Ranking Every Sonic Game

what classifies as a Sonic game is a bit convoluted so spare me a moment to share what I'm including I'm not counting mobile or Japanese arcade games so I'm sorry to the Sonic Minesweeper Fanboys out there compilations are allowed if they change the original games in any way Beyond just being a port so Sonic Mega Collection wouldn't count but Sonic Origins does because it adds widescreen and a bevy of new features as for the racing games I've decided to only include the ones that mostly are entirely focused on Sonic so Sonic R counts but Sonic and all-stars racing transform doesn't since there's many other IPS included this same rule applies to the sports titles so I'm not including Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games also I'm not counting Sega Pico or LeapFrog titles because they barely count as games to begin with everything beyond that however is included so let's get this massive project started and get her ranked 72 Sonic Free Riders oh boy we're starting off rough unless you're in a perfectly lit room with a reasonable amount of space it is impossible to play this I've turned on my studio lights and cleared my office just us so I can jump around like an idiot most people don't have this luxury I'm mad that I do because now I have to play this we'll be talking about the first two Sonic Rider games later on but this third and last one killed the entire spin-off Series where do I even begin I guess with the controls because your body is the controller you'll move around by leaning your body left and right and you jump by physically jumping it sounds cool but the only problem is that it only works when it wants to for the game to process a jump you need to launch all of your legs into your stomach like you're in the goddamn Olympics otherwise it will not count and sometimes it won't count anyway if you like the Strategic gameplay in the first Sonic Riders that is completely gone in this game the only strats is praying you can time your jumps correctly and that they work at all and the laps are way too long it's like four minutes per stage which left me wiped after each one and I'm in decent shape the game itself is just that demanding and can we talk about these items shake up a soda can to get a speed boost where the hell did that come from what and a golf club I don't understand where the idea of using non-sonic items came from and before every race you have to recalibrate your position it was like this and we fit too but at least the balance board was competent here it doesn't seem to matter and don't even get me started on the missions so many of them are designed to be as obnoxious as physically possible but the most annoying part of all this is the game could have been really good I mean it looks decent and the music is still great it's just yeah it's just the controls 71 Sonic Jam gamecom I've played Superman 64. ET on the Atari 2600 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde all the infamous bad games I think it's fair to say that I've tried the worst of the worst Sonic Jam on the game com might actually surpass all of them why did they even attempt to make games on this handheld the only reason and I mean only reason this is above Sonic Free Riders is because the controls technically work everything else however again where do I even begin first actually just just look at it the game chugs at a solid 10 FPS at best the music is straight up gargled mesh I apologize for your ears but take a listen and guess what when you collect Rings the music stops playing honestly good riddance because the Rings at least sound better and don't even get me started on the physics they make absolutely no sense jumping slows your speed down and when you build up speed to go up a hill he automatically gains speed even when ascending you can't spin dash but only one little Spin and then that's all you get no more this collection doesn't even have Sonic 1 in it how does it have Sonic 2 Sonic and Knuckles Sonic 3 but not the first game well actually these aren't even the same level so it doesn't matter to begin with the screen crunch makes it impossible to see where you're going if you get hit you aren't able to grab your rings again flying batteries music is playing in mushroom Hill for some reason there's only one Zone per game the special stages run way faster than anything else look I I just have to move on I don't want to think about this disaster ever again 70. Sonic spinball Master System why does there have to be a Master System version of spin-off games that aren't that good just look at it does this look like a fun time to you at the very least the controls function and it looks okay for Master System standards but the physics just don't care Sonic will randomly gain speed while going up because reasons and look at how much it chugs when you warp somewhere I swear the Master System is going to catch on fire trying to process what's happening you can help navigate Sonic with a d-pad which is nice but I have no will to play much of this game at all and the music is horrendous and I'm sorry but we're only at the beginning of Master System slash Game Gear Sonic titles 69. Sonic the Hedgehog Master System this game uh certainly is functional you can indeed push the buttons and Sonic will move now does that make it fun at all yeah yeah it's basically a Sonic 1D make the only thing I can really give it credit for is some of the music and Sprites for the time the Sprites look pretty snazzy and a few of the tunes are catchy but my God this game is boring it has fairly pinpoint controls but not much beyond that the first two zones are okay until you get to an auto scroller yep there's an auto scroller in a Sonic game because that makes all the sense and things go from mediocre to bad and then Dreadful if you didn't like Labyrinth Zone before you definitely won't like the Master System version it's somehow even slower and spikes can kill you so easily because your hit stunt timer is virtually none and scrap brain isn't any better it's a confusing Maze and it's just not very fun but on the contrast the bosses are way too easy but you know what at least this game has the world's best ending yep I know it's pretty awesome even Sonic uh sings in the credits I do like the Sprite event because that's goofy as hell but otherwise there's almost no redeeming qualities 68 Sonic Schoolhouse I cannot believe this game has entered my mind once again this was one of the first games I ever played I have a few memories of playing this on a computer when I was like three or four years old as I'm sure you can tell by its art style this was the game that inspired baldi's Basics with its super stiff 3D character models and creepy looking hallways what I always found weird is he can play as these Five Nights at Freddy animals but not a single Sonic character this came out in 1996 so there weren't that many characters yet but not even Tails or Knuckles are here as for the game itself it's an educational game you learn how to do extremely basic math in English and not much more than that you grab numbers and had to take them to a chalkboard and robotic can interfere to take away answers I love all the random Sonic spin bar on the wall This truly has become a surreal piece of History it's strangely nostalgic diving back into the school I'm unlocking core memories while also remembering things like the infamous Windows 95 maze screensaver I stared at that thing for hours when I was younger but I digress you can also go on field trips and watch Sonic Blaze 200 miles down the road while learning about animals and there's games where you'll match statues and grab Rings while avoiding Robotnik obviously there is no reason to ever go out of your way and try to play this but it's at least entertaining seeing how poorly it's aged over time 67 Sonic chaos ah yes the most chaotic game ever because you get to the special stages by collecting 100 Rings yeah you just warp there and then you get the emerald you don't even go back to the level you just move on to the next one which is super odd it is technically better than Sonic 1 on the Master System just because you can spin dash and there's the option to play as Tails the controls and lagging are much better however but at least it's more tolerable the music still sucks though but there are some good ideas here I really like the hover shoes because you can grab rings in the air I guess that's kind of cool and the bosses are interesting although stupidly easy like literally in Mecca Green Hill I just chill in this one spot and win I can't get hit at all again there's no reason to ever play this game 66. Sonic Blast you can tell that they made a valiant attempt at making this game look nice but my God all the extra pixels make everything look so stiff and lifeless the animations look like they come straight out of a bootleg it's genuinely that bad as for the game itself it's pretty nah you can play as Sonic or Knuckles and it controls just about as well as Sonic chaos which isn't great the special stages are at least more interesting you don't play a new level this time but run down an endless checkerboard path like the others but man blue marine Zone has to be the most painful Sonic level I've ever played in my life you thought Labyrinth Zone was bad imagine that but the game runs even slower plus it's a massive Maze and there's other pipes that blow water which force you to go a certain direction but you can barely see which pipes do that it is absolutely miserable I was on the edge of quitting but managed to slog through the rest of the game that zone is just Dreadful but the other ones at the very least are okay 65. Sonic the Hedgehog triple trouble I can all only call this a slightly better version of Sonic chaos and blast you're able to play as Sonic or tails the animation is a little better and the levels are slightly more enjoyable that's honestly the extent of what I can add all these Master System and Game Gear games start to blend together after a while it is interesting that you have to open a box for tails to fly or at least I wasn't able to fly with them otherwise and the special stages are once again just regular levels and you have to break a box with 50 rings to access them the same problems arise here like before the screen crunches horrendous and the water levels are confusing and miserable I did like the Sunset Park boss for at least being different but that was the only highlight 64. Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis GBA the most sorry excuse for report I've ever seen this port is Infamous for being extremely laggy having awful screen Crunch and terrible sound quality I know the GBA and Genesis sound chips aren't the same but everything is often janky and guess what I own this game as a kid and I turn this sound off just so the Game Wouldn't lag as much and even then it didn't help that that much what's even worse is that the game doesn't just lag it constantly changes frame rates which makes it really hard to make precise jumps and don't even get me started on the momentum it's completely messed up you'll sometimes stop sliding down Hills for no reason or fly forward from pushing a wall and Sonic's jump is busted I can hit robotic from way high up when I shouldn't be able to the music doesn't even hit the right notes let alone sound good there's also an anniversary mode where Sonic and spin dash which would have been neat at the time if the port was better optimized and let's keep in mind that this came out after the Sonic Advance Trilogy so I don't know how on Earth anyone approved this to be released 63. tail Sky Patrol you heard me right there exists dedicated Tails miles per hour video games and they're both on the game gear and fairly mediocre for Sky Patrol you fly around as Tails and constantly move forward you've got a ring that you can swing around to hit enemies and grab poles but you only have so much flight time so on the way you'll need to hit candies to increase your endurance this is actually a fairly neat idea for a side scroller it kind of reminds me of Knuckles chaotics to a small degree however because of the say it with me screen crunch it's really easy to get hit and run into walls which are instant deaths it's also very short you can beat this game in like 30 minutes if you know what you're doing and keep in mind that tails is the only Sonic character in this game not even Dr Robotnik or the chaos emeralds are anywhere to be found I think a remake and widescreen would really help breathe breathe life into this ring mechanic it may be not dying from touching the ground would be a good update too 62. Sonic spinball Genesis it's safe to say that I have a huge bias against pinball games I've always been bad at them and hate how it feels like luck plays such a big factor in beating them Sonic spinball is four levels long which should tell you how brutally hard this game is the first map is fine in fact the music is one of the most underrated gems that Sonic has to offer the main goal is to get Chaos Emeralds to unlock more of the board and eventually the boss room however if you get a game over at any point you go back to the beginning this is of course a common thing with older games but for how ludicrously difficult Sonic spinball is that doesn't feel fair in the slightest and it stinks because I really love the game's style there's moments where you can still move around with Sonic and the pixel art is still stunning to look at but the difficulty really kills it for me I mean you can get knocked out of the final boss just because you went to the wrong spot a few times forcing you to climb all the way back up I just wish I liked pinball games more this might be higher on on your list if you're a fan of this genre 61. Sonic Shuffle everybody knows that this game sucks but does anybody really know why it sucks I mean it's a Mario party rip-off that also happens to be a confusing snooze Fest I'm sure we've all seen this one board Emerald Coast because that's as far as most people will ever get without falling asleep the pacing is slow the loading times are atrocious and you don't play mini games at the end of each turn it's just when you land on a mini game akin to Mario Party 9 or 10. the mini-games are fine I guess there's nothing very special or standoutish here the biggest problem with Sonic Shuffle is the single