Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (Let's Play)

"In the beginning, there was a goon who was very fond of Sonic games. This goon had an idea: play through Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 from start to finish in one sitting..."

- Introduction

"...such crap."

- Kung-Fu Jesus, during the end credits

In 2008, Something Awful forum member Pokecapn decided to make a Let's Play of the 2006 Sonic The Hedgehog game for the PlayStation 3. For this task, he enlisted the help of fellow goons Kung Fu Jesus, IlluminatusVespucci, Medibot, and John Condit. Somewhat atypically for Let's Play, they decided to play through the whole game in one sitting.

What follows is the epic struggle between five (later reduced to four) poor souls against one of the worst video games from a big-name franchise ever made. Watch as the crew runs the full gamut of emotions from playful mocking, savage mocking, anger, depression, Sanity Slippage, and more. Marvel at how utterly broken the game in question is. Laugh. Several times.

Can be found here. More recently, it found its way onto pokecapn's YouTube channel.

For a more upbeat, but still very funny, take on a modern Sonic game, there's also their follow-up LP of Sonic Unleashed. They've also done Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I, Sonic Colors, and Sonic Generations, among others -- you can find it all here.

Has been (sort of) revisited with the livestream of Sonic 2D, which is based on Sonic's story in this game.

This Let's Play exhibits, or hangs lampshades on, examples of:
""There once was a man from Soleanna who degenerated into making grunts because it's less mouth movement than cursing""
 * Aerith and Bob: pokecapn, Kung Fu Jesus, IlluminatusVespucci, Medibot..... and John Condit. (Subverted when his Something Awful username is revealed to be No Time for Socks.)
 * Angrish: "MURDER!"

"medibot: ALL GLORY TO THE CACTUS KING!"
 * Inverted when they finish the billiard ball puzzle. Basically, a joy so great that it cannot be expressed in words; rather, it is done in a combination of a scream and an orgasm.

"Sonic: Uh oh! Gotta speed up!
 * Another beautiful instance is the first run of the Radical Train stage's Mach Speed section. After suffering through a ruthless timed chase beforehand, pokecapn finally loses his grip on his composure and his grasp of the English language. A special mention goes out to the strangled scream of pure undiluted frustration when pokecapn loses his final life and is forced to start the stage over once again.

pokecapn: UH OH! I'M A TARDASS!

Goons: ...What?!"

"pokecapn: AAAGH! NRRRGH! GOTTA SPEED... ABAAAAAAH! RRRRRRRRRRRRGH!"
 * Invoked beautifully in the third attempt at Radical Train's Mach Speed section, almost right off the bat.

"Shadow (falling into a Bottomless Pit): NUUUOOOOAAAAGGHHHH!!!
 * Also in episode 16, the second time they fail the ball puzzle, even going so far as to chant a circus theme as they go.
 * The stupid room in Dusty Desert, Shadow's story. pokecapn pretty much just loses it.
 * Apocalyptic Log: The Lets Play itself documents the Goons' descent into despair and madness.
 * Ass Shove: "Unclench your buttcheeks!"
 * Atomic F-Bomb: Sometimes, instead of a cluster, pokecapn will simply let one of these fly.
 * And sometimes both, especially in the case of Sonic's Radical Train stage.
 * Audience Participation: Throughout the LP, they issue challenges to the readers of the Lets Play thread.
 * The timed comments on the Viddler pages.
 * Berserk Button: The entire game, for both groups of players. Particularly End of the World and Sonic's Radical Train for pokecapn.
 * Big No: Lampshaded:

pokecapn: He seems to disagree.

medibot: Why you gotta be such a negative Nancy, Rockman Charcoal?"

"Shadow: The instability of time caused this time-space rift.
 * Pokecapn's scream of rage during the third try of Radical Train's Mach Speed section.
 * Breather Episode: The first two videos of Shadow's story, having been dubbed over due to a failure of some sort with the original audio, lacks the Angrish and much cursing present in Sonic's run-through. The group is much calmer since the dubbing was made after the fact, albeit slightly affected from the insanity of the rest of the game.
 * Brick Joke: "Hit the bell!"
 * Captain Obvious: Every time it happens, the goons crack up with hysterics (except when Silver pointed out that his stages and bosses take too long), and sometimes shout Captain Obvious statements of their own, includng "People die when they're killed!" and "When people run, they move faster!"

