The Sonic of Old Vs The Sonic of New

Sonic is been gaming icon for 20 years now and has influenced a generation forever.  Over these 20 years we have seen the golden age Sega with all of it's amazing games to recent years of an abomination of recent games.  Surprisingly with the release of Sonic 4 episode 1 and Sonic Generations the retro community can breathe with ease.  Any hardcore game that played games in the early 90's has to give some respect to this series  whether you like it or not.  

Sonic has always been about going fast whether if it's in 2d or 3d.  Now everyone should know the best games of the series where the first 4.  The first attempt for a 3d type game sonic 3D Blast.  The reason why the game didn't do very well was the main fact you couldn't go fast. Since you couldn't go fast they the action seemed to pretty much vanish.  More or less  the game was a long fetch quest of obtaining flickies to get to the new zone.   Also the music wasn't very good which doesn't help at all.  Sonic should always be about going fast no matter in what dimension, with good music that fits the stage, along with intricate platforming parts where you slow down.

The series hit a good stride after that with the dreamcast but I feel it still had flaws.  The voice acting was okay at best.  New characters were being introduced like Big the Cat and the robot.   These characters didn't really add much to the story in anyway.  Big the Cat ran around yelling froggy then made me feel like I was pro bass fishing.  Sonic Adventure 2 was fun but thn again I still felt like there were characters that are not needed like Shadow, Rouge the Bat, as well as cream later down the line. Shadow effectively a clone of Sonic not story but in spirit.  There already is a Hedgehog his name is Sonic and he runs fast not Shadow.  Then we get Silver just yelling Iblis trigger and time traveling.  I understand that over time games evolve we get new characters.  But these characters feel so gimicky that me and as well as other can't connect to this characters.  Until the end of time sonic will always be based on running fast and amazing music.  You don't even need voice acting for a story. Sonic 3 and Knuckles used the cut scenes to tell a story and it was perfectly great.