For a while we thought Sonic was a goner, a blue hedgehog-shaped smear on the tarmac of gaming history. With Sonic Team’s every attempted step forward, his scores plummeted down. Multiple characters exploring 3D environments? Big the Cat? Sonic with guns? With Secret Rings, the team has finally realized that the only way forwards is backwards. At breakneck speeds.
Filter him down into his purest form - the original Sonic on Genesis - and you’ll find little more than the urge to move forwards. Speedily moving from the left of the screen to the right, Sonic was about distance covered and little else. In Secret Rings this purity of motivation has been gloriously rediscovered, with Sonic sent zipping along, jumping obstacles and bopping the occasional baddie on the head like it was 1991.