*Here's the link to join my Patreon page:* www.patreon.com/ThomasGameDocs Thanks so much for watching this super extra long video! This Sonic ranking video was supposed to be my big, final video of 2023, but it ended up being so long that I didn't quite make my self-imposed deadline. Oh well, it's done now!! ALSO I've just put out my second Patreon bonus video, where I talk all about my favourite Nintendo composer who you've never heard of. And I promise I'm not exaggerating, I think that it's very unlikely you know his name, although you might recognise a few of his songs! If you wanna check out that video, then go sign up to my $5 Patreon tier! I'll be back this month with another video, but first I need a few days break - I'm utterly exhausted from writing this Sonic script and editing the longest video I've ever made! I hope you all had a great holiday season and a happy new year - let's hope 2024 is a good year :) - Thomas

Sonics biggest enemy isn't Eggman, its SEGA

06 had so much going for it conceptually. It really could've been the Adventure 3 everyone wanted if it got the time it deserved. At least we have P-06.

Thats it, I am now petitioning for Thomas to make “Whats the least popular refridgerator color?”

CD is hard slept on. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous sonic games ever both visually and audibly, each level feels like a treat

I’m glad we once again live in a time where people appreciate how fun SA1 is

I loved Sonic and the Black Knight! It can be really fun once you really get used to the sword mechanics. The flow of the stages completely changes once you master short hopping, dash-slashes, and perfect hits on Soul Surge.

Sonic CD being that low is wild

If you were a Sonic fan in 2010s you probably remember the days when Unleashed was bashed and SA2's radar stages were absolutely destroyed. Crazy what a few years can do to opinions.

I was the “Not a fan, too edgy!” guy :D So glad to be a part of this

If Ordinary Things made retro gaming videos, he'd be Thomas Game Docs -- and if Thomas Game Docs made essays about world events he'd be Ordinary Things. I adore them both.

I never understood what was so complicated about the team switching mechanic in “Heroes”. I remember adapting to it quite well as a kid, to the point where it’s kinda instinctual whenever I picture gameplay in my head. And maybe it’s just me, but I actually preferred the Werehog stages in “Unleashed” over the daytime stages. I just couldn’t get into regular Sonic’s gameplay, with the tank controls, the motion blur obscuring most oncoming obstacles, and the homing attack being a separate button. Ugh. By comparison, the Werehog was a lot easier to navigate and the buttons were simple to use. Sure, the stages did drag on a bit, but at least they were playable.

Wow. Even as a huge Classic fan, I always thought Sonic CD was overrated but I didn't actually think people would agree overall? #12?????? Lower than Sonic 1??????? Neither in the top 10? I'm shocked! Edit now that I'm done: Placements overall are good. Nostalgia would flip S3&K and Mania placements for me, but I'd vote 5 stars for both.

Why is the thumbnail of Super Mario 64 lol

I'm glad retro games still get the credit they deserve and I'm surprised young audiences are willing to play the classics. I recently properly played through all the original Sonic games for the first time and had a blast

Sonic Adventure 2 is a large part of my childhood-gaming-experience. I never get tired of the soundtrack.

16:17 not really a fair comparison. The original super Mario was released six years earlier, on a console 64x weaker than the Megadrive. comparing the original “Sonic the Hedgehog” to “Super Mario World” on the SNES would be more fair

The Master System games are missing, Sonic 1, 2 and the elusive Sonic Chaos which I always thought had a phenomenal soundtrack!

I'm figuring this out this year. I'm playing all sonic games and reviewing. Pray for me.

I'm kind of surprised Lost World was rated as high as it was, considering how much people complain about it. I was expecting it to be next to 06 and Rise of Lyric tbh.

Did anyone even learn how to play as the werehog? I did and I learned to love the werehog despite being really slow compared to daytime sonic, he still has a lot of things I like from a sonic game like learning to go faster by using shortcuts with the different combat abbilities, I even found eggmanland one of my fav experiences in any sonic game

I wish you had showed what the community said for each game instead of just for some and then your own summary for others. i liked that about the mario video. feels like you speedran through this one.

knowing that the game in the thumbnail is Sonic CD makes me feel like the biggest nerd of all time

I'm so sad I could never play Unleashed as a kid... I got stuck on the third level, in which you don't play as sonic, but you're put in a plane as Tails and have to push buttons in rapid time to keep up with the robots flying at you, and little me didn't have the dexterity to keep up with the buttons... I always wondered how the rest of the game could've been.

