Sonic the Hedgehog

Overview

A new beginning?

Sonic's first title for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 was supposed to be a new beginning for the franchise. Originally billed as a reboot for the series, the primary design goal for the game was to create a Sonic game set in real life -- complete with a full-on day/night cycle, physics-centric gameplay, and a huge world to explore. The game that ended up on store shelves was radically different: essentially another game broken out of the Sonic Adventure gameplay mold, containing unaltered game elements and concepts largely dating all the way back to 1999.

As per the formula established in the late 90's, Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) is broken up in to multiple storylines: one for hero Sonic the Hedgehog, another for rival Shadow the Hedgehog, and a third story for the newcomer, Silver the Hedgehog. Though each character has their own plot threads, paths frequently cross and storylines intersect. Like Sonic Adventure 2, each of the three characters' campaigns does not represent just a single playable character, but a team of characters. For example, throughout the course of Sonic's story, one can expect to play portions of certain stages as Tails, or Knuckles. Likewise, players who choose Silver will at times be required to play as Blaze the Cat and Amy Rose, and lastly, Shadow teams up with Rouge the Bat from Sonic Adventure 2 and E-123 Omega from Sonic Heroes. Each character has abilities unique to them and can differ greatly from Sonic in terms of play style.

NPCs, side missions, and loading screens greet the player before a single action stage can be played.

The game is broken up in to two major modes: free-roaming "Town Stages" and more goal-oriented "Action Stages". A typical scenario involves exploring a Town Stage in order to find a way to access the next Action Stage, and once the level is complete, you're taken back to the Town Stage to repeat the process. Town Stages contain human NPCs, which can offer hints on how to find the next Action Stage, or offer side missions to complete. A handful of shops exist around the game world's hubs as well, which will sell upgrades that unlock new abilities.

New to the game is the "Action Gauge": a special meter that determines how much of a special ability each character can use. When the gauge depletes, the special ability is unavailable until it recharges. For example, Silver the Hedgehog can only use his psychokinesis until the action gauge is empty.

Dusty Desert is a stage where Sonic must carry Elise

Although Sonic's action gauge is always on-screen (just as it is for other characters) he possesses no abilities that deplete the action gauge except when Sonic is carrying Princess Elise, where it's used for a protective shield ability. This is perhaps a result of a rushed development cycle -- Presumably, Sonic's unlockable ''gem'' powers were originally intended to make use of the action gauge. In the final release, Sonic's gem powers do not deplete the action gauge and can thus be used without limit.

Plot

Smile and wave.

In Soleanna, the City of Water, its people are holding a celebration marked by the lighting of a giant torch called the "Sun of Soleanna". During a fireworks display right at the ceremony's peak, Doctor Eggman launches a missile attack on the celebration, and uses the ensuing commotion to swoop down and attempt to kidnap the only surviving member of royalty: Princess Elise. Eggman knows that contained inside of Princess Elise is a dark secret, known as "The Flames of Disaster", and he wants to use this power combined with the energy of the Chaos Emeralds to fuel his time machine, "Solaris", named after the Soleanna God of Time. With time travel firmly in his grasp, nothing would stop Eggman.

 This party's over.

Right on cue, Sonic the Hedgehog shows up to rescue the Princess. Unfortunately, a second ambush catches Sonic off guard, and he ultimately loses the Princess to the Doctor.

Watching this spectacle from the shadows is Silver the Hedgehog, who was sent from the future to kill Sonic, believing him to be "The Iblis Trigger". In the future, the world is in ruins caused by a destructive, sentient flame god called "Iblis". Silver was brought to the past by a mysterious being called "Mephiles" who has the power to travel through time, and even the power to send others through time. It was Mephiles who informed Silver that it was Sonic who unleashed Iblis and therefore the one responsible for destroying the world. Mephiles tells Silver: Sonic is killed in the past, Iblis will never be unleashed, and the future will be saved.

 Nice eyeliner.

Unknown to Silver, Mephiles is actually an evil entity who was supposed to be sealed inside the Scepter of Darkness centuries before Silver's time. Mephiles was accidentally released by Shadow the Hedgehog when he and Rouge the Bat attempted to steal the scepter from Dr. Eggman. Much to Shadow's confusion, Mephiles somehow seemed to know who Shadow was, as if they had a previous encounter - though this was Shadow's first meeting with Mephiles. After being freed, Mephiles banishes both Shadow and Rouge to the dystopian future from where Silver originates.

Sonic must save Elise, Silver must kill Sonic, and Shadow has to figure out a way back to his own time!

Action Stages

Just as was the case with Sonic Heroes, each of the characters' campaigns in Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) use remixed versions of each other's action stages. So although Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) has 9 main zones, each zone has 3 different versions played as different characters, making it 27 stages in all.

