Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 video game)

Sonic the Hedgehog
North American box art
Developer(s)	Sonic Team
Publisher(s)	Sega
Director(s)	Shun Nakamura
Producer(s)	Masahiro Kumono
Artist(s)	Akira Mikame
Writer(s)	Shun Nakamura Kiyoko Yoshimura Shiro Maekawa
Composer(s)	Hideaki Kobayashi Tomoya Ohtani Mariko Nanba Taihei Sato Takahito Eguchi
Series	Sonic the Hedgehog
Engine	Havok
Platform(s)	Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Release date(s)	Xbox 360 NA November 14, 2006 EU November 24, 2006 AUS November 30, 2006 JP December 21, 2006[1] PlayStation 3 JP December 21, 2006 NA January 30, 2007 PAL March 23, 2007[2]
Genre(s)	Platform, action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player Multiplayer

Sonic the Hedgehog (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ, Sonikku za Hejjihoggu) is a 2006 platform video game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game primarily allows the player to use Sonic, Shadow and Silver across several stages. Other secondary characters also become playable across the game. The plot follows Sonic's quest to protect Princess Elise after she is kidnapped by his rival Dr. Eggman and is aided by new and returning allies.

The game shares its name with two earlier Sonic games, a manga, a television series, a comic book series, and their eponymous main character. To disambiguate, the game has been referred to as Sonic '06.^[3] It was produced in commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The game faced multiple issues during development, which resulted in rushing the product despite existing bugs. Both versions were heavily criticized for long loading times, poor camera system, gameplay glitches, complicated plot and sloppy character control.

Gameplay

Screenshot showing Sonic's gameplay, running across a beach.

Sonic the Hedgehog is a platform game with action-adventure elements. The main player characters are the titular Sonic, Silver or Shadow the Hedgehog, but others are available for short periods. Sonic's levels generally focus on speed, with some sections having him run at full speed while dodging obstacles. Other segments see him escorting Princess Elise, who uses a barrier to protect him from certain hazards. Shadow's sections are similarly speedy albeit more combat focused, though some segments see him riding vehicles, such as a motorcycle. In contrast, Silver's levels move at a slower pace, and revolve around his use of telekinesis to defeat enemies and solve puzzles. In certain areas, control is switched to a friend character (Tails or Knuckles for Sonic, Rouge or Omega for Shadow, and Amy or Blaze for Silver), each with their own abilities.

Although every character plays the same levels, each character's unique abilities allow the player to access different areas of each stage and deny the player from accessing certain items. Sonic, Shadow, and Silver start the game with five lives. A life is lost when the characters are struck by an enemy attack without rings or suffer any other type of damage. If the player runs out of lives, the game is over. The goal of the game is to complete three stories and unlock the Last Story. In each story, the player navigates through hub worlds, known as Town Stages, where they can converse with townspeople to progress the story. The main gameplay takes place in Action Stages that become accessible as the game progresses. Some Action Stages require certain abilities to access; for example, one stage requires the Light Speed Dash move to be unlocked. While in Town Stages, players can enter Mission Stages to earn rings, which can be spent on upgrades to their characters.

Several downloadable extensions have been released that add features to single-player gameplay. These include "Very Hard" mode, a more difficult version of the game; "Boss Attack" modes, which allow a playable character to engage in continuous battles with all of the game's bosses; and "Team Attack Amigo" mode, which sends players through a multitude of levels in a set order, changing to a different amigo character every two levels, culminating in a boss fight.^[4] The game also features two multiplayer modes: "Tag", where two players must work together to clear levels and collect Chaos Emeralds; and "Battle", a multiplayer mode where two players race against each other.

Plot

The game follows Sonic, Shadow, and Silver in a story intertwined in their respective gameplay modes.

In Soleanna (inspired by Venice), the Festival of the Sun's opening ceremony is disrupted by the arrival of Doctor Eggman who seeks the Flames of Disaster from Princess Elise. He captures Elise before she tosses the blue Chaos Emerald to Sonic the Hedgehog who arrives there. He meets Miles "Tails" Prower and they rescue Elise; Tails distracts Eggman's robots while Sonic and Elise escape. Meanwhile, Shadow saves Rouge the Bat, who drops the Scepter of Darkness that releases Mephiles the Dark, a creature in Shadow's image who reveals Shadow sealed him within the scepter ten years ago, before opening a wormhole which transports Shadow and Rouge to the future: a post-apocalyptic world that is caused by the Flames of Disaster and a fiery monster named Iblis.

