10 Things Sega Wants You To Forget About Sonic The Hedgehog

4. That Sonic '06 Was Completely Unplayable

Due to the mixed criticism regarding Sonic's first 3D titles such as Sonic Adventure 1 & 2 and Sonic Heroes, Sega made the decision to completely reboot the franchise for seventh-gen consoles in hope of giving the hedgehog a fresh start. Yuji Naka, then-head of Sonic Team resigned half way through development, while the introduction of the Wii caused Sega to split the Sonic Team developers in half, with one side set to developing Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, with the other tasked with developing Sonic and the Secret Rings for Wii. When the deadline neared closer and closer, the development team was far behind and forced to completely ignore reports from bug-testers. They released the game in the holiday season to disastrous results.

The game was universally panned by both critics and fans as it was deemed widely unplayable. The sheer amount of glitches, the awkward uncontrollable physics engine and a complete lack of direction in giant, unfinished environments were enough to repel any gamer - fan or not. Sega had not released a bad game under their biggest intellectual property, they'd released a completely unfinished product that was not up to any realistic sales standard. The game dirtied both Sega's reputation and Sonic's, a hit from which Sega are still trying to recover.