20 years ago, Sonic the Hedgehog made his debut on the Genesis game that wound up becoming an entire franchise with several games on that one console alone. Though the series has had its highs and lows throughout the years, it’s nonetheless as popular as it was back 20 years ago among gamers.
On the XBox Live Marketplace and the UK and US Playstation Store, a 650MB demo of Sonic Generations has been released, allowing you to play as the original Sonic through the first act of Green Hill Zone. I’m not sure if it’s been released on the US XBox however.
The demo only allows for 20 days of play and only lasts about two minutes. My own opinion on it is that it needs to clean up on the speed at times and probably have the camera move forward a good bit or zoom out more when Sonic is in motion, as well as making it a bit more obvious what you can and cannot land on since there isn’t much graphical difference between foreground and background.
It does look absolutely beautiful however, there is a real sense of depth and size for the stage, and it sticks to the mechanics of long bursts of speed and brief skill-based platforming elements that made the original games so successful.
The consensus from a few site’s commenters is that the controls and physics of the game need some work on them, some people are loving it, and others are hating it. Some are also having the audacity to judge an entire game based on a one-stage demo as well but they don’t matter. This is something Sonic fans have been waiting for, and I doubt it will be a letdown like how Duke Nukem Forever was to the modern gaming community.