If Unleashed was in the bottom half I would have had fighting words (great video man!) Also justice for the werehog

I remember having Sonic 4 Episode 2 when I was younger and having a lot of fun with the 2 levels given for free, but returning, beside the nostalgia I was kind of bored with it…

I didnt realize till the end the ratings were out of 5 and not 10 and I was so confused the whole time

The only things I feel should have been included are the advanced and rush games (including ds colors since its part of the rush trilogy), given they genuinely have one of the biggest impacts on the series as they're where the ideas for the boost came from starting with advanced 2 and later advanced 3 and the rush games. Arguably the biggest change to sonics core moveset since the homing attack or spindash, possibly even more so due to how wildly it shifted the level design mentality of games like unleahsed up to frontiers. Those 6 games are genuinely VERY VERY important to the evolution of the series.

Rise of Lyric deserves to be worst, especially when you search on KZfaq and see videos talking about how Sega messed up the game behind-the-scenes by pushing mandates on Big Red Button like forcing it to be a Wii U exclusive, tying it to Sonic Boom, and even telling them to complete it by a certain date, resulting in the game releasing with the bugs that were documented.

sonic rush wins only because of the FUNKY FRESH BEATS

Always great day when Thomas posts a new video

Happy New Year Thomas! I pray you have good health and a good year. Awesome video as always ❤😊 the Patron only discord server and 5 dollar bonus video is such a good idea!! Hope the revenue picks up

11:36 But you don’t have to most of the time. If you know how to use the sword combat in the game, you can blaze through the enemies.

Good video, but the Advance and Rush games should've been included-

The 1985 8-bit Famicom game does not hold up as well as the 1991 16-bit Mega Drive game. What a strange statement to make. :P

Hot take, Sonic Unleashed's night time stages were really fun.

this was an insanely well made, researched, and edited video!

17:48 The night levels of Sonic Unleashed were more fun for me than playing any other Sonic game

Im surprised sonic generations didnt get in the first place, but sonic mania and Sonic 3 are so damn good too, it was a fair fight

Great video. January 22th will be my yearly day to play Sonic the Hedgehog as it was the very first console and game I ever got for my bday. Trying to play it on a different system every year. This year will be on the Steamdeck! Keep up the creativity!

His face on the thumbnail is priceless 😂! I love this video and I am excited for Thomas Game Doc's next video!

Man, Sonic fans are like CoD fans, they just want more of the same, as can be shown by the fact that the top 2 "Best Games" are both the overall third (or fourth) entry in the franchise and a game that just does the same things the first 3 games did but HD. Meanwhile every single time something truly unique is done it gets criticized, see the werehog in Unleashed or the 2D stages in Colors.

I've played an embarrassingly small amount of Sonic games throughout my life (partially because I'm terrible at them...), but I've always had a soft spot for Sonic Colors. That's mostly nostalgia talking, mind you; I replayed it recently and yeah, the flaws are pretty apparent, but that game is the Sonic of my childhood and I'm super grateful for it.

I absolutely love this channel!!

Just became a patron! Keep promoting yourself, you have a huge audience and you deserve it!

I think many people dont give the werehog a chance and barely notice how many combos and tricks you can pull off with that play style. Soo the game is fun across the board in my opinion.

You should consider one of these for the Kirby series!

Sonic 4 was supposed to be a mobile game under the name "Sonic the Portable", hence the lacking gameplay, but Sega changed it last minute to be a home console game.

Sonic CD > Sonic 1 Sonic Unleashed > Sonic Colours I will die on this hill.

17:08 hot take:unleashed is at least top 5 (Werehog isnt that bad)

I managed to put over 100 hours into Sonic mania, something I rarely do for platformers. It definitely deserves its ranking.

Sonic lost world makes me hope mario will send sonic to jail for copyright

around 5 minutes in i said to myself “i bet Generations, Mania, or 3&K will be in the top three” i was 3 for 3

He's back with a vid on my birthday, the legend 🔥

This is awesome, keep up the good content!!!!

why are people acting like this is her ranking, this is literally from a community survey, if your favorite sonic game got a low ranking it’s because the community placed it low, not her

OMG i had no idea that you were trans! 🏳️‍⚧Awesome!🏳️‍⚧ As for the list, I'd say i agree for the most part with the community. Sonic Mania is probably the best there's ever been.

