Ten Features in Sonic the Hedgehog Games that Should Never Have Been Used

As much as developers try to make games featuring popular characters as perfect as possible, there are times when they create a feature that ends up ruining a portion of the game, or the entire game. Such a move is part of what has plagued the Sonic the Hedgehog games, especially in recent years, as they have been weighed down by pointless gimmicks. The series has had numerous unpopular features even before it made the move to 3D, but when it did, it expedited the hedgehog's downfall. Whether the upcoming Sonic 4 will return the hedgehog to his former glory remains to be seen, but in the meantime, there are plenty of features in the existing games that could have been either improved upon or dropped altogether. I shall list ten of these features, starting with...

Sonic Adventure: Fishing: Part of what made Sonic Adventure one of the better 3D Sonic games was the variety of modes that presented something for everyone. Unfortunately, the worst mode by far was fishing with Big the Cat. Not only did it seem a bit slow and boring compared to the excitement of most of the other modes, but its controls left a lot to be desired. Hooking a fish or Big's friend Froggy would be tricky, as was reeling them in, even with all of the lure power ups collected. Worst still, losing a fish meant losing a life, which simply made no sense. Surely, Sega would have come up with a better game mode for Big's quest to rescue Froggy.

Sonic 3D Blast: No Save Feature: A lot of features really brought down what should have been a grand finale to Sonic's Genesis era, but one of the most glaring of them all was the lack of a save feature. The game, monotonous as it already was, became even more of a chore when one realized that it had to be beaten in a single sitting. By 1996, many games were using save features, placing Sonic 3D Blast behind the times, especially considering that Sonic 3, released two years earlier, possessed a save feature. Including a save feature would have made the game at least a bit more tolerable, and Sega was foolish for not doing so.

Sonic Unleashed: Sonic the Werehog: As a hairy beast, Sonic looks more intimidating and fierce. Sadly, that is all he has going for him, as the Werehog levels in this game are, quite frankly, pretty lousy. Sonic the Werehog is slow, and the constant combats slows the action down that much more. Even worst is that there are far more Werehog stages than daytime stages, as if Sega could not be bothered to create a game that felt more like the classic Sonic games of yore. If Sega wanted to give Sonic some sort of curse, they could have done something that would not affect the high speed game play as poorly as the Werehog feature did.

Sonic Adventure 2: The Grading System: Making its debut in this game is this rather annoying system that challenges you to complete specific objectives. The catch is that in order to get the highest possible grade, you must achieve the goal while beating a specific score or time. Doing so is often difficult, which would be fine except that Sega made it nearly impossible by resetting your score to zero if you lose a life, even if you hit a checkpoint. Having to go through an entire stage in one life can be frustrating, as is dealing with levels that seem to go on forever (the treasure hunting stages in particular seem to take an eternity to complete). Making players want to complete all of a game's objectives is a good idea, but here, it is poorly executed.

Sonic Labyrinth: Sonic is Too Slow: Perhaps even worst than making Sonic into a slow, lumbering beast is making him slow in his normal form thanks to lead boots given to him by Robotnik. As a result, the game play likewise becomes quite tedious, with only the hedgehog's spin dash being fast. At least unlike Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Labyrinth is pretty short and thus players will only have to briefly put up with a slow hedgehog. Even so, Sonic as a slow hedgehog does not make for compelling game play at all.

Shadow the Hedgehog: Multiple Endings: One of this game's selling points was that players could decide whether Shadow was good or evil to some extent. However, Sega butchered this feature in a few ways. Some stages could take a player a long time to finish, making a relatively short quest seem longer than it should have been. Also, there were over 300 ways to beat the game and see one of its ten endings, though players might not have had the time or patience to go through every possible path. Lastly, a final level unlocked after seeing each of the ten endings at least once gave Shadow his true identity back, making the entire idea of having multiple endings seem pointless. Sega should have given the game a single ending, or keep the idea of having several possible endings while dropping the last level.

Sonic Heroes: The Team Chaotix Missions: The team-based game play as a whole made this game (at least in my eyes) the true start of Sonic's fall from grace, but no other team made it as bad as Team Chaotix did. It is no so much the voice acting or the characters themselves that I mind so much as the missions that they had to complete during their story. Often, these missions forced you to go off the beaten path to collect items, and had you backtrack if you missed anything important. Consequently, the missions would last a long time and become quite dull in the process. At least the other three story modes had plenty of action. Team Chaotix, however, suffered from some of the dullest game play ever seen in a Sonic game.

Sonic Shuffle: Highly Intelligent Computer Players: In the Mario Party games, you could make the computer players as smart or as stupid as you wanted them to be. Not so in Sonic Shuffle. In the story and party modes, the computer players tend to cheat and do anything to get ahead. What makes it so bad is that they would be hard to defeat even on the easiest difficulty setting. Also, the game, and not the player, selected which characters would be controlled by the computer, so that if you were playing against some characters who were really hard to beat, you were pretty much out of luck. This was a game meant for Sonic's younger fans, and as such, Sega should have made the game easier for them to handle.

Sonic R: Lack of Courses: Sonic's first 3D racing game was a letdown in many areas, including its courses. What was especially disappointing was that the game had only five courses, all but one of which was available from the start. This made Sonic R feel quite limited compared to Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing, which were released in the same year and which had 16 and 20 courses, respectively. Even Sonic Drift 1 and 2 had more courses, and they were released on the less powerful Game Gear. Not putting in more courses was a huge mistake on Sega's part.

Sonic Mega Collection: Unlocking the Hidden Games: This excellent compilation of classic Sonic games has some really neat unlockable games for the player to uncover. However, doing so involves playing the available games in the collection again and again. Granted, you can simply enter and exit the games quickly, but it still feels like a chore to unlock the secret games. What's worst, you will have to keep track of how many times you have played the games, as the game will not tell you how close you are to uncovering the extra games. The games themselves are largely worth the effort, but the tedious process of unlocking them should have been better thought out.

The list above shows that Sonic could barely do no wrong in the 1990s, though he still hit some snags on occasion. Following the move to 3D, however, all bets were off, as the hedgehog and his friends were subject to gimmicks and other features that wrecked either a portion of a game, or the entire game. These features should have never seen the light of day, or if they did, Sega should have tried to plan them out better instead of leaving them as they were just to rush the games out with all due speed. Hopefully, they will have learn their lessons and will make Sonic 4 a truly remarkable game. Otherwise, the hedgehog will continue to suffer from gimmicks and other features that threaten to make him a massive laughing stock.