it, though, you  end up with a fast and fun adventure that is   among the best-looking games on the system.We  just wish it got a little more time in the oven. #13: Sonic Unleashed (2008) PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360  We’ll say this up front: The game about Sonic  the Hedgehog becoming a werewolf is far better   than it should have been. Or, well, a “werehog,”  because Sega couldn’t work out which half of the   word “werewolf” meant “wolf.” (It’s the “wolf”  half, for the record.)It makes sense that Sega   would have wanted to shake up the formula after a  series of critically derided games, but was making   Sonic slower and clunkier with unrecognizable  beat-‘em-up gameplay really the best idea?   The werehog sections drag this game down, as  they’re rarely difficult and frequently overlong.  The thing about a werewolf, though,  is that it’s only a wolf at night.   In the daytime sections of Sonic Unleashed,  Sonic runs through some of the best stages in   any of his 3D games. They look great, the  music is incredible, and they are genuinely   a lot of fun. They’re also over in  the blink of an eye,which makes it   feel like Sega didn’t trust them to carry  a game on their own. That’s unfortunate,   because they’re the clear highlight, and this one  would rank much higher if it had more of them.  Sonic Unleashed is not quite the same game across  platforms, but we didn’t think the two versions   were different enough to warrant their own  entries. The Wiiand PS2 versions are inferior,   and the increased percentage of night-time levels  doesn’t help but, still, it’s a good game wherever   you played it. It’s just that it could have  been a much better game wherever you played it. #12: Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (2012) PlayStation 3, Vita, WiiU, Xbox 360  Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is  the best Sonic racing game. We realize   that’s like calling a chicken sandwich “the best  chicken sandwich” because it’s one of very few   chicken sandwiches that didn’t cause you a full  night of violent plops, but still. It’s not the   chicken sandwich’s fault that previous chicken  sandwiches set the bar so low. In related news,   I am very hungry for a chicken sandwich. The game basically takes everything that   worked from Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and  builds upon it with better tracks, new characters,   and a transformation mechanic that allows  the same vehicles to race on land, sea,   and air. And it did that before Mario Kart 8,  which is impressive. Where’s our Sonic & All-Stars   Racing Transformed Deluxe, Sega? This is also the only game in the   history of humanity that allows you to pit Danica  Patrick against MeeMee the Monkey to determine,   conclusively, the better driver. Frankly,  we’d have ranked Sonic Boom so much higher   if it had somehow allowed us to do that.  The PC and 3DS ports were released just   a bit later so we aren’t counting those, but  it is worth mentioning that PC gamers got to   enjoy exclusive characters from Team Fortress 2,  Company of Heroes 2, Rome 2, and Football Manager   2…012. It’s an excellent, well-refined racer  that deserves its strong reputation. I mean,   good luck finding anyone playing it online today,  but we have to admit, it was fun while it lasted. #11: Sonic Lost World (2013) WiiU  Look, our writer knows full well that he is not  going to change your mind about Sonic Lost World.   All he wants to do is tell you why he loves it.  He wants to gush about the incredible soundtrack.   He wants to draw your attention to the lovely  visuals, which might have the best art direction   outside of the 2D games. He wants  to tell you about the deceptive   depth of the movement mechanics. He knows  that you’ve already come to a decision about   this game. He’s comfortable with that. He knows  that you’re already typing a comment that says   PLAY BETTER THINGS. He knows all of that, and  still he tries. That’s the saddest thing of all.  Joking aside, Sonic Lost World is worth  another look. The Deadly Six aren’t   anywhere near the memorable villains they  should be, the level design isn’t perfect,   and it’s weirdly difficult to get a hang of  the controls. Those are all fair criticisms.  But once things click – when you’re bounding  around some of the most lovingly crafted   environments in the series – it can feel  rather magical, and it comes closer to   capturing the charming atmosphere of the  original games than it gets credit for.   If you’re looking for the best Sonic game,  well…keep looking. But if you’re just trying   to sample a fewentries across his career, our  writer encourages you to give this one a shot.   He suffered through the edutainment games  for you. Surely you can do this much for him. #10: Sonic Adventure 2 (2001) Dreamcast  Both Sonic Adventure games do certain things very  well and other things very poorly. Different fans   will weigh those pros and cons differently, as  they should, but we think that Sonic Adventure 2   is the one that comes up short.Instead of the  six overlapping stories of the first game,   we get two here. There are still six  playable characters, but far less is done   with the “conflicting viewpoints” concept. The varying gameplay styles of Sonic Adventure   were not created equal, but here we get one  main style and two bits of extended filler.   