Sonic the Hedgehog is a mascot that has fallen hard since his glory days in the 90s. SEGA seems to have been lost as to how to recapture what made their blue-hued mascot special... until now. Sonic’s rebirth may take form through two titles: Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, which will be hitting the DS and Sonic Unleashed, which will arrive on just about every current console. These two games could be the beginning of something very big for a property that has languished in quality as of late.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood represents the more drastic departure from the norm for Sonic. The game is an RPG designed by Bioware, so there’s a huge emphasis on conversation. Of course, this title seeks to right one of the many wrongs found in recent Sonic games – the crappy friends. Each crappy friend, er... obnoxious character, um... non-Sonic character will supposedly be incredibly useful. The combat will supposedly be influenced heavily by Super Mario RPG, which makes perfect sense – it practically wrote the book on the mascot-based roleplayer. The point is, Bioware carries an impressive pedigree, and Sonic is a character who has been lacking that as of late.

One of the reasons Sonic’s reputation has suffered lately, though, is because of how much trouble Sonic Team has had with the third dimension. It seems that after several (read: many) failed attempts to capture the hedgoehog spirit (whatever that means), they’ve realized that by taking one step back they’ll take a giant leap forward. Sonic, in other words, is moving back to a 2D plane in Sonic Unleashed. This can only mean good things for the character, because this is where Sonic Team shined best – even NiGHT’S was on a 2D plane. Anyone worried about the quality of Sonic Team’s games would be justified, but they might rest easier knowing that they’ll be handling the 360/PS3 versions. Dimps (who made the Sonic Advance and Sonic Rush games) will be handling the PS2 and Wii versions, and those games have arguably been the better Sonic games during the last few years.

Even though these games show a lot of promise, there’s no guarantee they’ll perform well critically. Sonic and the Secret Rings had an extremely positive first showing and it ended up a disappointment. Sonic Heroes was supposed to finally get 3D Sonic right and was another letdown. We won’t even get into the awful Sonic the Hedgehog for the 360 and PS3.

Truth is, it seems like SEGA might have their bases covered this time, what, with Sonic Team returning to 2D gameplay, Dimp covering a couple versions, and a high profile RPG developer handling the new IP. Could Sonic finally be getting a fair shake? Only time will tell.