An Open Letter To Sega Re: Sonic The Hedgehog

Dear Sega;

As a lifelong fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, I think I can safely say that the series as a whole has lost it's way. I am not the only person who thinks this; you need only send one of your interns on a Google-search for any Sonic product post '99 to see just what the community thinks of the frankly inferior products you've been producing. It's a shame because Sonic made Sega the name it is today in many parts of the world, and the character still holds a lot of respect and selling power. However a name is only ever as good as the product it is backing, and in this sense recent efforts have been distinctly wanting. For this reason among others I want to suggest, for future titles, that you immediately forthwith implement the following changes;

1 - Get rid of the third D

Seriously, games like Sonic just don't work in three-dimensions. Since the original games relied on a combination of fast movement and controllable two-dimensional physics adding a third dimension just confounds things further. Believe me, you're on the right track with the Sonic Advance/Rush series. You can still make good looking games using all those fancy bells and whistles that come with modern consoles. Trust me, Sonic works when you're limited to up, down, left and right (and a + start)

2 - Shut Sonic up

Sonic was infinitely more endearing when he didn't open his stupid trap. In the context of comics and cartoons then there's a pressing need to have him speak dialogue, but much of his personality can be shown through inventive idle animations, actions within the games and so on. It's bad enough you made the poor guy speak, but to give him the prototypical "radical dude" vocal tics was stupendously obvious and above all obnoxious. Bill and Ted has long since passed, let it go already.

3 - Get rid of Shadow

I can understand; one day you were scanning through the music channels and chanced upon something by My Crappy Romance or other such tosh and thought "hey, the kids are into this misery deal, let's go with that". But really, come on, was it that necessary to start making spin-offs with the guy? Beside the fact that he has the personality of a wet tea-bag, the guy plays like wank in the games. Chaos control can suck my balls.

4 - Stop adding so many supporting characters

Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and possibly Amy. That's all you really need to make a Sonic game right there. Robotnik/Eggman/Whatever the hell you call him as the main bad guy and a suitable robotic anthropomorphic representation of a main cast member as a mini-nemesis. It's simple, it's effect and it's not sickeningly annoying. I needn't remind you that you're starting to run dry on the whole cute animal stock. For every cute animal on this planet, there's a thousand evil ones. You know you're scraping the barrel when you start using bats. I mean really, bats? Are they really so endearing? Name me one character that ever made his or her name by being associated with bats. Yeah, I thought not.

5 - Would you let us collect Chaos Emeralds and get Super Forms again for goodness sake?

I love going all Dragonball Z when I get fifty rings. I love being able to dash through levels at the speed of light destroying everything in my path. It's an incentive to explore to find the posts/rings to get to the special zone, it's a reward for me putting in so much darned effort in the first place. Brief storyline-based levels that last a few minutes do not count.

6 - No more cross-species love interests

I don't think I need to elabourate more. Just don't do it, okay?

7 - Stop adding pointless gameplay mechanics

What, I've got to deal with souls and do tricks in the middle of the air to get through a level? I've got enough going on avoiding bad-guys and the like without arsing about with such things. We get it, you're trying to do something different, but at the very least if you're going to implement such things make them a passive choice for the player and not a necessity for play. Kind of like the Super forms. See how that works?

8 - Remake Sonic 3 + S&K

Dammit all, just create a modern version of Sonic3K. Really you haven't made a decent Sonic game since then. From then on just make extensions on that same game layout until the end of time. We'll all thank you for it.

I hope you take my criticism on board because I'm telling you, I'm this close to getting a Mario game. I haven't bought a Mario game since '93. Is that what you want? Do you want the plumber to win? Do you want some overweight Italian municipal worker usurping my loyalty? I didn't think so.

In short, get your shit together.

-Captain Maxx Power

P.S. Actually I just realised, there's Batman, Batgirl and the actual Bat Man (as in a man who's a Bat). But not that many people know about the last guy so he doesn't count. My points are still valid though so get to it, chop chop!