Top 10 Worst Sonic Games

Ever wanted to punch Tails or Amy in the face? Then this little-played arcade fighter might provide you with a few minutes of enjoyment. Besides that, this Virtua Fighter clone, which coincidentally were both made by the same internal Sega studio, showcases incredibly dated graphics and little depth outside of pressing the same three buttons to make your opponent bleed rings. If you really desire to test out this gem of lameness, you can find it on Sonic Gems Collection for the Gamecube. And be sure to relish the appearances of characters like “Bean The Dynamite” and “Bark The Polar Bear”. You won’t be seeing them in any other games.

You’d be surprised at how many Sonic games forget that his main character trait is that he’s the fastest thing alive. Case in point: This Game Gear puzzle-platformer that places the speedy blue hedgehog in a series of mazes. You know. A set up where you have to take your time and not go fast. The gameplay is some of the most sluggish you’ll ever see, due to Dr. Robotnik replacing Sonic’s shoes with an invention of his called “Slow-Down Boots”. Message to Sega: If any of your pitch meetings begin with, “What if we slowed Sonic down?”, just scrap it before you go any further.

Sonic has many dark periods, but his first took place in the later half of the 90’s when he was struggling to make a transition to the third dimension. So instead of a proper 3D Sonic game, we got this frustrating platformer for the Genesis and Saturn with an isometric view. Much like Labyrinth above, the perspective seriously muddles what’s going on, and having almost every level be a fetch quest to save creatures called Flickies didn’t make things any better. The worst part is that this poor stop-gap installment was the closest thing we got to an official Sonic release during the Saturn era.

Unlike his onetime corporate nemesis Mario, Sonic hasn’t proven himself as successful at jumping from genre to genre as Nintendo’s plumber. One of the prime examples of that is in this Dreamcast party game that tried unsuccessfully to ape the Mario Party formula. The only positive thing worth noting about it is its early use of cel-shaded graphics. Besides that, the core game is boring, the mini games lacking, and the less said about the ludicrously in-depth storyline which featured Sonic and friends venturing into a dream world to gather the pieces of a jewel called the Precioustone, the better.

How do you manage to screw up directly porting a decade and a half old Genesis game to an advanced handheld system? One of the many disappointments of Sonic’s 15th Anniversary Celebration, Genesis for the Game Boy Advance actually sounded great on paper and even included features like the ability to save anywhere and the Spin Dash, which wasn’t introduced until Sonic 2. But unfortunately, Sonic Team merely included these to distract players from the constant slowdown issues, clunky controls, loads of bugs and glitches, and a completely unacceptable version of the once iconic 16-bit soundtrack.

If you look up “Forced darkness” in a dictionary, chances are you’ll see this games’ box art in place of an actual definition. We’re not against darker Sonic games, but this installment starring Sonic’s morally ambiguous counterpart Shadow is a lazy and wrong way to do it, substituting legitimate darkness for firearm based gameplay and swearing. And it’d be one thing if tone was the games only problem, but players are also forced to deal with awful controls and camera, and a long, convoluted story with ten, yes, ten possible endings. The even bigger kicker: The game has a “Last Chapter” once you get all those endings, making them all entirely pointless.

In 2006, Sega released Sonic Riders, a hoverboard based racing game. It was okay. Two years later, they released Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity. It was also okay. And two years after that, they released Sonic Free Riders. It was unplayable. Releasing as a launch title for the Xbox 360’s Kinect peripheral, being able to control your racer with your body sounds awesome in concept, but works horribly in execution. Seeing how a racing game depends ENTIRELY on being able to move, this is a pretty big hinderance, and a good reason of why this game had been forgotten shortly after its release.

Speaking of Sonic racing games, here’s the worst one of all. At its core, this one should’ve worked better than any other; Put gaming’s fastest character and his friends in a foot racing competition. It’s just too bad that Sega also decided to take away the characters ability to move more than an inch to the left or right, and also decided to release the game essentially unfinished, lacking completed textures and added detail on its paltry selection of five stages. Worst of all: you can 100% this game in less than an hour.

For Sonic’s 15th Anniversary and his first outing on the 360 and PS3, Sega decided to go big. And by big, we mean transfer half their development team to Sonic and The Secret Rings for the Wii and rush the game for a Holiday 2006 release. Because of this, Sega put out one of the most legendarily despised games ever released. Sonic ’06 introduced reviled new characters like Silver and Princess Elise, controlled abysmally, had intolerably long load times, and was backed by a wretched plot, that ended with Sonic sharing a kiss with the aforementioned Princess. And yet, this wasn’t Sonic’s biggest fail…

Before we reveal our top pick, here are a couple dishonorable mentions:

-“Sonic and the Black Knight” (2009)
-“Sonic Dash” (2013)
-“Sonic Unleashed” (2008)
-“Sonic Rivals” (2006)

As terrible as Sonic ’06 is, it still has a minority of defenders. But Rise of Lyric, alongside its abysmal 3DS counterpart Shattered Crystal, is so awful that not even the most dedicated fans of the once proud Hedgehog can defend it. Set in a new continuity connected to the cartoon of the same name and featuring laughable redesigns of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy, the game combines every problem that Sonic has had since he jumped to 3D and multiplied it exponentially. Framerate issues, loads of bugs and glitches and unbearably bad dialogue are all present here, adding up to the worst selling Sonic game ever released. Sonic Boom? More like Sonic Bust.

Do you agree with our list? What game do you think is the worst Sonic game? For more way past cool top tens posted every day be sure to subscribe to watchmojo.com.