Six years ago, Sega pulled every one of our nostalgia strings and released the series-spanning Sonic Generations. The game would offer the richest Sonic experience in recent memory.

Sonic Generations was created in 2011 for the 20th anniversary of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game. To honor this event, the game would feature multiple incarnations of the Sonic character to celebrate the franchise’s history and its forthcoming future. Various levels from the series would also be making a comeback. To pick the most well-rounded stages, Sega conducted numerous polls asking people about which levels from each of Sonic games was their favorite. The areas inserted in the final game were based on those fans’ selections.

“We have balanced out the stages so it will work as one game [since] fans tend to select the first Act of each game, and we didn’t want Generations to be consisted of only Act 1’s.”

– Takashi Iizuka, head of Sonic Team Japan

The story’s adventure begins when Sonic and his friends are having an appropriate birthday bash. The party gets crashed when a being known as the “Time Eater” scatters everyone at the party across numerous points in time. Sonic then has to find his pals across history and make his way back to his own time. Along the way, Sonic meets up with his original self from the 90s, together try to find out the truth behind the Time Eater, and as always, find the Chaos Emeralds.

Though Generations retains the platform gameplay the Sonic games are known for, it shifts between the classic side-view of the 90s games, and the 3D third-person perspective of the recent games. To add more strategy, the two playable Sonics can only perform moves from their specific eras. For example, the Classic Sonic can use “Spin Dash”, but can’t use homing attacks, a newer attack type. During down time between missions, players can also complete challenges and earn upgrades to enhance the two Sonics’ abilities.

The Sonic series as a whole is known for its somewhat polarizing game library, but Sonic Generations seemed to do something many long-spanning franchises can never do, unite old and new fans.

What do you think about Sonic Generations? Is the classic gameplay better than the new style? Do you think the upcoming “Sonic Project 2017” is a sequel to Generations?

Leave your answers in the comment section below!