Sonic the Hedgehog Archive

With Sonic the Hedgehog being Sega’s breakout success in the home console space, it seemed only natural to develop a Sonic game to promote their new CD based add-on, the Mega CD. The Sonic development team essentially splintered off into two groups; a team at Sega Technical Institute in the USA led by Yuji Naka which developed Sonic 2, and a team in Japan led by Naoto Oshima which made Sonic CD. This led to Sonic CD having a distinctly different feel to Sonic 2.

It’s kind of sad to think about it, but Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was the last universally praised Sonic game. Sega really threw everything they had at the sequel – it was a joint development effort between Japanese and American development teams. It was bigger, better looking, had a great soundtrack and some of the best momentum based platforming you’ll ever see. It was the #1 best selling game on the Mega Drive and Genesis, and may still be the best selling title in Sega’s catalogue.

Sonic Adventure marked the long awaited return of Sega’s mascot and the franchise’s first foray into full 3D. Widely praised at the time, and one of the most successful games on the Dreamcast, critics have been less friendly to the game over time, given that it was the first game to introduce a large number of playable characters who weren’t Sonic.