Sonic Lost World felt like a stumble but not a disaster, and while those Sonic Boom games were an incredible mess that side-reboot actually ended up pretty good - the cartoon was quite successful, and it's actually pretty funny, believe it or not. Both sides of the game were better for it, and even the modern Sonic levels in that game were strong. Sonic Generations was the culmination of the efforts: against all odds, SEGA seemed like it'd found a way to split the difference between old and new Sonic - and that was by quite literally splitting the game in two. Sonic Unleashed was half a good game, and then Sonic Colors doubled down on those ideas in a strong way. Over the last few years things started to look up a bit.

It was nowhere close to being expressed in the demo I played, however.' 'Buried somewhere deep in Sonic Forces is a strong idea for Sonic's future. Times were grim apart from a briefly wonderful turn on DS with Sonic Rush. I remember Heroes being the first 'major' Sonic game I thought was truly crap, and then the hits just kept coming: Shadow the Hedgehog, those dubious Wii games, the hugely misguided Sonic 4 and, of course, 2006's infamous Sonic the Hedgehog. Things went off the rails fast soon enough. I even had time for Sonic 3D Blast, and I'm one of those people who will go so far as to very lightly defend Sonic Adventure and its sequel.

When I was eight I was a loyal subscriber to the UK's Sonic the Comic (none of this silly Sally Acorn Archie Comics rubbish for me, thank you) and probably put hundreds of hours into Sonic 1 through 3 & Knuckles plus Sonic CD. I'm one of those people who lived and breathed the classic Sonic games when I was younger.

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