I played and enjoyed Sonic 1 2 and Spinball. I have had no interest in the games since spinball.

I like how your poll doesn't account for me =P

I kind of love the fact that Sonic somehow still exists today, though.

As someone that never owned a Sega console, I never really got my first proper taste of a Sonic game until Sonic Adventure 2 on the GameCube. And oh my lord is that game just terrible. Not for the Sonic/Shadow parts; those are OK. The Tails/Eggman stages are fine, too, in their own mindless way. But those Knuckles/Rouge stages. Ugh. That gem-hunting was just atrocious. The worst.

I have not played any Sonic games to any great degree since for a better comparison. All I can say is that my first real attempt at playing a Sonic game was not a good Sonic game.

Generations was really good, especially the soundtrack. Everything between SA2 and that kinda sucked though (the day levels in Unleashed were great, it was just the Werehog parts that were terrible).

They should bring back the Chao Garden. That was the best part of the Adventure games.

I thought about adding a "Never liked" option but I figured those people wouldn't be interested in the blogs so their info wouldn't be super useful. DEMOGRAPHICS SON.

The treasure hunting segments are exclusive to the Adventure games, if that helps. In the original Adventure your 'radar' would work for any of the crystals and the environments were a bit smaller so you could fly around and get a good idea of where any of the treasure was. In 2, they arbitrarily decided that it would only tell you one. That and a few other decisions make your opinion fairly common in the fandom.

I was kind of amazed at how well the soundtracks were evne in awful entries like Shadow The Hedgehog and Heroes.

Sonic 1, 2 and 3/K are the only ones that I think are good. Not great, but there was quality. I only liked the Adventure games because I was young and immature.

Haven't played any of the Nintendo exclusives, except for Advance, or the PS2 games.

I enjoyed Sonic 2 and Sonic CD. I enjoy watching speedruns of the 3d ones because of how hilariously broken they are, but you couldn't pay me to play them.

Darkspinessonic's runs of sonic '06 are particularly fantastic.

They just did generic buttrock songs for every game starting with Adventure, Generations broke that trend with some sicknasty "Classic" remixes of songs which just have a ton of synths and autotune and sound amazing.

They also did "Modern" remixes of the Classic songs which are just orchestral versions.

@odie_esty: I didn't say I never liked Sonic haha

@corruptedevil: If you only watch the trailers maybe. The buttrock is there but the levels themselves just have really good music, even shadow the Edgehog.

Although I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the buttrock on some level. The stupid Knuckles raps go right form ironic to genuine love for me.

This exactly. I tried & Knuckles and though it was just more of 2 and inferior.

Now that's intriguing, I didn't expect people to be a bit luke warm on 3.

Around the third or fourth level of the first Sonic game.

I think Sonic 3 has more bad then good and thus is not a well made game. Sonic & Knuckles is actually a lot better. I'm one of the few people who fucking love Knuckles Chaotix (and own a 32x still) but I don't care about anything between that and Sonic Colors. I enjoyed Colors and Generations quite a bit, Lost World had too much unbearable voice acting that you had no way to avoid, so I barely played it. The Zelda zone was cool though.

So anything other than what you can play on a Genesis and its add ons, and the 3 most recent games to a degree, I think is fucking garbage. I also think all the characters would be much better off mute and less like freaky realistic anime furries. Like they were in those Genesis games. That'd be a good start if they're ever going to give a real go at redeeming the series.

I had the first Sonic when I was a kid and I never really thought all that much of it. It was one of the handful of games I'd play every once in a while because I had it and I was bored on a Saturday afternoon, and never really got that far or anything. Just would fuck around for a while and go "ok done with that I'll switch to this other game instead" until some good cartoons came on or something.

Only Sonic game I've ever truly enjoyed was 'Sonic Spinball.' I played, and liked, 1-3, but they never caught on.

When that music started playing when Sonic was about to drown. As a 5 year old kid I couldn't handle the pressure.