There, Silver and his friend Blaze the Cat meet Mephiles, who reveals Sonic as the Iblis Trigger and sends the two back in time using the purple Chaos Emerald. Silver and Blaze are separated upon arrival, with Silver witnessing Eggman's attack on Soleanna and Sonic's departure. He meets Amy Rose, who accompanies him to find but defends Sonic when they find him, while Eggman recaptures Elise. Sonic flees and meets with Tails and Knuckles the Echidna, before Eggman lures them into a trap sending them into the future where Tails discovers Elise and Eggman died one day before Iblis was released. Shadow and Rouge find a shutdown E-123 Omega, and reunite with Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Using two Chaos Emeralds, they return to the present. Shadow faces Mephiles, and learns that in the future he was imprisoned by Omega, blamed for the destruction. Shadow and Omega then return to the present-day.

Shadow and Silver travel ten years into the past and learn Iblis and Mephiles are parts of the Duke of Soleanna's project to harness the power of the city's god Solaris. The Duke gives Shadow the Scepter of Darkness, which he uses to seal Mephiles, while Silver and the Duke seals Iblis into a young Elise's tears, the dying Duke asks his daughter not to cry for her tears could release Iblis. Sonic fails to reach Eggman's destroyed ship with Elise inside it, but Silver sends Sonic back in time so he can save Elise. While Shadow, Rouge and Omega defeat Mephiles' clones, Silver and Blaze (at the cost of her life) stop Iblis in the future.

After surviving Shadow's attack, Mephiles holds up the purple Chaos Emerald in use and seemingly kills Sonic with an energy blade behind him, causing Elise to cry and unleash Iblis. Mephiles bonds with Iblis, recreating Solaris to rip the time-space continuum apart. As everyone mourns Sonic's apparent death, Elise senses that Sonic may still be alive and Silver realizes that the Chaos Emeralds can revive him. As they are all gathered, Elise gives Sonic a kiss which allows him to transform into his super form who transfers some of his powers to Shadow and Silver, and together they defeat Solaris. Sonic and Elise go back in time, finding Solaris' original form as a single white flame. Elise blows out the candle to erase Solaris from existence and the story's events so that Solaris can befriend Elise again, rebooting the timeline. The game ends with Sonic watching Elise in the festival show; the two display signs of faintly recalling their friendship.

Development

Sonic the Hedgehog was first announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo convention in May 2005.^[5] At the 2005 Tokyo Game Show convention, Yuji Naka revealed the game's official title, Sonic the Hedgehog, and also announced that the game would celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Sonic the Hedgehog series.^[6] Game director Shun Nakamura demonstrated the game's use of the Havok engine during Sega's stage shows as well.^[7]

After its debut, the game's development team faced serious problems, starting with the resignation of Yuji Naka as the head of Sonic Team. When presented with development kits for the Nintendo Wii, it was decided that Sonic the Hedgehog's staff would be split in two, with Shun Nakamura finishing the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog for Xbox 360 and PS3, while Yojiro Ogawa would use the other half of Sonic Team to begin work on Sonic and the Secret Rings for the new Nintendo platform. What was originally an ambitious undertaking now became a race against time to meet the game's deadline with only half of a development team. In this time, Sonic Team reportedly ignored Quality Assurance Tester bug reports. Many of the criticisms of the game stem from these reasons in what can only be described as an unfortunate series of events.^[8]

The game was also made available on Xbox Live's Games on Demand service on August 11, 2009, but was later delisted during September 2010 in order to increase the value of the brand.^[9][10]

Soundtrack

The main theme for the game, "His World", written by Tomoya Ohtani, is performed by Ali Tabatabaee and Matty Lewis of the band Zebrahead. R&B artist Akon performed a remix of the Dreams Come True song "Sweet Sweet Sweet", a song originally from their 1992 album The Swinging Star, and was also used as the staff roll theme to Sonic the Hedgehog 2.^[11][12][13] A number of other songs feature vocals by other artists as well. Shadow's theme, "All Hail Shadow," one of the vocal songs from the Shadow the Hedgehog soundtrack, was re-arranged by Crush 40; it was originally sung by the band Magna-Fi. Silver's theme, "Dreams of an Absolution," by Lee Brotherton (from the Remix Factory, AKA Bentley Jones) was written by Mariko Nanba. Elise's theme, entitled "My Destiny," was performed by singer/songwriter Donna DeLory and plays during the last story's ending. The in-game music was composed by Hideaki Kobayashi, Tomoya Ohtani, Mariko Nanba, Taihei Sato, and Takahito Eguchi.

