Happy 25th Birthday Sonic the Hedgehog!

[samsonlonghair]

Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega Genesis was released June 23, 1991 in North America and Europe and July 26, 1991 in Japan.

[Gunstar Green]

Happy birthday, you shambling blue zombie.

[strangenova]

Wow. On his 15th birthday my sisters and I sat down and beat every sonic platformer on the Mega Collection for PS2. It was like 8 or 9 sonic games beaten over the course of a week.

[ExedExes]

Happy Birthday Sonic, while your life has been mainly trouble-free and awesome, we did hit that rebellious phase with Sonic 2006.

[Exhuminator]

First played Sonic in 1991 on my cousin's Genesis. We were totally blown away by its aesthetics, music, design, and everything else about the game that was top tier. SEGA had created a platformer worthy of being actual Mario competition and no doubt a star was born.
From there I loved Sonic 2 & 3 during their respective release times, and even enjoyed Sonic & Knuckles.

Then I kind of fell out of Sonic games for a long time, only popping in to play through Sonic Advance (decent) and Sonic CD (not great). Honestly the series became a bit of a shit show with totally sporadic levels of quality. I couldn't get into the Sonic Adventure games at all. I tried to enjoy Sonic and the Secret Rings but nope. I tried out Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity but the game was terribad. Spent some time with some friends on Sonic Shuffle for Dreamcast, but it was kinda "meh".

I wasn't blown away by another Sonic game until 2010's Sonic Colors on the Wii. (Sonic Colors is totally awesome do not listen to the haters.) I also enjoyed Sonic Colors on DS, but it was not super great like the Wii version. Then Sega decided Sonic needed some badass kart racing games, and gave us the Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing series. I love the new kart racers! (Notice the exclamation point, it is the pokey tip of adoration.)

There are a TON of Sonic games I have either never played, or only played for five minutes just to try out. It's hard to parse which games are actually legit great. For the sake of conversation, here's what I'm not sure about, but am Soni-curious:

Sonic Chaos
Sonic the Hedgehog: Triple Trouble
Knuckles' Chaotix
Sonic Blast
Sonic the Hedgehog Pocket Adventure
Sonic Advance 2
Sonic Advance 3
Sonic Rush
Sonic Rush Adventure
Sonic the Hedgehog 4
Sonic 3D Blast
Sonic Heroes
Shadow the Hedgehog
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
Sonic Unleashed
Sonic and the Black Knight
Sonic Generations
Sonic Lost World
Sonic Drift
Sonic Drift 2
Sonic R
Sonic Racing Shift Up
Sonic Racing Kart
Sonic Kart 3D X
Sonic Riders
Sonic Rivals
Sonic Rivals 2
Sonic Free Riders
Sonic Eraser
Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball
Sonic Labyrinth

And all the other insane amount of Sonic related games:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S ... ideo_games

[samsonlonghair]

Hey Ex, the best games on your list are Sonic Generations and Sonic Advance 2. Play 'em. Sonic Advance 3 isn't too bad, but I prefer Advance 2 over Advance 3.

[pierrot]

I played a lot of Sonic Chaos and Sonic Blast, as a kid. I liked Sonic Chaos more, but both are pretty good. I really liked the spring power-up from Sonic Chaos.

I like Knuckles' Chaotix, but acknowledge that it's not for everyone. At the price it goes for, I find it hard to recommend, but through other means, I think it's worth playing.

Sonic Advance 2 is basically just more of Sonic Advance, and I don't particularly care about either one.

Sonic Rush is pretty good. If you liked Sonic Colors on the DS, and/or if you liked the OST in Jet Grind Radio, this is one you should probably look in to.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is just all right (at least part 1, that is). It feels kind of janky, and is overall not terrible, but is kind of a slap in the face to the other numbered titles.

I like Sonic 3D Blast. It's a huge shift in gameplay, but after getting past that, it's a pretty fun game. The soundtrack is pretty incredible, also.

If you didn't like Sonic Adventure, Sonic Heroes would probably lead you to hate life entirely. It can be playable, but it's just not very good (and I liked the Sonic Adventure games).

Sonic Unleashed is half amazing, half junk. The werehog stages grind the pace down to a halt (they usually took me upwards of an hour to finish, and probably 30 minutes on average). The daytime stages are really good, and the challenge stages for them are really challenging. Don't pay much mind to the story, though.

I like Sonic Generations more than Sonic Colors, ultimately. Both are good, but the future stages in Generations work a little bit better than the 3D segments in Colors, I feel.

I played Sonic Drift 2 a lot as a kid, also, but I probably wouldn't recommend it today.

Love Sonic R. It's probably mostly nostalgia, but--.

Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball can be fun.

I've never even heard of these, what the hell are they?

Sonic Racing Shift Up
Sonic Racing Kart
Sonic Kart 3D X
Sonic Eraser

[Gunstar Green]

First played Sonic in 1991 on my cousin's Genesis. We were totally blown away by its aesthetics, music, design, and everything else about the game that was top tier. SEGA had created a platformer worthy of being actual Mario competition and no doubt a star was born.
From there I loved Sonic 2 & 3 during their respective release times, and even enjoyed Sonic & Knuckles.

I still remember playing Sonic for the first time at a Sear's kiosk. It was absolutely awesome. Apparently it took them forever to finalize the design of Green Hill Zone and that work paid off because any kind of loyalty I had towards my NES at that point was quickly forgotten.

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is when I really got into the games though. Me and a friend were pretty obsessed with the game and it became my favorite platformer of the era. I will always count Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles as one game. It's nearly impossible for me to see them any other way.

I still remember him calling me on the phone and telling me he unlocked HYPER Sonic. Since video game rumors and lies were a dime-a-dozen back then I thought he was bullshitting me that such a thing existed.

Nothing after that really grabbed me. That was the high-water mark of Sonic for me. I have played and liked Sonic games after that but the experience I had with Sonic 3 & Knuckles is lightning in a bottle I'm never going to personally recapture.

I've never even heard of these, what the hell are they?

Sonic Racing Shift Up
Sonic Racing Kart
Sonic Kart 3D X
Sonic Eraser

The first three are old mobile phone games. The last one was a Columns-ish puzzle game that was available on a Japanese Mega Drive download service of some sort.

[Exhuminator]

Thanks for the rec guys.

I've got a stupid idea:



Howabout we have a special community dippity-doo in September. Where you pick 3-5 Sonic games you never played, and you play them, and you talk about it? There's so many Sonic (and Sonic related) games, it should be easy to find ones you haven't played.

[ExedExes]

Sonic CD (not great).

Then again, I wasn't too fond of Sonic 3 or S&K....