Being a huge Sonic fan (and still a huge Sonic fan), I mark Sonic Heroes as the turning point. Sonic Adventure 2 was the last Sonic game I enjoyed (barring the Sonic Advance games; don't remember when those came out relative to SA2).

it was because the games started doing the same thing just different platform. sega didn't know what to do with the game so they decided to add more characters into the game. the only good sonic games were the ones that were 2D. the last one that i played was adventures 2 for the gamecube. it was a horrible game. the only great levels were when you played as sonic. knuckles was a badass character, that had to find gems.... that level started getting boring.

" The people saying that Sonic games are just about holding right and jumping every once and a while have obviously never played past the first level in a Sonic game. "

Yuji Naka left Sonic Team. Because of that = Furry relationship.

To be perfectly honest, all Sonic games are bad. Even the old ones that everyone loves. I think it's just a case of people playing the games in their younger days, thinking they were great, and then realizing that there's not much to them aside from holding up/right (depending on 3D or 2D) and occasionally jumping. Jeff seems to have come to this conclusion (at least based on the recent Quick Look).  
 
And I'm no different, I have a bunch of Sonic games, including the Adventure ones, a couple of the GBA/DS, and even a GameCube compilation of the old ones from the Genesis games. And to be honest, the only ones that still seem a little fun (to me anyway) are the GBA/DS ones. 

Sonic Adventure happened. Then Sonic Adventure 2 happened.

The feeling of going from full-speed to a fullstop has always been something I really dislike, so really Sonic has never appealed to me. I honestly think Sega should try treating Sonic as more of a driving game than a platformer; it suits the basic premise of momentum way better.

Sonic just may be a concept that can't be recreated in 3D. Not to compare it to Mario, but Sonic has never had it's "Mario 64" moment where this concept can be proven to work in full 3D. It looks like Colors bucks that trend, but with just SO MANY just meh games it's hard for most gamer to give Sonic that 2nd chance.

Sonic was good?

Reason number one is that sonic was never that great to start off with. Nostalgia is a bitch for trying to revive franchises.
It should have been ended a long time ago when people got tired of the concept but they kept making more games and since they stopped selling as well, they tried, unsuccessfully, to change the game up causing it to become worse. 
Franchises just die sometimes.

@mysteriousbob: The sonic adventure series was the best games sega ever made

Barring the fact that you just bumped a three-year-old conversation, if you truly think that the Sonic Adventure games are the best games Sega ever made (and Sega has made a lot of games), I think it'd be best if you provided some insight as to why that's the case, because from where I stand, that's just not true. Particularly given that Sonic Adventure 2 ranks pretty highly on my own personal list of worst games I've ever played simply because those emerald hunt stages with Knuckles and Rouge are beyond frustrating and abysmal. Even if you were to remove those stages, the rest of the game wouldn't be that great.

I liked Sonic Generations and Adventure Battle 2. Those were the only modern ones I liked though.

The Knuckles stages in Sonic Adventure 2 are the only good thing about a Sonic game, ever.

The Tails stages were the ones that actually sucked.

Ha! I will stick to the comment I made 3 years ago. The transition to 3D ruined Sonic, assuming sonic was ever actually good in the first place.

How in the almighty actual fuck is that even possible? Those stages are the worst thing about SA2. The controls. The time limit. The entire gem-hunting mechanic. The maps. Everything about those stages is terrible.

I don't think Sonic games were any good to begin with. Sorry but them's the fax, guys.

we are at the halfway marks of the sonic cycle, and this one doesn't seems to be hyping up the fanboys as much as previous attempts did. And there is still another "Sonic Teams" Sonic game in development, so who knows if this cycle will go on forever?

I think the smartest thing that's ever been said about Sonic was said by Griffin McElroy on The Besties podcast a while ago: it's a series of games where you always feel like you're playing them wrong. Every time I play them (the early ones, anyway), I always get the sense that there was an amazing game in there somewhere, but because I was fucking up, I was never seeing it. When you finally realize that it's not you who are bad at Sonic games, it's that the Sonic games are not very good, you stop liking this series. The first games were never that good, guys, they just tricked our infantile brains into thinking that they were good and that we were bad at them.

