Sonic Boom!
(A Sonic Chronology...sort of)

Here's a little chronology of selected games where Sonic the Hedgehog made his appearance. You will notice that I only include the Sega Genesis versions, along with Sega CD, and not the Game Gear, Gamecube, Master system, and Gameboy Advance series (along with other series like Spinball and Robotnik's mean bean machine). This is due to the point that I consider the Genesis series to be the ones in-tune with the whole story of the blue dude, and the Gamecube series just picked up after them. Oh yeah, Sega 32X shot the series dead with that Knuckles Chaotix mismatch, let us never remember that catastrophe.

In other words, I don't care about the later games completely.

Let's begin with:

198X- Supposedly, Sonic the Hedgehog makes his debut in America as a huge balloon at a Macy's parade, in other sides of the country, it is rumored that the newest Sega character was painted on trucks featuring merchandise of sorts. These are both shady statements, but it may had been just a preview to let U.S. that Sonic was coming into videogame consoles worldwide. *

1991- Sonic the Hedgehog appears along with the Sega Genesis, a 16-bit system whose intentions was to revolutionize the videogame industry. Although this could be a lot of hot air, the game did indeed rivaled the likes of the Super Mario Bros. for its speedy action and cutesy looks.

1992- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is featued along with the Sega Genesis 2 system (system 3 was a Japan-only release), and introduced gamers a cute two-tailed fox name Miled Prower, aka Tails the Fox. Some say this game lacked a bit after its first game, others say the two-player cooperative mode was a plus. Either way, this game was welcomed and it grew in the hearts of Sega-nites.

1993- Sonic CD: This was THE best Sonic game in the series, and the greatest to grace upon the Sega CD console (which was hurting due to its lack of sales, Sonic helped its fame a bit, if anything). The game featured bigger than life levels, a save feature, incredible music, and cartoon video at the beginning and the end of the game. Even Dr. Robotnik had a tuned-up themesong that sounded more like Santa Claus in crack. The game's timeline was between Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, and it featured two more characters in the Sonic-verse: Amy Rose and the infamous Metal Sonic. EGM also predicted a few surprises for Sega fans when two Sonic cartoons were to air in the near future. Sonic's fame was expanding, and there was NOTHING Nintendo could do about it. Did I mention Sonic gets his own very themesong in this game as well?

1994- Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles...Sonic 3 & Knuckles: This was referred as "Year of the hedgehog", Sega gives the go to 2 Sonic cartoons, and releases Sonic 3, improving the series with more levels of play, bonus stages, and the ability to let payers choose between Sonic & Tails, Sonic, or Tails solo. In S&K, the game introduced Knuckles as a playable character, and it featured the backward-compatible system where you could add Sonic 3 to form a massive adventure expanding two games. Knuckles could play in Sonic 3, and he could also be featured in Sonic 2 by using S&K. Other games locked in would feature random bonus stage games that were nothing more than a 3D version of Pacman with critters running amock.

The rest after the Genesis years featured Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 for the Dreamcast (and later featured in Nintendo Gamecube), Sonic Heroes, Sonic Shuffle, Sonic Advance, and a myriad of other games that I could not bring myself to mention. Not to offend the newest generation of Sonic fans, but the 16-bit era was the only time when Sonic shined its best. These games also featured a new look for Amy Rose, introduced Cream the Rabbit, Sexy Rouge the bat, and the oddity that was Big the cat, among other friends.

UPDATE: Oh, nevermind that Sonic was horridly due after Sonic Adventure 2, Sega decided to continue said franchise with other not-so-good sequels with such titles as:

Sonic Heroes: Sega gave a nod to advice that Sonic was playing too much like a Mario game (too much platform, less mindless speedy playability), therefore decided to create a whole new game that cuold feel as close as sthe Genesis versions (hahaha!), this time having groups of 3 characters gfor each team, including Sonic with Knuckles and Tails, and the likes of Shadow with Rouge the Bat and Omega the robot. This sounded promising, but the horrible camera control and the inclusion of less than desirable characters (Big the Cat, Vecotr, Charmbee, etc...), Sonic Heroes sounded more like an attempt to resucitate a dying relationship ebetween Sega and its loyal videogame followers.

Sonic Rush perked up things a bit, having Sonic going solo for the first time in eons, and takign advantage of the Nintendo DS' dual screen approach. Blaze the cat was just another exuce to create a character, but at least she was no Big the Cat in that retrospect. Storyline wise, this was just junk.

Sonic Rivals: Along with the PS3 title (named simply Sopnic the Hedgehog), Sega decided to once again, create an unnecesary title that would let you control Sonic and other characters of new and old games to race against each other. I am sure anyone has heard of Sonic Riders, so I am wondering why the hell this thing popped up. I was hoping that Sega and Sonic Team would learn their lesson by now, oh wait, here comes...

Sonic The Hedgehog: A title for Next-Gen consoles, mainly for Xbox 360 and PS3, Sonic Team went on to try and reinvent Sonic once again, having the hog breakdance around robots and having to deal with another guy named Silver the Hedgehog, which looks like a gray spray painted version of Shadow. Nevermind that he can use telekinesis powers to do away with enemies, this inclusion of a cloned character is so damn tiresome already. What could be worse than another Sonic game you might ask...try Sonic having the hots for a Teen Princess (!) that looks like Kairi from Kingdom Hearts complete with the same IQ level. Dogs alive, this is really atrocious.

The last games explained above have little or nothing to do with the entire Sonic concept, besides the fact that Sega is trying to revive the interest of a new crowd with their shiny PS3s and 360s. The buck stops right before Sonic Adventure, and to be honest, I prefer to keep on walking the opposite direction of what Sonic was headed. So long, little ble guy, and good luck.

ON TO PART 2!