player mode because the computer players are entirely broken even if you put them on easy they will know exactly what to do and screw you over making it nearly impossible to win the goal is similar to Mario party instead of coins there's Rings instead of stars there's precious stones and instead of a dice block there's cards these cards can be selected from your hand or the other players and the computers know exactly what your best cards are so yeah that's just a little bit unfair if there's anything good to say is that I'm a pretty big fan of the cell shaded style it doesn't look great in this game in particular but I can imagine a modern 3D Sonic game that would really shine with the style also Dr eggman's voice actor killed it he's very fun to listen to me but otherwise Sonic Shuffle deserves to be forgotten about just pretend you didn't watch this 60. Sonic drift I remember hating this game when I played it several years ago so I really gave it a chance this time and despite only having four characters and awful music it's actually okay the controls take a minute to get used to but once you get the hang of it it's fun to zoom around the turns and pass other Racers what I do really like about this game is the amount of tracks it has there's 18 total and they're all based on a Zone from the first Sonic game this is an incredibly cool idea I really wish Nintendo would do this for all the kingdoms of Mario Odyssey and add that to Mario Kart or something but this is on The Game Gear so everything kinda looks the same anyway there's not much for items either after playing all 18 tracks there's nothing else to do you've got free run to try the track Solo in a versus mode that can't be used because I mean who owns a Game Gear 59. Sonic drift 2 well it's Sonic drift again even the menu UI is a carbon copy but now we have some new characters like Knuckles Metal Sonic and uh thing the sniper that is a wild choice I like having this Oddball inclusion the tracks also have a lot more variety there's somewhere you have to drive through tunnels the Death Egg and even the Milky Way it's no rainbow road but it is still fun my main issue with this game is the track length for some reason every track is way longer and that makes the game a little bit boring since the gameplay is so simplistic it controls exactly the same as the previous game outside of a couple new items but I think it's safe to say that there's way better Sonic Racers out there 58. Sonic Labyrinth this game kind of lives in infamy for being one of the worst Sonic games of all time and yeah it's really not that fun Sonic moves around on an isometric plane at an extremely slow pace and all you really do is find some keys and get to the goal you can spin dash which picks up the pace pretty gradually but that's not really the issue there's just not much to do besides get keys and occasionally fight bosses the game is functional at the very least and the levels being bite-sized helps keep things moving but sometimes the perspective feels off like say when you're rolling down a hill and getting Rings you have to be in a very specific spot or you just won't grab them and the music isn't very good either it's on the Game Gear so you can't expect much anyway it's definitely ambitious for a Game Gear game but you might as well play Sonic 3D Blast if you're really itching for isometric Sonic 57 Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Master System of all the Master System and Game Gear Sonic titles I've slogged through this one was the most tolerable that's simply because the stage layouts weren't complete dog the only Zone I didn't like was Aqua Lake and even that one wasn't too bad the speed feels a bit more Amplified and you've got a couple new elements too like the hang glider and rail card the rail card is somewhat Fun Since you actually get some speed down Hills but the hang glider sucks it's so easy to lose all your speed one thing I despise about the Master System games is how bland the music is a scrambled egg Zone hits pretty hard this beat with a good remix could make for a fantastic tune the bosses are also slightly better than I expected Mecha Sonic was fun to take on and the others were all right I still have no reason to ever play this game again but at the very least it didn't feel like a complete waste of my time 56. Sonic pinball party the pinball era every big mascot in the 90s and 2000s needed a pinball spin-off game you already know I don't care for pinball but I have to at least give props the Sonic pinball party for being very colorful and fun there's only three tables which isn't a lot but they do all feel very different and have varied rule sets what's strange is there's only one Sonic theme board while the others are Knights and slamma De Amigo I'm not complaining about that it's nice to see some sort of representation of those series it's just very odd to call the game Sonic pinball when only 33 of the boards are Sonic themed there's also a story mode where you have to beat your friends in Eggman at the end and again your mileage will vary if you like pinball or not the presentation is very solid too but I just can't get past the fan fact that when I hit the ball it doesn't go where I wanted to half the time there's a few extra modes too you can play these Casino wapless mini games which are fine but again you have to use the table to play which just slows the slots and then go down to a crawl and like the other Sonic Advance games we have a tiny Chow Garden this game is all right you'll probably like it more if you already like pinball 55. Sonic Boom rise of lyric wow another YouTuber Guy saying Sonic Boom is big poo poo the thing about this game is that it's not unplayable or anything there's a lot of glitches obviously but the main issue is that it's just boring and I mean really really boring Sega was trying to Rebrand Sonic for the 74th time this attempt was really catered towards kids which is fine and all and I've heard great things about the TV show but man is this game a slog the missions are just so tedious it feels like I'm playing some random license PS2 platformer but with Sonic characters in it punch the bad guys push the green buttons that's the whole game none of the locations are pleasing to look at either like I said it's similar to a budget PS2 game and honestly I don't completely hate the redesigns of the characters either they look a bit disproportionate but it is a cartoon that makes them more interesting if you ask me the cutscenes though are uh oh there's something else they are so awful and cheesy that you kind of have to love them but the issue really comes down to the gameplay like I said it is so freaking slow you can do a little spin dash over and over but that's the most speed you're gonna get without glitches and on top of that it's really easy to get lost I had no idea where to go half the time you can't even Glide with Knuckles or fly with Tails what's up with that this game is what I would call a playable disaster 54. Sonic 06 going from Sonic Boom right to o6 at least this one is a so bad it's fun kind of ordeal Sonic 06 really could have been a home run for Sega in fact there's a project called project06 which is taking the liberty of fixing all the bugs and controls you gotta commence someone for taking the time to do that but that's not what we're talking about today first things first those loading times man they are rough especially if you're playing this on the PS3 not only do they average 15 to 30 seconds but the game loads constantly you legitimately spend a couple hours watching the game load it's insane how poorly optimized sonico 6 is I am a fan of the cutscenes as they're nicely animated and it's cool that you can place a ton of different Sonic characters you'll primarily use Sonic Shadow and Silver but you'll get the chance to use other ones as well it's just too bad the controls are awful for every character it feels like you're trying to control a car with only one car wheel in the middle it's a tricky Balancing Act the speed sections are so goofy too Sonic Clips through so many different landmarks and doesn't slow down unless he takes a stock it's either hilarious to watch or fun if you get used to the awkward controls and then there's Elise which yeah we all know she kisses Sonic and it is a little weird but outside of that one cut scene I think she's a decent enough character at least she actually matters to the plot and manages to mean something plus the music is amazing although that can be said for almost every Sonic game in existence but I'm kind of picking here there's no reason to ever play through Sonic 06 unless it's for Laughs With Friends the controls are simply awful and the loading screens can be unbearable Sonic's campaign is okay but shadows and Silvers are miserable Shadow's got a bunch of boring driving sections and then of course there's the infamous ball puzzle with silver and as the wise would say it's no use 53 Sonic Classic Collection I had no idea there even was a compilation of Sonic games on the DS until this video and I wasn't missing much it's absolutely hilarious that the menu uses the same Sonic Jam music just like Sonic Origins does but man there's really no reason to play these games on the DS because they don't run very well much more playable than Sonic on the GBA of course but that's not really hard to beat it feels like I'm playing these games anywhere from 20 to 30 percent slower so again everything is functional but why would you ever choose to do this you do get the option of playing as Knuckles in Sonic 2 and 3 but not Sonic 1 which is odd because you could do that with Sonic Jam so I'm not sure why that is in future here they also removed all the multiplayer options it's so weird seeing the Sonic 3D title screen now it just looks empty but hey you get some illustrations which we've seen a dozen times already and you don't have to do anything to unlock them they just exist the strangest part of this game though is the save and load buttons on the touch screen just take a good look at this I mean what does it look like to you you save states right well no when you uh when you save and reload it just saves the ACT you're on and that's it which is nice for Sonic 1 and 2 but I did feel a little debated I'm not gonna lie 52. Sonic and the Secret Rings If you ever wanted to move Sonic with motion controls then boy oh boy is this the game for you an even better Sonic runs automatically the perspective is admittedly pretty cool looking but this game just does not control well at all even just backing up is a pain because the camera doesn't turn around for you to see where you're going jumping slows you down so your incentivized to jump as little as possible ah if only there was a way to control Sonic's movement manually and the craziest part of all this is that you unlock moves to make your move set smoother that just makes no sense to me whatsoever why make your game less playable at any given point the levels are pretty fun locales but the structure could be better you play these levels like their missions which might seem okay but you just end up replaying the same level over and over again with slightly different fast honestly this game might have been decent if we could just use the joystick and buttons to move around and like usual the sound design is awful often Sonic will talk but the music is way too loud and speaking of music I hope you like the theme song because you're gonna hear it a lot it plays every time you're on the menu and even during the final boss and that's not all Secret Rings offers there's also a bunch of party games because you know it's the Wii but these games can use a GameCube controller while the main game can't which makes total sense of course most of these party games are blatantly ripping off Mario Party and just aren't fun there were only a couple that were all right I know Sonic rings has its fans but I am not one of them 51. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 episode 1. it's truly painful that Sega used the classic Sonic title in vain for this college flash project this was supposed to be the Revival of the classic Sonic games but instead it buried them further into the ground until Sonic Mania came out several years later the controls are uncomfortably stiff you can even roll down a hill when you're in a ball and for some reason reason you're able to lock onto enemies although that's not needed in a 2d space it makes sense in 3D since controls are more precise but in Sonic 4 it makes the game too easy and short in short it is you've got a total of four levels to play the point of that was because this was originally going to be an episodic series but it flopped so hard that it only ever made it to episode 2. for the stages themselves it's nothing interesting whatsoever Splash Hill Zone is Green Hill Casino Street zone is casino night lost Labyrinth zone is Labyrinth and mad gear is Metropolis there's no originality with this theming even the bosses come from the older games plus the special stage is a ripoff of Sonic ones why would you pick that one no one likes the Sonic 1 stage come on guys but to give it some points the music is decent and the art style is it's not bad if you really want to play this bad game you'll finish it in an hour and you'll be done 50. