Sonic wasn't always the beaten-up shell of a hedgehog he is today. When Sega launched the first Sonic the Hedgehog game on its 16-bit Genesis console in 1991, the action game was a huge hit. Sega positioned Sonic as its answer to Nintendo's Mario series, backed with a massive marketing blitz.

Sonic was the new hotness: He ran across the game screen with blazing speed and had a too-cool-for-school attitude that any mascot needed in the early '90s. Kids and core gamers alike ate it up.

What they discovered beyond the marketing was that Sonic the Hedgehog was one of the best platform games on the market. The levels were cleverly designed with lots of secrets, and players learned that they had to manage Sonic's blazing speed with precision, lest he slam into an enemy and grind to a screeching halt. The result was a risk-reward system that forced players to use momentum to their advantage.

Sega cranked out several well-received Sonic games for 16-bit systems, but when the game made its belated leap to 3-D in 1999, Sonic lost his way. The character remains a popular mascot and lucrative cash cow for Sega – Sonic Unleashed, the latest game in the series, sold nearly 2.5 million copies even with a Metacritic ranking in the low 60s – but the quality of the games has dropped like a rock over the last decade.

Sega has announced two new Sonic games this year. The downloadable Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is a return to old-school 2-D mechanics, and the Wii game Sonic Colors continues the 3-D style. Since fans have largely given up on the 3-D games being worthwhile, they've pinned their hopes on Sonic 4. As the first new 2-D Sonic for home game machines since 1994, it's what fans have been asking for. If Sega can't get it right this time, we might as well abandon all hope.

Early red flags indicate Sonic 4 isn't quite shaping up. Sega said last month that it would delay the game to "allow for more careful focus on the design of each level and to provide additional polish." In its current state, Sonic 4 doesn't look like it will buck the trend. A series of – videos that showed off the whole game long before its release date revealed that it was on the short track to mediocrity.

The game's developer, Dimps, seems to have at least gotten one thing right by keeping the design simple. Sonic is the only playable character in the game, unlike many other titles that became bogged down with extraneous playable characters.

Unfortunately, it seems like all the other problems of the 3-D Sonic games may remain.

Sonic Adventure: Beginning of the End ————————————-

Sonic Adventure may have wowed the world over with its impressive chased-by-a-whale sequence back when it launched on the Dreamcast. But today, the game is seen as the beginning of Sonic's decline. Sonic Adventure was the progenitor of all the problems that plague Sonic to this day.

While previous Sonic games on the Sega Genesis had added playable characters other than Sonic, the alternate choices were two characters that were actually quite similar to the hedgehog: Tails the fox and Knuckles the echidna. Tails could fly and Knuckles could climb up walls, but their respective abilities didn't change the game design in any way other than allowing them to reach hidden areas where Sonic couldn't go.

Sonic Adventure took the idea much further. The game introduced unique levels, new game mechanics and many more characters, each with its own storyline. Every one besides Sonic played terribly. Lengthy story sequences proved boring, and the other characters' controls ranged from unpolished to completely broken. The most maligned: Big the Cat, whose levels consisted entirely of fishing – as if Sega were trying to find the thing that would fit in least with Sonic.

Unleashing the Beast ——————–

All Sonic games after Sonic Adventure have dialed down the amount of playable characters – and yet each has introduced at least one more protagonist besides Sonic. It's come to the point where more time is spent playing as Sonic's friends than actually playing as the title character.

Even in games where the playable roster is comparatively small, Sega always insists on introducing some gimmick for each game that ends up bogging down the entire thing.

Although Sega said that 2008's Sonic Unleashed would mark a return to Sonic's roots, it later unveiled the Werehog, a creature Sonic transformed into during the game's nighttime sequences. These levels turned Unleashed into a beat 'em-up similar to God of War.

In theory, anyway. In practice, Sonic Unleashed's night levels are so mindless and so numbingly boring that any comparison to a game like God of War would be ludicrous. The night levels are slow as molasses, which is ironic seeing as how it's a Sonic game, and you can't go 20 feet without running into a forced enemy encounter. Adding insult to injury, the levels are excruciatingly long, with infrequent checkpoints and some truly sloppy jumping segments.

Lost in the Speedy Shuffle ————————–

Even though Big the Cat and the Werehog are emblematic of Sonic's decline, the series' biggest problem isn't his crappy friends and alter egos.

No, Sonic's biggest problem is that Sega may no longer understand what made the original games good to begin with. The Sonic the Hedgehog marketing campaign might have emphasized his blazing speed, but that's not what the gameplay was all about. Speed wasn't an easy thing to come by in the original games. In fact, you were liable to die if you went too fast. There were very few boost pads to make you go faster, and the games didn't offer you the ability to dash at the touch of a button like modern games do. Speed was a rarity, a reward for the player's skill at keeping the momentum going.

Managing momentum was important because of the curves in the level design. Players could gain speed by rolling down inclines and could even roll up hills to reach hidden areas, provided they maintained their forward momentum.

The classic level designs were also much more intricate, featuring different paths to the goal. Most levels had top, middle and bottom paths, which always led to the same place but had varying difficulty levels. Classic levels were also filled with more platforming sequences and other obstacles, forcing players to occasionally go slow and steady.

Contrast this with the levels in the 3-D Sonic games, which are designed in such a way as to facilitate as much high-speed running as possible. Modern Sonic levels are typically flat and straightforward, with plenty of straight lines on which to build speed. Loop-de-loops and boost pads are everywhere, and the result is that the levels are usually constructed to show off how fast Sonic can hoof it. Rarely do you have to do any jumping or exploration that requires your full attention.

Instead of incorporating the design principles of older games, it would seem from the videos that Sonic 4 might use the same streamlined level design as contemporary 3-D games. The leaked videos are filled with straightforward levels filled with boost pads and places for Sonic to run fast with minimal risk. Where are the branching pathways, the risk and reward?

Both Sega and Sonic's long-suffering fans surely want Sonic 4 to recapture the magic that made the 2-D games so popular. But that doesn't mean just snapping the camera to a fixed position and calling it a day. What's crucial is that Sega create intricate levels that serve not merely to get Sonic moving as fast as possible, but provide players with engaging obstacles and hidden routes.

By giving this game – the umpteenth Sonic adventure – the name Sonic the Hedgehog 4, Sega is putting its stake in the ground. The meaning is clear: This is the return to form, as if all that messy stuff never happened. It had better feel that way, or else Sonic's going to spin-dash into oblivion.

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