For example, Sonic's version of an action stage may not only have different enemy and object placement from Shadow's and Silver's, but might be traversed in a different order, or might have totally different level layouts, or will present totally different challenges and gimmicks -- For instance, whereas Sonic's Crisis City begins with a mandatory snowboarding segment, Shadow enters the same area on a vehicle and is even able to leave the vehicle and proceed on-foot. Some areas are also exclusive to one character or another. For instance, Sonic's Tropical Jungle is comprised of areas exclusive to Sonic, whereas Silver and Shadow have a Tropical Jungle stage comprised entirely of an area Sonic never gets to see, at least not in the main game.

Each stages even has a separate hard ''Hard'' version for each character, which present different enemy and object placement, among other changes. There are also ''Very Hard'' stages stages that present drastic changes to the level layouts, however, these ''Very Hard'' stages are only available by purchasing the downloadable content pack.

Most of the zones (excluding End of the World, and about one or two others) are selectable in Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)'s two different split-screen multiplayer modes. These are, once again, remixed versions of the stages and are designed for multiplayer. (including many parts that require specific cooperation from both players in order to proceed) The multiplayer stages cannot be played any other way except by selecting multiplayer mode.

The list of stages below is presented in the order which Sonic encounters them:

1. Wave Ocean

Wave Ocean is reminiscent of Emerald Coast from Sonic Adventure and even has its own whale chase sequence. Sonic's version of this stage begins as a normal Sonic stage before the player is required to play as Tails. After a loading screen, the player is presented with their first ''mach speed'' segment. (of which the game contains only four in total) In this one, Sonic must chase the Egg Carrier along a beach.

Wave Ocean is selectable in the multiplayer modes.

2. Dusty Desert

This arid desert is dotted with ruins. Sonic spends the entirety of this stage carrying Elise. Shadow and Silver versions of this stage take place inside ruins rather than outdoors, in an area Sonic and Elise never enter. Silver's Dusty Desert is home to the frustrating trick shot segment. Because of this segment it can easily take a player over an hour just to get past this stage as Silver.

Dusty Desert is selectable in the multiplayer modes. Both of the multiplayer versions of Dusty Desert are extended versions of the indoor segments.

3. White Acropolis

White Acropolis, Shadow's first stage in the game, is a remote base of Doctor Eggman located in a cold, mountainous region. Although Sonic is forced to use a snowboard on the first section, Shadow and Blaze proceed through this same area entirely on foot. The 2nd section begins in a canyon and leads into an expansive free roaming area where Shadow is presented with vehicles.

White Acropolis is selectable in the multiplayer modes. The multiplayer versions contain no snowboarding or vehicles.

4. Crisis City

Crisis City was later re-imagined in Sonic Generations

Silver's first stage. Sonic and friends eventually travel through Crisis City themselves after being hurled through time into a distant, post-apocalyptic future. This is stage that, for Sonic, consists of four short parts separated by loading screens. Tthe first part is comprised entirely of snowboarding, and the last part is a ''mach speed'' segment in which a fiery tornado literally assaults Sonic by throwing a constant, near-unavoidable barrage of objects.

5. Flame Core

Sonic and friends enter a volcano in their pursuit of a Chaos Emerald. This is a particularly treacherous stage where running along certain wall sections will inexplicably cause Sonic to fall off, thereby dropping into the lava below. The latter half of this stage takes place underground and, in one part, the player takes control of Knuckles.

6. Radical Train

Doctor Eggman is trying to get away on his train. It's up to Sonic and the gang to stop him. This is a two parter, the first half being a timed platforming stage, with the latter train chase sequence being a ''mach speed'' segment for Sonic, and a mandatory motorcycle segment as Shadow. Silver only plays the first segment and has no chase sequence.

7. Tropical Jungle

For Sonic this is a 2-part stage where he is forced to carry Elise the entire time. The Silver and Rouge version of this stage is an area entirely separate from Sonic's, and is literally a labyrinth of platforms with no clearly established routes, and a ton of exploration offered.

8. Kingdom Valley

This is the stage used in the demo for Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) as well as early previews. However, the first area does not end with a goal ring like it did in the demo. Instead, Sonic is taken to the 2nd part of a massive stage that consists of 4 parts in all, the last one being a ''mach speed'' segment inside a parted sea. It is also during this stage that Sonic and Silver cross paths for the final time.

Kingdom Valley is selectable in multiplayer. Unfortunately, the multiplayer stage consists solely of the area from the demo (in other words, the first part of Sonic's Kingdom Valley) and is therefore extremely short compared to the other multiplayer stages.

9. Aquatic Base

Aquatic Base is an underwater research lab that is now in use by Doctor Eggman, where Sonic and the others make one final pitch to save Princess Elise. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are each made use of in this stage, whereas Shadow and Silver go it by themselves.

