Slowly the Turtle (2006 BC)

Sonic the Hedgehog (also known as Sonic '06, Sonic 2006 or Sonic Next-Gen) is a 2006 platforming game in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. It was released as celebration for the 15th anniversary of the series. It was intended to be a reboot of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega, it was released for the Xbox 360 and later released for the PlayStation 3. Microsoft Windows and Wii versions of the game were also in development, but the PC port was scrapped due to its terrible development cycle, while the Wii port became Sonic and the Secret Rings due to the Wii's hardware limitations.

Plot
Dr. Eggman plans to revive an evil demon known as Iblis by kidnapping Princess Elise of Soleanna. However, in the future, Iblis has caused the end of the world, so a hedgehog known as Silver goes back in time, believing Sonic is responsible for awakening Iblis. What no one knows is that they are all pawns of another demon known as Mephiles, who plans to unite with Iblis as both Iblis and Mephiles were once a single entity known as Solaris, the God of Time.

Why The Game Was Delayed
After the game was announced, the development faced serious problems, starting with Yuji Naka's resignation as head of Sonic Team to form his own company, Prope. With his departure, "the heart and soul of Sonic" was gone, according to former Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske. Sonic the Hedgehog was originally intended for release on all major seventh generation consoles as well as Microsoft Windows, but when presented with development kits for Nintendo's less powerful Wii console, the team was split in two. Nakamura led one team to finish Sonic the Hedgehog for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 while producer Yojiro Ogawa led the other half to begin work on Sonic and the Secret Rings for the Wii. The split left an unusually small development team to work on Sonic the Hedgehog. Sega began pressuring the team to release the game by Christmas 2006, so with the deadline quickly approaching, Sonic Team rushed the final stages of development, ignoring existing bugs and design issues. Various planned features were dropped, such as a time of day and night mechanic similar to the one later implemented in Sonic Unleashed (2008), and additional multiplayer components.

In retrospect, Ogawa noted that the final period proved to be a large challenge for the team. Not only was the Xbox 360 release imminent, but the PlayStation 3 launch was scheduled not long afterward. This put tremendous pressure on the team to develop for both systems. Similarly, series producer Takashi Iizuka recalled, "we didn't have any time to polish and we were just churning out content as quick as we could."

For the beta elements for Sonic 06, go to Sonic News Network.

For more information about the development cycle, go here. (Archive)

