Is it just me or is 2011 an awesome year for us gamers who grew up during the nineties? Mortal Kombat has been re-imagined for HD consoles to stunning effect; there’s a Tomb Raider prequel being developed by the talented team at Crystal Dynamics; and Sonic Generations has recently been announced to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Mega Drive hit Sonic the Hedgehog.

I recently played through the re-mastered versions of Sonic 1 and 2 on PlayStation Network, and they were both excellent fun (with the sequel sporting more variation and better level design).

Then I tried out the demo for Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1 and was dismayed by how slowly Sonic reacted to your controller inputs. The old games were many times more responsive - a very odd situation considering that the Sonic games’ trademark is raw speed.

Judging by the latest screens and gameplay video Sonic will be back to his insanely fast, fluid self in Sonic Generations. Although the clip embedded below is a little grainy, it gives you a very good idea of how the levels will feature dynamic camera angles and what you can expect on the gameplay side of things.

This is footage from the PlayStation 3 build, and it’s looking amazingly fast and vibrant at this early stage. In fact, you may feel a little letdown by other current generation platformers (I’m looking at you LittleBigPlanet 2) when you see how just how fluent games from this genre can look on modern hardware.

Do yourself a favour and check out the gameplay clip below, and join me in celebrating classics from yesteryear being resurrected to take full advantage of today’s technology while maintaining and building upon what made that classic’s gameplay so enjoyable and compelling in the first place:

Sonic Generations – Extended Gameplay Footage

Sonic Generations should be out on PS3 and Xbox 360 sometime during the fourth quarter of this year. We’ll keep you up to speed on all the latest news stemming from this exciting project, right here on El33tonline.