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 episode 2. well they did fix a couple things the physics for one are a little bit better but it still doesn't feel all that great to play some of the stages are more inspired too but there's still a lot of elements like the special stages that are ripped from The Originals and look I've got no issue with paying homage to something that's nostalgic that's totally fine the issue here is that Sega constantly does this and the game is called Sonic the Hedgehog 4 implying that most of the content should be original and stand on its own but moving on tails is in this game which is pretty cool so I'll at least give it that there's also the option to use Metal Sonic to play harder stages but I don't know who would care at this point if you really want to kill an hour I guess this game would be okay as a last resort if you have nothing else to play all that's available is this I guess you're fine 49. Sonic eraser this just might be the shortest puzzle game I've ever played in my life the goal is to make matches of two or more but the puzzle pieces can't move all you can move is the color gems themselves so for what it is it's pretty fun but literally once you clear one level the credits roll and you're done at least with the mode I was playing there are other ones but they're all very similar but the best aspect of this game is that you can punch Sonic in the face it can make a big combo I was not expecting that in a puzzle game of all places so it was cracking me up but yeah that's really all there is there's also a two player mode but that's the extent of Sonic eraser this is an interesting game because it was only released in Japan and the only reason I'm counting it in this video is because this style of puzzle games are a universal language and can be played by anyone this game was also only available to those that use the Sega Mega Modem with the Sega Mega net subscription service so most people don't even know this exists 48. Dr robotnik's mending machine Master System your mileage is gonna vary with this one as it barely counts as a Sonic game it's Poyo Poyo but kind of talk to robotic theme strangely I'm not sure if I prefer this version over the Genesis one the Master System version obviously looks a lot worse and the music is kind of trash but it almost feels more fluid to play the bounciness of the puyos is more Concrete in a way it's really hard to describe now I've never been good at puyo puyo so this is not one of my my favorite puzzlers Tetris is more up my alley but I imagine you'd like this game more if you argue like puyo and interestingly the Master System variant has a puzzle mode while the Genesis one doesn't 47 Dr robotnik's main B Machine Genesis the one that we're all a bit more familiar with it's the same as the Master System one but it looks a lot nicer and has catchier music I did always find it weird how we don't play as Sonic characters but instead as beans as I'm sure you could guess it was originally using entirely different characters but the international release slapped on Dr Robotnik 46. Tails Adventure after playing like 20 Lame Game Gear and Master System games I was pleasantly surprised with this one Tails Adventure isn't a typical Sonic game it's a metroidvania where the goal is to take out the cuckoo Empire and find Chaos Emeralds the emeralds are pretty awesome as they increase your flight stamina it's too bad Sonic can enhance his moves one Emerald at a time in his games for a Game Gear title Tails Adventure is shockingly solid at least if you have a map pulled up this is the era before you could pause and see a map screen so without it it could be easy to get lost even the music is pretty catchy it's nothing mind-boggling but it gets the job done well the best part though is just how versatile tails is most of his weapons consist of bombs there is napalm remote triple and even a remote bomb that can squeeze through tight openings while it wouldn't normally go out of my way to play this it was a solid time overall 45 Shadow the Hedgehog I guess you could unironically call this the black sheep of the franchise I've played maybe an hour of shadow of the Hedgehog years ago but I never bothered to finish it and let's just say it was for good reason but let's start with the Positive shall we the music is fantastic it rocks hard and the songs give you when Adrenaline Rush as you play and some of the cutscenes look pretty nice as well there's a fairly diverse amount of locations to visit too my favorite being mad Matrix the vibrant colors really pop out but as for everything else uh you'd think Shadow the Hedgehog would control the same as Sonic Heroes which was fairly competent for the most part but no they actually adjusted things and made it worse how and why would they do that the Turning now is way too sharp it feels like you're running around on thin ice the entire time that's not to mention that you build up speed way too fast and the freaking light Dash only works when it feels like it half the time you don't go through the Royal rings and then there's so many new mechanics the main one being guns this game is obsessed with guns the menu buttons use gunshots it's so stupid that I love how overboard they went with this theme unfortunately the guns are a mixed bag you can still use homing attacks to kill robots or humans but the guns do the job way faster so you're incentivized to use them and there's actually a huge variety of them to pick from the problem is that you'll often run out of ammo quickly and if this happens with enemies nearby it takes twice as long to get through sections that require you to remove all enemies there is also Vehicles you can drive but they don't really add much besides slowing the game down more but at least they control okay and the levels are just a mess some of them have decent level design that flow well while the later ones are just awful it's not even that these levels are difficult they're just so long and so confusing these levels being confusing is a massive hindrance to the entire game because it's meant to be played multiple times that's right this is one of those games with multiple endings and you have to be the bad or good guy to Branch to specific paths that means that you're gonna play the first level at least 10 times assuming you do everything perfectly and for the so-called endings half of them repeat the bosses over and over and It All Leads to one last story so it's entirely pointless anyway egg dealer has to be the worst final boss I've played in a Sonic game by the way you literally just hit the slots until you get lucky with the right matches why would Eggman program like this I I just anyway moving on a lot of people think that shadow is really cringy in this game because of how edgy he is and he says damn every time he dies and at first I thought it was hilarious and stupid but after playing for several hours it was just stupid because of the sloppy controls a convoluted story and being forced to repeat levels multiple times this makes this one of the weakest 3D Sonic games of all time if it played exactly like Sonic Heroes with a normal level structure this game could have been great hell they could have even kept in the guns they were a nice change of pace but yeah this is yet another game I won't ever be touching again 44. Sonic in the Black Knight I read so many articles about this game in Nintendo power and I was never convinced it would be fun after getting burned so badly on Secret Rings as a kid but this manages to be an improvement in a multitude of ways first off Sonic with a sword is a really awesome idea and it works shockingly well they gotta go back to this idea in the future to some extent the setting just feels right you no longer move Sonic with motion controls thank God but with a normal joystick everything is mapped to buns actually except swinging your sword which is fine it's a lot of waggling your arm around but I'm not dying over that fact the story is pretty interesting for once the sword Sonic uses as an entity and keeps calling Sonic a knave until you get to King Arthur that's who the bad guy is Eggman doesn't really have any involvement you'll also have to fight Knight knuckles shadow and rouge and I always feel weird saying a sonic character looks badass but damn they really do with the knight helmets surprisingly Sonic has actual character development and you can kind of feel it he starts off really cocky but slowly grows to become more noble as he gets better with the sword over time like Secret Rings the stages are all super short and take about a minute or two to be because the controls are vastly improved and it's way smoother to plow through levels turning still feels stiff though and backing up sucks again because you can't move the camera but I'll give the game credit for being like 90 competent at least for the first half of the game there is a lot to play if you really want to after beating King Arthur there's a ton of post-game content to tackle but before getting to that can we talk about how awful he is to fight you have to time your first swing against them so precisely that this may in fact be the most obnoxious timing I've dealt with for a video game period I swear it's complete luck when you're supposed to swing and after defeating him it turns out he isn't even real and Melinda was debating us the whole time so this annoying fight was for nothing thanks a lot Sega but at this point you can play his knuckles shadow and rouge which is super cool because they have slightly different attacks but the stages after this are a pain in the neck to get through it's just more and more waggling with tougher and tougher enemies but dark queen is a really badass boss the ending to it is perfection Sonic slashes this massive monster and she screams in agony for several seconds in Sonic follows up with a thumbs up I love Sonic sometimes the music is fantastic as well but that's not a surprise it does its job fitting with the game's environments the locations themselves are gorgeous too every place is filled with a brim with small details that bring these worlds to life so while I'm glad to have finally played this I really just want to see a better attempt with sword Sonic in a modern game 43 Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis similar to the original Super Mario Bros this game has not aged super well of course Green Hill Zone is fun to blast through and the music on each stage is infectious but let's be real do you really enjoy playing any of the other zones I bet these special stages are great Under the Influence but otherwise they're really annoying you have no sense of control and the stupid R circles change the rotation making it hard to plan your jumps out Marvel Hill looks great but it's just really boring you'll stand around on these blocks half the time and these Spike platforms take forever to go up and down spring yard is a little better but the Springs are a pain to bounce around and there's more sections where you just stand around waiting for platforms to move after the exhilaration of Green Hill this is straight up lame Labyrinth is an awful water stage with Spears and enemies who either can't avoid or don't see coming until it's too late Starlight is a lot better but it's ruined by the fan since they don't work correctly and scrap brain is kind of a combination of everything annoying waiting around too many obstacles and water but as for the bosses they're very okay the final one is so disappointing because it feels like it ends too soon and the other ones aren't very memorable outside of Starlight which has you launching spikes of yourself into the air if for whatever reason you haven't played this game yet Try Green Hill Zone and then dip it's really not worth playing Sonic 1 beyond that unless you're playing a version with unlimited lives 42. Sonic forces five years in development and this is somehow one of the most disappointing Sonic games we've ever gotten like sonico 6 this should have been a really good time but instead we got a three hour Adventure that feels very rushed and unpolished there's definitely some fun to be had when you're using modern Sonic and even your OC but as soon as you start getting into the groove of the level it ends every level is like one to two minutes long which is way too short this was fine for Sonic Colors because there's lots of levels in one world but there's only 30ish levels in the entirety of Sonic forces and don't even get me started on classic Sonic for some reason he somehow controls worse than he did in Sonic Generations how did they even mess that up it was perfectly competent before Classic Sonic feels very stiff and frankly doesn't need to be in the game at all he's literally just there so Sega can cash in on a few extra Nostalgia sails the big Hook is none other than the OC character and I actually really like this was the customization kind of lame yeah I was but I enjoyed the stages for what they were you can also play a shadow for a total of three whopping stages so enjoy that I guess but hey at least we can play everyone's favorite area Green Hill Zone there's only eight different stages in that location oh and don't forget chemical plant another underrated one I really am a big fan of the concept and the main villain infinite it's just the execution is all over the place 41 Knuckles chaotix this has to be the strangest 2D platformer I've ever ever played here we have a game that's on the 32x a random add-on for the Genesis that most people didn't have and it doesn't really have Sonic in it outside of the credits you play as two characters that are linked together by rings and you kind of just lasso yourself around while it's a really creative idea it's nearly impossible to maintain speed doing this and it just feels awkward to control so thank God charmie the bee is playable because he essentially breaks the entire game by being able to fly around speaking of the stages there's five zones per location and you play them at complete random I'm not sure why it's set up like this probably because there's so many levels in one place but it's still really bizarre I just can't get past the controls this would have been a pretty solid game if they didn't force us to use this team mechanic the music is all right there's a couple of catchy Tunes but a lot of it is forgettable as well the art style really reminds me of Sonic's CD even the level design is similar since there's multiple different Pathways and plenty of the sound effects carry over but the weirdness doesn't stop there you may have noticed that there's no live counter yeah that's because you have infinite lives which is shockingly way ahead of its time for a 90s game and man the stages are funky I actually kind of like these you run around in 3D collecting blue Spears and Rings the Rings add to your timer which is a great incentive to get them going into the special stage it's a little on the janky side but for the most part it's just fun to run through these you don't even get chaos emeralds in this game you get Chaos Rings and oh man the ending the Rings circle around the screen and you get a slow zoom in of the words cool wow what an awesome ending you really can't top that can you I'm glad to have finally tried this game now but like the previous 40 Sonic titles I never have a reason to play this one again 40. Sonic Rivals look at that box art this game looks awesome