That's pretty much what I thought of the new Sonic E3 trailer. When I saw the initial trailers for the new 360 and PS3 Sonic game, I had high hopes for the blue guy; I couldn't wait to see him retake his spot in the video game hall of greatness. But as soon as I saw this new trailer with princesses, Shadow in a jeep, and a psychic hedgehog; I gave up any looking forward to it. Now I'm just afraid it's going to be another horrible 3D Sonic game.

You've got to wonder what made Sonic so good in the old days. Long story short, it was fast and solid platforming. The levels were well designed, and the game was fun to play, you could zoom through it as fast as you wanted, or take it nice and slow. And Sega kept mixing it up just a bit to make it interesting. New special stages kept things fun, multiplayer was added in nicely, and new characters brought an interesting mix. Tails could fly for a limited time, and Knuckles could glide and climb, making previous areas you couldn't reach with Sonic fun to explore.

But when they went 3D with the first Sonic Adventure, it seems Sega forgot some of what made Sonic fun, namely Sonic. I give them kudos for trying to replicate the huge main world feel of games like Mario 64, but they threw so much more than was necessary in the game. There were 10 solid levels to play as with Sonic, and they were the best part of the game, aside from a few camera problems, they were perfect. Tails' levels weren't that bad either, once again variations of Sonic's levels but with nice flying thrown in. Too bad that there were 4 other characters to play beyond that.

The other character levels varied from okay to mind-bendingly boring. Even the good ones paled in comparison to Sonic and Tails' levels. E-102 gamma was definitely fun to play, but his levels weren't much of a redesign and he felt out of place in a Sonic game. Meanwhile, Knuckles' levels were turned into annoying fetch quests, Amy's levels were atrociously slow and boring, and Big the Cat was the thing Sonic fans like to insist never happened. Whoever thought fishing and Sonic mix should remember that fishing is optional in Zelda, and when it gets boring, you should be able to stop it. It was the first game I ever thought would have been more fun with less content.

And from there, it only kept getting worse. Sonic Adventure 2 mixed in more weird characters and again, aside from Sonic's levels, the rest of the game was boring (they even managed to stick Tails in a vehicle and ruin what was fun about him). It seems the best Sega has done is throw in more characters to try to breath life into the series. But characters don't make a game, gameplay does. It doesn't matter how cool Shadow is to the 8-13 age group, if the game sucks, he sucks. And if he sucks, they need to focus back on what was fun about the franchise, not give him a gun.

Fast forward and Sonic has more friends in every game than me, and Sega won't let them go away. They keep showing up as baggage in every poorly designed game the franchise has made, and they all have Sonic surfing or doing whatever other god awful thing someone can think of. What's saddest is that kids still like the blue hedgehog and so they buy the games, but the games flop in review after review.

For a time, I had hopes for this Sonic game because it had been rumored that this game would return to the basics, just Sonic doing what he does best. And I really want to see that. When you look back at Mario 64, the game that defined the 3D platformer, it didn't have any edgy characters or major plot twists, it was the simplest story in the world with lots of good levels of Mario doing his thing, and it worked.

I find it especially ironic that the recent GBA Sonic games have gotten the best ratings when all they've done is stick to the basic 2D Sonic formula. But it's not that the successful 3D formula isn't there, Sega's already pulled it off in the Dreamcast games, they just didn't do it enough, and they weighed it down with extraneous content.

Ideally, I wanted the next Sonic game to just be Sonic fighting Robotnik and to leave the rest of the baggage behind. The focus should be on making the levels fast and expansive, like you're racing through a huge world. Like it used to be. If Sega is really fishing for a plot, why not just redo the Emerald Island plot from Sonic and Knuckles, or the Death Egg, both were good. If people haven't gotten sick of seeing a fat Italian fight a turtle for his woman, I'm sure they'll forgive Sonic's lack of edge and character development.

Perhaps this complaint is part of a larger sadness associated with wondering what happened to Sega after the Dreamcast fell apart. It seemed like they were at the top of their game then, but now seeing their name on a game practically scares me away. I'm hoping it's just a phase of finding their identity once again. Especially with Naka finally leaving the company, I'm hoping that eventually they'll figure out that all Sonic fans really want to see is Sonic.

Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.