Sonic Generations Demo Out Now XBL, PSN

20 years ago today, the original Sonic the Hedgehog was released on the Sega Genesis. To celebrate the occasion, Sega sneakily released a little present for all of you Sonic fans out there: a demo of Sonic Generations, out now on Xbox Live and later today on the PlayStation Network.

The demo lets you play Classic Sonic on the remake of the iconic Green Hill Zone stage. The demo is a little short and doesn’t include any Modern Sonic levels, but hey, it’s something.

While Sega was gracious in offering fans a taste of Sonic Generations, you’re not actually going to be able to keep the demo. The demo will only be available for 20 days, after which time it will be removed from both Xbox Live and PlayStation Network and, if you have it downloaded, access will be disabled. So if you’d like to see if Sonic managed to break the cycle, you’ll have to act fast.

I’m probably in the minority when I say this, but I’m actually looking forward to this. I didn’t think the 3D gameplay in Sonic Colors was particularly terrible, and the Classic Sonic sections appear to be mostly true to the games of old. We’ll get to see how it all turns out when Sonic Generations launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo 3DS later this year.