(pokecapn snickers)

Kung-Fu Jesus: (deadpan) Oh, is that all?"

"medibot: GEOMETRY!"
 * Call Back: Kung-Fu Jesus makes a lot of references to God Hand, which he previously did a Let's Play of.
 * One early episode even reveals he has a God Hand ringtone.
 * When he is first given the controls, medibot briefly mimics the "children's show host" narration he did in his Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards LP.
 * Catch Phrase: "PHYSICS!", mainly in Silver's story.
 * Later parodied:

"Kung-Fu Jesus: He sounded really out of it.
 * medibot's "JUNK!" and "CUNTWAGGLE!"
 * pokecapn has a tendency to say "WHY?" when something goes pear-shaped. In this case, that means most of the game.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: medibot, who admittedly may just be like that in general. Mainly through his insistence that each and every little thing in the game has some deep metaphorical and societal meaning. Ironically, It also didn't hurt that he actually did get a full eight hours sleep, where the rest only got five.
 * Lampshaded about halfway through. Kung-Fu Jesus calls medibot on the phone to see if he's up for more Sonic '06, and worries he might be... affected:

pokecapn: As he always does?"

"medibot: Mario Galaxy did not have a perfect camera, but it had a pretty good camera and it, you know, maybe didn't have perfect controls, but it had pretty good controls, so when the game says to me, "Alright, here is a clever challenge involving things that may temporarily alter the way you control your characters," I say, "Okay. That's fair. I'll give it a shot." Now, I might not get it my first try, I might not get it my tenth try, but at no point do I feel like I have been asked to do something that is simply unreasonable. This game is unreasonable."
 * Kung-Fu Jesus doesn't get off the hook either, as he attempts to articulate several extended metaphors (one comparing Sonic 2006 to Harry Potter in a weird way) that not even Pokecapn and the others get, despite knowing medibot.
 * The Cuckoolander Was Right: medibot tends to articulate precisely what makes the game so infuriating.

"Condit: Maybe we should disconnect the mic before you give the Internet your credit card number?"
 * Cluster F-Bomb: A lot. Poor pokecapn.
 * There's at least one instance of a literal cluster F-bomb.
 * Deadpan Snarker: Condit, although he left pretty quickly.
 * Despair Event Horizon: You can literally hear them cross it when Kung-Fu Jesus.
 * pokecapn crosses it a bit earlier than that, which is to be expected since he was the one stuck playing the game for most of the run. See Ten-Minute Retirement below.
 * Determinator: Whenever pokecapn gets a game over and he even thinks about just going to another hedgehog's episode, the other goons loudly shout him down and tell him to continue with the current hedgehog's story. They keep persevering even in the face of That One Level, Sanity Slippage, and near-impossible-to-surmount brick walls like End of the World. Truly, the last video "Rest easy, heroes" is well-named.
 * In the last episode, one of them contemplates quitting if they can't finish That One Level in their next two tries. What follows is three voices simultaneously yelling "No." Almost a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * Almost?
 * Dissonant Serenity: In the penultimate video, Kung-Fu Jesus starts chanting lyrics in a monotone voice. It's quite jarring, really. Especially after all the "FUCK"s.
 * Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Medibot.
 * Engineered Public Confession: Narrowly averted, when they call out for Chinese.

