A discussion in another thread made me think about this, why is he? Its not like any games that he has been in for the last 10 years (?) or so have been any good. In fact its been a long time since i even considered purchasing a Sonic game and yet when i was younger i was buying them the day they came out. Why does a world filled with young children still go out and buy his crappy titles over and over again when there are so many better alternatives out there? The only reason i can possibly come up with is that parents who played Sonic when they were younger have gone out and bought their sons/daughters the new sonic game because they played it when they were smaller and they enjoyed it, meaning it must be good.

Any views on this?

Also Sonic Rivals on the PSP is cool also.

Hrm, true, i concede that there aren't an amazing amount of platform games available widely on any system but there are a few that i can think of (Blinx for example).  But i dont see the standard  of Sonic games of late to be enough to keep a franchise alive. Tomb Raider for example, it had a decent quality when it began but of late the games haven't been of a high enough quality and now the franchise is in serious trouble. And yes i have enjoyed the DS and GBA Sonics but they have been a more traditional form of 2d gameplay which works for Sonic. I rented Sonic and the Secret rings and its "meh", feels more like a racing game (admittedly so did the 2d Sonics when in full flow).

Sonic for the 360 was a solid game for me. Not the best, but Solid. I also like Shadow The Hedgehog, too. I'm fine with Sonic. It was never better than Mario, anyways.

Is he?

nostalgia

With the exception of Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (PS3, X360) the Sonic releases have been mostly ok. Both Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 were well received on the Dreamcast and deservedly sold well. The 2D games on the GB Advance and DS are mostly considered to be good games, even if hardcore Sonic fans tend to be harsher. Taking a more objective look at the games, one can see that sales have been sustained over the years by enough good games being released to keep interest, even if a handful of releases have been pretty bad.

Well, alot of younger kids love platformers because they are great, and the industry as a whole is kinda moving away from paltformers... so if Sonic is the next best thing (platformer) and mario only comes out once a gen (as a platformer) kids are going to buy the 4-5 sonic games that come out... though I do agree riders was HORIBLE! No way im buying the Wii one coming out XD

Sonic Riders and Shadow the Hedgehog are games that, when we can travel back in time, need to have their creators shot before they can drag the Sonic further into the mud. Like i said, i liked the 2d iterations of them i like, unfortunately a good handheld wont persuade me to go out and buy the console version. Like the pokemon series, own all of them but only ever owned one for a nintendo home console. Im still waiting for POKEMONLINE! A fully fledged MMORPG that allows you to go around as if it was a real time pokemon world...

brand i s'pose... anyway I've never really had a problem with any of his offerings- everyone says he went downhill since Sonic Adventure 1 BUT the Sonic games I've played have been pretty good in my opinion (btw I never played sonic rivals) ...