Critical reception

Reception

Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings (X360) 48.74%[14] (PS3) 46.12%[15] Metacritic (X360) 46/100[16] (PS3) 43/100[17] Review scores Publication Score 1UP.com C[18] (Xbox 360) Eurogamer 2 / 10[19] (Xbox 360) Famitsu 30 / 40 (Xbox 360) 29 / 40[20] (PS3) Game Informer 6.75 / 10[21] (Xbox 360) GamePro [22] (Xbox 360) GameSpot 4.4 / 10[23][24] (Xbox 360) 4.2 / 10[25] (PS3) GameSpy [26] (Xbox 360) GamesRadar (Xbox 360) [27] (PS3) GameTrailers 4.6 / 10[28] (Xbox 360) GameZone 4.5 / 10 [29] (Xbox 360) IGN 4.8 / 10[30] (Xbox 360) 4.2 / 10[31] (PS3) OXM (UK) 6.0 / 10[32] (Xbox 360) Play 5.5 / 10[33] (PS3) 8.5 / 10[34] (Xbox 360) PSM3 4.7 / 10[35] (PS3) TeamXbox 6 / 10[36] (Xbox 360) X-Play [37] (Xbox 360) The A.V. Club D−[38]

Sonic the Hedgehog is regarded as one of the worst video games ever made, with aggregating review websites GameRankings and Metacritic assigning the Xbox 360 version a 48.74% and 46/100,^[14][16] and the PS3 version a 46.14% and 43/100.^[15][17] Reviewers heavily criticized the game's camera system, extensive loading times, poor controls, and several gameplay glitches; Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot labeled Sonic the Hedgehog as "a mess from top to bottom."^[23] Juan Castro of IGN said that the game "offers a few good ideas, and a handful of exciting moments, but none of this helps the game recover from a catastrophic loss in control,"^[30] while GameTrailers concluded that the game was "flat-out unfinished, unfairly difficult, and most importantly, just isn't much fun."^[28] GameTrailers also ranked the game #9 in their countdown of the "Top Ten Most Disappointing Games of the Decade."^[39] In 2009, GamesTM ranked it #1 on their top ten "Video Game Franchises That Lost Their Way," commenting that "The blue hedgehog's next-gen efforts have been nothing short of appalling, none more so than his 2006 appearance."^[40]

Dave Halverson of Play Magazine initially gave Sonic the Hedgehog a 9.5/10 score for the Xbox 360 version. In the following issue, however, Halverson reassessed it as 8.5/10, citing that he was incorrectly told that the load times and glitches in his review copy would not be in the final version of the game.^[34] In a later review for the PS3, Halverson was frustrated with the glitches and load times not being improved upon, as well as how the game ran marginally worse despite the extra development time; Halverson gave the PS3 version a 5.5/10.^[33] Bobbi Dempsey of Common Sense Media gave it one out of five stars, also criticizing the game's "atrocious" design problems and the "quirky" control system, asserting that it's "not even a renter."^[41]

In a February 2007 interview for Kikizo magazine, Sonic Team producer Yojiro Ogawa was asked to comment on the game's glitches, control problems and loading times:

The reason why we probably ended up with what we see today, involves a lot of reasons. One is that we did want to launch the title around Christmas, and we had the PS3 launch coming up, but we had to develop for Microsoft's 360 at the same time and the team had an awful lot of pressure on them. It was very hard for the team to try and see how we were going to come out with both versions together with just the one team. It was a big challenge.

— Yojiro Ogawa^[42]

The game's plot was also not well received. GamesRadar called the story "ridiculously overwrought"^[43] and "conceptually challenged,"^[44] while GameTrailers commented that the plot was "pretty ridiculous stuff"^[28] and that "You might actually be better off reading Internet fan fiction."^[28] Gertsmann stated that "While the character variety might initially seem like a good idea, most of them aren't too interesting,"^[23] GameTrailers also commented that "even if you like the characters, the convoluted manimal melodrama is poor quality,"^[28] while Eurogamer mentioned that "Rather than fleshing the game out, the supporting cast often just annoys."^[19] Game Informer, however, opined that "The story, though outlandish and nonsensical at first, eventually incorporates an interesting mix of interweaving time travel, pathos, and all-star teamwork to defeat an ancient evil."^[21]

The introduction of the characters Silver^[45] and Elise was not well received by critics.^[46] The implied romance between Sonic the Hedgehog and the human Princess Elise was especially criticized.^[40][43][44] GamesRadar called their kiss "the most bizarrely cringe-worthy kiss in video game history,"^[43] and in another article, concluded about the pairing that "True love has never been so disgusting."^[44] GamesTM went so far as to say that "...Sonic's relationship and kiss with Princess Elise truly marked the point the [Sonic] series had veered off into absolute nonsense."^[40] Some even accused Sega for supporting bestiality, during an interview with actress Lacey Chabert, where Chabert stated "Ha! No, you're just being silly. It's not an inappropriate relationship. Let's just say Sonic and Princess Elise have an attraction for each other."^[47]

Legacy

While most characters introduced in the game, including Elise, have made no further appearances in the Sonic series, Silver has appeared as a minor or multiplayer-only character in the Sonic Rivals, Sonic Riders, and Mario & Sonic sub-series.^[46][48]

For Sonic's 20th Anniversary, Sega released Sonic Generations, a game that remade aspects of various past games from the franchise. The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC version contained a remake of the "Crisis City" level.^[49] Additionally, every version of the game, including the Nintendo 3DS version, contains a remake of the boss battle with Silver.^[50]

References

External links

• Official Webite (English)
• Official Website (Japanese)