Sonic the Hedgehog is not a bad franchise, regardless of what the series’ discourse has been twisted into. Between the 2D and 3D entries, there are more than enough high-quality Sonic games to ensure the series’ place in history – something anyone with any real understanding of the medium can recognize. All the same, it’s impossible to deny the hiccups in Sonic’s resumes.
While Sonic, as a whole, has its merits, its worst games tend to be quite awful. A “bad” Mario game is hard to quantify because the average Mario game is still coherently designed even at its worst. Not necessarily the case with Sonic, and certainly not the case with Sonic 06– one of the single worst video games of all time.
10 The Blaze Conundrum
In one of Sonic 06’s strongest assertions of its incompetence, it simply forgot that Blaze was an established character with an incredibly specific backstory which more or less allowed her to serve as the main character in the first Sonic Rush, the first Sonic game on the Nintendo DS – a game most Sonic fans would have played before 06.
Imagine their surprise when Blaze shows up and: is not from her alternate timeline, does not interact or even acknowledge Sonic, and is saddled with Silver for the entire game, a character who had absolutely nothing to do with Blaze. Also, she’s now from the future instead of an alternate dimensionn – which Rush Adventure straight up ignores.
9 Elise Seriously Never Cried?
The main conflict in Sonic 06 primarily centers around the fact that if Elise cries, she’ll more or less bring upon the apocalypse. Okay, not a bad plot, in theory, it’s something rooted in classical mythology that actually fits Sonic’s aesthetic well, but here’s the thing: Elise is a grown woman. If she were a little kid, this would make sense, but she’s a grown woman…
Whose father has already died by the time she meets Sonic, by the way! Elise doesn’t cry for her literal family dying, but Sonic the overgrown Hedgehog? Well, that’s enough to break her into pieces. Oh, also, Sonic dies.
8 Sonic The Hedgehog Literally Dies
Talk about pranks gone wrong. As Sonic 06 was attempting to go for a more mature and serious storyline (really the series’ natural next step following the ill-conceived Shadow the Hedgehog,) it makes sense to feature some doom and gloom. Heck, even some casual death would work. But the death of the main character?
This is like killing Mario on-screen or like killing Donkey Kong: you just don’t do it. Not only is there no narrative value in killing Sonic here, all it does is stand out as a needlessly shocking moment. Funny enough, though, it’s not even the game’s worst scene.
7 Sonic The Hedgehog Kisses A Human Woman
This is actually a plot point rooted in the original game’s development. While developing Sonic the Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis, Sonic Team actually envisioned a human love interest for Sonic himself: Madonna. Perhaps realizing the insanity of such a move, however, Sonic Team opted to give Sonic no love interest, let alone a human one.
Then comes Sonic 06, where Sonic the Hedgehog and Elise not only have aggressive sexual tension from start to finish, they lock lips on-screen in a passionate kiss that brings Sonic back to life. On one hand, Sega’s audacity and shamelessness is kind of admirable. On the other, uhhhhhhh...
6 Sonic 06 As A Soft Reboot
Arguably the strangest thing about Sonic 06 is its complete disregard for the rest of the franchise’s history and lore. Aside from a few key characters returning, Sonic 06 essentially serves as a soft reboot, setting new ground for the series to build off of. It was such a colossal failure that this didn’t happen, but it was always a poor idea from the start.
Keep in mind Sonic 06 was supposed to be a celebration of Sonic the Hedgehog’s history. While the 3D titles weren’t as consistent in quality as the 2D ones, Sonic hadn’t lost his goodwill by 2006. Which makes it all the stranger that Sonic 06 refuses to engage with the series’ history in any meaningful capacity.
5 Time Travel
It’s always tricky whenever a series randomly introduces time travel as a concept. Rarely does it ever culminate into a net positive, but Sonic 06 was adamant to try anyways. To be fair, the set up isn’t too terrible, basically lifting from Terminator and DBZ’s Cell arc as far as post-apocalyptic futures go, but the rules of time travel are just dumb.
By using two Chaos Emeralds in conjunction, it’s now possible to travel through time in Sonic. Is this ever mentioned again? You bet it isn’t. Does it even make much sense in the context of Sonic 06? No, but you already knew that.
4 Silver Is Just Future Trunks From Dragon Ball
Sonic the Hedgehog has a lot of references to Dragon Ball– Super Sonic/Super Saiyan, 7 Chaos Emeralds/7 Dragon Balls, Knuckles is red Piccolo– but Silver really takes the cake. He’s not so much a reference as he is a blatant rip-off. Sonic 06 just decides Hedgehogs are Saiyans as has Silver replicate Future Trunks’ role wholesale.
He’s one of the sole survivors of a destroyed future, he goes back in time to save another timeline, and the story is ultimately framed through him even if he’s not the main character. The only thing missing is Shadow being Silver’s father.
3 Shadow And The Secret Rings
We mentioned that Sonic 06 doesn’t honor Sonic the Hedgehog’s history as a franchise, but that isn’t quite true. There is one piece of Sonic media Sonic 06 gleefully references despite the fact it had zero basis or build-up in the games: Shadow’s rings. In Sonic X, Shadow’s rings on his wrist suppress his true power.
At the end of Shadow’s story, he releases his strength out of nowhere and… that’s it. This has no lasting consequences on either the game or the series. It’s a strange detail from Sonic X that exists in Sonic 06 for truly no discernible reason.
2 Mephiles, The Worst Sonic Villain
Mephiles has a pretty decent boss theme, but he’s a strong contender for worst villain as far as the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is concerned. As is the case with most 3D Sonic games, a decent chunk of Sonic 06 is dedicated to hunting down the Chaos Emeralds– only for it to be revealed that Mephiles can summon the Chaos Emeralds to him pretty much whenever.
To make matters worse, he is a blatantly evil character who inexplicably manages to manipulate Silver. Mephiles also has no real relationship with Sonic, despite being the one to kill him, making Sonic 06’s last act feel incredibly hollow.
1 None Of This Matters
The only solace to come out of the fresh hell that is Sonic 06 is the fact that Sega at least had the human decency to wrap the story up in a way where quite literally nothing players did for dozens upon dozens of hours (just counting the load times, of course.) Come the end of Sonic 06, the timeline has been reset and everyone’s back to square one.
Considering the game’s story, it makes sense Sonic 06 would opt to go for a time loop ending. In theory, it brings everything full circle – but how surface level is that? Literally bringing things full circle? That’s not impressive or cool. It’s not even particularly interesting once you stop to think about it for more than a second.