I've never played Chaotix but I saw it recently and it's a pretty inventive game. It's a shame it gets lost in the shuffle. The sonic series in general doesn't really adhere to a formula as much as I once thought, each game is kind of it's own little microcosm. That's kind of what I find so intriguing about it. It's less reliable than Mario but I kind of find it more interesting.

the dirty secret is ＳＯＮＩＣ ＷＡＳ ＮＥＶＥＲ ＦＵＮ

naw that isn't true. Thought I do kind of subscribe to the "sonic was never good" theory. but good and fun are not the same thing, kids can find anything fun .

By the way, did anyone but me in the entire world play and enjoy the BioWare made Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood? I never see anyone talking about it and I had a hell of a time finding a new copy, had to buy a used kart from ebay in the end.

@amafi: I did, it was pretty fun but short and easy.

I mainly switched over to PC gaming after the Genesis. Glad to know I haven't missed anything because the first three were games I remember fondly.

Since the very beginning.

@probablytuna: I mean it didn't really stop then did it?

The last Sonic Game I played and enjoyed on older consoles was Sonic 3D Blast, but probably because I had less to play at the time.

The last best traditional Sonic game was Sonic 3 & Knuckles. There was also all of those GBA releases which were fun to an extent, but lacked the soul of the level design in particular that the older games had. I also later played Sonic CD and recognize it as a pretty awesome Sonic experience compared to recent games, but I've never put the time into completing it.

11-year-old me thought Sonic Heroes was pretty bad, but that same 11-year-old did so in comparison to the Adventure games, which I now fully acknowledge were probably never any good. That also didn't stop me from renting (and finishing) Shadow the Hedgehog, which might be one of the earliest examples of me intentionally seeking out bad games and playing them for weird thrills.

But of course this all assumes that Sonic was ever any good to begin with, which I'm not sure is something I'm willing to bank on. Those Genesis games are fine, but they're products of their time. Remove them from the context of the early 90s and they don't exactly hold up in comparison to Super Mario World. I dunno. What I played of Generations seemed genuinely alright.

Sonic was never fun. Sonic is bad. Sonic is only good on the Mega Drive/Genesis. Sonic doesn't work in 3D etc etc etc. Yawn.

I still like Sonic, I still love the MD games, Generations is probably the best game in the series... The 3D levels are the standout sections. I've grown pretty tired of people telling me something I find fun was never fun and I'm just fooling myself. This isn't to say I don't have problems with the series. The over reliance on friends, the majority of the 3D games are poor and the last two games (probably soon to be three) have been a real step back from Generations and Colours... Those two games can't be held up as a return to form forever.

Sonic 06 is the worst game I have ever played.

I pretty much only ever liked the Green Hills Zone of the first game.

♫ Rolling around at the speed of sound

Got places to go, gotta FOLLOW MY RAINBOW ♪

Err...I mean, what? After Sonic 2...yeah, after Sonic 2...

Gotta go with Adventure 2 as being the point where I stopped liking the Sonic games in general. It was a combination of the next few games being okay at best (and then Shadow the Hedgehog... an awful game) and a general moving away from the Platformer as one of my genre's of choice.

The music on the other hand, I still really like. So much so I spent $60+ importing SA1/SA2 20th anniversary soundtracks (as well as the Crush 40 Best Of), right before then ended up getting put on iTunes.

Can...can I submit a write in candidate for "Always"? Sonic has never really been fun for me. He goes too fast and I can't even see what I'm "doing", so it ends up that I'm not doing much of anything at all besides looking at colors.

@gunstarred said:

I don't mean to bother you, but your post blew my mind.

What? That he's correct?

@cornbredx: Awesome!?

I only ever played Sonic 1&2 and really liked those. Adventure is where I lost all my interest to even pay attention to what was happening with the series, because I thought the idea of mixing Sonic together with modern world and humans was fucking terrible.

I've always sucked at Sonic games, so I guess I never really found them fun. I'd go fast for a while and then hit a wall, or spike, or enemy, and then spend a few seconds jumping around like a moron trying to get all my rings back and then repeat the cycle. I could never really hit that stride that everyone else seems to in order to fully enjoy Sonic games. I just realized after playing a bit of Generations recently, that I will never be good at Sonic games, whether they are 2D or 3D.

I need a post Sonic jam/R option, basically Sonic died when the Dreamcast launched. It's a shame because I used to really love sonic, but now I have been hurt too many times.

