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I open this with a confession that would probably get me lynched in certain circles: I think I like the modern Sonic better than the classic Sonic.

Dangerous words, if you know a little about the Sonic fan community.

With that said, I’ve been playing the games since the very first title. I had a few friends with Sega Genesis systems, with whom I played Sonic the Hedgehog ad nauseum. For someone whose gaming identity was forged by Mario and Zelda, I’m not sure why I took to Nintendo’s competition so fervently, though it could be that Sonic represented something different I hadn’t seen games do before, and it did that thing well, not just with speed but personality.

And I kept playing, for a long time. I got my own Sega Genesis in Christmas of 1994, after a demo kiosk of Sonic & Knuckles convinced me that it was a must have. I went years without a decent Sonic title, until 1999 when I saved money during summer vacation to buy a Sega DreamCast and Sonic Adventure.

I think, more than anything, Sonic suffered as a series and as a fandom because he was unable to evolve. Rather than changing over time, he was thrust into a new setting and a new era, creating a rift between those who just wanted more and those who wanted thing just as they’d been five years earlier.

This isn’t to say that mistakes were made, because they were. The classic games worked in part because they were single minded, even when allowing multiple characters into the fray. Tail and Knuckles were enjoyable to play because they shook up how you moved through the levels, but the goals and boss fights were often the same.

The 3D titles tried to introduce variety where it was not needed and perhaps not even wanted. The intent, to be sure, was to create a richer game experience, and when distilled in such a way as Sonic Generations is, it’s apparent that classic design with modern sensibilities offers a short experience.

To elaborate, I finished Sonic Generations from start to finish in roughly 24 hours, including time taken off to work on other things, make dinner, exercise, ect. The game only demands a few detours from tearing through the many large levels it offers, requiring players to complete a few side challenges in the level-select hub in order to access the boss of each segment and repeat the cycle again.

Sonic Generations is a short game, but it’s short in the way Sonic games are meant to be. Levels are meant to be sped through, and revisited by the challenge seeker in order to find items missed and quicker pathways. Skillful play awards better ranks, more points and various unlockable bonuses, mainly art and music.

Candidly speaking, I would replay Sonic 3 & Knuckles again and again with far fewer motivational items.

This isn’t a game that adds anything new, per se, but that’s it’s selling point: revisiting stages from across the board of the mainline Sonic titles. Seeing some more recent titles (such as last year’s Sonic Colors) revisited so soon after release feels a bit odd, but the game is meant to be a timeline of Sonic the Hedgehog, starting with the original and concluding with the recent.

Returning to many stages from as recently as the DreamCast days is something of a joy, hearing classic tunes and seeing familiar sequences revised with newfound gusto.

Each of these zones—classic to modern—is divided into two parts: again, classic and modern. Act 1 puts the players in the shoes of the original Sonic the Hedgehog, with largely the same controls, abilities and physics. This is certainly the most accurate attempt of bringing old-school Sonic to 3D on Sega’s behalf, and while I’m sure that some nitpickers will obsess over how Sega is “$%^#ing things up again,” this is in truth the most sincere representation we’ll probably get.

Elsewhere, Act 2 of each stage places the player in control of the so-called Modern Sonic, whose abilities are geared for quicker response and twitch gameplay. Modern Sonic can literally go from zero to sixty in an instant and is, in truth, better geared to negotiate the terrain he comes across.

The differences between these two hedgehogs aren’t limited to controls and cosmetics. Classic Sonic’s stages are strictly 2D affairs, but take wonderful advantage of the 3D environments they’re built in. One of the founding strengths of the old Sonic games was that there was often more than one way to get through a stage, and these are often most apparent with Classic Sonic, where you may often see another route in the background and want to return to the stage to figure out how to get to it instead.

Modern Sonic, meanwhile, teeters effortlessly between 2D and 3D levels. One of the reason I’m more sold on the current incarnation of Sonic is because the sense of scope is more fully realized through his eyes. There’s something thrilling to me about nosediving down the ramps of the Chemical Plant Zone and seeing everything ahead that Classic Sonic could never see (and perhaps, shouldn’t).

Contrary to popular opinion, I’ve often felt Sonic was better suited to 3D on principle. With such a focus on speed, and 2D side view can make platforming extremely dangerous, approaching unseen obstacles and high speed and often running headfirst into them. Blending 2D and 3D design philosophy was perhaps the best compromise, and it truthfully does work quite well.

Between the two characters though, Modern Sonic is simply smoother and faster. When brought to a stop, Classic Sonic loses momentum badly—this isn’t a criticism, it’s simply a truth in how the games were built—whereas the Modern version can quickly regain his footing and take off at full speed.

Moving past weighing the strengths and faults of this now-twenty-year-old mascot, the game is a sincere take on how to do a remake right, even if it only does so in small doses.

Consider Capcom’s Resident Evil remake on the GameCube a while back. Part of the reason the game worked wasn’t just because the plot was refined or the graphics were tweaked, but because it made a conscious effort to change up the experience while staying true to the spirit.

With many of its stages, Sonic Generations does just that, visiting old environments but adding something new to them to keep things fresh. Finding an interior garden in the Sky Sanctuary Zone or running through the caves in the Green Hill Zone is exciting, and shows how something old can be made new again.

Hell, I’d gladly buy a Sonic 3 & Knuckles 3D remake if it was done like that.

What about the other things the game does?

The boss fights are generally quite enjoyable. Many of them are simply based on older final bosses, but tweaked to make them new again. One of my favorite and most exciting battles in the game was against Sonic Adventure’s Perfect Chaos, which was possibly made better by the fact that Sonic could not become Super Sonic as he had in the original’s showdown. Instead, his current abilities were cleverly employed and new segments were added, making the fight more epic than it originally was.

By contrast, the only fight I didn’t enjoy as much was the final battle, which is unfortunate (and ironic) since it’s the only original one in the game. Sonic Generations takes the approach Sega has been utilizing for a while, having the Sonics both become Super Sonic (and this is hardly a spoiler—I’d be shocked if they didn’t do it). The design for the final boss is a bit difficult to discern, since several new abilities are made available and how they work is not clearly explained. Aside from that, a clutter of activity on the screen (owing partially to the color choices) makes seeing the golden rings Sonic needs to survive more difficult than it has to be, and while the fight is not entirely ruined, it is marred by a few aesthetic and design choices peculiar to it.

The story, meanwhile, is a modestly entertaining pretense to put a few Sonics together in the same room. It has a few good moments, but attempts to keep things simple, a far departure with what Sega was trying to do when they launched Sonic Adventure over a decade ago, for better or for worse.

The assorted supporting cast is present, mostly for the two Sonics to rescue from each of the stages, as they do little else in the story. They are, however, used in many of the various sub-challenges, where Sonic can call them in to use their abilities to deal with unique obstacles. It’s a good use of these characters, though one can’t help but feel that there’s simply too many of them to use for earnest storytelling, if the designers were to attempt to bother down the line.

I don’t know if I’d call this the perfect Sonic game, but it’s damned close, and it certainly brought me back to the series. I might need to fall back later and play Sonic Colors (which I’d heard great things about), but for now I’ll likely pop this in from time to time to try to cap off a few more of the many challenges.

With so many other titles coming out, it’d be easy to overlook Sonic Generations, but I’d advise anyone who ever enjoyed the old or is willing to look for the merits of the new to pick it up and give it a go.

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