Just the other day I took time out of my terribly busy schedule of recording Chinese TV commercials and criticising food and actually had the opportunity to play a game. It just so happens that the game that was closest to hand was my old copy of the Sonic Mega collection for the GameCube. Sounds like a laugh, I thought. A bit of nostalgia to warm the cockles of my cold, cold heart. My game of choice was Sonic 3 and with a few hours to kill (or at least lightly torture) it was time to see if the old game was still as fun as it used to be.

Except, it was never fun, and it is even less fun now.

Sonic 3 is and was a terrible game. And therein lies the problem with the franchise: there has not been a truly great Sonic game since Sonic 2 over 15 years ago. The series is still trading on the greatness of that particular title, in fact it's hard to think of any Sonic game nowadays without your mind being drawn back to 1992 and the alleged past glories of the blue hedgehog.

Let's take it one step at a time, shall we? Sonic the Hedgehog heralded the true beginning of the Megadrive vs. SNES console war with the creation of a definable mascot to go head to head with the ageing Mario. The speedy gameplay with ridiculous twists and turns was so radically different to Mario that gamers and critics alike could not help embrace it. Whole pages in magazines were filled with vitriolic rants about how much smack Sonic could lay down on Mario and vice-versa. It was a great time to be a game player with both companies seeking to outdo each other in the innovation stakes.

Sonic 2 did what many movie sequels do � introduce a cute secondary character to add variety. Except Sonic 2 did it with far more style than any hackneyed Hollywood follow-up. The spin-dash, soon to be Sonic's signature move, came crashing into the game along with many new areas as well as reassuringly familiar ones. This was the moment that truly defined Sonic as it set the template for every game that would follow. It was undeniably the peak of Sonic's excellence and has not been matched since.

Sonic 3, Sonic and Knuckles and Sonic 3D were all terribly shoddy affairs when compared to the brilliance of Sonic 2. In fact, they were terribly shoddy affairs when compared to most other games too. Beset by delays and hampered by puzzles, physics and ideas that just plain did not work, Sonic 3 was also burdened by being the direct sequel to one of the best games of all time. Sonic and Knuckles only continued the decline of the franchise with a poor single player but the interesting concept of playing Knuckles in the previous games. Sonic CD was marginally better than these games, but that's like saying tapioca pudding is better than semolina � both are bland and it's just a matter of taste that dictates which one you can tolerate better.

But let us leave the 2D Sonic games alone now and move on to the far more controversial issue of the fully three-dimensional counterparts.

When Mario 64 was released it created a storm in gaming that had not been seen for years: it was a revolutionary title that is still respected and played even today almost 10 years after launch. The game showed that a 2 Dimensional character could truly cut it in the new age of polygons and advanced rendering. Sonic, arrived at the party quite late with Sonic Adventure, and, in all honestly, it would have been best if he had not bothered turning up at all. The experience was bland, lengthy, boring and often hampered by terrible camera controls combined with impossible-to-judge distances, which when put together led to a frustrating experience. Crucially, Mario got the camera right and kept the basic platforming action �that was well-suited to the 3D transition, relatively unchanged.

The worst crime, however, was not in the camera, nor the controls, nor even the poor visuals. The game was fatally flawed because Sonic just does not work in 3D. Sonic is all about speed and timing combined together to allow you to progress. Decisions have to be made in a microsecond or you are dead. Sonic Adventure took away the speed in favour of the 3D and subsequently lost everything that Sonic stood (or spin-dashed) for. Puzzles in the game still demanded concentration, but the skill was no longer in careful timing but learning precisely how to work around the terrible environments and adventure-hampering camera. For most non-fanatical gamers, this was a deal breaker.

Added into the mix were a number of secondary characters that were really hard to engage with: too many genre cliché's and personality-bypassed nonentities left players alienated rather than involved. Whereas the Mario games sprinkle the world with self-referential humour and amusing cameos, the Sonic Universe had by this time become bloated with these characters who really added nothing to the overall experience.

Sonic Adventure 2 saw the first time a Sonic game was released on a Nintendo console, and it was a marginal improvement on its predecessor. Still it was riddled with control issues, blind camera angles and poorly-designed levels. The experience was more pleasant one and garnered largely positive reviews, as was the case with Sonic Heroes a few years later. This title was certainly closest in feel to the original games with death-defying stunts and spectacular physics, but still it suffered from bad level design, blind corners and an improved but flawed camera.

Truthfully, Sonic should never have been 3D. The games were never about the graphics and the constant attempts to match the latest technology with the franchise has only created an embarrassing mismatch. While it's true that 3D is now the dominant form in gaming, classic gameplay still shines through. And as games get more complex so can the 2D environments. Imagine all the power of the Wii channelled into a series of half-pipes funnelled towards the screen, dipping in and out of the background with countless seconds of air time and just the right amount of speed to get your eyeballs rolling. Sadly, it probably won't happen as the desire to manufacture games with the latest technology at the forefront, particularly flagship characters. While the Wii may seem the perfect platform for the series to go back to its roots, an important franchise such as Sonic must be seen to keep up with the latest trends or risk being doomed to obscurity.

But there is hope for the Sonic franchise: the handheld editions of the games have proven to be consistent winners amongst critics and gamers, and real sales winners too. Their simplistic adherence to the tried-and-tested formula may be unambitious but it is this formula that gamers have loved for so long and will continue to love for years to come, which hopefully will be followed by the upcoming Sonic Unleashed. If it ain't broke, don't make it 3D, don't add pointless characters, don't make a shoddy camera system and don't take away the best aspects of the games in order to keep up with all the shifts in technology. Just stick to the basics.

- Iun Hockley
N-Europe Staff Writer