For me it was when I played Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii that I was turned off by the series and the DS releases did nothing for me. I really liked Sonic Advance 3 for the GBA but that was the last Sonic game I enjoyed and as for my personal aesthetic tastes I really don't like the modern look for Sonic and prefer his 1992 look.

@gkhan: You are wrong. The handheld games (Sonic Advance, Sonic Advance 2, Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Rush, and Sonic Rush Adventure) are great games. All of those (perhaps barring the latter one), were met with unanimous critical praise and commercial success.

I personally enjoyed the heck out of everyone of those. They are a ton of fun, and embody that ideal pick-up-play-and-have-fun ethos you want out of handheld games. Sonic Rush is probably my favorite of the bunch - there is literally a "go-fast-and-break-everything" button.

I liked the genesis sonic games, and thought some parts of adventure and adventure 2 were alright, but they definitely don't hold up very well today. I haven't actually played a sonic game since, though. As a character I don't find him very nostalgic and mostly just remember fondly being a 6 year old kid at the time that the first games were coming out. As a franchise its turned into something way different from what I would want out of a sonic game.

Also, the tails/robotnick and rouge/knuckles levels in adventure 2 were poorly conceived at the time, much less now. From memory they barely even worked right.

They were doing good until Sonic Heroes came out. They started to flop, then tried to patch it with Sonic Colors and Generations, tbh they were going to the right path. Then Sonic: Lost worlds happened and destroyed the build up. Sonic Team better start being creative and stop copying other games...

I know this is an old conversation but there are still people fighting over this everywhere. Lol and it's so funny to see you guys use the same words (barring, abysmal, etc.) make you sound superior in your opinion. But that's the thing! Some of you guys are stating your opinions as fact, and that's just not right. I forgot who said it before three years ago but it's all about which ones you played as a kid. I had Mega Collection Plus all the way to Sonic and the freaking Black Knight dude lol and I loved them all (except for secret rings and 06 those were just factually broken). So yeah that's all there is to it! The old schools are gonna hate the new schools cause they were the OGs. It's just how it is man. And if you think that Sonic sucks in general, well then don't even post your crap man you're all saying the same thing! Alrighty lol I'm done :)

The originals only seemed good at the time because of the beautiful graphics, style, and novelty around the speed. It absolutely does not hold up at all. In my opinion of course.

I thought Sonic Generations was good, and yes I am including the 3D levels in that. Also Racing Transformed is better than Mario Kart 8

The secret is, that Sonic was never good.

Sonic wasn't always bad. He was good on the Mega Drive and Sega CD but he can't transfer to 3D because Sega still market him to be all about speed. A ledge they can't climb from.

Sonic as an Endless Runner could work.

you're right, It was great!

Now that I got that out of the way after the death of Sega Consoles the stand out games are Sonic Chronicles (which unbearably wont get a sequel due to licensing issues), Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. anyone want to count Sonic 4? I won' till they finish.

Oh Sonic Advance and Rush games where brilliant.

Sonic games have been good sometimes great for a while but they haven't wowed anyone for a while but Crush 40 have been fantastic throught!

Sonic Heroes was a good game, actually.

Being an old man, who played Sonic 1 when it came out, Sonic seems like a product of its time period.

He was all attitude, favoring fast and flashy game play over Mario's slower and more deliberate pace. That sense of speed, ramps, bumpers, became Sonic, just like jumping and warp pipes was Mario's thing. The Sega of that period chased after Nintendo, screaming "Look at me!" and Sonic pretty much personified that. It was bright, shiny, fast, but it lacked any actual depth. The sensation of speed was artificial and the loop/bumper sections were about as interactive as Rebel Assault. Sonic was everything that Mario was not. Even being the motto of Sega; Sega does what Nintendon't.

Nintendon't make shitty Super Mario games.

The biggest problem with Sonic as a game franchise is that its faults are the heart of its gameplay. The speed. It never transitioned well to 3d. You're giving players this sense of speed, but everything's so zoomed in.

Just to see how many pages I'd need to get through before fat sonic/skinny sonic conversations showed up in Google, I looked up Sonic the Hedgehog. Looks like they're making a cgi + live action Sonic movie.

I think most people would agree that sonic started to become terrible when they started introducing more of his furry friends to the table. I think Tails and maybe Knuckles were enough but then they started introducing more.