Sonic and Pals zooming across a field oh what kind of game could this be well it's on the PSP and you'll Race someone over and over again but why are you racing simple uh yeah because the game said so like seriously everybody is racing each other to beat up Dr Eggman first because why work together when you can race instead visually the game looks really nice and the locations are varied there's a lot of sweet camera angles and the gameplay is fine the physics can be really wonky at times though but for the most part the game is playable but yeah you really just race someone and can also utilize power-ups to slow them down or speed yourself up which by the way the speed up power-up is a star instead of Sonic shoes which just feels wrong to me even with the boss fight you're supposed to hit them more times in your rival that is just weird as hell it makes the bosses seem like a complete joke once you've played a few levels you've basically played the whole game it doesn't really change much you'll also collect cards as you go and there's some great ones like Tails Doll and o6 Sonic Silver is cool to have as a playable character I guess but I don't know I feel like this game should have been a more fleshed out minigame on a big Sonic title instead of a standalone release but hey it got a sequel so who am I to say it's decent for what it is but nothing special 39. Sonic Rivals 2 if you've played the first Sonic Rivals you've played at sequel as well although to give it credit there's a lot more going for it for one there's twice as many playable characters the durable look of the game is beeped up too like more interesting camera swoops and interactions and I like the music more as well there's a couple bangers hidden inside but even still it's basically the same thing race to rival for no reason and take out the bosses there's also a new battle mode but that's not enough to really make you say oh well now I have to play this the best part of the battle mode is getting a KO which makes characters t-pose yep that is just what I needed 38 Sonic Boom shatter Crystal one of the two 3DS Sonic Boom spin-off games it's weird that that many released but honestly these aren't half bad if you're looking for something light-hearted the gameplay is way different to rise of lyric on Wii U here we've got a 2.5 D side-scrolling Adventure game where you go around levels collecting various objects and finding your way to the end as you go through you unlock more characters which have different abilities which allow you to explore the levels deeper Tails lets you fly up these wind turbines Styx has a boomerang and so on it controls pretty well and looks decent although the music is fair really lackluster the big issue is that it's just really boring and unmemorable but to be fair the game's pace is way slower than a typical Sonic game so it does make sense along the way are these racing and auto scrolling tunnel sections which are a fun change of pace but if you don't like backtracking you are not going to like this game shider crystal is full of backtracking you need to find all the shards and blueprints in a stage to unlock Sonic badges which are required to unlock each level you can't really half-ass your way through you're encouraged to explore and find just about everything I really wish the levels of Music were more interesting because this can make Shadow Crystal a bit of a slog but this is the first Sonic game we've talked about that I'd recommend trying out if you can find it for cheap 37. sonic boom Fire and Ice I don't know if anyone remembers this but Sonic Boom Fire and Ice has a big box which comes with this DVD holding a few Sonic Boom TV episodes that's pretty neat maybe I'll watch these at some point no I I won't I promise but on to the game Sonic and friends randomly get fire and ice powers we don't know why this happens it just does and it's accepted almost immediately thankfully that makes the levels a bit more interesting to play This Time sansro games really took the feedback to Heart from shattered Crystal and fleshed out just about everything to make this sequel better hell they delayed this game and that rarely happens for Sonic titles the biggest and best difference is Collectibles are no longer required for level progression and thank God for that I still think Shadow crystal is decent but I definitely prefer to plow through levels and if the game is fun enough then I'll go for 100 and not be forced into doing so the movement is also smoother in ways I think a lot of people haven't noticed the homing attack and Sonic's dashing is much faster for one hitting objects that give you rings are automatically given to you instead of having to manually grab them the general speed is faster even sticks Boomerang is more responsive the side games are also more enjoyable too especially the racing this is what Sonic Rivals should have been a little side game in between the main game the levels are also shorter and more condensed and the boss fights are pretty solid so while that's all good and dandy the overall Vibe is about the same the level design amuse music aren't particularly memorable again and like the first game there's lots of segments where the game plays itself with a billion boosts and it gets tedious just watching it's sad that Fire and Ice turned into a slog because I love seeing all the improvements they made it does pick up in the end a little bit but it takes a while to get more stimulating gameplay also what is up with getting hit because when you get attacked in this game you fly back to a certain spot of the stage instead of just getting knocked back what kind of sense does that make I think Seiya could come back to this metroidvania style game again and flush it out even more although Tails torpedo missions are still dumb because you have to constantly tap the screen to reveal the map it's not hard guys it's just annoying tapping the screen every five seconds 36 team Sonic racing did you forget this game came out too because it's probably one of the most forgettable Sonic games you can pick a team of three Sonic characters and uh race around the tracks the team mechanic is a novel idea and a fun throwback to Sonic Heroes you'll pick a team and try to place as high as you can for an overall score there's also an ultimate meter you can build up to get some blazing speed stamped rarely and items can be used like any other Kart Racer it's a decent enough idea but definitely frustrating if your computer teammates are racing poorly there's not much you can do to help them you've got a good amount of stages to pick from but if you played the Sega All-Stars Racing Games you'll notice that a lot of these tracks reported over which is disappointing and honestly those games are a lot better especially transform considering the laps change in your car transforms into different Vehicles I'm not counting those games for this video because they have so many other Sega related characters but those are by far the better games even this character roster is bizarre no cream Espeon or charmie even though the other Sonic Hero characters are here there's also an adventure mode but there's not much to say about it it's super Bare Bones and the cutscenes are just images of the characters talking team Sonic racing could have been a lot better if there was a bit more effort put into it but at the very least it does control quite well and can still be fun to play in general 35. Sonic r ah my biggest guilty pleasure this game kinda sucks but God I love it so much there's a good amount of characters but a lot of them aren't worth using Amy is insanely slow in her car and basically all the unlockable characters besides supersonic are inferior to their counterparts and we get five tracks that is a pathetic amount that's not even close to enough but why would I be putting this game above team Sonic racing frankly I think it's way more interesting than it has any right to be first off the music is simply Bliss it doesn't fit at all with the tracks but it sure is catchy and the idea of physically running is just awesome despite how bad the controls are this is the one franchise where racing game on foot actually makes a lot of sense and it's really too bad that Sega has never attempted to make a sequel or reboot this idea and yes the stages are open world in a sense and are easy to get lost in but that's also really unique and is taken to its full potential to unlock the characters you have to go through doors that require rings to grab s coins or Chaos Emeralds oftentimes these doors are hidden well so you have to plan a route out to get rings grab the emerald and still secure first place since there's only five stages it's not as much of a headache to do as you'd think and the multiplayer modes are pretty sweet you've got balloon hunting where you have to be the first person to find five balloons again this only works because the stages are openly built and then there's tag which is just hilarious you literally have to tag everyone to win name another racing game that does that I bet it'd be hard to find one so yeah Sonic R is probably still worse than team Sonic racing but I don't care 34. Sonic the fighters a 3D fighting game it's one that I strangely feel nostalgic towards only because it was available in Sonic Gems Collection there's not much to this game you get a roster of characters a handful of stages a short arcade mode and the option to play with someone else that's about it and I freaking love its Simplicity now I've always been really bad at Fighters and this one is no exception but every character is fun to use since they all control so differently I always liked using Sonic His fast and Speedy play style works great for me but then you get some super obscure choices like being a dynamite bark the polar bear and Fang the sniper Fang is a quirk gun bear will tear you in half and ping really likes pecking at your brain it seems like the music has always been so underappreciated for Sonic the fighters because it does a fantastic job capturing the fighting Essence while retaining some of Sonic's charms I'm a huge fan of the art style as well I can't get enough of these early 3D Sonic models so the characters look great to me with that said there's bigger and better fighting games out there even back when this was released but every time I pop this game in it's always fun in short doses 33 Sonic Chronicles the Dark Brotherhood I feel like I'm playing a Sonic Flash game from the 2000s and I'm actually having some fun with it yeah this is probably my biggest hot take in this video but I actually kind of enjoyed Sonic Chronicles as you can see by this footage this is an RPG it was made by BioWare as wild as that sounds which means there's multiple dialogue boxes throughout the story so if you want to make Sonic talk like a sarcastic then by all means go for it it's very amusing almost the entire game is controlled with the touchscreen moving around on the Overworld map selecting items combat just about all of it while I definitely prefer to use the d-pad for walking around the Overworld I really don't think it's that bad it's easy to get around I guess it's kind of annoying with your hand being in the way sometimes but it works there's a lot to dive into for this game next I have to go over the combat at first I thought it was completely broken the combat is somewhat traditional in which you need to take turns to attack except you plan out three to four moves in advance and the rest just autoplays that is besides the pal moves to use pal moves which by the way you need to do because they're way more effective than normal attacks you'll need to drag your stylus across the screen or tap in certain spots to initiate the attack so imagine Elite beat agents but without synchronized music the only problem with that is that this mechanic is extremely finicky I'm not even joking if you don't keep your stylus inside the circle at the correct time you can attack that was until I played more and figured out the timing you need to push down on the circle slightly early or you'll miss every time once you figure that out that's when the game starts to get fun the gameplay Loop feels really engaging because you're constantly avoiding enemy attacks with a touchscreen while using riskier POV moves that is until about chapter 5 when evading gets really obnoxious for no reason whatsoever enemies will evade over and over again simply to pad out game time which makes you want to flee every fight when you're at a point where you want to skip the combat you know you up something in your game as for the other aspects of Sonic Chronicles it's got all your typical RPG stuff you can level up equip items things like that that there's also ciao which are like items but stay attached to a character so similar to making a Pokemon hold an item ferox is the best Chow considering you don't have to time your POV moves at all it just works a hundred percent of the time most of the Sonic characters are in this game too which I was really digging I mean look at all these characters we can play as I'm almost getting Subspace Emissary Vibes with this collaboration as for the sound design the DS it is uh oh it sure is producing sounds I mean I wasn't expecting much but wow it's really bad the compression is abysmal and I know that yeah this is on DS but Jesus everything sounds like a garbled mess the only sound effect I like is when enemies die it's straight up a Tom and Jerry cartoon sound have been giggling at this for the past hour despite it not fitting with this game at all and the Metropolis music blew my goddamn mind almost nobody will notice but it's actually a remix from Sonic 3D Blast on the Saturn as obscure as the music is in that game that's where it comes from Sonic Chronicles also has a habit of chugging pretty bad there's a lot of slow down and even stuttering between the combat and Overworld it feels like the game is gonna crash sometimes it just wasn't well optimized and also why the hell can't we switch characters mid game there's like four to five places to do this in the entire game if you need to switch characters to get somewhere that is a massive oversight I could probably make an entire video about this game because I'm so fascinated and mixed about it but yeah despite it being a little sloggy at times I somewhat enjoyed this one 32 Sonic the Hedgehog pocket