>>11893762
Are you kidding? It was the last boom of platformer characters, and just about all were more popular and got better reviews than Sonic. This was when Sonic was falling in popularity, Sega itself died as a console, and right before Sonic became the biggest "lolcow" for about ten years from the mid 00s-mid 10s
>Crash
>Spyro
>Jak and Daxter
>Ratchet and Clank
>Sly Cooper
All kinda ate Sonic's lunch in this time period while he became "weird", when in the 90s he was second only to Mario's already massive popularity, but certainly considered the "cooler" or "less dorky" of the two