Why It Rocks

 * 1) As mentioned above, the game was heavily rushed and had a terrible development cycle. Sonic Team didn't finish the game, instead they took an untested alpha build. This predictably caused a great number of issues listed below.
 * 2) *This game also suffered from executive meddling from Sega.
 * 3) The game has lots of glitches and bugs; many gimmicks are buggy, it's easy to glitch through walls, sometimes the character model can disappear, etc.
 * 4) Extremely sensitive controls. Just a slight tilt of the analog stick is more than enough to turn your character 90 degrees.
 * 5) Due to improper physics implementation, moving on an incline doesn't feel any different from moving on a flat surface, characters come to an immediate stop upon release of the joy stick, characters can stand upside-down on the ceilings of loops, and jumping feels very floaty. To add insult to injury, the game uses Havok physics engine, which is known for awesome physics capabilities and was used in lots of awesome games like , Far Cry 2 and F.E.A.R..
 * 6) Poor controls and terrible camera make the game frustratingly bad and more difficult, making it hard to jump through rings or drive a vehicle. It also makes the game unfairly difficult and rage inducing. The bad controls can cause cheap deaths. For example, in the first zone, there is a bridge below an item box which Sonic can get stuck on and die if you aren't moving the left stick after going on the ramp just before the bridge.
 * 7) The game also suffers from a terrible framerate; there are plenty of moments where the game drops into single digit frames, almost of slideshow quality. It's pretty bad on Xbox 360, and even worse on PS3 (see WIS #35).
 * 8) Most of the voice acting ranges from decent to terrible. Pete Capella's performance as Silver can get really annoying at times, and Kathleen Delaney's performance as Rouge gives very dull effort and doesn't match with the character, once again.
 * 9) The story is convoluted, messy, and downright riddled with plotholes. The reason for all of this is because Sonic '06 was meant to be a series reboot; if that was the case, it would be fine, but for some strange reason, Sonic Generations treats it as canon with the rest of the series (In fact, it introduced a huge continunity hole to the Modern Era timeline), so the massive retcons, inconsistencies and plotholes can't be excused anymore and also introduces plotholes in the rest of the lore. Some examples include (but not limited to):
 * 10) * Sonic and his friends can time travel with the Chaos Emeralds. Why don't they just go back in time and extinguish The Flame Of Hope (aka Solaris) right away to prevent the end of the world?!
 * 11) * Mephiles' plan doesn't make sense either. Why don't he just go back in time and merge with Iblis right away?!
 * 12) * In the scene where Shadow is sealing Mephiles in the staff, Mephiles says that one day he will escape and kill Shadow, which could explain how Mephiles knows Shadow when they first meet, because Shadow was meant to stop Mephiles. However, Shadow was still sealed in the capsule in Prison Island at that time, so there was no way he could have stopped Mephiles in the first place.
 * 13) * The aforementioned ability to time travel at will has no limitations or consequences. This game exemplifies why time travel is such a risky plot device because how easy it is to cock up.
 * 14) * During the scene when Shadow meets Mephiles, he introduces himself to him, however, when he meets Mephiles again, Shadow asks Mephiles how he knew his name. Does Shadow have some kind of short-term memory loss?
 * 15) * Why did Shadow leave the Sceptre Of Darkness behind? Even Silver questions this decision!
 * 16) * Shadow works for G.U.N, which was the same organization that tried to kill him in the last game (the game's Expert Mode contains some dialogue that helps fill this in, but it's quite a far fetch).
 * 17) * Before the Duke (Elise's father) dies, he seals Iblis inside Elise (who is unconscious) and tells Elise to always be happy and that if she ever cries, Iblis will be free. The problem is, how was Elise able to not cry for ten years, especially after her father dies?
 * 18) * Before Shadow and Silver go back to the present, Silver gives the young and unconscious Elise the Blue Chaos Emerald, which could explain how Elise has the Chaos Emerald in the begin of the game, but that's in Silver's story. In Shadow's story, if you look very closely at Silver's right hand as he heads into the portal, you can see the Blue Chaos Emerald is still in his hand. Oops!
 * 19) * Blaze and Silver can call themselves "best friends", but there's a problem, Blaze completely forgot Sonic (you know, she learned friendship from him in Sonic Rush). Also there's no explanation how Blaze met Silver and became friends.
 * 20) **Speaking of Blaze, she doesn't do anything useful throughout Silver's story, as she is shoehorned. While she supposedly acts as Silver's mentor, but in terms of story contribution? Well aside from sacrificing herself to seal Iblis, she does very little to aid Silver on his quest, and has very little input on anything. There are cutscenes where Silver is conversing with someone with Blaze just standing in the background looking pretty. The funniest part is that neither Silver nor the character he is talking to even acknowledge her presence.
 * 21) Speaking of the storyline, the game literally retcons itself at the end. This infuriated players because they had to endure this game for approximately 12 hours, only to be told it was all for nothing, most likely due to Sonic Team being aware that the game was unfinished.
 * 22) Next to no speed in a game franchise that is supposed to be fast-paced and full of fast characters. Even Sonic himself (you know, the fastest thing alive) runs relatively slow compared to the other entries in the series, and the stages where Sonic does run fast are near impossible to control.
 * 23) * Those sections where Sonic runs fast are the mach speed sections, sections where Sonic moves at lightning speed and must be controlled to avoid the obstacles. The moving controls are inconsistent and oversensitive, Sonic normally moves forward by himself, but when he hits an item box in the air you suddenly need to move the left stick for him to move forward. It is also very difficult to avoid obstacles as the stage throws way too many things at you. Jumping in these sections is also extremely dangerous since it locks Sonic's movement while in the air. The Light Dash is more of a hindrance at times during these segments it can lead Sonic to run into hazards; you're better off not using it.
