10 Video Games That Owned Themselves

10. Sonic Mania

As esteemed as the spiny speedster once was, Sonic has made himself drastically and devastatingly easy to mock over the latter half of his 30 year tenure, thanks to a slew of terrible, noodle-armed disasters and a fandom which has turned self-parody a fine art. SEGA themselves have even got in on the act, releasing an utterly preposterous movie, one originally animated by competition winners working off a rough description reading 'small blue man'.

The Sonic the Hedgehog movie didn't have much right gently ribbing the series given it was contributing to the problem, but 2017's Sonic Mania, a gushing love letter to lapsed fans and the best Sonic game of all time, did. Christian Whitehead's delicious dose of erinaceidae action affectionately lampoons some of the more ridiculous aspects of Sonic culture, though the most sardonically subtle comes under the bright lights of the game's second level, Studiopolis.

After besting the zone's boss - a climate-flipping egg-o-matic itself parodying Sonic & Knuckles' weathervane Cluckoid badnik - the TV feed cuts to a test card, accompanied by an annoying buzz. This is no standard studio static though; it's the exact same buzz which plagued SEGA's 25th Anniversary livestream, one infamously beset by technical issues.

Now that's a pointed barb.