Spinning Back in the Right Direction

*Disclaimer* Hi everyone this is Kempand, the latest addition to the Gaming Simplicity staff. Just wanted to let everyone know that the following piece is strictly my opinion and not necessarily reflective of the rest of the Gaming Simplicity staff. Hope to be putting up more material for you all soon. *End of Disclaimer*

A few months ago multiple gaming sites covered the anniversary of the Dreamcast. While I was going through a few of these articles I noticed a character who always brought the words Sega into my mind: Sonic the Hedgehog. By extension I began to think about Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast, one of the last (and to some the very last) solid console outing in the Sonic franchise. Since then the Sonic franchise has seen a shaky run, from hits and misses on handhelds to a seemingly endless spiral into mediocrity (or downright crap) on consoles.

The shaky run on handhelds has had some bright moments as of late, including Sonic Rush Adventure which seems to point the franchise on handhelds in the right direction. Things don’t look as bright on the console market. The only real bright spots lately have been the re-releases of early Sonic games as downloadable content, and even then they are overshadowed by collections of Sega games that include those games already. As pessimistic as all this sounds I do have hope that Sonic can be restored to its former glory on consoles. If the series does reach that point, Sega needs to be sure that people will still be willing to buy Sonic games.

I know it is a big jump to say that the Sonic franchise, because of its drop in quality, will not be able to get people to buy the game just because of the legacy, but there is precedent there. We have seen trusted companies and properties who mistreated consumers for long enough that those consumers and fans abandoned them. The Dreamcast is a shining example (which Sega should never forget) about the limits to the patience of fans. After the manner in which Sega was constantly jerking around their fans with their odd system life cycles and choices, even when Sega releases one of the best systems in gaming history, the fans weren’t willing to give them another chance. Sega needs to keep the Sonic reputation from going that far or they may never be able to get the franchise out of mediocrity.

Which leads me to my point, namely that Sega needs to find a way to pull the Sonic franchise out of this rut it is in. My opinion is that they may need to take a step backward in order to take a few steps forward. “A step backward” to me means a return to the roots of the series in its original side scrolling format of years past. Could they follow the lead of the recent Bionic Commando: Rearmed in updating the older Sonic games? Perhaps, but I would much prefer that they make a brand new game using the format they had the most success with. A great example of this recently is Mega Man 9, which was not only a great game but as Mark Bozon of IGN stated perfectly, “[Mega Man 9] truly does rival the best in the franchise’s 8-bit roots.” If the Mega Man franchise can create a brand new game using a classic format why shouldn’t the Sonic franchise, whose glory days are grounded in that classic format, follow their lead?

Sega may very well go down that path or find more interesting ways to restore Sonic’s tarnished reputation. Then again they may not and we could see one of the classic franchises in gaming history continue to fall further into obscurity. Sega had Sonic spinning in the right direction long ago and that classic gameplay format may be the key to getting him back up there. Here is hoping that they do.