Adventure or the prequel to Sonic Mania it takes a bunch of levels and music from the classic games and matches it all together although the bosses are completely different and shockingly this is a pretty solid game even if it's on the Neo Geo Pocket color the one console that nobody owned it's worth trying out the momentum actually feels really good and the remix chiptunes are super catchy too even the art style is well done it's in the era between retro and modern pixel art it's the best way I can describe it the colors are so eye-popping and Sonic Sprite is really well put together like most Sonic games the last couple zones are a bit of a headache just because of the screen Crunch and the pop-in is pretty bad for the special stages but for the most part I had a fun time playing through this 31. Sonic Riders zero Gravity for years I heard that this game was worse than the GameCube one and while I do agree I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be especially if you're playing the Wii version with a GameCube controller then you don't have to worry about the motion controls zero gravity is very similar to the GameCube counterpart but this time there's new stages more characters and dumb down controls you trick in this game by timing a button press and most of the momentum mechanics have been replaced with much simpler ones I mean I guess that makes the game play slightly worse Sonic Riders has a steep learning curve while zero gravity is almost too easy there's not really a perfect balance from either game but even with the easier controls I still had a good time with the story mode and trying out all the tracks the music is still fantastic and the cutscenes are just as gloriously corny as ever you make turns by slowing down time and boosting at the right moment and you can also activate gravity dive which lets you fly through the air and build extra speed these new mechanics are still fun in their own Merit plus the unlockable 80s and 90 stages are eye candy that's worth checking out 30. Sonic Riders I can't tell you how many times I watched the opening movie to Sonic Riders this solidified the coolness of this character for me at 11 years old I loved it so much that I burned this trailer and many others on this DVD I was obsessed with game trailers before YouTubers popular I never actually played the game though until now and it's actually not that bad now yes I have sampled it a few times in the past struggling with the controls and getting confused on how all the systems work but now that I've beaten the game I still don't get it entirely everyone rides around on boards and you can pick between speed flying or power characters these properties determine shortcuts you can take in the tracks which makes them fairly replayable you can customize your board buy new ones in the shop which are insanely expensive each character has its own stats and we haven't even started racing yet you start the race by running and trying to build momentum but also not run into the electricity I have never seen a racing game do this before it's still incredibly unique and fun to try timing well then when you get on the boards you'll build speed by drifting sharp enough hitting other characters turbulence and using your Boost this comes from your Boost meter that drains so similar to f-zero and you'll fill it by getting air back in your board with turbulence or items needless to say the mechanics are extremely complex and those that like complex Racers will get a kick out of this game it has a really refreshing flow that is very unlike most Racers but it's honestly a bit much for me I feel like I gotta be a sweaty gamer just to play well which I don't always like to do when playing video games I also really love the new characters it's a shame we've barely seen them in future games because they've been in perfectly with the Hedgehog's lore Sonic Riders is fun but definitely not for everyone 29. Sonic 3D Blast Genesis I have an unsettling amount of love for this stupid Sonic title probably because I played it when I was like four years old but even getting back to it today it holds up fairly well the isometric 3D perspective and chunky art style are really different and showcase the 90s time period perfectly you still say flip keys and get to the end but this time you do so by bopping enemies and collecting individual flickies once you find five you'll move on to the next segment if you get hit at any point the flickies scatter off and you'll need to grab them again it is surprisingly solid gameplay loop as it encourages you to be thoughtful of your movement and jumps now I do have to say that this isn't a fast game it kind of feels like Super Mario RPG but with a spin dash slapped in and the depth perception takes some time getting used to especially in the later levels when your jumps need to be more precise with that said the special stages are so much fun and that's a rare thing to say having fun with a Sonic Special stage and what's really cool is these stages differ depending on which console you're on another big advantage to this game is that if you get a game over you go all the way back to the beginning and that really sucks because it's a longer game in worse it turns into a bit of a slog by the end but at least every stage is unique and has solid music but there's much better versions of Sonic 3D Blast to play and speak of the devil 28. Sonic 3D Blast Saturn while it looks better it's not all that impressive for the Sega Saturn it looks like the same game but with better textures and animations nothing was really reworked and I don't give a sh because I adore this updated version there's so many new little details like the titles coming loose and Rusty ruin or the ice cracking in diamond dust but the two big differences are the music in special stages I like the Genesis special stage slightly more but this one isn't half bad it's the classic half Loop that Sega keeps remaking over and over but at least here it gets broken up and sometimes you can jump onto the other floating Platforms in the air Tails and Knuckles also fly you in and at the halfway point you get this nice close-up of Sonic giving you a thumbs up so it's definitely a lot more Charming but now I gotta talk about the music I love this I cannot express how happy this OST makes me it's 100 a Nostalgia thing because this is the game I played on my PC when I was really young but the 90s Vibe just fits so perfectly whether it's green Grove's energetic nature Panic pup is tearing struggles her diamond dust holiday cheer it's all fantastic and I'm the only person that's probably this passionate about this OST seriously go on YouTube and look it up yourself it's way better than what's on the Genesis 27 Sonic 3D Blast PC is pretty much the same as the Saturn version but the loading times are a lot faster so for that reason alone it's slightly better but strangely they change the special stages again and I'm not gonna lie they look a lot worse than the Saturn one and aren't nearly as stylish 26. Sonic 3D Blast director's cut while you could technically count this as a mod I'm counting it as an official release considering the person that did this was the original programmer for Sonic 3D Blast it's so freaking cool that he went back to a 20 year old game to add things I wish more programmers did things like this the amount of changes is insane as well there's so many improvements that make this the most definitive way to play a Sonic 3D Blast the changes include being able to unlock supersonic smoother controls a better camera flickies that are lost have a flashing icon flicky AI is more likely to follow you and they don't get knocked out by obstacles unless you have zero rings on top of that is a level editor time challenge mode save game passwords the Prototype crab is added in and an entirely new Hub after completing a level it's also more challenging to get all the emeralds because you can only get it once per Zone instead of banging them all out by the time you reach Rusty ruin what a privilege it is to be able to play something like this that came from the original guy by far the coolest thing I've seen from the gaming industry 25. Sonic Lost World 3DS well I liked this game at first it really does start strong displaying actual cutscenes in 3D gameplay the controls are super smooth and it's a lot of fun to run through levels speaking of running Sonic's got a run button this time and strangely it works well since this is a more platform heavy title you can also run up the wall and jump from side to side which honestly is super intuitive and I'm surprised more 3D Sonic games don't do this it actually does a good job blending together the speed and platforming sections but things very quickly dip and I don't understand why that needed to happen my first impression of the special stages was that they looked really fun until I found out that they were entirely gyro controls and it's the kind of Gyro that you can't recalibrate on the Fly which means you have to stand up and constantly turn in place to get through these Honestly though I don't mind these stages all that much but they would have been so much better with normal controls when I get into World 2 and Beyond the stages were taking longer and longer some of them were getting close to 20 minutes in length that is pretty absurd especially for a handheld game but what I mostly don't get is the incessant need to introduce a gimmick that's just okay and form an entire level around it some of the stages are really boring and downright Dreadful because of this like let's take this freaking snowball one you gotta build up snowballs and put them into a hole that might sound simple but while that's happening there's always some sort of enemy attacking you and Sonic will randomly stop pushing the snowball leaving it vulnerable because yes it can be destroyed and oftentimes you need to roll it into a massive ball so it fits into the hole there's this huge snowhead that follows you around and it's the most obnoxious Sonic enemy ever and this level just doesn't end why couldn't they have used this gimmick on a normal level for like 30 seconds instead the boss fights were at least pretty fun and it's interesting to see Eggman in Sonic kind of teaming up since they lose control of the Deadly Six this could have been better than Generations on the 3DS had it mostly stuck with normal levels but of course it didn't 24. Sonic battle so I've got a fun story about Sonic battle when I was 11 years old I sold all of my Pokemon cards including a holographic Charizard that's worth hundreds now for 31 bucks and with that money I bought Sonic battle was it worth it after all this time I mean uh it kind of was this is one of the most unique spin-off games Sonic has ever had a fighting game on the GBA that moves in 3D using 2D Sprites with a fairly compelling story that's a lot to ask of one game on this handheld and it works remarkably well there's a good amount of characters to pick from and they all have very distinct movesets since this is GBA you do have to pick and choose between a few special attacks which stinks but it had to be done because there's just not enough buttons here you can switch special moves after each death so it's a fair trade-off the Sprite work is wonderful and the game still looks great the music has some catchy Beats but man it really could use some remixing because the GBA sound chip crunches them a bit too hard nowadays Emerald is this new character that learns your moves and gets stronger over time in the story mode and he's a really cool robot you really feel like you're growing with him as he gets better and better just like leveling up a Pokemon and the story takes a more serious tone yet retains the character's attributes it might be one of the best Sonic stories we've ever gotten actually which is surprising considering this is a spin-off as a kid I never ended up finishing the story mode and I forgot why until now this game pads and I mean had while the story is good it takes forever to move on because you're constantly being forced into battles what you defeated Knuckles do it again except for longer oh just destroyed a bunch of robots do it again because uh I said so this plagues the entire story mode which is a real shame because this would have otherwise been a really solid campaign the difficulty Curve will also randomly Spike up at times but usually you can find a Cheesy spam Strat to get through a tough battle there's also mini games as well as a battle in challenge mode so there's quite a bit here honestly I would love to have Sonic battle too just make it the same kind of game with a strong story don't include filler and add some online play that would be incredible let's make it happen Sega 23. Sonic Unleashed I finally got around to playing this game this year and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed parts of it the daytime stages are Infamous for being some of the most enjoyable 3D Sonic levels out there the locations are based on the real world and it's such a joy there's a genuine sense of speed you can actually feel the adrenaline rush when you're blasting across the water or soaring through the air but what about those pesky night stages well they're okay I wouldn't call these awful or anything but there's so many overlying problems that could have easily been fixed first off every night stage lasts for way too long and there's too many of them I appreciate that each one has a couple unique elements in it but there's so much unnecessary filler in second killing enemies takes way too long you can level up Sonic to make him stronger which is all plus some but even then the stronger enemies take multiple hits it kills the pacing not because it is in a speed stage but because there's too many enemies and don't even get me started on Eggman Land good Lord this level will literally take you like 40 minutes that is way too long for any platformer stage in any game and there's so many irritating sections I could go on and on why Eggman land is awful and then there's the Sun and Moon medals you'll find them throughout levels and are required to unlock new levels the only problem is you're very likely to not have collected enough and get stuck somewhere and you'll find most of your leftover Metals in the slow ass nighttime stages meaning you'll likely have to replace several of them