Now don’t get me wrong, I love nintendo as much as the next bloke, BUT! When I was a lad, nothing really swayed me toward the potential of videogame consoles as a platform (as opposed to my trusty 5086 amstrad of the time) than seeing Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive at a friend’s house. Sure i’d been playing on consoles and appreciated their charm prior to this – i’d regularly visit my mate James and spend hours battling through Mario Bros and Chip ‘n’ Dale on his NES, but there was something about the speed of hurtling through levels that really opened my eyes to console gaming.
Granted its likely that the leap to 16bit didn’t hurt things (a 16bit RISC processor you say? wowzer) but there was more to Sonic than the speed (if only a little more!) – the level design, and general pinball-esque concept was undeniably addictive and that’s what assured Sonic a place in all our hearts as a gaming ‘classic’.
Now i’m sure there are plenty of my friends, largely die-hard ninty fans that would quaff at the idea of my love of Sonic, and this is thanks in no small part to the demise of the Sonic games. Some stronger supporters than I would argue that Sonic games continued to be great as far as the Saturn and Dreamcast, but for me, it all went wrong when ‘Sonic 3D’ came out on the Mega Drive around ’96. This isometric view sonic was the first attempt to revamp the series by presenting the same characters & world from a new viewpoint. Big Mistake! ’3D was slow (granted it was still a megadrive game, but the action was far slower than the previous Sonic games) and just didn’t have any of the appeal or level design sense of madness that gripped you throughout 1, 2, & Knuckles etc..
Nowadays Sega are out of the hardware game. They concentrate their efforts solely on software and are doing well again, but i’ve never really sat and thought back about my days playing Sonic until I saw the following trailer for Sonic : Unleashed, which really made me think they might have come up with another potentially classic Sonic game.. Well I’m excited anyway 
