Friday 16 June 2006
When we were 15 years old we were too busy trying to look down girls' tops and drinking cider to star in a videogame. Teen star Sonic The Hedgehog, however, has found time to celebrate his 15th birthday by making a spectacular leap to Xbox 360.
The watchword for a re-invigorated Sonic is 'speed' -raw, eye-melting speed of the sort that wowed us game wrinklies back in the days when the eponymous hedgehog was still years from breaking out of two dimensions.
With this overwhelming sense of pace comes frenetic and varied gameplay as Sonic spins into enemies, careers through the air in vast loops, before smashing through church windows and then hitching a ride on a passing eagle as he comes out again.
Above: Sonic loved showing up the robots in freestyle breakdancing sessions
Old schoolers will be pleased to learn that characters such as Dr Robotnik do make the leap (albeit in new, much more human form), as do the original ring-collecting sound effects and insane springs that catapult our hero skyward.
But this game is all about bringing Sonic kicking and screaming into the next generation, so it's way more than a mere saunter down memory lane.
Sonic gets an official lore timeline that goes "tens of thousands of years" into the past and 200 years into the future, and somehow canonizes a party game spin-off
We'll finally learn if Sonic is faster than the Flash as Sega's famous hedgehog and pals team up with the Justice League in a new mash-up comic