 * 24) A lot of puzzles in this game are rather broken and poorly designed. The most infamous example is the billiard puzzle at the end of Silver's run through Dusty Desert, in which he needs to guide a large ball through an L-shaped corridor and into a hole at the end. The problem here is the physics; since nothing in the game has proper weight implementation, the ball will bounce uncontrollably with each hit, and the metal crates that are supposed to stop it from falling into the wrong holes are ineffective. Compounded by the fact that Silver can only bitch-slap the ball through the hallway (instead of, you know, grabbing it with psychokinesis) 9 times before it eventually explodes. It really says a lot about this game when most players bypass this puzzle by exploiting the shoddy coding to glitch through the door using one of the boxes. In Shadow's Kingdom Valley level, Rouge tells you that you need three keys to open a door, similar to the hunting stages in the Adventure games. Only this time, you don't have a radar to help you find them and there are no hints, leaving you completely blind when looking for these keys (thankfully there's a glitch, which it bypasses the entire puzzle).
 * 25) The Skill Gem power-ups were supposed to be timer-based, but due to incorrect naming in the code, the timers never run out, meaning you can use them indefinitely.
 * 26) * All seven gems themselves are very broken, and they are:
 * 27) ** The blue gem gives you a burst of speed, which can be spammed infinitely to speed through levels.
 * 28) **The red gem can be used to slow down time. This includes the level timer, making it easier to get high ranks.
 * 29) ** The green gem creates a tornado around Sonic, damaging everything close to him.
 * 30) ** The white gem allows Sonic to perform a more powerful and controllable homing attack.
 * 31) ** The sky blue gem makes Sonic throw a small gem, and wherever it lands, Sonic will zip towards that location. However its range is not unlimited, and it can accidentally launch Sonic off the stage.
 * 32) ** The yellow gem creates a yellow-colored thunder shield around Sonic, similar to the lightning/magnetic shield from older games. While it can only take one hit, there is nothing preventing the player from simply making another one right after he gets hit.
 * 33) ** The purple emerald shrinks you down and gives you infinite jumps. Because the emerald powerups last forever, Sonic can skip huge chunks of his levels by jumping infinitely. This makes it the most broken emerald in the game.
 * 34) Speaking of upgrades, Shadow and Silver only get a fraction of the upgrades Sonic has:
 * 35) * Shadow gets the Light Dash, and three Chaos powers, the Chaos Snap, Chaos Lance, and Chaos Blast, none of which are really that useful.
 * 36) * Silver gets a pathetic Dash move that covers very little distance, a wider pickup radius, a Throw-All move that's self-explanatory, and a slam attack that stuns all enemies within range.
 * 37) While not as much as Shadow the Hedgehog, this game tries way too hard to take itself seriously. Some examples include:
 * 38) * In the last story, Sonic gets killed by the main villain (albeit temporarily).
 * 39) * Crisis City, most notably being horribly out-of-place in Sonic universe due to its dark and gritty tone.
 * 40) **Speaking of Crisis City, the mach speed section at the end of the stage is the worst one of the lot; there are so many obstacles that are hard to avoid, plus you to deal with debris being thrown at you from behind as well, with no indication of where if comes from. There are also moments where the camera spins round in front of Sonic, but the controls don't change to compensate for this new angle, making it feel disorienting.
 * 41) The opening cutscene feels like it could fit more in a Final Fantasy game than in Sonic. Nothing in it feels fitting until Sonic and Dr. Eggman jump in and perform their roles.
 * 42) On that topic, the game's art direction received mixed reactions from fans since the more realistic people and settings clash with Sonic and company's more cartoony aesthetics. It's very inconsistent, and while it was a running theme in other Sonic games like Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow the Hedgehog, and later Sonic Unleashed, those games at least had a cartoony appearance. In this game, however, it is very glaring with its mediocre models and more realistic environments.
 * 43) * Eggman's realistic design was heavily panned for being incredibly disturbing and falling straight into the depths of Uncanny Valley, since Eggman was never meant to look realistic. Elise's design was also noted for being too pale and looking like a poor man's version of a character designed by Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts character designer Tetsuya Nomura.
 * 44) Constant scripted events and autopilot sections in the levels. Often you can find yourself not pressing any button for over 20 seconds while the game plays itself (for example, you can beat the Shadow hang gliding sections without even touching a single button). Sonic's version of Tropical Jungle works the same way for the first 20 seconds of the stage.
 * 45) Nothing happens in Sonic's story. All of the important backstories of Princess Elise and Solaris are told in Shadow and Silver's stories. With Sonic (you know, the main character in the entire series), it's just the completely pointless scuffle with Dr. Eggman complete with Elise getting kidnapped five times.
 * 46) * Despite Mephiles being the main villain of the game, Sonic never meets him once in his story. The only time he does so is in the last episode, and Sonic dies about two seconds after.