Yeah saga need to focus on there relationship with nitendo and make a Crossover game with mario a other crossover game cause the winter games was released in 2019

Nice video, i think you should make a ranking for handheld sonic games and best levels in sonic games

the fact sonic 1 was put before sonic unleashed is genuinely a crime

🤓🤓I think Sonic Frontier's score should be higher, because when you think about it, the physics may be a little wonky, but the reused assets were there because of the story, so it shouldn't be something holding it down. The assets were reused because the cyber space was combining with sonic and his memories. The assets were reused because they are part of him, that explains why the death egg is in one of the backgrounds🤓🤓🤓

Not a huge deal, but Shadow, Secret Rings, Black Knight, and Boom are all considered spinoffs. They are all considered major releases though so it’s fine, just thought I’d mention it

I can’t believe the best Sonic game Sonic Jam on the Gamecom wasn’t included

I never thought about how the Sonic Colors logo would have to be changed in British English speaking countries until now.

I loved the Sonic Unleashed night levels!

Im honestly surprised how high on the list Sonic Superstars is

I am shocked that people prefer Sonic 06 over Sonic 4 episode 1 and 2

7:00 "18th on the list..." * City Escape starts playing * AAHHH!!! Don't scare me like that!

I'm going to be honest. I think that sonic the hedgehog 1 deserves the ranking. It's nowhere near as bad as the other options and laid the blueprint for level design but about two entire zones of the game go against sonic's design philosophy with their slowness. Although it is a fun and functional game. I feel that naturally with being the first game it suffers from the worst of the 2d series(Slow level design,unfair design,overuse of underwater sections,traps that slow down the game) Literally the second zone of the game contradicts the first zone in every way.

I really wish I knew about the surveys existence so that I could've tried to save sonic 06's rating from being so low. I sound like a stupid idiot for saying this: but we all have our own opinions, and sonic 06 is not a terrible games, it's an amazing game in every way. It's fun, has a good story, nice graphics, best sonic voice actor, Jason Griffith, is in the game, and the pre-rendered cutscene make me wish an animated sonic 06 movie was real. Maybe you think I'm nostalgia taling when I say that this is the first xbox 360 game, first sonic game, and first game I've EVER played, but I loved it, despite never ever beating the first level for 4 years, and even though I'm nostalgic for this game, whenever I try to find the "bad" and glitches in the game and take nostalgia out of my mind, I can't find anything wrong with this game. I've never encountered a single glitch in the game (probably because the Xbox 360 version ISNT a buggy mess, unlike ps3 version), and it's an entertaining game that did so much right, it had good new characters. Really the only thing I don't like is the load times, but that can't ruin a game. If the game was bad just for the load times, gta 5 would be the worst game ever made. I have a hsrd time finding anything to dislike about the game, and I never will find anything bad about it.

Basically what I got from this video is don't bother with anything past the original trilogy, and then skip straight to Mania.

Werehog slander will NOT be tolerated.

Honestly for what i've seen the true least popular sonic game is Sonic Chronicles: the dark brotherhood. Almost nobody talks about it. Personally I think this is a shame. The game is underrated if anything. The game has the best story I've ever seen in a sonic game. Pretty good worldbuilding. Great artwork. So much potential and a very interesting battle system which, I know, it has it's flaws, but it was fun regardless of anything.

I don’t get how mania is so great, in my eyes, my favourite has to be origins plus, superstars, or frontiers because those are what I call the nostalgia bring back three, because at times, they bring back oG characters, and talk and reference to some of the greatest hits, including adventure 2.

Fun fact: Mirage Saloon was going to be a zone in Sonic cd, but sadly was scrapped

Awesome Video Thomas!!

I knew that Sonic Mania is going to be in first place!

i have 1 big issue with sonic generations. modern sonic wasn't fully 3d. it used the boost formula, meaning it was comprised of mostly 2d sections, which to me ruins the novelty of separating the two.