I don't think any of the 2D Sonic games have been bad (The putrid port of the original on the GBA doesn't count). It might not be your type of game so unless you believe that the reviews are paid off they I can't help you.

The 3D ones I can understand why people hate them but I played them back in the day and still play them today and the Adventure games where very good. I even S ranked the version that came out for Xbox Live (GT: Hotsp0t). If you didn't get into the Adventure series back in the day its very hard to do so now. I understand the rules these games put in place because I played the crap out of them but it does a poor job at conveying them to new players.

I'm a big Sonic fan but that doesn't mean I can't look at the series objectively. Even I wouldn't place the series among the legends like Mario, Zelda, Metroid etc etc. Still there are some great games that should be considered and of course some really bad ones.

@gokaired: Crush 40 IS awesome!

Since 1991 they have put out over 65 fuckin' games with Sonic in them. They haven't even slowed down to ask themselves what they are even doing.

I liked Sonic 4 Episode 1 but not so much Ep. 2 for some reason. It still made really big flaws though. Sonic looked liked crap and floated in the air like crap. If they were able to make the controls handle like Sonic 1 or 2 it would be heaps better as you need responsive controls for these games.

When did they change Robotnik to Eggman? That surely was the beginning of the end.

Adventure, but it was more of an insult to begin with and it was oddly embarrassed.

Sonic is the epitome of the 90s "tude" character. As in has an attiTUDE. Much like "Poochie" in that Simpson's episode. "Tude" characters are as one dimensional as they come. Sega kept trying to introduce new companions to flesh out the franchise: Tails, Knuckles, Amy... but they were just consecutively increasingly awful.

This topic is almost four years old and just as relevant today as when it was started.

That says something, doesn't it.

@snail: Correction. Sonic heroes is the only good sonic game besides the first one.

And every time it was necroed it was by some guy who just posts once and then leaves. I REALLY wish Giantbomb would prohibit newly created accounts from doing that.

Also Mr. Necro who will never post again, that's a false statement. I played Sonic Adventure 2 as a kid and freaking LOVED IT. I played the re-release on the Playstation 3, and it's nowhere NEAR as good as I remembered it. Hell, I'd say it's an abysmal game outside of a few Sonic and Shadow levels.

It says people don't understand how powerful nostalgia is. The games were never good; we just liked the pretty graphics and nice music. Like others said 3 years ago, "we didn't know any better."

What? How can you think the first Sonic game is good, but not the second one? Or 3 and & Knuckles, for that matter.

Because Sonic is entirely based around a very high speed platformer, which is a nice gimmick when it had never been seen before but is old hat now. Also, I think once people look past the speed the platforming in Sonic games is subpar. Also also, high speed platforming translates terribly into 3D space.

For a long time they just never stuck the landing transitioning from 2D to 3D. Sonic Adventure wasn't great, and in trying to improve the basic formula it set up they just made it worse and worse until Sonic 06 nearly killed the franchise. Sonic Generations is really good though.

I don't think Sonic games were ever really that great. I went back recently to see what I like about Sonic 2 and came away wondering how they're lauded as classics. Ahead of their time, maybe. The sense of speed is cool,. and when the game allows you to blow through its levels in a half minute is when it's at its best. As soon as a stray enemy or spike knocks you out of the run, it kind of becomes a really poorly controlling platformer until you're up to speed again. So, the best part of those games is when you're moving too fast to see how bad they are.

But whatever, I'm also of the opinion that Sonic Adventure 2 was one of the more interesting entries in the franchise.

The Adventure games and Generations sucked too. They were kind of entertaining, but crummy.

The character himself became horrible when they tried to make him too cool and tall. I liked him when he still looked like a kid's cartoon character.

The games after the Mega Drive trilogy don't even have good momentum-based physics.

While I think Sonic is a bit over rated and not on par with Mario I still think the original game through Sonic 3 and Knuckles are fun as hell. I say it was all downhill with the release of Sonic 3D Blast. It was the first time I actually hated a Sonic game and this was coming from a kid who loved Spinball and the Game Gear games.

I never played sonic games as a kid. Once, I tried playing some of the genesis ones on an emulator. They sucked. I think sonic has just always been bad, and was a product of its time.