2013 Sonic Retrospective

[NegaMetallix 27]

Well, the year is coming to an end, and so I thought of doing a recap on everything involving our favourite blue blur this year.

I'll just start right off by saying that, for me 2013 was... kinda disappointing overall. Outside of Sonic-related things, there were a few good movies and games this year, but also a lot of bad ones. But how did Sonic do this year? Well, if you ask me, I think he had a very mixed year. I'll start with the Archie comics first, since that was a major part of 2013. We started off the year by finishing up 'Endangered Species' and Universe's 'Chaotix Quest' story arcs, both of which suffered from the then-ongoing Ken Penders case. As such, both storys (more so on the former) ended up severly altered, with characters like Shard and Bow Sparrow being brought in to fill in the blanks. This was followed by the 50th Universe issue, which featured an awesome battle between Metal Sonics old and new. We then got treated to 'At All Costs: Part 1', which was set to end the Mecha Sally chase. However...

This was followed by Eggman discovering where the Blue Chaos Emerald disappeared to after 'Genesis'. It turned out that it landed in another universe entirely... Earth 20XX! What followed was one of the biggest, and longest, video game comic crossovers in history: Sonic & Mega Man - When Worlds Collide! We had Dr. Eggman and Dr. Wily activating another Genesis Wave to take over both dimensions, the Blue Blur and the Blue Bomber battling each other, then teaming up to stop new foes such as the Roboticized Masters and the Chaos Devil, as well as hundreds of Robot Masters from Mega Man's world. But, near the end of the crossover, we started learning more about the Penders case. And unfortunately, it seemed like he had won...

After the bittersweet ending to the crossover, with Mega Man's world restored back to normal, Sonic wasn't so lucky. In-universe, Eggman's interference during Super Sonic's Chaos Control caused the world to be drastically altered, resembling a merge between the old universe and the 'Genesis' one. In the real world, however, it was because (as far as I can tell) Penders got all of his characters back, and Archie Comics could no longer use them. Seeing as his roster consisted of a majority of characters, namely one's who were going to be major players in the build-up from issues 250-300, this resulted in Ian Flynn having to completely change the story, settings, names and even removing fan-favourites from the series. Currently, the next issue to be released is the finale to 'Countdown To Chaos', and the arc so far isn't looking too bad. So here's to a new era of Sonic Comics!

Meanwhile, in the official games department, SEGA revealed in May that they had entered a three-game partnership with Nintendo. While the third game won't be coming out until next year, we got given two of them this year. The first was the next major Sonic game since 2011's Sonic Generations, titled 'Sonic: Lost World'. Ever since its first reveal trailer, many people had different thoughts. Some thought it looked amazing, others thought the new characters (namely the Deadly Six) looked out-of-place. Soon after, they revealed the next entry in the Mario and Sonic Olympic series, based on the upcoming Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. Naturally, people thought it would just be more of the same. (Spoiler Alert! It pretty much was.) When Lost World was released a few months ago, the reviews were polarizing beyond belief. Some reviewers thought it was one of the best Sonic games to come out in years, but most people said that it was a step down for the franchise, either for the story, characters, way-past-experimental gameplay etc. I've only played the 3DS version, and I've pretty much said all I needed to say over on that game's topic page.

So, overall I'd say that Sonic has had a bit of a rough year. But as I've said above, there are some things worth checking out for next year. We have the last game on the Nintendo contract before Sonic can go multi-platform again, and he'll be appearing as a playable character (again) in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. for Wii-U and 3DS! Meanwhile, the guys at Archie Comics are doing their best to keep Sonic fans old and new interested in the comic series.

And with that, I'd like to know what you guys thought of this year for Sonic (or even just the year in general). Have a great New Year's Eve, everyone!

(...Oh, and there was that... er, 'Sonic Fan-Film' early in the year. I think the video below pretty much explains my thoughts on that... er, film.)

[sweet_lil_Eliza 49]

Sonic Lost World was a good progress, no other say except that. I wanted a 3DS and I didn't get it. While my year was basically bad even when sonic is not counted, sonic did pretty good ^_^

[Lena Stan Account 60]

Well Sonic Lost World didn't interest me. No Metal Sonic. Lame villains (Well not lamer than black doom). Out of reach for.

And for other things... this year wasn't really interesting at all, Comics had a Crossover with the weakest Megaman Character. No new megaman game. And no new game in my reach. I'am going to Dominus Dracula enough in next days.

In Overall it wasn't as good as last year.