Save our Sonic?

Ah, Sonic, it's been a long and arduous road. You started out as a hip up and comer that was a serious challenger to the platformer throne, with some excellent 16-bit titles. Then you hit the Dreamcast and while there were some blemishes, most had an enjoyable experience. But we should've seen the warning signs then, because it's been almost nothing but a downhill spiral for the blue speedster for the past 17 years. Yikes. Granted, there haven't been many pure Sonic games in that time, but we have plenty of horrid spin-offs like Sonic Rivals, Shadow the Hedgehog and of course the failed abortion that was your next-gen debut, simply titled "Sonic the Hedgehog", apparently trying to make a comeback in the same way Sylvester Stallone did with the simple title of "Rocky Balboa", but with far less successful results.

Yes, Sonic desperately needs a revamp if he's not to completely lose what few fans are left. And we are getting it with a new DS rpg by Bioware that sounds incredible. But is he even worth saving? We come back to him time after time again like the victim in an abusive relationship, expecting that things will be better this time. I've been able to mostly stay away, but as somebody who was a diehard Sega fanboy in it's glory days, I still have been lured back by promises of revamped gameplay on games such as Shadow & more recently Sonic & the Secret Riings, which had so much potential, but fell way short as usual. In most cases, gamers usually give up on a series long before they have been burned this often. But you see the fan reaction when it's announced that he is in Smash Bros or that Bioware is working on a game (when the reaction was more likely to be that they've sold out) and we still love the abusive blue blur. I'm willing to ignore my better judgement and give Sonic one last chance to tempt me, but hopefully if we gamers are spurned again, we'll respond with wrath and vengeance (not literal of course, put the torches & pitchforks down) rather than just waiting to be punished again because Sonic promises it'll get better next time.

No major games are coming out or movies being released this week. Luckily, all that will change when the first truly big game title 0f '08 hits next week. In fact, I'm so pumped about it, I made a cool fanvid! Check it out:



Also, the Dark Knight trailer is pretty wicked, what's more wicked is when somebody makes a killer trailer for the original campy show using the exact same audio:



FREE GAME OF THE WEEK: Coffee Shop