 * 47) Painfully long and frequent loading times. The worst instance of this is when you do a side mission. First, you accept the mission, it loads, then the NPC explains what you must do, and it loads again, you finish the mission, it loads, the NPC praises/criticizes you, it loads. It takes four loading screens to do a side-quest, sometimes the load screens will last longer than the side-quests. The worst offender has to be "The Mathematician's Training", where Shadow has to answer math problems, of which there are six in total, and every single question has its own loading screen, so that's eight loading screen you have to sit through for the mission.
 * 48) * What's even worse is that there is a side quest in Shadow's story where you help a G.U.N. soldier, and it has only one loading screen. Why can't all of the levels be like this?
 * 49) * It appears the primary reason for all the loading is that the overworld maps are modelled as finite-state machines: in other words, to change anything in a map, the game has to dump everything out of RAM, reload the base state of the map, then apply a state transition to it in order to create a specific state. This method is the most quick-and-dirty method of creating a functional loader, and probably a result of rushed development.
 * 50) * In the Let's Play of the PS3 version for the Something Awful forums by pokecapn, out of a 20:16:32 full runtime, 2:24:31 was loading screens. This amounts to almost 12% of the total playtime.
 * 51) The three main hedgehogs (Sonic, Shadow, and Silver) are buggy due to their controls and odd design choices for their gameplay:
 * 52) * Sonic plays just as he did in previous games, but he doesn't run as fast, as he runs slower than Omega and Blaze, his Homing Attack has a pause between attacks, he can't jump while using the Spin Dash, and his Homing Attack has strange tracking, sometimes slinging past enemies instead of hitting them.
 * 53) * Shadow's gameplay is similar to Sonic's, except he lacks the Spin Dash and his Homing Attack is more combat based which is a bit polarizing, as you're just tapping the jump button until the enemy dies. He also has some Chaos powers, that while cool, are bland and can sometimes break.
 * 54) * Silver's gameplay is using his psychokinesis. Think of the Stasis Field in Gravity Rush in that he can grab objects in the environment and fling them at enemies, only it's not very accurate, he can't aim his projectiles, they can simply bounce off the enemies about 40% of the time, and he can accidentally throw stuff into another one of the objects he's holding due to the poor spread. He can also grab enemy projectiles and throw those, and enemies themselves; however, Silver needs to stun them first by pimp-slapping them. Silver doesn't have any other means of attack in this game; he is completely dependent on his psychokinesis for defense. He is also much slower than Sonic, Shadow and even Amy, so he can't avoid obstacles or enemies as easily.
 * 55) There are also six playable side characters (two for each hedgehog), but they are rarely used and are just as buggy as the main characters, if not worse. Knuckles and Rouge are arguably the buggiest characters in the game.
 * 56) * Tails' gameplay is similar to that of Sonic Heroes (when he is on his own). He can fly, but his flight has too much forward momentum and he'll drop like a brick after a short while. He can attack enemies with Dummy Ring Bombs, which are slow but effective against enemies. However, they create fake rings upon exploding, and if you take damage, there is no way to tell the difference between real and fake rings. Tails is also agonizingly slow on the ground to the point where one has to wonder how he is able to hover when he is moving that slowly.
 * 57) * Rouge doesn't use hand-to-hand combat like she did in Sonic Adventure 2. Instead, she uses bombs, similar to Tails. She can throw 5 bombs at once making stronger enemies look like low level mooks, but she can get stuck on walls when climbing.
 * 58) * For E-123 Omega, he only has a pea shooter and homing missiles that sometimes work. His attacks also lack the impact that they had in Sonic Heroes. He also has a hover ability that can be easily exploited by mashing the jump button to skip certain parts of levels, and he is surprisingly fast for a robot.
 * 59) * Knuckles is slow, has unnaturally heavy gliding, is hard to use, and has terrible combat with such poor hit detection that it's impossible to kill enemies quickly. Like Rouge, Knuckles can also get stuck on walls when climbing.
 * 60) * Amy has reverted to her Sonic Adventure play style, which wasn't that good but it's much worse here; terrible ground speed, a delayed hammer swing, a double jump that gives extra height but kills forward momentum, and she can inexplicably turn invisible for some reason. She also can't even perform air attacks anymore.
 * 61) * Blaze's gameplay style similar to she did in Sonic Rush, she runs faster than Sonic, her Homing Attack is more quick and flowing-free and her double jump is more functional than Amy's double jump, making her the most functional character in the entire game. However, she is only used three times, as she only has two playable segments and one full stage to herself and she has little-to-no impact to the storyline whatsoever.
 * 62) Sonic's personality shifts from a cool hero with an attitude into a most of the time serious one with no humor. Also, Blaze and Knuckles both act out of character and don't serve any real purpose.
 * 63) Elise is by far one of the biggest "damsel in distress" characters in video game history (surpassing even Princess Peach of the Super Mario Bros. franchise, which is quite the accomplishment), since she gets kidnapped so often, it's ridiculous. She has the power of Iblis inside her, which is extremely powerful yet she almost never uses it (as it only triggers if she sheds a single tear, which in itself is pretty stupid), making her a poor man's version of Jean Grey (only without becoming a strong female lead).
 * 64) Both Elise and Silver were poorly received. After Sonic '06, Elise has never been seen in any future Sonic games. Silver, on the other hand, had gained more popularity than Elise, becoming a side character in the franchise, and appearing in minor roles like the two Sonic Rivals games, the Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games series, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, Sonic Generations, Sonic Forces and Team Sonic Racing. Silver usually gives people Sonic '06 flashbacks, which might be why he doesn't appear often.