Aquatic Base is selectable in multiplayer.

End of the World

This stage, named ''End of the World'', is part of the unlockable Last Story rather than the main 3 campaigns and is unlocked only after the main 3 campaigns have been played through. (Therefore, this stage doesn't have a separate version for Sonic, Shadow, and Silver.) This is an grueling stage consisting of 7 parts, each part played by a different character and based on one of the other zones in the game. As each character you must find and touch the chaos emerald. As time passes in the stage, more black holes appear, penalizing the player for taking too long. (although most of the black holes appear no matter what) After getting through this stage, the player can face the final boss.

Soundtrack

Sonic the Hedgehog's soundtrack was composed by Mariko Nanba, Tomoya Ohtani, Hideaki Kobayashi, Tai-Hey, and Jun Senoue, and was overseen by Masato Nakamura, the original composer for the Sega Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The game contains five vocal songs:

• "His World - Theme of Sonic the Hedgehog" by Tomoya Ohtani, Ali Tabatabaee, and Johnny Gioeli of the band Crush 40

• "Dreams of Absolution - Theme of Silver the Hedgehog" by Mariko Nanba, Lee Brotherton and The Remix Factory
• "All Hail Shadow - Theme of Shadow the Hedgehog" by Jun Senoue, Mike Szuter and Johnny Gioeli of the band Crush 40
• "My Destiny - Theme of Princess Elise" by Mariko Nanba, Candie Y, and Donna De Lory
• "Sweet Dream - AKON '06 Mix" by Dreams Come True and AKON

Development History

Sonic in the first teaser trailer for ''Sonic The Hedgehog''

The game was first shown behind closed doors at E3 in May 2005. Shown along side a number of other real-time tech demos Sega created for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, the "Hedgehog" tech demo featured a real-time animated scene of Sonic racing through miles of forest as robots closed in around him. Sonic found himself at the ruins of an old castle, where the demonstrator took control to showcase a real-time physics engine, with golden rings bouncing around the dilapidated environment. The animation resumed, with Sonic being chased out of the ruins by the squad of robots who had been hunting him. Now outside, an airship loomed overhead. Cargo doors opened, and hundreds of hunter robots poured out, completely surrounding Sonic on all sides. Having nowhere to escape to, the robots all simultaneously open fire on the blue hedgehog, and the hail of gunfire presumably leaves Sonic for dead. However, from the smoke rises the now-transformed Super Sonic. Super Sonic flies forward at high speed to meet the robot army head on - the tech demo animation ending right before we see the final result.

This may sting a bit.

Despite being played for a select audience behind closed doors, cell phone video footage of the demonstration was leaked on to the internet within hours of being shown. The game was officially announced on September 9th, 2005 by current President of Sonic Team, Yuji Naka, who stated that they would be treating the game on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 as if it were the original Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis - implying that they would be redesigning every aspect of the character and his world from scratch. The game was to be a new beginning for Sonic, developed towards goal: "What if Sonic the Hedgehog existed in the real world?" When officially announced, the same animated scene from the behind-closed-doors demonstration was shown, minus the interactive ring physics demo. Instead, a brief demonstration of the actual game itself was revealed, showing a very early version of the level known as "Kingdom Valley". The highlight of the gameplay demonstration was the game's lighting engine, which self-shadowed everything in the environment. This was to fuel the game's real-time day/night cycle, a first for a Sonic title.

Not long after that point, Yuji Naka left Sega to start his own company, PROPE. Yojiro Ogawa, who was once in charge with developing a Nintendo Wii port of this game, took half of the game's staff to create Sonic & The Secret Rings instead. Under-staffed, Producer Shun Nakamura and the remnants of Sonic Team limped towards their scheduled November 2006 release date, where reports from supposed "anonymous" Quality Assurance Testers at Sega claim the game was over-budget and so rushed for time that all bug reports had to be ignored in order to make the release deadline.

Trivia

• 

  Kingdom Valley with the scrapped day/night cycle.
  Despite being a focal point of the original gameplay demonstration, the game's real-time day/night cycle was removed shortly after the game was unveiled.
• A number of online multiplayer modes were at one point planned; Time Trial, Ring Race, and most cryptically, "Quiz". The final version of the game has no online multiplayer. Instead, it has just offline split screen multiplayer, in which two players can choose to play as Sonic, Shadow, or Silver and play together in either a versus or cooperative mode. Each of the two modes has its own remixed versions of the action stages found in the main game. These stages can't be played any other way.
• Viewing the game's main executable in a hex editor reveals a bevvy of cut content and features, including planned (but never released) Downloadable Content like "Super Hard Mode" (Unless it is referring to the ''Very Hard'' DLC stages, which were in fact released), Xbox 360 icon sets (although gamerpics based on the game were made available for purchase from the Xbox Live store), dashboard themes (which were also available from the Xbox Live store), a real-time version of the original tech demo animation, and music packs for every game spanning Sonic's 15 year history.
• 