Sonic and Shadow have stages built for speed,  which is great. But Knuckles’ and Rouge’s   treasure hunting iseven more tedious now. And you  don’t so much control Tails and Eggman as you do   the little mechsthat they sit in. It’s fine,  but it just makes you want to get back to   Sonic or Shadow and a stage you might actually  enjoy. Also, when Sonic and Shadow turn super,   they do this, and we feel as though someone,  somewhere, should have prevented that.  There’s still a lot to love. The soundtrack isn’t  as strong as the first game’s, but it’s no slouch.   The writing is better, the animation is  better, and the voice acting is better…even   if the English lines step over each other due  to amateurish editing. As a swansong for the   underloved Dreamcast, it’s hard to ask for more,  though. A third game could have ironed out the   wrinkles and truly delivered on the Sonic  Adventure promise, but it was never to be. #9: Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) Mega Drive  The debate continues about whether Sonic 2  or Sonic 3 is the best game of the Mega Drive   trilogy, but you won’t find too many people  arguing that the first Sonic is the best one.   That’s because its flaws are glaring enough  that even the biggest fans can’t overlook   them…especially since they were all, to some  degree, addressed in the very next game.  Designwise, it’s all over the place. Even the  game’s much-vaunted sense of speed is only   really on display in Green Hill Zone, then just  barely resurfaces for bits of the Spring Yard   and Starlight Zones. The game jerks from open  and frantic to tight and demanding on a dime,   and it does so in a way that’s  more frustrating than interesting.  And yet, clearly, the game did so much right.  It has some of gaming’s most iconic visuals.   The soundtrack is phenomenal, and its Mega  Drive sequels would still only get better   in that regard. The physics are excellent,  even if they take a bit of getting used to.   And when everything slips into place  – the speed, the design, the visuals,   the music – it feels just a little bit like  magic.It was and remains an extraordinarily strong   first outing. No, Sega didn’t create  a perfect game right out of the gate,   nor could they have been expected to. But they  came closer than they had any right to come. #8: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994) Mega Drive  “Which is better? Sonic 2 or Sonic 3  and/or Knuckles? The debate continues,   and always will, but for the purposes of  this list we won’t have to worry about the   answer.” Well, that was nice while it lasted. It would be wonderful to think that benevolent   Sega released this and Sonic & Knuckles separately  because it was too big for a single cartridge,   but, according to Yuji Naka himself, it  was really because they’d made a deal with   McDonald’s that required Sega to have the game  on shelves sooner. They cobbled together what   they had completed and called it Sonic 3,  pushing everything else to a later release.  It shows, and Sonic 3 very much  feels unfinished. It’s full of   instant-death hazards and the difficultly  often feels artificial. There are issues with   slowdown and collision detection and it feels  uneven, with some acts moving at a brisk pace   and others feeling like they never end.  In short, it often feels like what it is:   a half-finished game full of ideas that nobody had  time to implement well enough. Later games made   it clear that Sega is in the habit of releasing  things before they’re finished, and that habit   started here, in the third game proper. It’s far from bad. Some of the music is   great. The special stages are better  than the ones in the previous games.   Environmental shields are a genuinely great  idea. Oh, and Knuckles, the red one. He’s   here. It’s quite good, but it’s no masterpiece.  But don’t worry; the second half of the game is. #7: Sonic the Hedgehog CD (1993) Mega CD  Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima were two of the most  important figures in the creation and design of   the first game. Then they focused on two different  projects:Naka lent his talents to Sonic 2,   while Oshima headed up Sonic CD. Here, Eggman has decided to bring   his particular brand of mechanized oppression  to another world, and he got enough of a head   start that the planet is doomed to fall into  ruin.That’s not just the backstory; that’s the   setup for Sonic CD’s gameplay. You begin each  zone in the present, and you can travel through   time to see what becomes of things or change  history. Each main level has a past, present,   good future, and bad future iteration. It’s  like A Christmas Carol, if Dickens were a furry.  Sonic CD has great ideas, but inconsistent  execution. For instance, there’s only ever   a reason to go back in time, as that’s how  youdestroy Eggman’s gizmos and save the world.Sort   of defeats the purpose of having four versions  of each level, doesn’t it?Then there’s the time   travel itself. It requires Sonic to run at top  speed for several unbroken seconds – because   Oshima, like the rest of us, watched Back to the  Future – but it’s too easy to be interrupted,   cancelling your time jump. So  why is Sonic CD ranked so high?   Because it’s still an incredibly fun platformer  with memorable levels and some of the best music   in the series.Not all of its ideas work, but the  ones that do elevate it to being a highlight. #6: Sonic Advance (2001) Game Boy Advance  “You either die a hero or you live long  enough to see yourself become the villain.”   