 * 65) The NPCs look like uglier versions of the character models in mh:awesomegames:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and they also have Sonic Adventure level animations. Also, they have fewer models compared to San Andreas, making NPC clumping a very common phenomenon.
 * 66) An absolutely inappropriate romance scene between Elise and Sonic that was criticized for implications of bestiality (in a Sonic game). The scene where Elise kisses Sonic on the lips is one of the most infamous and despised moments in the entire franchise. To make matters worse, Sonic is dead in said scene.
 * 67) The game was so rushed, the manual lists items and features that aren't even in the game and half of the achievements have grammatical errors.
 * 68) You can't even jump on enemies to defeat them. You know, one of the most classic features in the entire franchise!
 * 69) Like in Shadow the Hedgehog, Shadow can use vehicles at various points, but save for the few sections where they are mandatory like in White Acropolis, Kingdom Valley, and Radical Train, they aren't necessary and you can bypass using them with no penalty. It doesn't help that said vehicles (except for the Glider) control very poorly.
 * 70) * The buggy is slow and handling is somewhat clunky, and you need it to complete White Acropolis by blowing up the searchlight towers.
 * 71) * The bike is required to beat Radical Train, but the handling feels loose, and changing direction feels very haphazard.
 * 72) * The Hovercraft is the most used vehicle, and is the worst one of the bunch; it feels very slippery to handle, and is used in the worst environments for it, those being:
 * 73) **Kingdom Valley, where Shadow can be blindsided by collapsing pillars that will kill him on impact.
 * 74) **Dusty Desert, where Shadow has to pass through rising gates in order to gain entrance to the ruins, but there's no reason to do this and it just over-complicates things, and the terrain makes it easy to flip the Hovercraft over, which results in death.
 * 75) **Wave Ocean is the tamest, due to calm waters and a straight forward path to the exit from the moment you mount the Hovercraft.
 * 76) * The Glider functions as it should, but it is only used three times in short 30 second sections of stages.
 * 77) Most of the boss fights are poorly designed, with the three most infamous ones being Silver and Iblis' second phase. Silver can grab and throw you into a wall while saying his most infamous quotes: "It's no use!" followed by "Take this!" or "This will end it!" along with "How about this!?" in another form. This boss fight is also infamous due to a glitch where he can repeatedly throw you against a wall, without giving you any time to recover. When this happens, you keep unintentionally picking up at least one ring, so you're left stuck in an endless loop. Iblis' second phase is not as bad as Silver, but it is also infamous for being little more than a waiting game. You have fight both bosses twice, once with Sonic, and again with Shadow.
 * 78) * Silver doesn't fare any better; because he's slower, it is harder for him to avoid Sonic and Shadow's Homing Attacks. Sometimes, they'll hit Silver from the other end of the arena, and he can't grab them as easily since they'll immediately break free as if nothing happened, which is total BS because it doesn't work the other way around!
 * 79) Cheap enemy placements that give several enemies a chance to pop up out of nowhere and ambush you.
 * 80) The tenth and final stage (The End Of The World) is one of the worst levels in the game, and one of the worst final levels in the entire franchise. It's painfully long, has seven separate loading screens that each lasting over 20 seconds, doesn't let you play as Sonic or Blaze (they are already dead in this segment keep in mind), forces players to deal with every other character's problems at once, is filled with poorly placed wormholes that are instant kills and starts you off with six lives. It's difficult to get more and if you get a game over, you have to do the whole level all over again! If you get hit by an enemy when next to these things since you are left vulnerable, and to top it off, invincibility frames  do not protect you from them! 
 * 81) No autosave feature. For example, if you forget to save manually and get a game over on the first level, you have to start the whole game all over again from the opening cutscene as demonstrated by James Rolfe.
 * 82) * The only upside to this is that unlike another game that relies on manual saves, this game at least prompts players to save after finishing a level.
 * 83) The PS3 version really didn't get anything exclusive like the Xbox 360 version.
 * 84) * The Xbox 360 version got the Team Attack Amigo, the Very Hard Missions DLC for all three amigo characters (Tails, Omega and Blaze) & boss attacks DLC for all three hedgehogs, while the PS3 version only has the Very Hard DLC in North America. Sadly, other DLC's for PS3 was only released in Europe and Asia.
 * 85) * Background themes based on the game were released for the Xbox 360, but not the PS3.
 * 86) The PS3 version is slightly inferior than the Xbox 360 version despite having extra development time since it has slightly longer load times (25 seconds while the Xbox 360 version loads in 20 seconds) and has worse framerate than the 360 version. There's also no way to install the game onto the hard drive to reduce those problems.
 * 87) You collect medals that are similar to the emblems in previous 3D Sonic games, only this time you get absolutely nothing when you get them all, once again, due to the game being rushed. All you can get from them is an achievement in the 360 version.
 * 88) The game has a co-op mode where two players can race each other towards the end of a level of their choice, but it's extremely unbalanced because Sonic is much faster than Shadow and Silver. Silver is too slow, but he can freeze the other player infinitely, which allows the Silver player to curb-stomp the other player.
 * 89) As previously mentioned in WIS #27, the achievements are poorly written because they don't offer enough information on their requirements and have improper grammar. For example, to unlock the Blue Phantom achievement, you have to get all of the Skill Gems as Sonic. The description says "Super Sonic: Obtain the all moves".

