Sonic the Hedgehogcelebrated his 30 year anniversary in 2021; a tremendous accomplishment. For over three decades, the spiky rodent with attitude has spindashed his way across a multitude of games, films, comics, and cartoons – and in doing so, cemented himself in gamers' hearts. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t have some childhood memory or other of this unique franchise.
Even so, the actual quality of Sonic’s mainline games has, shall we say, varied. Some are bonafide classics, while others are perhaps best left in the Blue Blur bargain bin. Want to know which of his many, many adventures are worth a spin? Let’s find out!
Updated July 04, 2025 by Bobby Mills:The Year of Shadow or the Year of Luigi – who wore it better? Whichever side you come down on, 2024 has been a banner year for our beloved gun-toting ultimate life form. The celebrations have peaked with the release of Shadow Generations, and it’s a good ‘un; so we thought we’d slot it into our list. Enjoy!
As is practically tradition by now with our Sonic rankings, when we say ‘mainline’ we’re referring solely to home console platformers that were developed either entirely, or in large part, by Sonic Team. This excludes spinoffs like Team Sonic Racing and handheld titles like the Rush duology.
One exception, though: we’ll be covering Sonic 4, despite that being a Dimps project, since it’s a numbered sequel.
21Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)
Well, What Else Did You Expect?
Yep, it was inevitable. Sonic 2006, or ‘06 as it’s most commonly known, represents the nadir of the Sonic timeline. An ambitious project intended to breathe new life into the ailing IP via the wonders of high-definition, it crashed and burned in spectacular fashion.
It would be quicker to number ‘06’s positives than its laundry list of faults. Its immovable Christmas deadline did it no favours – the narrative is incomprehensible, it’s riddled with bugs and interminable loading screens, and it drops more frames than a clumsy art dealer.
20Sonic And The Secret Rings
Arabian Blights
Part one of the Sonic Storybook Series - which made it to a grand total of two entries before being canned - Secret Rings entered development only because ‘06 couldn’t be ported to the Wii. A motion control-centric experience, it’s a grueling nightmare to suffer through.
Tilting the Wiimote to steer Sonic across deserts and evil foundries is as imprecise as imprecision gets, not helped by the floaty jumping and half-baked RPG elements. Aladdin never had to deal with this.
19Shadow The Hedgehog
Edge Was The 2000s Formula
Given his ongoing popularity with fans after his post-SA2 resurrection, it was no surprise that Shadow the Hedgehog was given a standalone game. Whatwassurprising, however, was that it took the form of a clunky third-person shooter.
The Ultimate Life Form runs, guns, and (mildly) cusses his way through an assortment of colourless environments in his quest to thwart the Black Arms invasion. You’ll die to misaligned homing attacks more often than to the enemies, and the ‘morality system’ quests are dull as dishwater.
18Sonic The Hedgehog 4
Fourquels Always Suck
Sonic 4 began life as a mobile title, ‘Sonic Portable,’ before Sega execs decided it’d make more dough on consoles masquerading as a Genesis sequel. Lethargic and creatively derivative, it was a colossal disappointment.
Released episodically, we would see two chapters before the project was axed. Episode 1’s physics don’t bear thinking about; Episode 2 sands off a few of the rougher edges, but it’s not enough to salvage something that’s this dead inside.
17Sonic Forces
Sonic Forces You To Rethink Your Life
Riding a tidal wave of hype, spurred on by cannily-edited teaser trailers and convention appearances, Sonic Forces sold itself on a strong premise: Dr. Eggman has won. Sadly, the final offering failed to hit any of the necessary benchmarks to pull off such a high concept.
Eggman does indeed conquer the globe, but it’s told to us via a black screen with text – an omen of the cheapness that pervades the game. You spend more time playing as an awkward OC that you create to bail Sonic out of prison than the Blue Blur himself, and the writing smacks of subpar fanfiction.
16Sonic The Hedgehog
The Original, But Far From The Best
It may seem like heresy to have the inaugural game this low in the ranking – but most fans tend to concede that Sonic 2 was the true beginning, and Sonic 1 was just the flashy tech demo to move hardware. It’s astonishingly brief, rocking a meager six zones, and often has a pace akin to molasses.
With no spindash at your disposal, much of Sonic 1 is spent doing sluggish, single-block platforming. Four out of the six worlds are duds (can anyone in good conscience defend Marble or Labyrinth?) and even the Chaos Emeralds serve no significant purpose.
15Sonic Lost World
Sonic Goes The Way Of The Plumber
As part of a Wii U exclusivity deal signed in the 2010s, Nintendo assisted with the development of Sonic Lost World. The result was a confused package that borrows more than a few pages from Mario’s playbook, from the cylindrical Galaxy-esque planetoids to the generic world themes.
Sing along, now: grasslands, desert, beach, forest, ice world, fire world, boss. Things aren’t exactly buoyed by a complicated parkour system, which in fairnessisquite satisfying to utilise, but takes far more patience to get to grips with than most players are likely to possess.
14Sonic Heroes
Four Times The Length Means Four Times The Fun, Surely?
Heroes is, at its core, a perfectly acceptable endeavour. The controls are workable, the soundtrack slaps, and there’s no extra fluff or hubs between stages. You simply pick your preferred team, and you’re off to enjoy that high-octane Sonic action.
But then it dawns on you: in order to reach the Last Story, you’ve got to play the entire damn game four separate times. Once as Team Sonic, then again, with little variation, as Teams Dark, Rose, and Chaotix. Suddenly, the fun begins to melt away, and what should have been a brisk four-hour classic bloats into a 15-hour letdown.
13Sonic And The Black Knight
Whoso Waggleth This Sword Shall Be King
Black Knight closes out the Storybook duology with a smidge more competence than the atrocities of Secret Rings, but it remains uneven. Here, Sonic’s dragged, chili dogs and all, into the pages of the Arthurian legend, where he’s got to help young Merlina dethrone a ghoulish King Arthur.
Assisting you in this knightly task is Caliburn, a talkative sword that you can swipe at enemies (with impressive inconsistency) via the Wiimote. Skyward Sword this ain’t – but there is mirth to be had seeing Sonic’s friends cosplay as various medieval figures for the occasion.
12Sonic Colors
Wii’re Gonna Reach For The Stars
We’re now at the point in our ranking where the remaining entries are all solid to great. Colors kicked off a kind of Sonic-naissance; hot on the heels of the maligned ‘06 and Black Knight, all it took was this Wii outing to rekindle public faith in the little guy’s games.
After Eggman constructs a (graphically stunning) Interstellar Amusement Park in space as a front to enslave the alien Wisps, Sonic and Tails are on the case. Colors builds on the firm foundation of Unleashed’s boost formula to crowd-pleasing effect, but it’s marred by an overreliance on floaty 2D portions.
