Sega is celebrating Sonic the Hedgehog’s 15-year anniversary by shitting all over its legacy. How else to explain the tripe that is Sonic Riders?

Xtreme lens flare!

If any Sonic spinoff should work, it’s a racing game. I mean, the core of the series is running from one end of a level to the other; it’s not that complicated. But Sonic Drift, Sonic R and now Sonic Riders prove just how incapable Sega is of making that simple formula work.

Sonic’s “attitude” wasn’t even cool when the Dreamcast launched in 1999. But his pseudo-hip “extreme” persona is so dated now that I actually felt embarrassed playing Riders.

Embarrassed and bored. When I first saw Back to the Future 2, I never imagined hoverboard racing could be so uninspired. Riders seriously plays worse than Dreamcast launch title TrickStyle, and that game sucked. And why does Sonic even need a hoverboard? He’s fast! That’s like his thing.

Riders takes everything that is wrong with the Sonic series and makes it worse. Insipid Wacky Name the Exotic Animal characters? Check. Ear-grating voiceovers? Yep. Nonsensical story mode (in a racing game?!?)? Holla!

With the lackluster Sonic Heroes, the ill-conceived Shadow the Hedgehog, and now Sonic Riders, it seems Sega has lost sight of what made Sonic so great 15 years ago. Which doesn’t leave me terribly optimistic for the next-gen Sonic currently in development. Hey Sonic Team, psst … Try making a Sonic game that features Sonic running really fast. Throw in some loops, and we’re pretty much good to go. That’s all we really want.