I recall many years ago the creation of a blue hedgehog, a cocky little fellow who would become the mascot and rival to a plumber in blue overalls and a red cap. He had his own morning cartoon show, a slew of great platforming titles, and the love of a nation of gamers. It seemed nothing could go wrong.

But now... now, Sonic the Hedgehog is dead.



After taking a step in the right direction with Sonic and the Secret Rings (the best Sonic game in years, I might add), Sonic Team has proceeded to take ten thousand steps back by bringing us a sword-wielding Sonic in his latest Wii adventure. It screams "Shadow the Hedgehog" all over again. It also made me do this:



If you are scratching your heads over the news... well, so am I. I'm not surprised Sonc Team would do something this dumb, but I'm surprised how dumb they can be. But in a world where Castlevania is being turned into a fighting game and Soulcalibur was an adventure title, I should know better than to be surprised by a move like this. On the other hand, I can't wait for Forza 3 to be a turn-based RPG.



Oh, and let's not forget Sonic Unleashed. We at least knew this was coming. Half the game appears to be classic Sonic fun... but the other half features Sonic as a stretchy-armed werewolf beating up bad guys. Having had my worst fears about this game confirmed at E3, and with the DS games being the lone sliver of light left in the entire franchise (I can't believe a Sonic RPG is beating out two Sonic platforming titles in this regard), it's as good as time as any to say that the Sonic franchise is dead. Forever. As in there is no coming back from this point

No amount of awesome platforming in future titles is ever going to be able to undo the damage that had been done. Imagine if this were Mario, and Nintendo had decided to make a bunch of Mario games were he ran around with a machine gun and fought in giant robot battles. Sound ridiculous? It's pretty much the same thing.

The grave has been dug for a long time now. The casket was lowered when Sonic for the 360 and PS3 came out. Now, they're just finishing filling up the hole with dirt. It's a hard truth to swallow, especially in a day and age when one good game can reinvigorate an entire franchise, but Sonic is really past saving. And Sega can't blame anyone but themselves for it.

At least we'll always have sweet memories of years gone by...



*sigh*













Also, screw Sonic Team.