Here are my five simple steps to make Sonic good again.

1. Kill the characters:

I think that we can all agree that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has WAY too many supporting characters. Sega adds in a new character for every game that they make. Like Marina, Silver, Shahra, E-102: Gamma, and so on, and so on. If I could make a Sonic game, I would have Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, Silver, E-123: Omega, Rouge, and Dr. Eggman. SEE?! Now we don't need to have the MOST NEEDLESSLY LARGE CAST OF CHARACTERS IN EXISTENCE.

2. We need speed:

What was the problem with Sonic 2006? Sonic is SLOWER THAN BLAZE. Sonic is slow, for what he can do, in that game. In the beginning to Sonic and the Secret Rings, HE WAS SLOW. Sonic Unleashed was fast, and that's why I liked it. But you could just let go of the controller, and Sonic would speed through half of the level. I think that SEGA and Sonic Team should try to make the game as polished as Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast. What made that game good? It was FAST, and fun. You could run around as much as you wanted, and you had complete control of Sonic, and the others.

3. Original Backstory:

In every Sonic game EVER CREATED, it's just been the same recycled plot, over and over. You need to save the world from an evil force or person. Think of something new! Okay, maybe it could take place directly after Sonic 1, but before Sonic 2. Sonic is in an unfamiliar area, when he sees Amy and Tails, being trapped by evil robots. (He doesn't know either of them yet.) Sonic saves them, but Sonic gets roughed up, during the fight. Maybe they take Sonic to their, I don't know... village? And for saving Amy and Tails, Tails idolizes him, (Giving Tails a reason to follow Sonic) and Amy falls in love with him. (A reason that Amy loves Sonic so much) Sonic joins an underground resistance force against an evil government, and the leader of that government performs experiments on little animals, so there's a motive for Sonic to stop them. And they say that he experimented on a hedgehog, but the hedgehog escaped, and was never heard from again. Hmm... that's kind of original for something I can pull off the top of my head.

4: Controls:

The problem with a lot of Sonic games are that the controls suck. How about a button to jump, abutton to spin-dash, and a button to use a boost, limited by a gauge. The controls should be simple enough to map to a freakin' Nintendo 64 controller! Maybe... you're fighting a boss in an open area. You have to kill enough enemies to fill up your boost gauge, get behind the robot and boost into it's back. But if it's in a closed area, maybe you need to kill enough enemies to get your boost gauge up, and dash into a pillar, or something, to topple onto the boss. See, Sonic? Simplicity is your friend.

5: Gameplay Variety:

The good thing about Sonic Adventure, was that there were six styles of gameplay. Speed platforming, racing Sonic, treasure hunting, shoot 'em ups, keep-away, and um... fishing. We all hated the fishing part, and you can't deny it. :P The problem with Sonic 2006, was that Sonic's was running to the end of the goal, Silver's was a beat-'em-up, and Shadow's was just Sonic's but withMORE KILLING. We need some more variety. Maybe, you could bring back single story modes, with an average amount of levels for each. Unlike Sonic Adventure 2, where you had 2 stories, but those were in teams. I want to run, jump, and spindash my way through a story, with one character. Maybe just 1 gameplay style per story, like in Sonic Adventure.

Well, I hope you like what I wrote down, even though this only took me about 15 minutes to make. :P Comment on what you thought of my list on how to make Sonic good.