A reader is frustrated that it’s taken this long for Sega to make a game like Sonic Frontiers and laments the last 20 years of wasted time.
So I’m playing Sonic Frontiers at the moment and it’s true: it really is the best 3D Sonic The Hedgehog ever. That is, of course, very faint praise and it obviously has a lot of rough edges, but overall it’s a pretty great game and a big milestone for the series and Sonic Team. But what I can’t help thinking, as I played it, is that not only is it badly overdue but it’s ridiculous that we’ve had to wait over two decades for Sega to get to grips with the post 16-bit era.
People complain about 343 Industries or Bethesda, but that is a massive amount of time for Sonic Team to be churning out dud after dud. Sonic games sell but it’s not like they’re always number one or anything. If Sega had its head screwed on properly it would’ve shut Sonic Team down years ago and got in people that could do a proper job on such an important franchise.
But, of course, it’s Sega and that’s only mistake #1,236 on a list that goes on forever, dating back to the Mega Drive era. Everyone loves Sega but that love is primarily born out of 50% nostalgia and 50% pity. They’re basically loveable goofs, forever messing up and always making the wrong decisions. But it should be so different.
As far as I understand it, most of their money nowadays comes from Sonic merch and PC strategy games, which is the sort of revelation that would’ve blow the mind of my eight-year-old self, if he’d known it during the days when the Mega Drive was king. I guess if you’re only a PC gamer it might never even occur to you that Sega used to be anything other than a purveyor of strategy games, which, again, is mind-blowing.