10 Video Game Franchises Who Desperately Need A Win

Sonic once fronted an entire half of the gaming world in the Nintendo Vs. Sega era, but over the years he has slowly been beaten down with misfire after misfire.

Sega would use him as a guinea pig of sorts trying to find something that would work, with a strange aversion to just letting him just be in a competent 2D platformer like the old days. Instead of allowing Sonic to be Sonic, he'd be saddled with gimmicks such as him turning into a were-hog or riding a hoverboard for the Kinect.

Sonic '06 went down as one of the biggest failures of the sixth generation, The Lost World gave him gravity-defying 3D levels to traverse that ripped off Super Mario Galaxy and the less said about Sonic Boom the better.

His only games to gain praise were Sonic Generations that features amazing 2D platforming from his glory days, and the fan developed Sonic Mania which featured the Hedgehog in his classic 16-bit form. This shows people do love Sonic when he just runs fast and jumps to stop an evil scientist, not being roped into expansive games featuring large open world hub areas with epic anime-style storylines.

Sonic has sadly become a punchline in most conversations, but he just needs one big return to form to get fans excited for his adventures again.