Note: This essay was written on a dare. Despite this, my feelings on the matter are genuine.

There are two fronts on which Sonic 2006 succeeds in spite of itself. One is cultural, and the other is innate. The cultural aspect is probably easier to describe so I will begin there.

The documentary “The Best Worst Movie” tells of a failed horror movie from 1990 called Troll 2. Troll 2 was so incompetently made that a fandom grew around an ironic appreciation of that fact. There is bemusement to be had in a work of art that fails spectacularly. But, as the documentary points out, failure is simply not enough in a world packed to burst with poorly made films. For a bad film to stand out, it cannot be boring. It must be memorable. It must be bad in a good way. Troll 2 succeeds in this regard perfectly, constantly raising the stakes of its badness. The film contains highlights and catch-phrases for its audience to anticipate and celebrate. The awkward corn-on-the-cob sex scene is met with applause. Recitations of the immortal line, “you can’t piss on hospitality! I won’t allow it!” beat the film to the punch.

Sonic 2006 carries many of these positively negative traits. Whenever I watch someone play the game, it’s always in the context of milestones and highlights. It’s delightful to savor moments such as one’s first encounter with the wildly out-of-control “Mach Speed” sections. The awkward romance scenes. The infuriatingly broken Silver the Hedgehog boss fight. The snowboarding section. A new player’s pain upon reaching his or her first game over and realizing that there is no auto-save function, resetting their progress back to zero. The line, “I’ve finally found him. The Iblis trigger.” These moments, and many more, are so numerous and paced in such a satisfying way. Speaking of the game’s impressive pacing, it reaches a crescendo with a final act that must be experienced to be believed. It begins with the famous blue hedgehog being murdered in cold blood, reaches a boil with the most artificially difficult and convoluted gameplay challenge I’ve seen in any game, and then crosses the finish line with its infamous bestiality-laden kiss. Consider that for a moment: in spite of Sonic Team’s general inability to deliver on the product, some sort of sixth sense pushed them to save the game’s absolute nadir for its curtain call. It’s like a Broadway reprieve of crap that one can't help but fall in love with. Sonic 06 is so intricate in the way it crushes a player’s spirits and brings glee to those ‘in the know’ that I can barely believe it was accidental.

But that is simply what one can experience from watching it. After purchasing and playing the game for myself, I was delighted to find an entirely new wrinkle in which to enjoy Sonic 2006.

There have been games that position themselves as comedies since the medium began. To name a few: Leisure Suit Larry. Earthworm Jim. Portal. Jazzpunk. However, those games, regardless of whether you find them funny or not, actually have little to do with comedy on a mechanical level. Portal, for example, is not a comedy game. It’s a puzzle game with jokes added on top. If you took away the characters’ voices, then it ceases to be a comedy game entirely. This may strike you as a pointless thought experiment, and to an extent it is. Telling you to imagine Portal without the comedic dialogue isn't very enlightening, because Portal does and forever will have that dialogue. But it is notable that there are few examples of video games with humor baked into the non-superficial parts of the experience. In film, there are ways to be funny with “just” cinematography. For example, a static wide shot will generally appear to be humorous. A song like Yakkety Sax can sound humorous even without lyrics. Consider the video game industry’s repeated attempts to push non-comedic emotions into the mechanical space. A game like Shadow of the Colossus packs many different emotions and implicit relationships into its mechanics.

This is something of a roundabout way of saying that Sonic 2006 is a landmark game in the comedy space because it feels funny to play. It’s something that’s difficult to describe to someone without putting their hands on the controller, but I’ll give it a try. At a core level, humor is about subverted expectations. When you first see Dick Van Dyke stride across his living room, you don't expect him to trip and fall over the ottoman. When he does, your mind reacts to the surprise with laughter. Or perhaps you don't laugh, because you're familiar with the scene already or familiar enough with the construction of comedic tropes to see the pratfall coming before it happens. The amount of laughs the scene gives you is directly correlated to your expectations.

When playing a video game, one expects the output to react to their input. You press a button and Mario jumps. Of course, a version of the game where Mario died when you pressed the button instead might be funny once, but would cease to be surprising afterwards. This is why Sonic 06 is a machine precision built to subvert your expectations. It holds itself together just barely enough that you expect each individual action to function. When the game ceases to function, it's often in a manner that's difficult to predict. But even aside from its bugs, Sonic 06 subverts the very idea of what the baseline of gameplay is. It is next to impossible to make Sonic move in a straightforward direction. There's a giddy deliriousness to Sonic's movement controls that transcend simply being "bad". Instead, I'd argue that the controls in Sonic 06 are tuned impeccably for comedic value.

Consider, then, how this innate comedy mixes with the cultural comedy. The amount of concentration the player must pour into such 'rewards' as seeing a cartoon hedgehog make it with a woman further adds to the level of humor. Playing Sonic 06 is nothing if not a struggle, but not only is the struggle in vain but the game's scenario is constantly reminding the player of that fact. There's a level of intellectual delight to this interaction between game and player that's reminiscent of the absurdist qualities of many fine works of classic Russian literature.

Of course, Sonic 2006 is not the only game to ever ship half-finished and full of bugs. A perusal of YouTube’s many upset video game nerd character actors will attest to that. In fact, it’s not even the first Sonic game to ship in such a state. But like Troll 2, the quality and variety of 06’s broken-ness shines through. As a bad game, Sonic 2006 is memorable and not boring. Furthermore, between playing for myself and watching others play, Sonic 2006 has given me more hours of entertainment than most from that generation of consoles. That is why Sonic 2006 is the best worst game. Thank you.