Pictured: Sonic running away from quality gameplay.

It’s easy to dismiss those that willingly invite and/or accept drama into their lives as weak-willed individuals who deserve whatever circumstances that they happen to put up with – - I used to think in the same manner. Granted, on a most basic, logical level, it’s true. In retrospect, all the girls on Ricki Lake who shouted “Ah luv heem, tho!” may not have deserved to be mentally or physically abused, but after a while you simply have to scream “STFU and fix the situation!” in order to cope with the same ol’ song and dance. However,  as with many aspects of life, age and experience have ways of altering opinion; I now understand those ladies’ pain.

The splinter in my heart is Sonic, my highly attractive  yet brutally abusive lover.  He (and by direct extension, SEGA) have continually hurt me, when all I’ve wanted is for him to love me as he used to in those early, tender years. At a time when Sonic‘s once again on the brain due to today’s announcement of Sonic Classic Collection for the Nintendo DS (which includes Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic & Knuckles), I sincerely ask SEGA to either stop with the Sonic bullshit or I’m walking away. Forever.

I met Sonic nearly 20 years ago when we were hooked up by my friend, Bobby Mitchell. He received a SEGA Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog as a pack-in as a Christmas gift, and invited me over to play. Consider it love at first sight, if you will; I had heard of Sonic the Hedgehod and the infamous “Blast Processing” courtesy of print ads and TV spots, but I still had in mind that the character would be very Mario-like in terms of temperament. I was expecting Richie Cunningham, but got Arthur Fonzarelli.

SEGA had tried cool before, but the secret sauce in the formula just didn’t deliver the goods. Kid Chameleon had a leather jacket and sunglasses, but was decidedly non-bad ass. Sonic, on the other hand, was the very definition of cool. He wagged his finger. He had a smirk. He tapped his foot impatiently when you didn’t touch the controller after a few seconds. He had attitude. Now? He’s just a sad sack of blue fur that’s trying to be cool long after his period of hipness has expired.

Pictured: Part of the problem.

It all began with Sonic & Knuckles, one of the more unique cartridges in videogamedom. It was the game in which Knuckles the Echidna first became a playable character; a game that when attached to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Sonic the Hedgehog 3, allowed him to be retroactively used in those titles. Unfortunately, the spiky-haired mammal, for all intents and purposes, became the new Sonic. He had more ‘tude, he had more cool, and managed to overshadow the protagonist in every way. He along with Tails, represented the out of control character additions that Sega felt was needed to broaden the scope of the “Sonicverse”, yet took away from the charms of the main character himself.

The move to 3D in Sonic Adventure made matters infinitely worse. Knuckles didn’t hog the spotlight, but shoddy level design and designers’ erections for all things polygonal made for a game, although fun, that didnt have the natural feel of a Sonic game due to, you guessed it, camera angles.

Then Sonic Adventures 2 introduced Shadow the Hedgehog, which gamers worth their weight in Cheetos knew with all of their hearts and souls just had to be an EGM joke when the first screens were revealed. Even in 2001, only two years after The Matrix, being dipped in black and toting a hand cannon was played. There was also a  flustercuck of barely indistinguishable Sonic games which included fighters, pinball games, werewolves, pairings with Mario, and miscellaneous other failures that never managed to capture the magic of the first two Sonic games.

There’s only so much that an old school Sonic fan can take before totally abandoning the franchise – - so what’s a beaten and battered Sonic fan to do? Relive what worked, which is what I suppose the release of Sonic Classic Collection is all about. The paranoid conspiracist in me thinks its SEGA putting a toe in the water to test the public’s reaction to a 2D Sonic game before “Project Needlemouse” spins and dashes onto PSN and XBLA some time in the new year.

Until then, I’ll check out Sonic Classic Collection, not just for 2D-X, but for myself. If it’s altered in anyway to placate the modern Sonic fan, I’m wiping the the slate clean Eternal Sunshine style. But I won’t start over.