  A texture rip of Sonic's equips reveals a lot of items that were never used.
  Also cut were items to buy from the shop: A "Speed Booster" item for Silver that increased his top speed, and for Sonic, a special "Rainbow Gem" equip that possibly allowed him to transform in to Super Sonic at will, like he could in the old Sega Genesis Sonic games. At one point, extra 1ups could also be purchased from shops.
• Perhaps the biggest content cut came in the form of extra missions for each playable character in the game - Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Silver, Amy, Blaze, Shadow, Omega, and Rouge. (Unless this is referring to the ''Amigo'' stages, which was in fact made available as downloadable content and featured all of the playable characters in the game.) However, listed among these names was a heretofore unseen secret tenth playable character: Metal Sonic, Sonic's long-time robotic doppelganger which originally debuted in Sonic CD. Curiously, Metal Sonic is not referenced anywhere else in the game, and no data for him exists anywhere else on the disc.
• In addition, the game was slated to feature alternate level objectives, similar to Sonic Adventure 2. Mission description text exists tasking you to get to the goal ring within a specific time limit, finding a newly re-located goal ring, collecting a specific amount of rings, defeating all the enemies, and clearing the mini-game. None of this is present in the game.
• More Level Objective text exists, possibly relating to the game's cut multiplayer modes: "Get to the goal ring before the ghost" and "Get to the goal ring before your rival" - Ghost possibly a reference to time trial ghosts, a feature often seen in racing games. However, no such ghost feature or mode exists in the final release.
• The Tokyo Game Show 2006 trailer for the game showcases a build of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) that is somewhat different from the final release -- There are a large number of additional effects and flourish animations present in the TGS 2006 trailer that simply do not exist in the final retail version of the game.
  
• Though customizing Sonic's abilities was a major selling point (even as far as being a bullet point on the back of the box), the final release features no actual "customization" to speak of, except for the unlockable gems which grant Sonic a bevy of odd and downright broken abilities such as the ability to perform a tornado kick attack, jump in midair (and do so infinitely), or perform a speed boost. However, these gem abilities are only available after clearing Sonic's story, and once purchased, cannot be unequipped or otherwise disabled, they can only be toggled through while in-game by using the directional pad. In this sense, Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) features no actual ''customization'', per se.
• The instruction manual for Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) contains a number of inaccuracies that do not accurately reflect the final game. For one thing it describes the possibility of leveling up the Action Gauge to three levels of "Maturity", and that as the Gauge levels up, the ability equipped to it will get more powerful. In the final release, neither Shadow or Silver can equip moves to their Action Gauge. Furthermore, unless carrying the Princess, Sonic's Action Gauge is not used at all.
• The manual also makes reference to a green shield power-up (similar to one seen in past Sonic games). This shield power-up does not exist, nor is any shield power is ever acquired from item pickups.
  
• In addition, the manual also mentions that Tails and Omega can only fly until their "Flight Gauge" depletes. No flight gauge is ever visible, and Omega cannot fly - only hover.
• Even prior to attaining it, the text for the Xbox 360 achievement " Nights of Kronos" suggests there is an alternate ending sequence to the game. (The achievement writes: "Unlock the complete ending to the last hidden story.") Meeting the requirements to get the achievement (S-Rank the entire Last Episode -- In other words, S-Rank the final boss and the action stage ''End of the World''.) does not actually change anything about the ending.
• Early design documents state that Silver's original name was at one point "Venice" and Princess Elise's name was at one point "Oliga".
• 

  Early Sonic 1 concept art
  Princess Elise and her role as a human "damsel in distress" is similar to a scrapped concept for the original Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) on Sega Genesis, where Sonic was tasked with rescuing a woman named Madonna.
• During Shadow's story, the Scepter of Darkness is mistakenly referred to as the "Book of Darkness" at one point.
• A PC port for Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) was teased in the instruction manual for the PC version of Sonic Riders, but was never mentioned anywhere else ever again.
• 

  A fur-shaded Sonic?
  Early concept art released by Blur Studios depicts a fur shaded version of the Sonic the Hedgehog character, having a slightly more hairy appearance than normal. This was perhaps related to the vision of creating a more "realistic" Sonic title.
• In August 2009, Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) was made available as a downloadable title for Xbox 360, as one of the first titles available on Xbox Live Marketplace's Games on Demand service. It was sold with a price of $19.99 US plus tax. The title was eventually delisted from the service about a year later, in an effort made by Sega to remove "poorly rated Sonic titles from the marketplace".