Who, hasn’t heard of Sonic the Hedgehog, must have been living in a cave for more than twenty years, as the fame of this gaming character rivals that of Nintendo’s Super Mario, and just like Nintendo’s official mascot, our spiky friend is making a comeback on the web, reviving those days of glory.

While the company that invented Sonic stepped out of the console business, they remained, developing games of Sonic for other platforms, resulting in appearances in Nintendo titles like Mario & Sonic at the Olympics, and the ultra fast Hedgehog made appearances in other games starring the Italian plumber as well. Besides those appearances and some less successful PC games, everything was pretty much quiet on the Sonic the Hedgehog front. Until now that is, because with literally hundreds of free Sonic games available  at specialized arcade sites, the Spiky speed monster is back with a vengeance.

Though a recent development, Sonic games are gaining in popularity at an amazing rate, and it won’t be long till they once again rival the popularity of online Super Mario games, just like they did in the time of the Sega gaming consoles. A great advantage of these games is that you can play them on just about any device capable of surfing the web. No need for the latest console, or the biggest PC with a monstrous graphics card. Any old PC will do, and it does not matter if you run Windows, Linux, or are playing on a Mac, these games will work on any operating system, and without the need of anything extra in terms of hardware.

Like Mario, Sonic games are free to play, will run in your browser, and can be played on any Internet capable device. The quality of those games is amazing, they look as good as they did on the Dreamcast, if not better, but now you can play them anywhere you can go online. No more confinement to the location where your console is set up, it is even possible to play them on your mobile phone!

Sonic Xtreme, is a perfect example of a high quality Sonic game you can play in your browser, and though there is nothing to download or install, the graphics are still pretty amazing. In this game you need to guide Sonic to collect all the rings, while eliminating his enemies, and getting them all within the time limit. This game plays just as well as any official Sonic game ever released, and it’s a load of fun.

Classic looking Sonic games are not all there is though, there are loads of other type of games, ranging from puzzles, to Tetris clones, all featuring the famous Hedgehog in action, and more titles are coming out every day.
Through these games a whole new generation, that only knew sonic from the cartoon series is introduced to games that brought us so many hours of joy in the eighties, and it won’t be long till our Spiky friend is back at the top with Mario and all the others.

Ever since Mario stole the spotlight from a certain princess kidnapping ape, people have fallen in love with the overalls wearing plumber. Super Mario has spawned countless games. From the original Super Mario and it’s sequels, even today it has a wide variety of spin offs including Mario Soccer, Mario Party, and Mario Kart. Mario is the mascot for Nintendo and that has to tell you something. With such a huge fan base paired with the creative minds of many flash programmers, there have been a huge number of equally addicting and unique Mario Games made by the fans of the Super Mario craze.