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Sonic games in order: How to play in story and release order

Sonic and the gang need your help.

Key art of Sonic Superstars showing Sonic, Knuckles, Tails and Amy.

Sega

Published: Friday, 20 December 2024 at 1:05 pm

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Are you new to the Sonic the Hedgehog games after watching the films? You’ll probably want to know where to start with the Sonic games.

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The speedy blue hedgehog has been around since 1991, starting with the Mega Drive classic original game.

Since then, countless spin-offs, comic books, TV shows, and now three Hollywood films have been made – not to mention the long list of mainline games.

We get that knowing where to start is a bit tricky.

Fortunately, we’ve done the research so you don’t have to.

Read on to find out how to play the Sonic games in order. We’ve covered how to play them in release date and story order so you can decide what’s best.

Where should you start with the Sonic games?

We recommend that you start with Sonic Origins Plus. It’s a collection of the original four Sonic games plus 12 Game Gear classics that can be played on current consoles.

You can buy Sonic Origins Plus on Amazon.

Once you’re done with that, we recommend you move on to Sonic Mania Plus for more of that classic 2D gameplay and then new titles such as Sonic x Shadow Generations.

Going in that order when you start will give you a good feel of the Sonic franchise as a whole with both classic and modern gameplay styles in abundance.

If you’d rather play in a different order, though, you can find how to play Sonic in release date and story order below.

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Sonic games in release date order

Here is how to play the Sonic games in release date order:

Most of the games above can be found on modern platforms, too, we’ve just listed them all by their original release dates and consoles.

There are also loads more Sonic spin-off games. We thought we’d stick with the platformers for this guide. We’ve bolded the mainline console games above, too.

Mainline Sonic games in story order

Key art of Sonic Frontiers - Sonic is grinding on a rail.

Sonic Frontiers. Sega

You can play the mainline Sonic games in any order you want, really, but there is a canon and some will make more sense played after other games due to the introduction of various characters.

We’ve tried our best to get the Sonic games in chronological story order, and we’ve only listed what we consider the mainline games – we’ve left out all handheld games, for example.

With all of that in mind, here is how to play the mainline Sonic games in story order:

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Authors

Toby SaundersFreelance Writer

Toby Saunders is a freelance writer specialising in Video Game journalism. He has a wealth of experience in the field and is published on many different websites including PCGamesN, Nintendo Life and Pocket Tactics. He has a degree in Film Studies (he gets to write about Film and TV occasionally, too).

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