Suggested read-along music:
My family has never been what some might call “tech savvy” so when I asked my parents for a gaming console back when I was five, they got me a Sega Genesis and I couldn’t have been more excited. For the longest time that was my favorite possession and I held on to it for years until the death of Sega with the disastrous Dreamcast. My folks never really got it. To them they still thought of videogames as arcades, pinballs or the back section of a bowling alley that always has the Galaga/Ms. Pacman machine. I probably did some serious damage to my eyes and social skills but I developed a 20 year obsession with the adventures of a fat evil doctor and his nemesis, a blue hedgehog with sneakers.
Modern gaming took off quickly in the 80’s with Nintendo creating the blockbuster games and such iconic characters like Donkey Kong, Link, the original Metal Gear and the all-star champs the Mario Brothers. Sure these stars had predecessors like the Pacman family, the Joust bird, and theGalaga ship but home console gaming set them as the true first wave. As gaming advanced there came the rise of newer, more “complex” characters like Ratchet & Clank, the gangsters and criminals of the GTA series or the insane action stars like Ryu Haybusa, Kratos or Dante from Devil May Cry. And let us not forget the big time sellers like Mass Effect’s John Shepard, Halo’s Master Chief and fan favorite Gordon Freeman of Half-Life fame. With these new characters come fantastical realities that previously only existed in descriptive prose form or in on the canvas of an artist. Worlds became expansive with interactive environments. Simple two dimensional side scrolling levels like Prince of Persia’s castles or Super Mario Brothers Butter Bridge to Playstation and Xbox games like Ubisofts’s Prince of Persia and its spiritual successor Assassin’s Creed where they replicate historical settings such as Renaissance Italy or Colonial America, or the Portal series where one can teleport through the environment itself, or games like Fez, which is an independent game where time manipulation is a component.
For the most part our main characters are just cyphers to pull us into this world. This is what we want to experience. Believe me; I’m not saying that story and characters are second string here. I’m a writer. I love story, I love interesting characters, but let us not forget the name of this medium. It is called “video-games” not “video-art”. Art is inherently passive, you experience it through observation, it can wash over you. A game is active, you have to participate, you have to be involved. You are Master Chief, you are Marcus Felix of Delta Squad. The story is your story, the feeling your own. Your individual attachment to the game is important with franchises letting you choose your appearance or gender like John/Jane Sheppard. So where does Sonic fit in to all this?
The lovable speedster got his start back in 1991 with the self-titled “Sonic the Hedgehog” on the Sega Genesis. Now I never actually knew that the plot of the game. It could have been because I was six years old, or because there really wasn’t one, but I got the point. Get the rings, smash the robots, and most importantly, go fast. Sonic is perhaps the greatest side-scroller, the perfection of the form. The developers understood that early gamers didn’t want something to solve or challenging boss battles. What the youth of America wanted was to go fast, a blue blur across the screen as you transverse level after level. Places like Green Hill Zone or chemical plants, stopping by casinos and breaking into fortresses of mustachioed madmen, and the levels kept going.
The success fueled a franchise that continued on several platforms, even becoming Sega’s flagship. Now I did not play Sonic 3D but I did experience the golden age of Sonic play. See, with every new game came a new character that is added to the roster. Orange two-tailed fox named Miles “Tails” Prower, the powerful red treasure hunter Knuckles the Echidna- whatever the hell that is-and sweet giant hammer wielding pink hedgehog Amy Rose. Soon a mythology began to emerge with chaos crystals and master emeralds with ancient civilizations and apparently modern civilization. The franchise enters a golden age with the Sonic Adventures series where you could follow those multiple characters and not only run through levels but also hunt in them and shoot down enemies.
Sure it had its problems but on Sonic’s tenth anniversary came Sonic Adventures 2, arguably the best game, and Shadow, the essential evil sonic, the Vegeta to his Goku. He eventually becomes popular enough to get his own, kinda just ok, spin off game that was rated T for violence (shocker!). But while the games looked beautiful and the follow-ups Hero’s and Riders were successful, the Sega company went under, and with consistent additions of characteristics like a Ninja Chameleon, a singing crocodile, and birds that ride skateboards. Gone were the inventive environments from previous games, the city chases or the inexplicable space colony rails. The levels felt like knock-offs from previous games, the camera often could not keep up with the characters and there was just a general lack of challenge.
It became official to me, Sonic was for children of the 90s and now it was for the children of the 00s. I’ve kept my eye on the franchise, unable to let go of first loves and all that. The character traveled through time, met a genie, became a werewolf, and all other sorts of shenanigans and hi-jinks. The cast has survived the downfall of Sega, jumping on to the Wii and officially joined the ranks with the greats with the Mario Bro’s with such games as Winter Olympics, Tennis, Racing, Soccer and of course Super Smash Bros.
Over the holidays I played a few games with the younger members of my family and revisited this old friend. We were close to the same age and I was amused to see that Sonic also had adopted a slightly douchey hipster scarf. Sure the dialogue made me feel like I was getting progressively dumber the more I listened to it, but something remained the same. The exhilaration of going fast through levels at break neck speeds. The games were fluid, the controls basically the same, it was all very shiny and still fun. Though the outer shell may have undergone a few cosmetic changes, the heart of the laid back adventure seeking hedgehog remained.
If you allow me to romanticize and feel nostalgia for a bit, I want to say that Sonic really represents that particular set of time. That sweet spot of the 90’s where things were looking good and the youth was being exposed to the second Disney Golden Age, of the rise of DVD’s and the internet. We just wanted more and faster. If something doesn’t work we rebrand, if our console is obsolete we curl into a ball and jump onto the next floating platform, if we get knocked down we also curl into a ball and roll at our enemy. And though we never know why he runs, how he got so good at it or how he got those shoes. We, like Sonic, keep moving forward, ready for the next level.