something kind of strange that nobody tends to bring up is the large amount of qtes this game is filled to the brim with them and I don't know why but I do really like the story and the cutscenes have age like fine wine I mean seriously this intro is still the coolest 3D Sonic animation Sega has made and it's been like 15 years if you're gonna play Sonic Unleashed get a series s or X because it upgrades the the frame rate from 30 to 60 FPS it makes a huge difference believe me 22. Sonic Unleashed Wii this is not your ordinary Port the Wii version has entirely different levels there's also no Hub world like in the 360 version which I'm personally happy with since the hubs felt really pointless it's much more straightforward when it comes to just playing the game itself and it's overall more enjoyable admittedly the daytime stages aren't as good as the 360 ones simply because of the frame rate you still feel nice sense of speed and exhilaration but the sense is much greater on the Xbox version the big difference is the nighttime stages my goodness they fix virtually all the problems I had before the stage length is much shorter and the pacing is a lot better because enemies and objects are destroyed with less hits It's got the same story although strangely one of the locations doesn't have any levels outside of a boss fight and there's still an overabundance of nighttime stages over daytime but since they're so much more enjoyable I don't mind nearly as much the biggest difference is you don't have to worry about finding sudden mood medals to make progress that alone makes the Weaver version Superior 21. Sonic Generations 3DS this is the tail end of ports being different games Sonic Generations on the 3DS has the exact same story as the console versions but with different levels and locations what's really cool is that a lot of the locations are exclusive to the 3DS like mushroom Hill and Water Palace however most of these new areas don't focus on the handheld Sonic games and they're all 2D levels kitikaans Mario 64 DS worked fine in 3D so why not Sonic Generations as for the locations I personally don't really care that we didn't get anything from the Sonic Advance series or the Game Gear games would it have been cool I guess yeah but they still went out of their way to introduce unique places compared to the console ones that's enough for me and they even brought back the Sonic Hero special stages and it actually controls well plus the bosses are super cool we get bile lizard from Sonic Adventure 2 an egg Emperor from Sonic Heroes just as a couple examples the levels themselves are fine but nothing special the last couple areas had a lot of Bottomless Pits which was annoying but overall it's a decent game what is bizarre is the First Act of each location that was originally in 2D uses the exact same level layout so if you played Water Palace in Sonic Rush You'll Play the exact same level layout here and I also appreciate that you can use a couple wisps and tropical resort that was a nice touch to include those there's also a versus mode and missions you can unlock so there's extra stuff to do if you're really into Generations on 3DS but despite all that the console version exists so so why not just play that one instead 20. Sonic Advance man I remember spending countless hours trying to unlock Amy as a kid only to learn that she's the game's expert mode like the classic Sonic titles each character has their own gimmick Sonic can do an extra slash in the air Tails can fly Knuckles Glides and Amy sucks ass she can swing her Hammer at the ground or in the air and that's about it I mean she's awesome for bosses but she can't curl up in a ball or spin dash making it really easy to get hit by enemies as for the stages themselves there's a few interesting locations secret base and egg rocket are the highlights in terms of the aesthetic and set pieces and there's also way less death pits than Advanced tour 3 but the game still has its share of enemy placement all three of these titles could really benefit from a remake that's widescreen run in 60fps remove lives and lets you retry special stages and let's talk about those because the only reason to get all the chaos emeralds is to unlock one short Zone at the end and if you really want to do that you're gonna go through some hell you'll find these blue bounce pads that take you to the special stage which I found to be pretty fun to look for but man the stages themselves are just awful you're on some sort of board traveling through space and you have to collect a bunch of rings and avoid spikes the problem is the depth perception is horrendous it'll look like you're in line with the Rings and you just aren't for some reason you basically have to memorize where the actual hitbox is and not pay as much attention to where the Rings are it is just the worst and in the later stages the ring count is excruciatingly limited so you can't miss very many and you still have to avoid the spikes if you aren't going for Chaos Emeralds this game is pretty fun up until the last couple zones but if you are it's incredibly irritating 19. Sonic Advance 2. after playing this game again I realize that it has a lot of the same qualities as the first Advance they both have amazing starts and rough endings the special stages in particular are much more fun and same with the first four zones the center speed is much greater this is where they first added the boost mode as well as mid-air tricks like Advanced 3 the tricks aren't just for styling but allow you to make jumps that you normally wouldn't as for the locations they're by far the most interesting of the three games music playing has you bouncing around a bunch of pianos and notes techno bass is loaded with techno gadgets that appear and disappear even the typical grass snow places feel differentiated from most other Sonic games but alas there are a couple of flaws big flaws might I add the first being actually unlocking the special stages in order to do this you must find seven special Rings hidden in each Act without losing a life and I don't say this lightly but good luck accomplishing this I'll be blunt and say that I only play the special stages by using a code I would have had to take several days to fully memorize every level and be able to play extremely well otherwise and guess what you gotta do this for every character to unlock Amy for the four kids that actually did this back in the day you are a true king and God bless your sanity but hey if you just want the secret level then you you only need the emerald to Sonic and the second glaring flaw is the last few levels there's Bottomless Pits all over the place but I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be as long as you're using mid-air tricks you'll probably be just fine 18. Sonic Advance 3. it seems like there's a general consensus that advanced 3 is the worst of the bunch but now that I've played all three of the games back to back I really don't understand that claim even as a kid I remember this game being a lot more annoying but I actually quite like playing through this one again the music is surprisingly amazing the zones have some interesting themes and the whole character swapping gimmick is unique and I'm surprised we haven't seen anything like this from any future Sonic games there's something so neat about pairing up two characters any way you want and each one has special moves that only that pair has but what about the Hub worlds well they're admittedly kind of pointless but each one is small and easy to navigate this game does have its share of death pits and there's more instant death blocks than I wish there were but frankly most of the stuff isn't that hard to avoid like the other advanced games it's the last couple zones that suck Advance 3 is no different but at least you do get the best combo to get through it which of course is Knuckles and Tails with this Duo you're able to use an enhanced Glide that lets you get extra air time plus you can get better jumps with Tails and there's so many little things that have been fixed with the general flow of the gameplay you'll float above water before entering you can land on Rails diagonally and there's slightly faster movement as for the boss's they're a joke I guess the devs thought they went a little too hard on Advanced too but now they're just way too easy like seriously I could completely cheese the final boss with no trouble but I do love hearing Eggman say you little one of the most annoying aspects of Advance 2 was collecting the special rings to unlock the special stages and in advance 3 you have to find Chao to get to the stages so it's similar in concept but better in execution you don't have to get every Chow in one go for starters and you can retry the special stage as much as you want given you have enough of the special keys but the best part the special stage is by far the most fair and fun of all three because the ring hitboxes are way more forgiving look I'm honestly surprised I'm putting Advanced 3 as my favorite in the trilogy but I think it's pretty damn solid despite what other creators on YouTube may say 17. Sonic CD I'm sorry but I don't understand why so many people claim this to be one of their favorite Sonic games I still think it's fun but the best of all time and I don't know about that it does have this strange mystical vibe to it being on the freaking Sega CD and spying the similarities to Sonic 2 and 3. and this was the game to introduce Amy and Metal Sonic both are iconic characters today plus those cutscenes are pure gold and still stunning to look at there's a lot to love about Sonic CD that is until you get into the actual game its big Hook is that you can go into the past and future these change how the stage looks and also makes them easier harder while it's a great idea it really doesn't make a drastic enough change for me to bother trying considering you have to build speed for a long period of time sometimes there's spots and levels that make this easy to do and then sometimes it's almost impossible the stage design is very complex in fact a little too complex some people love the intricacies and all the different rounds that you can take to reach the end in that aspect it's great if you play Sonic CD multiple times or you may think that most of the stages are a confusing mess to filled with obnoxious gimmicks wacky workbench is a perfect example of this if you don't meticulously time your jumps out you jump 2 000 feet in the air and have to go all the way back to the bottom to move on and the bosses are an absolute joke there are some good ideas with all of them it's just way too easy I mean it takes virtually no skill to beat them even with the final boss and those special stages can be a bit of a headache but it's a lot better than Sonic once at least another interesting tidbit is the music the US and Japanese versions are completely different some prefer one over the other I'm a fan of both of them and find it to be quite Charming to have so much music for this one game so while I don't hate this game or anything it's one that I only replay maybe every few years 16. Sonic Rush oh man I remember it being Christmas Eve as a preteen and the one gift I was allowed to open early was Sonic Rush it was a tradition for a while to play this game every Christmas Eve to get excited for the next day I've got a lot of good memories with Sonic Rush and now the freaking games composer has acknowledged my existence which is still such a fever dream that I can't even begin to comprehend the music is what makes Sonic Rush really stand out amongst most 2D Sonic titles it's so energetic and catchy which isn't unheard of for a Sonic game but the lyrics are used as samples to create the beat which is very different this was the first game to have the proper boost and it feels amazing to use in general this gave us a supremely satisfying flow to it all the key features like tricking and grinding on Rails from the advanced games are here you'll plow out the ring boxes without stopping movement is fast and stops on a dime even grabbing air bubbles takes significantly less time also new to the game is Blaze the Cat she's got slightly different moves seeing as she can hover in the air in as much floatier the boss fights are also in 3D which I need to point out how unreal this was back in 2005 just try to imagine playing games on a Game Boy for several years this is what your mind has been enamored with and out of complete nowhere the DS arrives which was the same size as the Game Boy and it was capable of running the games in 3D seriously it was mind-boggling but nowadays these bosses are just okay they have pretty easy patterns and you can only hit them once per attack cycle although the final boss randomly jumps in difficulty I don't know where the hell that came from look while I've talked this game up a storm there's a couple of glaring issues the biggest thing is the death pits it's somehow even worse than Advanced two and three they are all over the place thankfully the controls are so tight that you'll be able to avoid most of these Pits on the first try also the sound mixing is pretty bad why the hell are the sound effects so loud foreign and finally the special stages are incredible they're really easy to access and you'll use the touchscreen to move Sonic around it's genuinely fun and if you mess up a special stage you can just jump right back into it since all you need is some boost I forgot how much fun Sonic Rush was it was a blast getting to play through it again 15. Sonic Rush Adventure I really gave this game a chance for this video I played it a couple times in the past and it never quite vibed with me like with the first game but now that it's been several years I can safely say that it's a little bit better than Sonic Rush the main thing here is that the level design is so much better in adventure compared to the first title there is way less death pits and the bosses don't feel as mechanical either there's also a couple new characters like Captain whiskers yeah he uh he sure is a captain and that's about all I gotta say for him Marine is okay I don't think she's annoying as some say she is but I don't really mind all that much unlike Sonic Rush where you just plow through levels this time you'll sometimes have to grind for minerals to upgrade your vehicles and sail around a map