""I'm gonna go ahead and buy -- see if I can buy something that gives me access to cracks."
 * Even Sonic Nuts Have Standards: pokecapn's reaction to the Game Informer review.
 * Five-Man Band:
 * The Hero: pokecapn
 * The Lancer: John Condit, also known as No Time for Socks.
 * The Big Guy: IlluminatusVespucci
 * The Smart Guy: Kung-Fu Jesus
 * The Chick: medibot
 * Sixth Ranger: MyNameIsKaz; he wasn't in this one, but he's a regular in their later Let's Plays.
 * Foreshadowing: In the comments on the video, about the insanity to come.
 * Not only that, but if one chooses to watch the Let's Play on Viddler, a quick look at the stream bar at the bottom of the video will showcase clusters of comments at certain points -- a sure sign that either something very good or something very bad will happen at those moments. Considering which game they're playing, it's almost always the latter.
 * Also, in the two redubbed videos, some of the things foreshadow what happens in the later videos.
 * Follow the Leader: The game is accused of doing this on several occasions by the various participants, with Final Fantasy X, Super Mario Sunshine, Metal Gear Solid, and Half-Life 2 being the main games they felt similarities to. They even accuse Sega of ripping themselves off, with the number of levels taken pretty transparently from the original Sonic Adventure.
 * Gag Dub: An erasure of the audio at the beginning of Shadow's Story forced them to provide the voices for the now completely silent cutscenes, resulting in such hilarity as a Cross-Dressing Voices Rouge, a Solid Snake ripoff Shadow, and Liquid Snake as Mephistophiles. Sadly, none of them thought to follow up Shadow's line of "Who are you?" with "I'm you! I'm your shadow!" at the time.
 * Go Mad From the Revelation: They manage to hold on to their sanity for most of Sonic's section of the game... And then they get to the 3 trials. About 19 minutes into the video, The goons react to this by  After this, insanity kicks in.
 * Heh, Heh, You Said "X": Parodied.

"Ha ha! You said 'access'!""

"If Sonic and Elise's love on the battlefield truly bloomed, there would be an inevitable conclusion. The challenge is for you to draw fanart of Princess Elise giving birth to a hedgehog (specifically, her and Sonic's child). With this, the thread about the worst Sonic game will have created the worst Sonic fanart."
 * Hope Spot: The goons enter the home stretch of the game, titled Last Episode, after struggling to beat the last boss of Silver's story (see That One Boss). They have a hearty laugh at the game's ridiculous cutscenes (and particularly Eggman's emerald scouter glasses) and seem to be in renewed spirit. Then they spend two hours struggling through End of the World, crossing the Despair Event Horizon in the process.
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Invoked at one point when Kung Fu Jesus was explaining why pokecapn didn't have to worry about getting hit by enemies.
 * Interspecies Romance: The implications of this prompted them to issue a challenge to create the worst Sonic fanart ever:

"The challenge is for you to find the worst Sonic fanart."
 * Even funnier if you remember the second challenge they issued:

"Eggman's ship: Thrust increasing.
 * If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: Medibot wants Elise's stuff very close to the end.
 * He seems fond of this trope, and uses it in the earlier videos too.
 * It Got Better: Their later playthroughs of Sonic games, which are definitely better than this game.
 * It Got Worse: The entire point of this Let's Play.
 * Radical Train, particularly the infamous Mach Speed section.
 * "Operation Desert Poetry". Pokecapn descends into madness within fifteen seconds.
 * The last stage before the final boss battle. All of it.
 * The Jimmy Hart Version: The goons note that one of the battle tunes sounds like Flash Man's theme from Mega Man 2, and the Kingdom Valley music sounds like it was lifted from Chrono Cross.
 * And a chunk of the Jungle theme is ripped straight from the Bowser stages from Super Mario 64.
 * Not to mention a part of that music was used in Crisis City. Which the goons didn't take note of until they played the remake of the level in their LP of Sonic Generations.
 * Large Ham: While pokecapn is mainly angry at the game and IlluminatusVespucci remains the voice of reason, Kung-Fu Jesus and medibot deliver this trope in spades.

Kung-Fu Jesus: [grunts loudly]

medibot: Thrust!

Kung-Fu Jesus: THRUST!

Eggman's ship: Course plotted.

Kung-Fu Jesus: Course plotted into her penis!

medibot: Falcon CROTCH!"

"medibot: Junk.
 * Laughing Mad: What Kung-Fu Jesus was reduced to.
 * Left the Background Music On: Used to censor their credit card information and phone numbers.
 * Loads and Loads of Loading: pokecapn calculated the total loading times in his group's videos spent en route to beating the game. The total result? Eleven point eighty-eight percent of the entire game. Over two hours.
 * One viddler user decided to count them all. There were 539, or one loading screen every two minutes and fifteen seconds of footage.
 * Madness Mantra: At the very end, Medibot begins chanting "JUNK!" over and over, usually at a stupidly-caused death.

Kung-Fu Jesus: What? I couldn't jump.

medibot: No, I said JUNK."

