Well its back to the mill stone for me, I’ll be back to work on Monday, and I plan on ramping things up around here soon enough, in the meantime however what do you guys and gals say to having a look back at what 2009 has brought us in the world of Sonic.

Games
The year saw two major games released featuring our favourite hedgehog, Sonic and the Black Knight which quiet frankly was terrible, the idea of Sonic with a sword was a shaky premise to start with which they could have made work if they weren’t let down by the control scheme and pretty much ruined the whole game for me.

The second game where Sonic graced us with his presence is of course Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter games which while a very solid enjoyable game is not a Sonic game.

There were also several game re-releases over the year on a variety of online console services which while refreshing to play again don’t bring anything new to the table.

Overall then I’m forced to conclude that Sonic game releases this year has been rather rubbish with the best new game being one where he teams up with his former worst enemy in the games industry. At least 2010 is looking to shape up better.

Music
This year we have been spoilt rotten with good music it started off with the release of the amazing Sonic Unleashed soundtrack in a beautiful 3 CD set that I’m still enjoying.

A few months later we had the Sonic and the Black Knight soundtracks released which was one of the few redeeming features of the game itself. Although it was annoying that they split the vocal and instrumental tracks into two separate CD sets to make more money.

Then in the later half of the year we had the release of not one but two Jun Sunoue CD’s, admittedly one of those was a Crush 40 CD but it still counts. While most of Juns CD the works was baseball game related there were a few classic Sonic and SEGA related tracks that set things off quiet nicely. The Crush 40 Super Sonic Songs CD collected together the greatest songs they have done for the hedgehog and even added a few new ones, I’m still enjoying Fire Woman.

To round the year out we had one more CD, True Colours a sequel to the True Blue CD a year or two back which I can’t say much about yet as I’m hoping I’ll be listening to it when I get into work next Monday, but from the track list it looks like being one of the best Sonic compilation CD’s to date.

Comics
The year started with something truly joyous, the death of Archie’s Sonic X tie in comic series, with that gone we can finally put the whole series behind us! Now the death of one series brought the birth of a new one, Sonic Universe, which promised to explore story lines from the main Archie series that wouldn’t normally be featured in the main comic. So far it’s been a bit of a mixed bag though, with the Shadow story line at the start being really good, and then the Mobius 30 years later arc being a real stinker for the most part which is a shame considering the high quality stories that led up to it.

The normal Archie series saw a big milestone this year, hitting two hundred issues and celebrating in style with the fall (once again) of Eggman, leaving his mind shattered and a power vacuum quickly filled with migrants from the East. The story has been solid even though its been a little mediocre after 200 but that’s to be expected when you consider the build up they had before that issue.

Overall Archie have provided us with another entertaining year of comics, with me looking forward to seeing what next year will bring.

Merch
It’s been a very good year for merh collectors, with the CD and comic releases (see above), but lets not forget the rest, Jazwares have been throwing out tons of Sonic figures… only in America really though, hows about bringing them to the UK so I don’t have to be price gouged by ebay? Then there’s First 4 Figures who have done a marvellous job with there first figure set, and lets not forget they seem to have something that looks very much like Metal Sonic in the works hopefully coming next year.

Right I’ve blathered on for long enough, to sum up 2009 has been a good year for Sonic, except in the games department which is where it really matters, however next years line up looks to fix that.