As you may already know, SEGA is busy developing a brand new Sonic the Hedgehog title, currently under the name “Project Needlemouse.”

Project Needlemouse is planned to be a downloadable title to be released later this year.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Project Needlemouse in planned as being a brand new, old school sidescrolling style Sonic platformer, hearkening back to the blue hedgehog’s greatest outings on the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive.

Some doubted just how Project Needlemouse would turn out, as it was only in 2008 that we were promised an old school Sonic the Hedgehog title in the form of Sonic Unleashed, only to later reveal that Sonic would turn into a werewolf -like creature in that game and having the gameplay switch to something more akin to the more recent, less beloved Sonic titles.

Well it seems that with Project Needlemouse, SEGA truly is going for a classic Sonic experience for those who know the blue hedgehog from those ever so wonderful 16-bit days, as well as for younger fans to see why Sonic is so beloved to begin with.

SEGA recently announced on their official blog that Sonic will be the ONLY playable character, as well as the only major animal character.

Now we all love Knuckles and Tails (and to a slightly lesser extent, Amy Rose), but let’s face it, their introductions opened the gates to countless floods of less likable, series altering characters like Big the Cat, Silver the hedgehog and the franchise breaking character himself, Shadow the Hedgehog. But SEGA has promised that all animal sidekicks will be left out of Project Needlemouse, to give it a feel very much like that of the original game.

Which also brings us to another old school Sonic aspect that will be revived for Project Needlemouse, all of the villains, which are robots, will be called ‘Badniks’ after over a decade’s absence of the term. We can all bet that the sole major villain of the game will be Dr. Robotnik (or Eggman or whatever you want to call him, but I grew up calling him Robotnik so I use that more often).

So Project Needlemouse looks to be this, classic old school Sonic made new again, and it looks to be going as old school as possible with the classic rivalry of Sonic vs. Robotnik.

No animal sidekicks, no weird monster final boss that takes center stage over Eggman, no hedgehogs aside from Sonic. My hopes for Project Needlemouse are being restored after I myself began to wonder if SEGA would pull another “werehog” on us.

It looks like everything is coming full circle, back to the very roots of the nature of the Sonic the Hedgehog series.

And for all the Knuckles and Tails fans out there, maybe there will be a Project Needlemouse 2.