Sonic the Hedgehog has come a long way in the past few years. From the open-world reinvention Sonic Frontiers to the financial success of the movie franchise, everyone’s favorite Sega mascot is enjoying a boom period. But while some at Sega might want you to forget some of Sonic’s more mediocre (or downright terrible) outings–especially those of the mid 2000s–the die-hard modders in the surprisingly active 3D Sonic scene are here to fix the problems that annoyed thousands of schoolchildren back in the day.
Of the many, many Sonic games that have emerged over the years, it’s fair to say that 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog is the most infamous. Featuring a wildly ambitious spread of playable characters and a doomed cross-species love story between Sonic and a human princess, “Sonic ’06” is one of the best-ever examples of publisher hubris. That said, does it deserve its reputation as an all-time bad game? According to Sonic fan ChaosX, absolutely not. And he’s far from the only one who feels that way.
ChaosX is the Argentinian developer behind “P-06 (Project ’06),” a decidedly unofficial remake of the Sonic 2006 game made in the Unity engine. When the developer first played Sonic 2006 as a kid, he was fascinated by its mix of soaring highs and abyssal lows–here was a game that had some of the best art design and music that he had ever seen and heard, yet it struggled with the basics of the platforming genre.
