New Mobile Sonic Game Abandons Sonic Boom Look and Goes Classic

After the abject failure that was Sonic Boom, Sega's moving back to a more classic approach with their beloved mascot character in Sonic Runners, a new mobile game featuring the Blue Blur and his friends doing what they do best -- going fast.

No, your eyes didn't fool you — there's no new footage in that teaser trailer for Sonic Runners that we found from Polygon. But we did get a nice, nostalgic look at the history of the Sonic the Hedgehog, going all the way back to his glory days on the Sega Genesis. Ah, those were the golden times, back before Sonic was turning into a werehog and all those other atrocious 3D titles.

While we have yet to see it in action, we know that Sonic Runners is an automatic side-scroller, meaning that Sonic moves forward without any input, and players will control the timing and duration of his jumps. Whether this translates into a fast-paced experience or something simplistically dull remains to be seen.

Sonic Runners will be free-to-play and supported by in-game purchases (of course), so those of us hoping for a new mobile game reminiscent of classic Sonic may not be happy with what we get — be prepared for the possibility of paying real-life money for in-game lives. On the plus side, you can earn Tails and Knuckles to play as, too, so there may be a little variety to Sonic Runners, despite its simplistic controls.

Sonic Runners' debuts in Japan this month and its stateside release is slated for this spring, and for all major mobile devices.