@corruptedevil: It's not about an agreement or disagreement, relax. I'm pretty luke warm on all the sonic games passed the ones I mentioned earlier.

As I highlighted he quoted others as saying "Sonic doesn't work in 3D etc etc etc. Yawn."

Then he went on to say: "I've grown pretty tired of people telling me something I find fun was never fun and I'm just fooling myself."

Then he said: "the majority of the 3D games are poor and the last two games (probably soon to be three) have been a real step back from Generations and Colours..."

Now, I'm a fan of irony. This turn of events is hilarious to me and blows my mind. Basically he said: He is tired of people saying the 3D versions of Sonic suck, but the 3D versions of Sonic suck.

I couldn't help but comment on it because I found it funny. I didn't say he was right or wrong- I have no opinion on it one way or another, and don't really believe people have wrong opinions.

@gunstarred: Awesome indeed. No offense intended. =)

Man, I still think the art of the first game still hasn't been duplicated well after almost 25 years ago.

@cornbredx: The first part I wrote is the same old stuff that always gets said about Sonic games, hence the yawn. The people that often claim that Sonic doesn't work in 3D are people that haven't touched the series since the Adventure days. There's plenty of examples that Sonic in 3D CAN work.

Just because the majority of 3D Sonic games are bad doesn't mean that all of them are. The sections in Generations, Colours and some of Unleashed's daytime stages are great. Even Lost World is enjoyable at the beginning of the game.

When I mean being tired of people saying Sonic was never fun I am referring to the people that insist Sonic was only ever good because we were kids and didn't know any better. Jeff, Patrick and even Ryan when Sonic 4 was announced have stated this numerous times. I enjoyed those games then and I still enjoy them now, nostalgia has nothing to do with it.

I enjoyed Sonic up to Riders but up to that point, I had purchased few games that were not Sonic games. I got a late start on gaming so I didn't know what games to get so I went with the game I enjoyed the most in the bundle I got. When I bought an Xbox 360 and a Wii, I realized that everything I had played was only good due to it being my only experience. I started at Sonic Adventure on the Gamecube and I liked Adventure 2, Heroes, Shadow and Riders.

Sonic and Knuckles + 3 was the height. After that it started to go downhill from there. I think everyone had high hopes for the 3d transition on Dreamcast, but the game lost all its charm. The mixing of realistic environments with the Sonic world was just disturbing. Sonic used to be a high quality franchise, but with the 3d transition it just seemed cheap. Sega made a real big mistake with the game direction for this franchise.

Bingo.

Where's the option for the person whose enjoyment isn't linear? I like the Genesis games, dropped off after the Adventure games, got back on the enjoyment train for Unleashed through Generations and then fell off again with Lost World and Boom.

Where's the "After Sonic 2" option? Mostly as a result of never owning Sonic 3, but I played a bit of Sonic 1, thought it was alright, played a ton of Sonic 2, thought it was great, but never really had any desire to try anything else in the series.

Actually I take it back , forgot about this, I did end up playing a decent amount of Sonic CD, I felt that that was kind of the culmination of Sonic, at least for me. The levels were great, the music was especially great, I really like that game. That said, the whole time travel mechanics (while really clever), made it really confusing as to how the hell to actually beat the game, and at one point I got stuck and haven't played it since.

On June 23, 1991. (That was the day it was released in case you were wondering)

When Sonic 3d Blast ended up not being Super Mario RPG with Sonic

NEVER

The only Sonic game I had access to as a kid was Sonic 2, and I adored it. Years later when I picked up a Sonic collection for the Gamecube I fiddled around with the rest of them, and none held my attention for more than 5 minutes. None of those games are very good. I can still play and enjoy Sonic 2 to this day, but it's all on the back of my nostalgia. If I'm being honest the only thing that really holds up today is the music.

If we're talking modern Sonic games well... my nephew likes them well enough so at least someones satisfied.

So the story begins and ends at 2 for me. I guess Mean Bean Machine is ok too.

I played Sonic 1, 2 and CD which I liked. I also really liked Sonic R, which is the best sonic game. This was when I was fairly young.

When Sonic Heroes released I also enjoyed that but I kind of knew it wasn't very good. Then I got Unleashed on Wii and realised it was shit.