discovering new places to explore grinding in Sonic games is inherently stupid but frankly I didn't think it was that much of a problem because of how much better the level design is each stage is a blast to play so having to replace some of them or the boss is wasn't that big of a deal the sailing special stages are also pretty fun so I have to give that props as well 14. Sonic Lost World Wii U for some reason I never got around to playing this despite being excited for it when it originally released after the success of Sonic colors and generations the next three Sonic game goes with a completely different gameplay style the most logical step for Sega to take of course and it was originally on the Wii U only but got ported to PC later on so the main gameplay Loop is running around on planets with rapid gravity sounds exactly like Super Mario Galaxy but it isn't at all this game controls completely differently in almost every aspect but there were a few moments that you could tell they were inspired by the Galaxy titles which is cool one of the strangest mechanics to get used to is the Run button and I thought it was fine a lot of people hate that about lost world but this is a much more platform heavy title so it makes sense in this instance you can also parkour off walls but I didn't really like this it worked on the 3DS but here it felt like it just kind of didn't work half the time maybe I was doing something wrong but it kind of slowed the pacing down too much but overall though the levels are fun outside of a few that got annoying I complained a lot about the snowball level on the 3DS version and this time you just play inside a snowball and it's way way better in every way the Deadly Six are some new bad guys and they're all really lame these villains are just really boring personality wise and not very expressive I mean they have this depressed guy that just complains the whole time I see how they might have thought that would have been funny but it just doesn't work I appreciate the effort in bringing new bad guys to life but even zavok I don't really care for it doesn't help that every boss fight takes like 5-10 seconds and that's not even an exaggeration they go down so fast and I don't know why they're this easy outside of the final boss which is pretty cool because that it grows really big and chases you from the bottom it kind of reminds me of new Super Mario Bros 2 but a bit more challenging the music is pretty hit or miss some of them are absolute bangers While others do just enough to fit with the theme and that's it there's also some really cool DLC for Yoshi and Zelda and honestly these are the best part of the game for one you can easily Farm lives and animals with a DLC in two the levels are just more enjoyable especially the Zelda one I played it like four or five times and it was a blast to reach run it's a good idea to do this anyway because you're supposed to collect animals along the way and you need 5 000 to get to the end and you average like 20 to 50 per level so thank God you don't really have to grind levels if you've got the DLC there's also Knights that you'll see on the PC version and it's basically a mini boss Gauntlet but everything is replaced with Knight's characters which is kind of neat this is a pretty solid game it's not a masterpiece or anything but I had a good amount of fun with it and would go back to it to replay the DLC stuff 13. Sonic Heroes one of the most nostalgic Sonic games for me of all time Sonic Heroes starts things off on such a high note right away you can play as four different teams which was mind-boggling back in the day they kind of all do the same thing but it's still super cool each team is basically a difficulty mode team roast is easy team Sonic is normal Team Dark is hard and team chaotix is the most challenging there's not nearly as many cut scenes compared to Adventure 1 and 2 but they look so much better and still have the same goofy corniness you immediately start the game on a huge High Seaside Hills is a blast to play through the music is super energetic it feels like a true successor to Sonic Adventure 2. the main gimmick here is you can switch between controlling a speed flying or power character Sonic team took what worked best in adventure 1 and 2 and combined all those gameplay Styles into one and for the most part it works well each character feels distinct and even has a few different attack options even the bosses are pretty fun they require a lot of spamming but I'd say there's still an improvement over the adventure games and then you get to the casino levels that's kind of where everything slowly falls apart you start to see the cracks a little more clearly let's just say that while the controls are functional they don't adapt well to tricky platforming which makes later stages a slog to play and some of them last for way too long the run time isn't as bad as say Sonic Unleashed nighttime stages but they still feel excessive the issue is that you're sometimes forced to defeat a bunch of bad Nicks that have life bars so it kills the pacing entirely and once you've played through one character's campaign you gotta do it three more times and the levels are exactly the same the only difference is that depending on the team you'll travel slightly different distances and that's about it and you have to be at all four campaigns to unlock the final level so best of luck with that team chaotix is such a mixed bag too there's a level where you have to kill all 85 enemies which is just absurd and don't even get me started on the special stages the difficulty progression is all over the place and the controls are so wonky that it takes a ton of practice to get used to the physics so while there's a handful of bad elements it does such an incredible job at setting a high tone at the beginning that I still consider it to be a great game the music is so freaking fantastic too and the voice clips ooze charm whether it's Tails yelling we or Knuckles saying can't really go wrong 12. Sonic Adventure we finally made it to the adventure games these are really hard to rank because they objectively have lots of Jane especially this first game but damn if they aren't a joy ride they still stand out as some of the most unique 3D Platformers out there Sonic Adventure lets you play as multiple different characters and they all have different levels with varying gameplay Styles these are connected through a hub world and what's cool about this is that each level feels interconnected within the Hub but at the same time it feels out of place with these random human NPCs I know Sonic interacted with people a lot in the 2000s but it doesn't seem necessary at all especially since these hubs are too big and can be confusing and the cutscenes are just works of art the lip syncing and audio balance is so atrociously bad that you have to love it this is very early 3D work so it's not surprising that it hasn't aged well but my God them Health movements are so funny now obviously playing through the Sonic stages is the Highlight you go really fast the music's super catchy it controls decently enough you'll likely have a good time playing these and honestly the other five characters aren't that bad either tail stages are very similar to Sonics but you're a bit slower and can also fly flying can be awesome if you want to break everything and Skip portions of levels depending on what kind of person you are you'll either love or hate this I personally think it's fantastic Knuckles levels are pretty easy but it's still fun gliding around and fighting the emeralds the game is just a little too friendly with the hints it pretty much tells you exactly where to go each time as for Amy she probably has the worst stages yes even worse than Biggs fishing with her it's very very slow going it takes forever to finish levels it's more cutscenes than gameplay with her so I don't really care much for her stages e102 stages are surprisingly solid you go around shooting stuff and it's pretty enjoyable again these stages in the bosses especially are too easy but it's still a good time but now to Big stages you have to fish for froggy I don't know why this needed its own story mode but as you've heard a million times it's not the most fun thing ever it's gone on record by some is unplayable but really it's not that bad waiting for froggy to hook on and learning for him is just tedious work the bosses in general are also just way too easy and boring but Perfect Chaos is so damn gratifying with open your heart blasting in the back while flying forward to Sonic you can't really go wrong with ascending there's also missions in the DX version and a ciao Garden so you've got quite a bit to play here so yeah Sonic Adventure is still a ton of fun despite a few shortcomings 11. Sonic Colors we so Sega finally said okay no more gimmicks we're just gonna give you Sonic and normal running levels and my God it turned out to be one of the best 3D Sonic games out there the new twist in Sonic Colors is the Wisps and these are pretty fun as you'll find them throughout the level and they allow you to transform to get extra speed jump higher or get through obstacles in your path not every wisp is great though Cube just changes some blue cubes into rings and vice versa and the spike wisp is the only way you can spin dash they had to pull some of Sonic's normal moves away from him to make the Whisk more useful that wasn't the greatest choice but I also get it each world has a really unique location a lot of them still look beautiful full even to this day sweet mountain is filled with candies and delicious food Planet wisp is a vegetated lush land of plants and tropical resort is some sort of vacation area in Space the controls feel great and the game consistently throws in Wild scenarios around these levels just like a Sonic Unleashed generations and my God the soundtrack is just incredible something about Sonic Colors music is just so memorable and stands Out Among the others the only real issue is some of the levels are on the short side this was a problem in Sonic forces as well but at least that's not always the case in Sonic colors and there's plenty more levels in interesting locations and how can we forget Sonic's all-time best quote no copyright law in the universe is gonna stop me except they do in real life it just happens 10. Sonic Colors ultimate I definitely have an unpopular opinion here but I really don't get why so many people hated Sonic Colors ultimate so much like yes the glitches were awful on the switch version and its extra content doesn't really add a lot but as an overall package it's the same great game with a few new bells and whistles there's was even a new wisp called the Jade whisk which lets you go through certain walls I wouldn't call it all that useful but it's still kind of cool to have a new one included by collecting tokens you can customize Sonic's look which sounds cool but honestly it's pretty slapped on and isn't all that interesting the changes are pretty minimal and Bare Bones but at least it's something and then people have complained about the new lighting engine I mean it looks fine I guess a few areas look too bright here and there I don't know maybe my eyes just suck but it looks like the same game if you ask me there's also a new rival Rush mode where you'll Race Metal Sonic it's basically just time trials for a handful of stages again it's a fine addition I totally understand why some people prefer the original version but I personally don't think ultimate's issues are Grand enough to make it worse but I do have to say the credits being 30 minutes long is pretty stupid and the music doesn't even Loop you just stand there in complete silence 9. Sonic Generations there was a short period in my life where I stopped playing Sonic games because I kept hearing that they were bad according to the internet but then I got Sonic Generation and my God what a trip this was this is the ultimate celebration of what makes the Blue Blur so great you can play as modern and classic sonic and revisit all the best worlds from the past nowadays it's annoying seeing Green Hill Zone recreated but back in 2011 it was a treat to play it in 3D and then 2D right after that but you've also got Sky Sanctuary speed Highway City Escape Seaside Hill rooftop run every location is just awesome even Crisis City from sonico 6 is a ton of fun this game is pure joy from start to finish now with that said I've got a couple small qualms and part of it has to do with the controls they're pretty damn good for the most part but jumps don't always feel precise and the momentum can be wonky sometimes there's moments where you'll randomly speed up or randomly slow down without warning but again it's not game breaking or anything for the most part Generations feels good to play the bosses are pretty cool too I especially enjoy how Metal Sonic Shadow and Silver are all rivals you can fight on top of the main stages are a bunch of missions and surprisingly a lot of these have interesting ideas to add a bit more replay value I do kind of wish we got some sort of world from a Sonic CD it may be a more interesting location from Sonic Heroes considering Seaside Hill isn't the most interesting looking place but man I still freaking love this game I blew my goddamn mind when I first played it and the remixes are just incredible too 8. Sonic Adventure 2 battle I was considering splitting this with a Dreamcast version but the only difference or that sa2 battle overhauled a multiplayer and has better graphics this is so much better than Sonic Adventure in every way possible like seriously it's hard to not love this game it Futures what I would consider one of the best if not the best first levels in a video game City Escape holy this state is incredible you immediately start off falling from the sky the music's off and when you hit the ground whoa when the guitars start rocking the out oh it's awesome I've replayed this level more than any Sonic stage in my life even more than Green Hill Zone I'd reckon you can really feel the sense of speed Adventure exhilaration and happiness just bursting in this game and I even like the Tails and knuckle stages they're not as good as Sonic levels but they can be a great time too Tails shoots stuff in his Mech and Knuckles Glides around looking for emeralds just like an adventure one but of course this is the game to introduce the ultimate life form Shadow the Hedgehog you can play as him Rouge and Eggman as well they are the exact same controls as the hero style yeah that's right there's a hero and dark campaign beat both of these to unlock the final few levels if you liked Adventure 1's corny cut scenes they're back once again in adventure too and the sound mixing is somehow even worse it's so hard to seriously care about that though when you can feel the passion of each quote as it's bestowed these cut scenes are the epitome of entertaining for all the right and wrong reasons now like Others May mention there aren't as many Sonic and Shadow stages compared to the others which is a tad disappointing but I really don't care that much the campaigns just fly by until you get to the very end when a couple levels are just too big or too long meteor herd is a pain in the ass but at least these missions are harder because you only get subtle hints for where you're supposed to go the boss fights are still a joke though outside of maybe King boom boom but even he isn't much of a threat the final boss with Supersonic and Super Shadow is insanely cool and Adventure 2 has one of the best Chow Gardens we've ever seen I love these little guys and playing through levels to feed them animals and vials the greatest thing about it is the sheer amount of characters you can play as because it's quite a lot but that's Sonic Adventure 2. if you've never played it then you gotta at least try the first few stages 7. