Sonic the Hedgehog, commonly referred to as Sonic '06, is a 2006 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. Intended as a soft reboot to the Sonic franchise for seventh-generation video game consoles, players control Sonic, Shadow, and the new character Silver, alongside several supporting characters, across three intertwining storylines as they individually piece together the mystery behind an ancient evil pursued by Doctor Eggman in the city Soleanna. Each of the three main playable characters has his own campaign and abilities, and must complete levels, explore hub worlds and fight bosses to advance the story. In multiplayer modes, players can work cooperatively to collect Chaos Emeralds or race to the end of a level. The development began in early 2005, led by Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka. Sonic Team sought to create an appealing game in the vein of superhero films such as Batman Begins (2005), hoping it would advance the series with a realistic tone and multiple gameplay styles. While it received praise from video game journalists during pre-release showings, problems developed after Naka resigned to form his own company, Prope, and the team split to work on the Wii game Sonic and the Secret Rings (2007). Sonic Team rushed the later stages of development, cutting numerous features and scrapping plans for ports to the Wii and Windows. Sega insisted on shipping Sonic the Hedgehog in time for the 2006 holiday shopping season and released it unfinished to coincide with the franchise's 15th anniversary. It was released for the Xbox 360 in November 2006 and PlayStation 3 that December. The game received strongly negative reviews, receiving criticism for its excessive loading times, camera system, story, voice acting, glitches, and controls. It is widely considered the worst mainline Sonic game and severely damaged the franchise's reputation. In 2010, Sega delisted Sonic the Hedgehog from retailers, following its decision to remove all Sonic games with below-average Metacritic scores to increase the value of the franchise.
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