That quote is from my favorite film, Sonic  and The Dark Knight, and it summarizes how it   must have felt for Sega to release their first  original Sonic game for Nintendo hardware. The   two companies were legendarily at each other’s  throats, and then, suddenly, one had no choice   but to partner with the other for survival. Fortunately for fans, Sonic Advance is genuinely   great. It has its issues, mainly in terms of  the final few stages requiring leaps of faith   and memorization of stage layouts – as well as a  final boss that is most comfortably defeated by   abusing invincibility frames – but our  nitpicks are minor and are balanced out   by what the game does well. Sonic Advance looks  great, the music is wonderful, and the maze-like   Egg Rocket Zonemanages to ramp up the tension  in a way that feels impressively climactic.  You also get to play as Amy Rose, who is more  than just a palette swap; she controls entirely   differently and relies on melee combat rather than  hopping on enemies, making her journey through the   game feel fresh and unique. If you’re curious,  this was ported to the N-Gage and retitled   Sonic N. It’s just a straight port, but we wanted  to point it out because a) it has a unique title   and might otherwise cause confusion and b)  it’s the stinkiest of stinkyrubbish and we’re   glad they renamed it so that it wouldn’t  tarnish the good name of Sonic Advance. #5: Sonic Adventure (1998) Dreamcast  “Had a difficult transition to 3D” is probably the  phrase that most often follows the word “Sonic”   in the whole of the English language. But what if  we told you…that that weren’t true? Well, we’d be   lying, obviously; we’ve seen the evidence.But  the first proper attempt to bring the series   into 3D, Sonic Adventure,basically nailed it. It’s not without its flaws, but it’s surprising   in retrospect, after so many later games have  struggled, how much it got correct out of the   gate. The characters control well. The levels are  memorable and provide opportunities for both speed   and exploration. The soundtrack is phenomenal.  And the story is…well, it’s not good, no, but   it’s told in an interesting way, with six distinct  campaigns that overlap at key points. Then you   get an epilogue to pull everything together  and resolve the central threat satisfyingly.  All of that is great, and its flaws aren’t even  all that damning. Admittedly, the campaigns were   far from created equal. Sonic’s campaign was the  understandable highlight, but Tails’ campaign,   disappointingly, was basically the same thing,  only shorter. Knuckles was relegated to a few   rounds of hot-and-cold. E-102 Gamma and Amy both  added impressive variety, but their stories were   brief. And Big the Cat’s campaign seemed to be  designed to help you develop real-life anger   management issues.Overall, though?Little of  that matters when the game is so much fun.   This was a solid debut for 3D Sonic, and it’s  not its fault that later games struggled. #4: Sonic Rush (2005) DS  The first of nine Sonic games on the DS, Sonic  Rush isn’t just a highlight of that batch;   it’s a highlight of Sonic’s 2D games overall, and  that’s a high bar. Coming off the excellent Sonic   Advance series, developer Dimps outdid themselves  in every way with this one. It improves on the   sense of speed, it cranks the bright visuals  up even higher, and it positively wipes the   floor with the soundtracks from those games. In fact, Sonic Rush is a genuine contender for   the best soundtrack in the series.The CEO of Funky  Fresh Beats himself, Hideki Naganuma, bestowed   upon the game an incredible selection of danceable  earworms. Naganuma is best known for his work on   Jet Set Radio and its sequel, and his work here is  a standout element of an already excellent game.  The stages are massive and varied, with multiple  paths that help things stay fresh for another   playthrough. That’s good, because to unlock  the true ending, you must play the stages in a   different sequence as Blaze the Cat. The story is  pants, of course, but if you play Sonic games for   the story…man, go read an actual story sometime.  Granted, some of the levels are easy to get lost   in. The final couple of zones just about manage  to overstay their welcome. And the bosses are   far more tedious than they are challenging, with  long stretches of downtime between opportunities   to attack. But we’re picking nits, because on  the whole, this is one of Sonic’s best post-Mega   Drive games.It’s absolutely worth picking up  if you overlooked it. Go on, spoil yourself. #3: Sonic & Knuckles (1994) Mega Drive  The debate between Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 is, in  our opinion, not a debate at all. A brilliantly   designed, fun adventure with some flaws, or an  inconsistently designed, flawed adventure with   some brilliance? The real debate, we think, should  be between Sonic 2 and Sonic & Knuckles. Compared   to Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles looks better,  plays better, has better music, has better   design, has a better balance between set-pieces  and gameplay, has a much lower reliance on   beginner’s traps, and is just all-aroundmore fun. Sonic & Knuckles even features lock-on technology,   allowing you to connect it to Sonic 3 and play  both games straight through. That’s a good idea,   and doing this will actually update  Sonic 3’slevels and fix design issues,   obscuring as best it can the fact  that that game was never finished.  