Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 video game)

Platform game by Sega

Sonic the Hedgehog (ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ, Sonikku za Hejjihoggu) (commonly referred to as Sonic '06) is a 2006 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. It was produced in commemoration of the Sonic series' 15th anniversary and intended as a reboot for seventh generation video game consoles. Players control Sonic, Shadow, and the new character Silver, who battle Solaris, an ancient evil pursued by Doctor Eggman. Each playable character has his own campaign and abilities, and must complete levels, explore hub worlds and fight bosses to advance the story. In multiplayer modes, players can work cooperatively to collect Chaos Emeralds or race to the end of a level. Development began in 2004, led by Sonic co creator Yuji Naka. Sonic Team sought to create an appealing game in the vein of superhero films such as Batman Begins (2005), hoping it would advance the series with a realistic tone and multiple gameplay styles. Problems developed after Naka resigned to form his own company, Prope, and the team split to work on the Wii game Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007). As a result, Sonic the Hedgehog was rushed for release in time for the December holiday season. It was released for Xbox 360 in November 2006 and for PlayStation 3 the following month. Versions for Wii and Windows were canceled. Downloadable content featuring new single player modes was released in 2007. Sonic the Hedgehog received praise in prerelease showings, as journalists believed it could return to the series' roots after years of mixed reviews. However, it received negative reviews, with criticism for its excessive loading times, camera system, story, voice acting, glitches, and controls. It is widely considered the worst Sonic game and led to the series' direction being rethought; subsequent games ignored its tone and most characters. In 2010, Sega delisted Sonic the Hedgehog from retailers, following its decision to remove all Sonic games with below average Metacritic scores to increase the value of the franchise.

Sonic the Hedgehog is a 3D platformer with action adventure and role playing elements. Sonic's story focuses on the speed based platforming seen in previous Sonic games, with some sections having him run at full speed while dodging obstacles or riding a snowboard. Although each character traverses the same levels, their unique abilities allow the player to access different areas of each stage and prevent them from accessing certain items. Scattered through each level are golden rings, which serve as a form of health. The rings can protect a character from a single hit by an enemy or obstacle, at which point they will be scattered and blink before disappearing. The game begins with Sonic, Shadow, and Silver each assigned a limited number of lives. These lives are successively lost whenever, with no rings in their possession, the characters are hit by an enemy or obstacle or encounter other fatal hazards. The game ends when the player exhausts the characters' lives. The game also features two multiplayer modes: "Tag", a cooperative mode where two players must work together to clear levels and collect Chaos Emeralds, and "Battle", a player versus player mode where two players race against each other. Despite this, Sonic and Elise show faint signs of recalling their encounter afterwards.

After finishing Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (2003), Sonic Team began to plan its next project. Among the ideas the team was considering was a game with a realistic tone and an advanced physics engine. When Sega reassigned the team to start working on a new game in the bestselling Sonic series, they decided to retain the realistic approach. Series co creator and team lead Yuji Naka wanted the first Sonic game for seventh generation systems to reach a wide audience. Naka noted the success of superhero films such as Spider Man 2 (2004) and Batman Begins (2005): "When Marvel or DC Comics turn their characters into films, they are thinking of them as blockbusters, huge hits, and that's what we were trying to emulate with Sonic." Development on Sonic the Hedgehog began in late 2004. Sonic Team used the same title as the original 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog to indicate that it would be a major advance from the previous games. The Havok physics engine, previously used in their PlayStation 2 game Astro Boy (2004), allowed Sonic Team to create expansive levels previously impossible on earlier sixth generation consoles and experiment with multiple play styles. As the hardware of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 was more powerful compared to the prior generation's consoles, In designing Shadow's gameplay, the developers abandoned the concept of firearms previously used in Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) in favor of combat elements to differentiate him from the other characters. Shadow's gameplay was further fleshed out with the addition of vehicles; each vehicle uses its own physical engine. The CGI cutscenes were produced by Blur Studio. Animation supervisor Leo Santos said Blur faced challenges animating the opening scene due to the placement of Sonic's mouth. As development progressed, Sonic Team faced serious problems. In March 2006, Naka resigned as head of Sonic Team to form his own company, Prope. Naka has said he resigned because he did not want to continue making Sonic games and instead wished to focus on original properties. With his departure, "the heart and soul of Sonic" was gone, according to former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske. but Sega was presented with development kits for Nintendo's less powerful Wii console. Sega believed porting the game to Wii would take too long, and so conceived a Sonic game that would use the motion detection function of its controller. The split left an unusually small team to work on Sonic the Hedgehog. Sega pressured the team to finish the game in time for the 2006 holiday shopping season, so with the deadline quickly approaching, Sonic Team rushed the final stages of development, ignoring bug reports from Sega's quality assurance department and control problems. In retrospect, Ogawa noted that the final period proved to be a large challenge for the team. Not only was the Xbox 360 release imminent, but the PlayStation 3 launch was scheduled not long afterwards. This put tremendous pressure on the team to develop for both systems. The score was primarily composed by Tomoya Ohtani along with Hideaki Kobayashi, Mariko Nanba, Taihei Sato, and Takahito Eguchi. It was the first Sonic game that Ohtani, who had previously contributed to Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog, worked on as sound director. The main theme, the fantasy rap song "His World", was performed by Ali Tabatabaee and Matty Lewis of the band Zebrahead. Crush 40 performed Shadow's theme, "All Hail Shadow", while vocalist Bentley Jones (previously known as Lee Brotherton) sang Silver's theme, "Dreams of an Absolution". Donna De Lory sang Elise's theme, "My Destiny". Vocal Traxx: Several Wills contains seven songs; four are from the game, while the remaining three are remixes, including a version of "His World" performed by Crush 40. Original Soundtrack includes all 93 tracks featured in Sonic the Hedgehog, spanning three discs.

