See, the Rushes and Advances are the Star Trek TNG movies -- they did different, new, often weird stuff, but only people who were already fans noticed them -- and Sonic 4 is Star Trek 09 -- just rehashing the stuff everyone remembers, not treading any new ground, to sell it to a mass audience on nostalgia. The difference, of course, being that the Rushes and Advances don't suck and Sonic 4 isn't awesome.
Similar analogies can be drawn with many various media franchises in the last few years, such as the SML and WL series vs. NSMB. Everything's getting a mass-appeal reboot, and some of them suck less than others.