"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-"
 * Malevolent Architecture: In Kingdom Valley, while the goons were on the stairs of a tower, the stairs fall without warning, causing Sonic's death in an I Wanna Be the Guy like fashion.
 * The pillars in the hall of the billiard ball puzzle constantly interfered with the goons' attempts to get the ball in the hole.
 * Oh Crap: "We only have one life... and we didn't save."
 * Twelve minutes later...

"pokecapn: And I lost my ability to homing attack... why?!
 * Only Sane Man: . Well, only man with a some shreds of sanity by the end of the LP.
 * It's not so much a case of "most sane" as it is "least affected," really.
 * Parrot Exposition: In keeping up with the Shadow/Solid Snake Running Gag, the goons will have Shadow mimic Snake's habit of repeating the last words of the person he's speaking to.
 * Perfectly Cromulent Word: Several coined by medibot over the course of the LP.

medibot: 'Cause he hit you with a... with a chuffleguff.

pokecapn: I was not hit until I hit the ground.

Condit: It's because it was a chuffleguff. It doesn't actually hit you. It just makes you junk.

Kung-Fu Jesus: Oh, yeah. "Chuffleguff" means "Game Breaking Bugs." The game breaking in the other way, you know, the bad way."

"Medibot: Attention game designers: FUCK! SHIT! CUNTWAGGLE! Love, Medibot.
 * The Power of Friendship: The final level is only defeated once various members of the group determine their individual strengths and start passing the controller around from section to section. It's enough to make the viewer believe in the real super power of teamwork!
 * Precision F-Strike: medibot delivers a few during the course of the game (including a Cluster F-Bomb during Silver's billiard ball puzzle.) It's a little jarring considering how calm and sane he was compared to the other goons.

Ill-Ves: Cuntwaggle?

Medibot: You fucking heard me! Cuntwaggle!"

"Kung-Fu Jesus: Whoa, what was that bright light?
 * Punctuated Pounding: "This is junk!... J! U! N! K! JUNK!"
 * Rule 34: Deliberately invoked so that the "worst Sonic game would produce the worst Sonic fanart ever."
 * Rule of Symbolism: One of the goons put together a death reel of Sonic's branch of the story. It ends with a clip of a train wreck.
 * Running Gag: Whenever the gameplay mechanics are being particularly uncooperative, medibot shouts "PHYSICS!"
 * Part of the way through the LP, they start using "physics" as a verb, an early sign of their Sanity Slippage.
 * They also refer to Sonic, Shadow, and Silver as "Rockman Blue/Classic, Rockman Charcoal, and Rockman Steel".
 * There's also the recurrent comments on the PlayStation 3 version's inexplicable lack of gondolas.
 * Everything is the Iblis Trigger. Including pokecapn.
 * Referring to the Kindgom Valley eagle as an owl.
 * medibot being the original voice actor of every character in the game.
 * "Camera control!" is a small version of this.
 * State transitions.
 * KFJ always asking about the blue "stun boxes", only to be shot down by pokecapn.

pokecapn: Don't know, don't care."

"Sonic: If we don't return in time, Elise will die on board Eggman's battleship.
 * "Tech", said repeatedly, pronounced as "tetch".
 * medibot's love for birch beer.
 * San Dimas Time:

Kung-Fu Jesus: What? If you don't return in time? What?! But... you can return any time you want, that's the thing, you can go back to whenever you want!

IlluminatusVespucci: People never seem to realize this when they have time machines."