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Awesome music, especially the main theme, "His World", probably one of the best video game themes ever made, and Silver's theme, "Dreams of an Absolution". Other standout tracks include the second half of Wave Ocean, the first halves of Radical Train and Flame Core, along with Aquatic Base 1.
 * 2) Shadow's portrayal in this game is an improvement over mh:awesomegames:Sonic Adventure 2 and Shadow the Hedgehog.
 * 3) Despite not aging well, the graphics look very nice (even though it look way too realistic and out-of-place).
 * 4) Despite also feeling out-of-place, the opening cutscene is actually pretty awesome to watch.
 * 5) There still are few good bosses here and there. The Egg Wyvern boss is a nice call back to the Egg Viper boss from Sonic Adventure.
 * 6) The game has a lot of callbacks to Sonic Adventure.
 * 7) The story does have funny moments here and there: the possibly unintentionally hilarious scene where Shadow uses the power of Chaos Control to kick Silver in the back of the head being a stand-out example, along with the revelation that Eggman has robot glasses that always know where the Chaos Emeralds are.
 * 8) Some glitches in this game are fun to use; especially the floating box glitch.
 * 9) Your mileage may vary, but the gold medals can offer some degree of replay value; you get one for completing the stage as you would, one for completing the Hard mode, one for S ranking each difficulty, and one more for collecting 10 silver medals in each stage. Each story has three extra gold medals; one for finding 30 silver medals in the hub worlds in each story, one for S ranking all ACT stages, and one for S ranking all town missions. This can help you practice the stage and potentially discover new secrets you may have missed in the main route.
 * 10) Had Sega given Sonic Team more time, this could've ended up on the Awesome Games Wiki (even though it still wouldn't have aged well).

