It seems someone over at SEGA France (because the French are ‘special’ and don’t come under the SEGA of Europe banner)* has been talking about a big announcement of an upcoming game this Friday.

At this point I thought I’d weigh in with a few thoughts of mine in the hopes of cooling off some of the more rabid amongst us.

Now the initial reaction of a Sonic fan may be, “NEW SONIC GAME COMING FRIDAY 😀 !!!!” (which sums up nicely the comments on this TSSZ article) I’d like to throw a bucket of water on the community before it overheats with speculation about this being a new Sonic game.

First off lets look at where this has come from, SEGA France which if I remember my geography correctly is not the heartland of Sonic game development, so why they would be hinting at something which is most unlikely to be developed in there region is peculiar, however I will admit it is not beyond the realm of possibility. It could just be that all regions know, its just the French aren’t very good at keeping secrets.

Secondly, the tease included the words, “huge surprise,” a new Sonic game is not a huge surprise, its a guaranteed fact, its just a matter of when they announce a new Sonic game because if SEGA is not developing a new Sonic game right now I will quiet happily eat my hat! “Huge Surprise” to me implies something new, not Sonic, a new IP perhaps or even a re-imagining of an old IP, while yes this could include a re-imagined Sonic game (oh god not another one) I still put it down as highly unlikely.

Okay that’s enough cold water, now to fan the flames a bit.

Look at the upcoming Sonic games that we know about, there isn’t any… well yes there is the new Mario and Sonic but that doesn’t count since its not even being developed by Sonic team. So we have no upcoming Sonic games announced, and to the best of my knowledge Sonic Team isn’t working on another project that has been announced, so there must be something on the way. Still a lack of new announcements doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something going to be announced on Friday, they may be taking there time with the next game to make sure they get it right. Except taking there time costs an exceedingly large amount of money when a quicker turn around for a game which ends up with a few bumps here and there is far more profitable.

Next lets have a look at previous years, the autumn SEGA lineup for the last few years has always included a Sonic title, last year we had, Unleashed, the year before we had Sonic Rush Adventure, the year before Sonic 06, and the year before that we had Sonic Rush and Shadow the hedgehog. So extrapolating from this, a pattern starts to become apparent. This may also lead some to conclude that if a new Sonic game will be announced on Friday then it will be a Sonic Rush 3, which to be honest I’m inclined to agree with except when it comes to being a, “huge surprise.”

Well I hope you have enjoyed this little article, I guess we will find out Friday what this game is, and while I am hoping for a Sonic game, I’m not so blind as to assume that it can be nothing else, and I hope this article has instilled a little of that in some of the more rabid Sonic fans.

NOTES:
* The French being ‘special’ are purely the opinion of the author and may not truly reflect the cheese eating serenader monkeys, with annoyingly cool cars.