Mario, Olympics Give Sonic Mouth-to-Mouth
For those of us who've been playing console games fairly consistently since about 1995, it's been pretty apparent that Sonic the Hedgehog has lost much of his former glory. The wee blue speedster, once the toast of Sega's 16-bit Genesis, has lost a step with the transition to 3D. In fact, I can't recall one highly-praised Sonic game since he and Knuckles shared the screen.
That may all change, now that Sega's long done with hardware. The company, which last released the failed Dreamcast in the late 90s, now concentrates its forces on crafting titles for Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.
According to reports, it'll be Mario and friends attempting to revive Sonic in an Olympics-inspired title due for the Wii and DS by Christmas.
Although the combined hype of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games and Nintendo's current Wii hysteria should help Sonic, the genre may not. Few Olympic-inspired titles have had much more success than Sonic himself in the past decade.
At least the hedgehog has one thing going:
There is no friggin' way two plumbers, a princess, or a little green dinosaur could keep pace with him in the 100 meter dash.