Even if we considered Sonic 3 and  Sonic & Knuckles as one entity,   it’s clear that the Sonic & Knuckles parts of  the game are significantly better, and aside   from Angel Island Zone and Hydrocity Zone, this  half of the game has all of the best content to   itself. (Sonic 3 can take Sandopolis Zone, though.  That one stinks.) If they really are two halves   of one game, then one half is far more worthy of  your time than the other. It works to the credit   of Sonic & Knuckles that they were released  separately because, Happy Meal toys be damned,   this is the worthier successor to Sonic the  Hedgehog 2. And speaking of Sonic the Hedgehog 2… #2: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) Mega Drive  Sonic the Hedgehog positioned Sega as a  serious competitor – for the first time ever,   despite having released two previous consoles –in  the home gaming market. Its first proper sequel,   then, had a lot to live up. How lucky for all  of us that Sonic 2 was flipping brilliant.The   game looks better, the levels are more varied,  the speed is increased, and the soundtrack is   legendary. Whether it’s better than the first  game’s soundtrack is a matter of opinion…and this   is our script full of our opinions so, yes, it is! The first game had six proper zones, not counting   special stages and final acts. This game has 10,  and every one of them is better designed and more   fun than what we had before. Things aren’t  always perfect here, but when they’re not,   they’re still quite close. Even Sky Chase Zone,  which is an autoscroller, feels welcome, simply   because it serves as a chance to catch your breath  between the two most hectic zones in the game.  If we have any complaints, it’s that…um…Metropolis  Zone drags a bit? Hill Top Zone’s music deserved a   better level? Casino Night Zone set unrealistic  beauty standards for casino zones to come?   Really, there’s little fault to find anywhere  here, and the introductions of Tails and   the spindash feel less like additions than  things that should have been there all along.  Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has a very strong claim  to being the best game of its generation. 90%   of it is 2D platforming perfection. And the  remaining 10% is still platforming greatness.  And, in our opinion, it’s only been beaten  once. What beat it? Well, we’ll tell you… #1: Sonic Mania (2017) Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC  Sonic Mania is the best Sonic game  ever made. It is a wonderful, loving,   near-flawless reimagining of the earliest Sonic  titlesthat still featuresunique level designs,   gimmicks, and improvements throughout. It’s both  fresh and familiar, and it feels as though it came   from a place of sincere adoration. Many fans  feel similarly about Generations, and that’s   completely fair. That’s a good game. But, in our  opinion, it doesn’t hold a candle to this one.  Development was led by Christian Whitehead,  who had earned a name for himself in the   Sonic fan-game community. He and the rest  of his team, including musician Tee Lopes,   brought their many years of love, experience,  and understanding of the franchise to the   project and created something truly  special, reimagining famous elements   of the previous games while building on them  in ways that felt natural and appropriate.  It’s true that much of Sonic Mania consists  of existing content, but it’s presented and   reconstructed in novel ways. In fact, one of  the great things about playing it is that you   can then return to the older games and see for  yourself just how much this game improves on them.  Everything in Sonic Mania feels  right, and, in our opinion,   is right. It could still probably do with some  small improvements, of course. Titanic Monarch   Zone drags a bit, Lava Reef Zone isn’t much  more fun here than it was the first time around,   and another fully original zone or two would have  been welcome, but any “negative” thing we could   say about Sonic Mania really just come down to  things we’d like to see ironed out in the sequel.  We…are getting a sequel, right  Sega? This was the best-ever game   from your biggest franchise. Surelywe are getting  a sequel. Sega? Stop pretending you can’t hear us…

Channel: TripleJump

Views: 382,359

Keywords: Every Sonic The Hedgehog Video Game Ranked From WORST To BEST, sonic the hedgehog, sonic, sonic mania, sonic ranked, sonic games ranked, sonic the hedgehog games ranked, sonic games ranked from worst to best, worst sonic games, best sonic games, triple jump ranked, sonic origins, sonic 2, sonic and knuckles, tails, knuckles, robotnik, sonic rush, sonic adventure, sonic advance, sonic the hedgehog cd, sonic lost world, sonic and all stars racing, triplejump, sonic unleashed

Id: 8zMjfKAnE7s

Length: 138min 8sec (8288 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 15 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Homeschooled316]

Sonic Generations not making the top 20 (and being below Unleashed) is obviously the highlight here, but there are quite a lot of other hot takes:

• Sonic chronicles in the bottom 10% with the edusoft games (it’s bad, but THAT bad?)
• Black knight > secret rings
• Sonic Adventure 1 > 2
• Sonic CD > Sonic 3
• Chao garden bad

In fact, I can’t think of a classic sonic hot take cliche that didn’t make the list. I think I heard Jon from GVG say sonic and the black knight is one of the best sonic games, so at least you didn’t take it that far.