Once upon a time there was a meeting at Sega headquarters about how they were going to deal with that pesky Mario. They came up with an Armadillo, Teddy Roosevelt in pyjamas, a Rabbit and a Hedgehog. Fortunately, the people who voted for the first three were taking round the back and promptly shot, so that their idiocy would not infect the other members of the team and thus Sonic the Hedgehog was born.

Sonic made his debut on the Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive if you live in good ol' Blighty) in 1991. It was a standard 2D Side Scrolling Platformer in which you ran from one end to the other really fast, jumping on and over things as you went. Sure it was basic but most importantly it was fun. At the end of each level you got to face Dr. Ivo Robotnik, who actually was the Teddy Roosevelt in pyjamas design I mentioned earlier, and what could be more fun than jumping on the head of a caricature of an American President. I know I'd love to do that to George Bush ( Yay! Political Humour)

Sonic appeared in a string of good titles including Sonic 2, Sonic CD, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles. Things were looking rosy for the little blue hedgehog and then Nintendo took Mario into 3D, so Sega had to do the same with Sonic and this was the beginning of his downfall.

Sonic Adventure was the first 3D Sonic game and was released on the Dreamcast. This is recognized as the best of the 3D Sonic games. I've never quite seen why though the camera was rubbish, there was too many unnecessary characters ( I hope Big the Cat chokes on that Goddammned frog), the adventure elements were pointless and they changed Robotniks' name to Eggman which infuriates me to this day. Despite all of this though it is the best 3D Sonic game, if only by default.

Sonic Adventure 2 was more of the average same and it introduced Shadow the Hedgehog, who can join Big the Cat in Hell, oh wait Marine the Racoon she's there too and Rouge the Bat, can't forget Cream the Rabbit and I was never a big fan of Team Chaotix or Amy Rose for that matter. So there all in Hell for been such annoying, stupid, horribly voice acted characters. Hopefully with the designers who made them.

Anyway, Sonic Heroes was the first Sonic game to appear on Playstation and Xbox. The gimmick behind this was that you was in teams of three characters and you switched between them to use their skills. A good idea in theory but the camera was vomit inducing and constantly made you fall of ledges you couldn't see and horrible voice acting which made me want to stick red-hot pokers in my ears. Plus I only wanted to play as Team Sonic as all the other characters annoyed me. So it was another disappointment and one that had promised so much as well.

The series hit an all-time low with Shadow the Hedgehog. There are so many problems with this game, first off the guns. Now it was bad enough they decided to have them in the first place but to make it worse they were horrible to use, almost as if the developers realised their mistake and so decided to make them unusable, which is just stupidity covering up stupidity. The vehicle sections were crap, in a game were the idea is to run fast why would you need vehicles? The camera was still terrible, as was the voice acting. The characters started using mild language for no apparent reason and quite frankly was completely unnecessary. On top of all that Shadow was a horrible character in the first place why make a game about him. It got slated by the critics and rightly so, strangely enough some people think this is a good game and those same people are proof involuntary euthanasia is a good idea.

Sonic the Hedgehog for 360 and PS3 was just plain terrible, Sonic and the Secret Rings was average with an annoying control scheme and Sonic Riders was a stupid idea and a rubbish game anyway. On the plus side the 2D handheld games are brilliant and show exactly what Sonic does best.

So where does this leave the little blue hedgehog? Well the upcoming Sonic Unleashed is showing signs of promise but to be honest Sonic Team are probably going to screw it up, breaking the hearts of all the Sonic fans again and when that happens you'll find me playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 reminiscing about what was.

Josh_3691