Reception and Impact
The game at first was hyped and had fans with very high hopes, with most of them expecting it to repair the damage Shadow the Hedgehog had done to the franchise. Under pressure from the Christmas rush and because of the PS3 launching, the game was released as a nigh-unplayable alpha build with little testing and as a result, it was heavily panned both by critics and fans alike, often averaging around 40%.

The game is often considered the point the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise hit rock bottom. As mentioned above, the game is widely considered to be one of the worst games of all time and was regarded as the worst Sonic game for a long time, until Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric dethroned it. Adding insult to injury, in essence, this game was the closest there would ever be to a "Sonic Adventure 3", and because of that, it is unlikely that Sega will ever make another Sonic game following the "Adventure" formula (so far).

A large number of fans gave up on the Sonic franchise believing it to be dead after this game. On the other hand others believe this game to be a necessary evil, as at the time the franchise was filled with awkward experiments like Shadow the Hedgehog, and following this game Sonic slowly began to get back on track with games like Sonic Unleashed, mh:awesomegames:Sonic Colors and mh:awesomegames:Sonic Generations, at least until Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric happened, which is also considered one of the worst games in the entire Sonic series of all time. There is frequent debate over which game is worse: this game, or Rise of Lyric.

Somecallmejohnny played the game a lot of times, and he said that he did enjoy the game a bit. He even said that it's even more enjoyable than Shadow the Hedgehog.

A fan project is aiming to develop a build of the game for PC with all (or at least a significant number of) the gameplay problems and bugs fixed. ChaosX was released the Sonic the Hedgehog P-06 demo (Project 06) on April 19th, 2019 then it earned biggest attention by everyone and journalists, the video was received 3k likes within one week.

Sega delisted the game from retailers in 2010, following its decision to remove all Sonic games with below-average Metacritic scores in order to increase the value of the brand. Since the game was poorly received by critics and fans, the game was removed from the Xbox Marketplace, and the PlayStation Store. Only the DLC remains in the stores.

Trivia

 * Sometimes during the Egg Wyvern boss, after playing for a couple of minutes, the boss suddenly stops and the screen goes to black, skipping the entire boss. You can get an easy S rank because of this.
 * Sonic '06 is one of the few games that the port version released earlier than the original version. In this case the Xbox 360 version, which is actually a port, despite being released earlier than the PlayStation 3 version. This because Sega made a contract with Microsoft.
 * Silver the Hedgehog's "It's no use" line became a meme.
 * Like Sonic Adventure 2, SnapCube's fandub made this game popular for a little bit, while introducing more memes, such as Ke$ha: Die Young (marching band arrangement), "Ha ha, ha ONE!", "Tilted Towers", "Speak for yourself, motherfucker!", "I'm not in the sky, dicknips!",  "Welcome to my Gamer Pad!",  "Prepare for my ultimate grand slam!", "Finally god, Take me!", "The audacites of this bitch..." and "Downloading weed.exe".
 * Mephiles the Dark is the only villain in the entire series who successfully killed Sonic.