Sonic the Hedgehog was announced in a closed doors presentation at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in May 2005. Later that year, at TGS in September, Naka revealed the title and said its release would correspond with the series' 15th anniversary. Sega released several packages of desktop wallpaper featuring characters from the game,

The Xbox 360 version was released in North America on November 14, 2006, followed by a European release on November 24. Both versions were released in Japan on December 21. The PlayStation 3 version was released in North America on January 30, 2007, and in Europe on March 23. In 2007, Sega released several packages of downloadable content that added features to single player gameplay. One downloadable addition, "Team Attack Amigo" mode, sends players through a multitude of levels, changing to a different character every two or three levels and culminating in a boss fight. The PlayStation3 version was delayed to allow more time to incorporate the downloadable content, and thus launched alongside it. Sonic the Hedgehog was digitally rereleased via the Xbox Live Marketplace on April 15, 2010. The following October, various Sonic games with average or below average scores on the review aggregator website Metacritic, including Sonic the Hedgehog, were delisted from retailers. Sega reasoned this was to avoid confusing customers and increase the value of the brand, following positive prerelease responses to Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I and Sonic Colors (both 2010). Sonic the Hedgehog was relisted on the Xbox 360 Marketplace in select countries on May 24, 2022.

Sonic the Hedgehog was well received during prerelease showings. and GameSpy praised its graphics and environments. GamesRadar said that it had looked "amazing" before its release. Sonic the Hedgehog received widespread negative reviews. The Xbox 360 version was branded under the Platinum Hits budget line. Critics were divided on the presentation. and "conceptually challenged", and Eurogamer found its voice acting painful and its cutscenes cringeworthy. The romance between Sonic and the human Princess Elise was especially criticized; for GamesTM, it marked the point "the [Sonic] series had veered off into absolute nonsense". IGN said that it had some redeeming qualities, with brief segments of gameplay that demonstrated how a next generation Sonic game could work, but found it "rips them away as soon as it shows them" and concluded that the game failed to reinvent the series. Eurogamer believed the mistakes would have been noticed even if it had been released in 1996. The A. V. Club said in 2016 that despite the game's poor quality, the soundtrack has some "genuine rippers". GamesTM singled out the game when it ranked the Sonic franchise at the top of their list of "Video Game Franchises That Lost Their Way". Kotaku, and USgamer called the game the worst in the Sonic series, and the staff of GamesRadar named it among the worst video games of all time. The game remains popular for "Let's Play" walkthroughs, with players showing off its glitches. The official Sonic Twitter account also mocks the game. In particular, Sonic Team sought to avoid its serious tone, beginning with the next main Sonic game, Sonic Unleashed (2008). With Sonic Colors, The A. V. Club wrote that "the series rediscovered its strength for whimsical tales with light tones." most have made few appearances since. in Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (2008), and in Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games and its sequels, and is a minor character in the Nintendo DS version of Sonic Colors (2010) and Sonic Forces (2017). He also appeared in the Sonic the Hedgehog comic book series published by Archie Comics. The main theme of Sonic the Hedgehog and the theme of Sonic, "His World", was sampled in Drake's 2017 song "KMT". To celebrate the Sonic franchise's 20th anniversary in 2011, Sega released Sonic Generations, which remade aspects of past Sonic games. The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Windows versions feature a remake of Sonic the Hedgehogs "Crisis City" level, and every version, including the Nintendo 3DS version, includes a reimagined version of the boss battle with Silver. The decision to include Sonic the Hedgehog stages and bosses in Sonic Generations was criticized by critics; Jim Sterling of Destructoid referred to the Silver boss fight as the "catch" of the otherwise high quality game. In 2015, a fan group, Gistix, began developing a remake for Windows using the Unity engine. A demo was released in January 2017, and was positively received by journalists. A second demo was released in late 2017, which Eurogamer called ambitious. A second team of fans, led by ChaosX, began developing a separate PC remake in Unity, Sonic P 06, releasing multiple demos from 2019 onward.