Sonic with a sword makes more sense than Shadow getting a gun.

me when i sound like i was generated by an AI to give shallow opinions on sonic games

The thumbnail has the Mario 64 box art LMFAO

I feel like Generations suffers from the "Too much of this is sort of just okay 2d sections" issue even worse then Colors does, or at least as bad. The "3d"/modern stages still have 2d sections in them in Generations, so it's really only like 1/3 or 1/4th of the game is 3d.

The only Sonic game I've ever played in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic games XD. Thank you for this information on the Sonic series Thomas!

Thomas: “standing out isn’t a bad thing” Also Thomas: “ (super Mario bros 2) it’s too different…”

can't believe you pronounced it "hydrocity!" everyone knows it's actually "hydrocity"

Sonic CD is the Super Mario Sunshine of the series. There's a good game hidden under the garbage

8:13 you might not believe me when i say this, but i called sonic forces when you were about to say it and irl i yelled "LET'S GO!! CALLED IT!! (f-ck yeah!)"

Sonic CD is amazing, its just that ScottSheep cant learn how to appreciate game design OR form their own opinions so they follow the shepherd blindly with wool pulled over their eyes. In fact, before Scott's video and a few other big youtubers' critiques, it was one of the most liked games. And despite being somewhat divisive, it's got a lot of love still

While I totally understand the werehog being seen as the overall weaker half of unleashed I think it's worth pointing out that both have positives and negatives. A major negative of the day times stages is how crazy difficult the design is and how boosting feels a bit rough, not as fleshed out as it got in Generations. And as for the werehog, while it's an odd addition and really drags the pacing down I'd still say the combat itself can be fun for the right players and isn't totally mindless. Overall unleashed is far from a great sonic game, it has good and bad in all regards but to me it's still felt like the last sonic game of an era of the series where it really felt like Sonic, and now it just feels more like a dumbed down safer take on the series that lacks a certain appeal.

Black Knight is basically Secret Rings but done better

Anyone else like Sonic Adventure 1 more than Sonic Adventure 2? Playing through 2 was frustrating. Yes it looks better, but the gameplay isn’t necessarily better. The emerald hunting levels are just unbearable. By the time I got close to the end I couldn’t finish one of the last stages and just gave up. Plus the lack of an open world. I still like to walk around and explore the open world of 1 to this day even if I know where everything is at.

The dropdash was actually originally devised by SEGA themselves during development of Sonic 3, and can be found in an incomplete form in some of the early prototypes for the game. But the dropdash would show up again almost 20 years later in the fangame "Sonic Before the Sequel". These two both likely contributed to its appearance in Mania since Mania draws a lot of it's inspiration and references from obscure Sonic media. It's these kinds of deep-seated and hyper-obscure facts that make me a proud Sonic fan.

I kinda like sonic lost world more than sonic unleashed. Sonic unleashed night stages and eggman land. I also think sonic CD is better than sonic 1.sonic superstars is clearly better than sonic 1,2cd,3. Top 5 for me.# 5 sonic colors ultimate #4sonic superstars #3 sonic frontiers #2 sonic origins plus #1sonic mania

unleashed does not deserve to be in top ten. the warehog stages COMPLETELY ruin the game. if it was only the day time levels then it would probably be the best boost game. but the night stages makes it so mind numbingly boring, being a shitty god of war clone.

Let’s go you posted again

Sonic boom legit didn’t deserve the hate it got, it was sega’s fault that the game had so many faults. Forcing the game on the Wii U ( a really hated console I might add.) mid development was a horrible decision that took a toll on the rise of lyric’s workers.

The main reason Shadow the hedgehog was created was bc at the time, ppl wanted to see Sonic (Americanized) with a gun. So eventually sega came up with Shadow, they gave the people wat they wanted, so yall shouldnt be complaining

Was a little surprised to see Black Knight above Shadow, but I think it's because I was born in 1990. I was the exact target demographic for Shadow. Grew up on Sonic, loves SA2 with its Anime-esque story, loved the first run of Fullmetal Alchemist. All my friends had PS2 with GTA while I had GameCube. So this game lured me in, while I was in my mostly playing PC games when Black Knight came out.

I don't find it hard to believe that sonic fans know what makes this game series tick better than sonic team themselves, and Mania proves it. Here's to project 06 being some day sold on store shelves as the definitive rerelease of sonic 06

Happy new year!