Sonic the Hedgehog (2006 video game)
commonly referred to as Sonic '06, is a 2006 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. It was intended as a reboot of the Sonic franchise for seventh-generation video game consoles. Players control Sonic, Shadow, and the new character Silver as they seek to defeat Solaris, an ancient evil pursued by Doctor Eggman. Each 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.
The development began in early 2005, 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, hoping it would advance the series with a realistic tone and multiple gameplay styles. While it received praise from video game journalists during pre-release showings, 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. Sonic Team rushed the later stages of development, cutting numerous features and scrapping plans for ports to the Wii and Windows.
Sega insisted on shipping Sonic the Hedgehog in time for the 2006 holiday shopping season and released it unfinished to coincide with the franchise's 15th anniversary. It was released for the Xbox 360 in November 2006 and PlayStation 3 that December. The game received strongly negative reviews, with criticism for its load times, camera, story, voice acting, glitches, and controls. It is widely considered the worst Sonic game and severely damaged the franchise's reputation. 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.
Gameplay
Sonic the Hedgehog is a 3D platformer with action-adventure and role-playing elements. Like Sonic Adventure, the player navigates open-ended hub worlds where they can converse with townspeople and perform missions to advance the story. The main gameplay takes place in linear levels that become accessible as the game progresses. The main playable characters are three hedgehogs: Sonic, Shadow, and Silver, who feature in separate campaigns. A bonus campaign, which involves all three hedgehogs and concludes the storyline, is unlocked upon completing the first three.Sonic's gameplay 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. Another character, Princess Elise, must be escorted in some stages, and she can use a special barrier to guard Sonic. Shadow's sections are similarly speedy, albeit more combat-oriented, with some segments having him ride vehicles. In contrast, Silver's levels are slower and revolve around his use of telekinesis to defeat enemies and solve puzzles. In certain areas, control is switched to one of several friend characters, with their own abilities.
Although each character traverses the same levels, their unique abilities allow the player to access different areas in 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. Scattered around certain areas in levels and hub worlds are silver medals, silver coins which players get to collect throughout the adventure. Every few levels, players will encounter a boss stage; to proceed, they must defeat the boss by depleting its health meter.
Upon completion of a level or mission, players are given a grade depending on their performance, with an "S" rank being the best and a "D" rank being the worst. Players are given money for completing missions; more money is given to higher ranks. This money can be used to buy upgrades for the main player character. Certain upgrades are required to complete the game. The game also features two multiplayer modes: "Tag", a cooperative mode where two players must clear levels together and gain Chaos Emeralds, and "Battle", a player versus player mode where two players race against each other.
Plot
kidnaps Princess Elise of Soleanna in the hopes of harnessing the Flames of Disaster, a destructive power sealed inside her. Aided by his friends Tails and Knuckles, Sonic works to rescue Elise from Eggman. Meanwhile, Shadow, his fellow agent Rouge, and Eggman accidentally release an evil creature, Mephiles. The creature transports the agent duo to a post-apocalyptic future ravaged by a demonic monster, Iblis. When Mephiles meets survivors Silver and Blaze, he fools them into thinking Sonic is the cause of the destruction, and sends them to the present to kill him.Throughout the story, Sonic and friends travel between the past, present, and future in their efforts to stop Mephiles and Iblis and protect Elise from Doctor Eggman. Though at first Silver stalks Sonic and impedes his attempts to save Elise, Shadow reveals to him that Sonic is not the cause of his world's suffering, but rather Mephiles, who is trying to change the past for his own evil purposes. They travel ten years in the past and learn that Mephiles seeks to bond with Iblis, who was sealed within Elise as a child, as they are the two halves of Soleanna's omnipotent god, Solaris. Mephiles eventually succeeds after killing Sonic to make Elise cry over his death, releasing her seal on Iblis and merging with him with the use of Chaos Emeralds to become Solaris, who then attempts to consume time itself. The heroes and Elise respectively collect and use the power of the Chaos Emeralds to revive Sonic, and he, Shadow, and Silver transform into their super forms to defeat Solaris. Sonic and Elise are brought to the past and extinguish Solaris' flame, removing the god from existence and preventing the events from ever occurring. Despite this, Sonic and Elise show faint signs of recalling their encounter afterwards.
Development
Conception
began planning what would become Sonic the Hedgehog after finishing the 2003 games Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg and Sonic Heroes. They began outlining a game with a realistic tone and physics engine; it was initially unrelated to Sonic, but became a Sonic game after Sega asked Sonic Team to start working on one. Sonic the Hedgehog was conceived for sixth-generation consoles, but Sonic Team realized its release would coincide with the franchise's 15th anniversary and decided to develop it for seventh-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. According to Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka, the head of Sonic Team at the time, Sonic Team received specifications for the seventh-generation consoles in late 2004 and began developing tech demos when they obtained software development kits in early 2005.Naka wanted the first Sonic game for seventh-generation systems to reach a wide audience. He noted the success of superhero films such as Spider-Man 2 and Batman Begins : "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." Sonic Team used the same title as the original Sonic the Hedgehog to indicate that it would be a major advance from the previous games. Sonic Team saw Sonic the Hedgehog as a "rebirth" of the franchise, so sources commonly describe it as an attempted reboot. Shun Nakamura served as director.
Design
Sonic Team used the Havok physics engine, which they first used for their PlayStation 2 game Astro Boy. The character artist Yoshinari Amaike said it allowed Sonic Team to create expansive levels impossible on earlier consoles with detailed objects and varied gameplay. In addition, the engine also enabled Sonic Team to experiment with aspects such as global illumination, a night-and-day system, and giving Sonic new abilities like using ropes to leap into the air.Sonic Team chose a more realistic, Japan-inspired setting than those of previous Sonic games. They redesigned Sonic and Doctor Eggman to better suit this updated environment: Sonic was made taller, with longer quills, and Eggman was made slimmer and given a more realistic appearance. Nakamura and the producer Masahiro Kumono reasoned this was because the characters would be interacting with more humans, and felt this would appeal to older players. At one point, Sonic Team considered giving Sonic realistic fur and rubber textures.
While Sonic Team focused significantly on the visuals, they considered their primary challenge creating a game that was as appealing as the original Sega Genesis Sonic games. Naka said Sonic Team wanted to retain Sonic traditional elements while adding new elements to appease both old and new players. They felt Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog had veered into different directions and wanted to return the series to its speed-based roots in new ways. For example, they wanted to include multiple paths in levels, like the Genesis games had, a goal the realistic environments helped achieve. Sonic Team sought to "aggressively" address problems with the virtual camera system from earlier Sonic games, about which they had received many complaints.
Silver the Hedgehog's gameplay style originated from Sonic Team's desire to take advantage of Havok's capabilities. The first design concept for Silver's character was an orange mink; he attained his final hedgehog look after over 50 design iterations. In designing Shadow's gameplay, the developers abandoned the concept of firearms previously used in Shadow the Hedgehog 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.