It's been said before: there seems to be nowhere left for Sega to take Sonic. This comes over the last decade, which nailed the company's once-proud mascot to the wall with numerous gimmicks and embarrassing spin-offs. Sonic 4 was probably the last straw for most fans; it wasn't a terrible game, but Sonic's painful lack of momentum made him control as though wearing lead weights. It was hardly the fitting "return to form" that Sega had purported it to be, although it was one of the better efforts in recent memory (Sonic Colors gets the award for the best). Anyone that cares about Sonic Generations had already heard about it with Sega's debut of the first trailer earlier this week. (My colleague Ryan Hauser also wrote a piece a couple days ago explaining how Sonic never needed to change at all, a notion I wholeheartedly agree with.) I'm not going to bother getting into the details of how the game works—classic "fat" Sonic has 2D design, modern Sonic has 3D design, they may or may not exist in the same universe. Since Sega seems borderline incapable of making a Sonic game anymore that isn't affected by some kind of weird twist on gameplay, this isn't surprising. However, unlike so many other games in the series, Sega may have inadvertently upped the ante with Generations, setting a kind of ultimatum with the series that they may not be able to recover, depending on what they do following Generations' commercial reception.
We all know that Sonic fans have been clamoring for many years that Sega should just drop the pretense and make a new 2D Sonic game that focuses on the originals' great blend of speed and classic platforming design. To Sega's credit, they've been inching ever closer to that (despite their inexplicable incapability of simply giving the fans exactly what they've asked for)—the last three games in the series have all increasingly leaned towards what made Sonic so much fun on the Genesis. Re-introducing fat Sonic into the fold may be the best thing Sega's done with the series in years, or possibly ever, depending on what your opinion of the 3D Sonic games has been. But it's a slippery slope to walk on for them, and for Sonic Team. If fat Sonic's re-appearance is a celebratory homage to Sonic's roots—which taking into account that his stages supposedly play (and sure as hell look) exactly like a modernized version of classic Sonic, seems to be the case—it's the closest thing yet to a "pure" old-school Sonic experience that Sega has done since the hedgehog went 3D. Aside from the 3D levels, it may even be the game fans have been begging Sega to do for so long.
Gearbox is sort of in the same boat with Duke Nukem Forever. Once you've introduced a classic character onto the stage after being absent for so long, where do you go from there? In the case of Duke, I personally can't see anything happening with the series after Forever hits; you can't modernize a game that's so thoroughly steeped in a mid-nineties feel and expect anyone to care. Sonic is obviously a little different, though.
Technically he hasn't gone anywhere, but at the same time, bringing back his original incarnation for 2011 has, for me at least, made me realize that I've missed not just fat Sonic, but all the gameplay associations that have gone with him. He's sort of the embodiment of the classic design we've been yearning for, you might say. What makes it probably one the ballsiest moves Sega has ever made with the series is that it sets the precedent for classic Sonic's return. Whether you consider Generations that or not doesn't matter. Once you let the original hedgehog out of the box again, if you don't keep him available to his adoring fans—or at the very least make modern Sonic conform from here on out—the risk of irrecoverable alienation from Sonic's already dwindling fanbase is astronomical. Thus Sega may have finally created a situation that's risky enough with the brand that unless their future plans are based around classic Sonic design, the series will completely fall off. It's time, it seems, for Sega to finally put up or shut up, and for keeps. Time will tell what the future holds for Sonic, but if Sega really does have brass balls, they'll know what to do.
Post contributed by Steve Haske. Questions for the author? Send an email to sdhaske@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @afraidtomerge, or online at Gamepro, Paste and ajumpsbshoots.com, among others.
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