You know, it's like Sega is afraid of success.

Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii wasn't perfect, but it was the best Sonic game in awhile. It was certainly better than Heroes or Sonic 2006, and had better pacing than the Sonic Adventure games.

Aside from Shadow The Hedgehog, Sonic 2006 is probably the most reviled platformer in the Sonic library. It was viewed as the "last chance" for Sonic and it drove HD users away from the franchise for good. Rather than capitalize on Secret Rings comparative success and improve its engine and try to further cultivate a fanbase on the Wii, Sega followed up on Secret Rings by giving the Wii a watered down version of Unleashed that shopped out to Dimps, because Sonic Team couldn't be bothered to do it. Despite all the missing content, the Wii version (and the PS2 version) actually played better than the PS3/360 versions and averaged review scores 6-12 points higher on the 100 point scale.

So then Sega's next Wii title? Sonic and the Black Knight, which took Sonic in a completely different direction that a lot of people didn't like. This was followed by Sonic Colors, again on the Wii, which is probably the best Sonic title of the post-Genesis era. It has slightly worse aggregate scores than Sonic 4 Episode I, but Sonic 4 Episode I benefitted from a string of preemptive OMG 2D SONIC A+++++ reviews before the public got ahold of it and began to turn on the game for its physics, length, and difficulty. The fact that episodic games usually release episodes within a month or so of each other, and it's been over a year since S4E1 came out and we don't even have a release date for Episode 2 is very telling of how good the game is.

And so now you have Sonic Generations, which has gameplay that's being compared to Sonic Colors, and it supposed to be a celebration of 20 years of Sonic. And does it get a Wii release? No, of course not. It's on the 3DS though! You know, because the 3DS is way more powerful and stuff.

You know, Sonic Generations reminds me of the Aerosmith live album, A Little South of Sanity. Traditionally, a live album had been one single concert, but A Little South of Sanity was just a collection of decent live versions of your favorite Aerosmith songs re-edited into what almost felt like a single concert. But not quite.

Greg the White wrote:

Or more like Death Magnetic. "Please just make it acceptable, not asking for Sonic the Lightning 2, just give me something okay. Ow wow, this is actually pretty damned good. Not what I've known to be great, but at least they get it now."

Well, I think the fact that the game is, at least from what I've read, comprised almost entirely of remakes of classic levels, that my analogy is better.