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Knuckles ah yes the first video game I ever completed I had this PC Port when I was like four years old and I've got very vague memories of waking up in the middle of the night to play the game for a couple hours then I would pretend I was asleep on the couch right before my mom came downstairs uh it was a good time and the only reason I remember this was because this was a daily occurrence for like a year until I beat the game but anyway the graphic style looks even better than Sonic 2 and was already a nice upgrade everything is well detailed and animated the special stages are actually fun you can save and play as multiple characters and the music is fantastic so why isn't it higher than Sonic 2 well it all comes down to the levels the first half of the game is all right but the second half and not so much Angel Island is a great way to start things off it takes the whole grassy theming and burns it to a crisp literally Hydro city is decent although sluggish since it's mostly in water at least these hands give you speed and you can run across water which is pretty cool but after that the levels are just all right Marvel Garden is a confusing mess and the freaking spike balls do a great job hitting you when you least expect it Carnival night is another obnoxious bouncy bounce level but ice cap picks things up the least and as you'd expect the music absolutely bangs I know I've said this for like every Sonic game but damn it is so good in Sonic 3. launch base is decent as well but now it's time for the and knuckle stages mushroom Hill is littered with obstacles that slow you down to a crawl flying battery is an all right one but then we get the sandopolis this one somehow feels more sluggish than most Sonic water stages it's that bad there's just so many random obstacles that Force Sonic to move at a snail's pace none of it is fun lava reef and hidden Palace are much better either but at least things pick up a little bit with Sky Sanctuary it just feels like all these levels Focus way too much on platforming which isn't a bad thing necessarily but there needs to be a higher emphasis on going fast since that's what Sonic was built for the final Zone and boss are decent and I'm glad to report that the final boss is somewhat challenging considering you can die in one hit from the laser I'll just say this the later stages are more enjoyable if you get super hypersonic early on 6. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Genesis sorry Sonic 3 and Knuckles fans I still gotta go with the second game being my favorite of the classics and the reason for that really comes down to the level design are there technically fewer stages in the third title sure but they're a lot more enjoyable to play if you ask me Emerald Hill is basically a copy of Green Hill but that doesn't make it a bad thing chemical plant introduces water but only to a small extent you're stuck in this poison for mere moments instead of minutes aquatic ruin also has water but again you can avoid large chunks of it by taking the higher paths casino night is a little Annoying due to the nature of this type of level but even still there's plenty of flow with your movement Hilltop is amazing it meshes together speed sections with platforming perfectly Mystic cave and oil ocean turn up the difficulty a notch and still have a great flow when blazing through the level now of course Metropolis Zone sucks I don't know what happened here but the stupid starfish and grasshopper enemies constantly get in your way and it's rage inducing and of course this one is three acts instead of two like the others but then you've got Sky Chase which is a short Change of pay face and you wrap things up with wing Fortress and Death Egg the bosses have gone a little bit better in terms of creativity although they're still too easy I just accepted that's how it is even the final boss is a joke once you know the strategy you'll never get hit and I gotta bring up the special stages too as they're Infamous for being extremely difficult and yeah they uh they definitely are a challenge especially if you're playing with tails you get so little time to react to the Rings coming while avoiding spikes but overall this game is still a joy to play through it's kind of insane how well it's aged after all this time 5. Sonic Jam this used to be one of the best ways to play the classic three Sonic games until Sonic Mega Collection but those are just ports Sonic Jam actually goes out of its way to change up the classic games a little bit one of the biggest differences is the difficulty mode easy and normal Ultra some of the stage design and add extra Rings When selecting Sonic and Knuckles you can choose to lock that on with any of the three Sonic games which is still a cool idea some of the sound effects are different too you can tell that the most when collecting Rings things like hitting enemies and collecting the orbs have this meteor crunch to them the most interesting part of this compilation though is the Sonic World in which you'll play as Sonic in 3D there's not really anything to do here besides run around get rings and check out some extra options but this was an early build of Sonic Adventure so it's like playing a beta version in an official game nowadays there is way better and more accessible ways to play the OG Sonic games but this wasn't a bad option when the Saturn was out 4. Sonic Colors DS it is absolutely criminal how few people have played Sonic colors on the DS I'm a fan of the Wii one but let's be honest the DS version is Superior in almost every way the levels themselves are all enjoyable outside of maybe one at the very end and that is very uncommon in Sonic games there's almost always an entire world or two that's frustrating to get through but here I had a blast like 99 of the time and the bosses are so much better than Sonic Russian Adventure they actually get harder and you can hit them more than once so it doesn't feel as scripted and the Wisps work so much better in this game compared to the Wii one they only bring back the useful ones and actually do a great job expanding the level's depth plus you've got the special stages which are not only fun to play through but also unlock a secret final boss the only negative I can really give is the difficulties on the easier side I really only struggle with a couple bosses at the end the final boss is so cool too I love how you basically have to absorb the whist from the boss and then use them at the very end to defeat Eggman it's an interesting way of going about it I'm not even kidding you have to play this game if you haven't already you're not gonna regret it three Sonic Frontiers this recently came out so I can't know how I'll feel about this game long term but man Sonic Team finally made a good 3D Sonic the last decent one was Sonic Generations which was over 10 years ago instead of switching between 2D and 3D levels most of the game is what is called an open zone so it kind of feels like Pokemon Legends Arceus or breath of the wild the controls immediately feel fantastic zooming around the islands completing the missions and finding all the Collectibles is such a thrill I 100 of this game and even s ranked the Cyber levels and I still want to go back and play more that's how you know you made a great game it makes you wish there was more to do because of how much fun it is the tone takes a more serious approach and it's not stupid like in shout out the Hedgehog no you actually care about the story and its characters The Voice actor's performances are much more toned down and mature and the writing is more complex than what we've seen in other previous Sonic titles the older games are referenced all the time his Distant Memories it's actually insane how much the story has improved but the best part of Frontiers the absurdly epic boss battles like seriously just look at this beating up huge robots is Supersonic and it's actually badass this is a Sonic game I'm not supposed to enjoy what I'm doing this much there's really only a few flaws which are all pretty minor it can be difficult to figure out what to do and where to go sometimes and by the end of the game you'll end up avoiding the guardian enemies because you can get their items through fishing yeah that's right you can fish with dig the cat again and it's the greatest thing ever the fishing's super easy and if you want to avoid fighting enemies like I did you can just buy their items in big shop as an alternative all I gotta say is for the love of God's Sega stick with this formula for the next 10 years please seriously do not try to change things again because you found something that works and this could be built upon in the future I swear to Sega don't you dare try to change the game again 2. Sonic Origins by far the definitive way to play Sonic 1 through 3 and CD each game is in widescreen the pixel art has been touched up and you can even play The Originals if you really want new to the games are the coins which allow you to retry special stages this is huge considering Sonic CD and two special stages are really difficult so it's a great update there's also a mission mode a fairly big Museum and new animated cutscenes for the beginning and ending of each game it's a great package with a solid presentation the main downside is they couldn't license all the Sonic free music the Alternatives sound fine but they're not even close to as good and honestly Sonic 1 is not fixed because it's in widescreen it still hasn't aged very well so yeah these games are still fun and all but we all know there's a better Sonic game out there one Sonic Mania plus it's almost the perfect Sonic game it looks amazing for starters the Pixlr is so well put together each song is great and even changes per act you can play as multiple characters plus Ray and mighty which have never been done before in a 2d platformer the level design is exactly what you'd want out of a Sonic game it keeps things fast for a majority of the time the bosses are really creative and well put together and the new zones are so freaking cool Studio office is by far my favorite but press Garden is a very close second the intro cutscene animation is stunning and there's an encore mode that changes up the colors the bonus stages are actually good too they made new blue spear stages and even a brand new one in 3D that's actually fun to play and it uses the adorable Saturn styled art oh Sega you found the key to my heart and you can't forget the knuckles and Knuckles mode he's got unique stages on top of that the only downside is the lack of new locations it's really too bad that every Zone isn't brand new because they really nailed everything in Sonic Mania there's so many stage elements that come from the older games and are added in ways that actually enhance levels to be more enjoyable and engaging it is a damn shame that Sonic Mania 2 doesn't exist yet like seriously this was one of the highest acclaimed Sonic games of all time and there hasn't been a sequel yet I am a massive Sonic fan and I have been my entire life but I have to hold my Integrity I am stunned at how many bad and mediocre Sonic games are out there because a lot of these I never played until this year and wow so far I've ranked every Mario game Kirby Luigi and Yoshi this was the most painful one to go through it really made me question how the hell is this franchise lasted for so long when there's so many just mediocre Sonic games out there and honestly it really just comes down to how iconic he is and his design I mean Sonic is just a really cool looking character and just his legacy it's it's something that can't really die you know just the fact that there are now so many Sonic games and the bad ones are talked about all the time it just means that Sonic is always in our minds and regardless of what happens to his games he can't really fail and the beautiful thing about the Sonic franchise is there's always that one or those two or three Sonic games that you just absolutely adore you know that there's something about them that's really bad but you don't care you freaking love that game no matter what and for me it's it's like Sonic Adventure 2. not the greatest game ever but my God I freaking love the game so much and anyone that's played a Sonic game you've got one of those games too and I think that is what makes sonic so special thank you for watching everyone I'll see you all soon

Channel: Nathaniel Bandy

Views: 932,098

Keywords: Sonic Frontiers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Ranking Every Sonic Game, Sonic, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Heroes, Sonic 06, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic 3, Sonic 2, Knuckles, Big the Cat, nathaniel bandy

Id: rFOYr1jhrjY

Length: 98min 54sec (5934 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 03 2022