There is a special section of Hell (Or whatever the equivalent is in your religion of choice), where evil minions try and torture those who are strong willed, to break them before they arrive, softening them up for the purgatory ahead. They send these off to the real world to cause havoc and terror among their chosen targets, hoping they work.
One area they specialise in is creating a game for the general public promising so much yet delivering little, and almost converting the participant from good to evil in an instant. They prefer long existing licences to making new games, as they only have to pay the creators a royalty before destroying the wills of the mortal, targeting the greatest common denominator. Where the numbers are. And so they asked Sega.

Sonic3D was a game that I firmly believe was involved in such heaven/hell debauchery. Someone must have thought, "Sonic the Hedgehog is a big licence. Let’s use it!" It was an obvious decision to make, due to the pedigree of the games starting off with Sonic 1, and then 2 and 3 following shortly after. Sonic Team were doing so well with it, that they must have been stupid to avoid such a prospect to ruin the minds of so many men.

It was created to be the first "3D Sonic Game", a guise that would surely bring more victims to their doom, all because of the promise of "Sensational 3D Graphics" and the ability to move Sonic in more than two directions (Excluding falling and jumping). Alas, this was not to be the case. Far from being true 3D, the minions thought an isometric viewpoint would suffice, as those playing would suddenly realise they have been short changed as soon as they install it. But that was not the only thing that changed. Oh no. There was more.

Sonic himself took a turn for the worse. He looked as if he went to a cosmetic surgeon in LA to make him fighting fit for 3D, but the medical expert misheard part of the order for the word ‘Fat’. The once lean hero for many 10 year olds had become Elvis-like in his appearance.
The worlds he lived in were changed to suit his now rotund physique, an attempt to make the worlds big so that Sonic looked normal failed. Feigned 3D enemies were littered across the plains, and were formed in such a way that they would be significantly harder to kill than any normal baddie.

Even the basis of the game changed. It may not have had anything to do with Sonic’s new lethargic appearance, but more to confuse the player by changing the original goals. Before, it was a simple "Get to the end of the level whilst attempting to get rings and chaos emeralds at high pace", but it became "Kill enemies to free birds to exit the level, rings aren’t important now". This structure of gameplay, coupled with the stupidly hard jumping mechanism and sparse positioning of said enemies around the level meant that the player would have to endure a marathon of finding the last enemy on the level hidden away from immediate view, in an attempt to give them something to do, to prolong their agony just that bit further.

The minions are happy, because they unleashed a heart wrenchingly bad game onto the face of the planet. If only they could be stopped… if only…

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