There have been a LOT of Sonic the Hedgehog video games released over the years. The Sega mascot has easily become one of the most recognizable and popular video game characters of all time. The Sonic franchise is easily one of my personal favorites.

That being said, with the sheer amount of Sonic games out there, they can’t all be winners. Some are even pretty bad, unfortunately. Because of that, here are the worst Sonic games, ranked by how bad they truly are.

10) Sonic Shuffle

Sonic Shuffle isn’t offensively bad by any means. It’s more just rough around the edges. It’s essentially the Sonic version of Mario Party if the computer had an extreme advantage over the actual players and the minigames weren’t very fun. It’s overall a frustrating and pointless game to play. Who would want a boring and broken version of Mario Party?

9) Sonic Drift

There are plenty of Sonic racing games out there. One of the weakest, without any doubt, is Sonic Drift. The controls were stiff and awkward, as opposed to the fluid controls needed for racing games. The resolution was so low that upcoming turns didn’t appear until it was too late. With so many great racing games in the Sonic franchise, it’s disappointing that there’s one that’s this unfun to play.

8) Sonic 3D Blast

Sonic 3D Blast does have some fun elements to it, and it’s a bold step for the franchise entering the realm of 3D, but it’s still extremely rough. This first attempt at 3D led to an awkward angle for the gameplay, which made certain jumps and movements really difficult. It also doesn’t focus on speed, which is what fans expect from the series. It’s instead replaced by clunky controls. Thankfully, they didn’t shy away from 3D games in the future. 

7) Sonic Spinball

Pinball is usually a lot of fun when playing on an actual machine. Sonic Spinball attempts to virtually recreate that gameplay, but with Sonic as the ball. It should have been a fun experience, but the clunky controls and sluggish physics prevented that. The ball (or Sonic in this case) would also bounce in random, unpredictable ways, making for an unforgiving and unfair time. It’s also all on a time limit, which is a great way to suck the fun out of pinball.

6) Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1

There was a lot of hype around this game, and for good reason. It was marketed as a true sequel to the classic era Sonic games. However, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 led to mass disappointment among the fanbase. The levels were boring, the 2.5-D aesthetic looked awkward, the physics were overly floaty, and the bosses were way too quick and easy. It all led to a frustrating and boring gameplay experience.

5) Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, often referred to as Sonic ‘06 is easily the most famous of the bad Sonic games. It was meant to move the mainline series into a new era. Instead, it was so bad that it stopped the “several playable character” stories altogether. It was unfinished and unpolished. It was a glitchy mess that made the player’s character fall through the ground, get stuck in walls, and clip through obstacles. Silver could damage himself with his own powers. The parts of the story that involve Silver and the apocalyptic future are really cool and save this game from being closer to number one on this list, but all the stuff about Sonic falling in love with a human is just plain weird and uncomfortable.

4) Sonic Free Riders

Sonic Free Riders is so bad that it ended the Riders series of games. Sonic and his friends racing on hover boards (called Extreme Gear) will never not be awesome. That being said, forcing the gameplay into working on the XBox 360 Kinect makes it just as awkward and terrible as it sounds. It didn’t even work half the time, and when it did, it controlled terribly. The player had to contort their bodies to steer, jump, and grab items, which made it more exhausting than fun. 

3) Sonic’s Schoolhouse

Sonic’s Schoolhouse is an edutainment title, but it fails at both the education and entertainment elements of that. It was originally a different educational product that was reskinned with Sonic to drive sales, but it was lazily made and poorly designed from the get-go. The game was played in the first person, and was done so in the most janky way possible. Movement was a slog, and consisted of walking around boring and empty environments looking for letters and numbers in what are some of the worst fetch quests ever. It’s just sort of repeating tasks instead of learning. It’s not fun, and it’s not educational like it claims to be.

2) Sonic Boom

I’m including all of the Sonic Boom games here, being Rise of Lyric, Shattered Crystal, and Fire & Ice. Rise of Lyric was unfinished and was so glitchy that it was barely playable. The gameplay, when it did work, was boring and repetitive. Shattered Crystal functioned, but the level design was maze-like and tedious. Fire & Ash was more polished and overall better, but that’s not saying much. The developers attempting to make the third installment better, the idea of using the characters’ powers and abilities in a platform brawler being a good one, and the TV series adaptation being enjoyable are what holds these back from the number one spot.

1) Sonic Labyrinth

The core idea of Sonic Labyrinth is basically “what if Sonic moved slowly,” which contradicts everything the franchise is about. There’s no running or jumping, which is what fans want from a Sonic the Hedgehog game. Players have to rely entirely on using the spin dash to move anywhere unless they want to walk extremely slow everywhere, but the spin dash just leads to randomly bouncing off of walls. The level design consists of slowly navigating mazes to find keys, which is extremely tedious. Those mazes have to be completed under certain time limits, which is obnoxious. It would be truly difficult to make a Sonic game less fun than this.

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