"Kung-Fu Jesus: You can't just have characters say how they feel! That Makes Me Feel Angry!"
 * Sanity Slippage: Over the course of the whole playthrough (medibot: "Who...in their right mind...would frost a cake...with their butt?"), but emphasized extremely well in the five videos detailing their attempts to get through End of the World, which are named after the Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
 * The crew even start with a reasonable amount of optimism. This has eroded by the time they reach Radical Train, and then... It Got Worse.
 * Don't forget "ALL THE BACON IN THE WORLD COULDN'T SAVE YOU NOW!!! 'CAUSE! IT'S A LASER! IT'S A LASER! IT'S A LASER!"
 * The period characterized as "Depression" actually occupies part of "Bargaining" and "Acceptance" as well. You can tell where it is because for the entirety of this period, all four guys are dead silent.
 * It's important to note, at this point, that the guys started this far later than any sane and rational person should have based on their respective schedules; as a result, by the end of the LP they'd been up for a few hours over a day with only about five hours of sleep and one or two hours dedicated to breaks.
 * Sanity Slippage Song: Eventually pokecapn takes to blaring out an ironic, irritated, a cappella rendition of Flash Man's theme whenever the gameplay gets especially boring and/or annoying. This happens a lot in Silver's desert stages.
 * Schmuck Bait: The reason pokecapn started this LP in the first place was because he heard the game was bad from reviewers, and given their history of reviewing Sonic games, didn't believe it could really be that bad. However, in pokecapn's own words, he got a train wreck.
 * Squee: The Goons' reaction to Eggman activating his high-tech glasses to locate the Chaos Emeralds.
 * Shout-Out: Several throughout, from Star Trek: The Animated Series to Neon Genesis Evangelion to The Big O to Dragon Force.
 * Stupid Statement Dance Mix:
 * Radical Train
 * Shit Pickle
 * Junk
 * That Makes Me Feel Angry: Quoted by KFJ at one point, in a Shout-Out to the Trope Namer.

"Omega: What is Eggman up to? Who is Mephiles?
 * Take Up My Controller: In the few times when Pokecapn absolutely refuses to continue playing the game (namely during Sonic's Radical Train stage and the End Of The World), the supporting Goons pick up the controller (despite having not nearly as much playtime as Pokecapn in either case) and attempt to beat the level while he cools down, with IlluminatusVespucci outright refusing to stop until the game is completed at End Of The World.
 * Tempting Fate: In three different levels in Sonic's story, Sonic or Tails warns the player about falling into lava/water/bottomless pits. All three times, the goons manage to fall off within seconds.
 * Kung-Fu Jesus at one point declares "We've reached that time during which the game has really done most of what it can do in terms of being awful." Immediately upon saying this, an explosive crate flung by an orange Time Dimension blasts pokecapn out of the air, and shortly thereafter he tries to jump to the next platform only to be kept hovering between instant death from a black Time Dimension and instant death from the quicksand.
 * At one point, the goons state that "nothing can be worse than that nightmare", followed by a hideously broken Mach Speed Zone.
 * Right before starting Shadow's Dusty Desert, pokecapn realizes he hasn't saved. medibot pipes in with "You'll be fine, it's just a desert level." You can only guess what ensues after that.
 * Ten-Minute Retirement:
 * This Is for Emphasis, Bitch

Kung-Fu Jesus: It's Satan, you bitch!"

"Kung-Fu Jesus: "And I think it's gonna be a long, long time. 'Til... touchdown... brings me 'round again to find.""
 * Title Drop: "The End of the World" section of the pokecapn LP is titled after the chorus from Rocket Man by Elton John, which Kung-Fu Jesus starts to chant à la William Shatner at the 1978 Science Fiction Awards as they near utter oblivion.

"medibot: Oh my God, I'm so not ready, I've never done a mach speed, help, how do I ... how do I inhale, what ... Do I just press down to copy their power?"
 * Trademark Favorite Food: The goons make a point of ordering General Tso's Chicken, as it will make them "full of ideas".
 * Let this be a lesson to you -- if you would like ideas, make sure you get a varied diet of ideas-rich foods.
 * medibot mentions Outback Steakhouse and Blooming Onions multiple times throughout the play.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Their reaction to Robotnik's scouter-glasses.
 * Wrong Genre Savvy: Medibot constantly trying to fit game mechanics, locations, characters, and plot elements from other games into this one (i.e. explaining that the meter in the bottom right corner of the screen is a tension gauge and expressing concern that when they get to the end of the game they'll actually need to have collected all the silver medals to race Wizpig.)
 * In the first Sonic mission, he literally rolls a d20 for Sonic's Gather Information check.
 * medibot takes over for pokecapn during the mach speed section of Sonic's Radical Train stage. The line below is the first thing he says.


 * X Meets Y: The whole Let's Play is reminiscent of a I Wanna Be the Guy or Kaizo Mario World run put under a Sonic filter.