Cruise Elroy

Given the posts so far on Cruise Elroy you might think I’m a lifelong dyed-in-the-wool Nintendo fan, but I actually grew up on Sega consoles (and PC shareware, but that’s a post for another day). For years I was a huge Sonic the Hedgehog fan, and I want to see if I can collect my thoughts on the series.

Much to my chagrin, there hasn’t been a smash hit Sonic game in over a decade. Remember when the 16-bit Sonic games stood toe-to-toe with the likes of Super Mario World and put the Genesis on the map? Those days are long gone. What happened?

My theory is that, more than the weak plots and the proliferation of questionable characters, the series has faltered because Sega hasn’t been able to keep running interesting.

In “The Experimental Gameplay Project,” I offered the opinion that many of the best video games are based around a single gameplay mechanic. In Super Mario Bros., that mechanic is jumping. You jump on Koopas and Goombas, you jump to knock powerups out of floating bricks, you jump to dodge Piranha Plants and Bullet Bills, and you jump to get from one platform to the next. Before Mario had a name, he was even called Jumpman.

In Sonic the Hedgehog, the central mechanic is running. You run through fields, ruins, and factories. You run down slopes and around loop-the-loops. You bounce off springs to send you running even faster. If enemies are in your way, you can switch from running to rolling with the press of a button and continue unhindered. Levels are designed so that you can tear through them at top speed.

In two dimensions, running is great. One of my first “wow” moments as a gamer was outrunning the scrolling background in Sonic the Hedgehog 2. When Sega got to Sonic Adventure, though, they ran into trouble.

“Go fast,” it turns out, is not a mechanic that works well in three dimensions. 3D environments are exponentially more complex than 2D ones; you can set off in any direction, and the level needs to either provide lots of things for you to do or inhibit your freedom to go wherever you want. Running requires an obvious direction to go in, so most levels in Sonic Adventure opt for the latter and are functionally two-dimensional. In other words, Sonic is in a polygonal world, but the design is such that there are still only two directions to go in — forward and backward.

This is problematic for two reasons. First, it makes the transition to 3D seem like a ruse. (Where’s the revolutionary next-generation gameplay?) Second, it forces the player to realize that the much of the game boils down to “hold forward on the D-pad.” It’s a disillusioning thought, but perhaps the series is based on a fundamentally flawed mechanic.

As if to preempt that realization, Sonic Adventure‘s other characters have radically different gameplay: Big the Cat fishes, E-102 Gamma shoots, Knuckles looks for stuff. They weren’t bad, but they were far removed from the lightning speed that defines the series.

Now Sega seems to have lost direction with a slew of mediocre releases like Sonic Rivals and Shadow the Hedgehog. There’s a Sonic RPG in the pipeline called Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood; meanwhile, the main series’ future rests on the upcoming Sonic Unleashed, which features the ability to (gulp) transform into a werewolf.

Is it possible to create a smash hit 3D Sonic game? I don’t know, but I am pretty sure that the series won’t be revitalized with werewolves and RPGs, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the best-received games of the past few years have been traditional side-scrollers like Sonic Advance. I’d be curious to hear others’ input on this, since my love of the early Genesis games may be clouding my judgement. Where can Sonic go from here?