Character Spotlight - Sonic the Hedgehog

For a long time, Dr. Ivo Robotnik - or Dr. Eggman, depending on where you’re from - has been attempting to bring the world under his reign but seeking out and using the Chaos Emeralds, a set of jewels that possess special properties - namely that they provide life energy to all living beings. To aid him in the process, the dastardly doctor kidnaps all the animal denizens of South Island and turns them into his robot army! Only one Hedgehog can stand is Dr. Eggman’s way!

In May 1991, Mario was the unchallenged King of the video game realm. Thanks to the efforts of character creator Shigeru Miyamoto and his team, Nintendo had successfully ended the video game crash of 1983. As a result, Mario was everywhere as the company’s mascot and all anyone on the playground would talk about. Nintendo was on top of the market with Super Mario 3 on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the hands of North American gamers.

Sega wanted their share in that success with their Sega Genesis. Just ahead of the release of Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega fired its first salvo in what would be the first console war. Sega took the world by storm with Sonic the Hedgehog. Designed to be everything Mario wasn’t, Sonic was sleek and fierce looking, exuding pure attitude. While a platformer game like Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog favoured speed over whimsy. Along with their aggressive marketing campaigns, (“Sega Does What Nintendon’t”) Sega had created a true rival for Mario and Nintendo.

Over the next decade, Sonic would continue to have success in the forms of the Genesis sequels, 2, 3, and Sonic and Knuckles. The three-dimensional incarnations of the series did not fair so well.While Mario had made the triumphant transition to the realm of 3D with the masterful Super Mario 64 with 11.89 million units sold as of 2017, Sonic Adventure failed to capture players’ imaginations to the same degree, selling somewhere in the realm of 4 million units in the same time. Paired with the falling sales of the Dreamcast in 2000, Sega opted out of the console race, shifting focus to game development. Since then, Sega has primarily developed three-dimensional Sonic games, toying with those designs to varying forms of success and failure. Sonic Unleashed as an example, was a trainwreck of a game where Sonic would transform into some sort of were-hog, in what could only be described as Sega’s attempt to turn Sonic into a budget level, family-friendly God of War clone.

With games like Unleashed seeming to become the norm, I have in the decades since Sonic the Hedgehog on Genesis, watched Sonic become something of a joke; a hallmark for mascots fallen from grace. Every time a new Sonic game is announced, the internet collectively sighs, knowing full-well that even though we hope for a new game to recapture that good ol’ “Sonic” feeling of yore, it’s not likely to happen. More on that in a bit.

In the lead up to the release of Sonic 2, as part of Sega’s $10 million advertising campaign, Sonic was everywhere. I remember seeing cardboard standees in toy stores, demo kiosks in K-Mart and Zellers with playable builds of the game, along with commercials promoting “awesome new graphics and blast processing.” All of this worked on my 6 year old mind, and I had to have it. I needed Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and begged and begged my mother. I can’t remember a time in my life I wanted, nay, needed, something more. I would stare at the box in stores, I would daydream about freeing forest animals from the clutches of the dastardly Dr. Robotnik while pouring over the Sears catalogue. There even came a point where I had an extremely vivid dream of my mother leading me to the trunk of her Pontiac to show me that she had bought me the Genesis with Sonic 2 packed in. I recall being unreasonably excited that morning and running downstairs only to have my hopes dashed as I realized it was only a dream. For the rest of the day, I was inconsolable. Perhaps mom took notice, as that Christmas, my brother and I opened up “The Big Present” to find a Sega Genesis with Sonic 2! From then on, it was all my mother could do to convince us to do our homework or play outside. We were fixated. We even went out and got Sonic and Tails plushies. It was the first game that I recall us really bonding over, a bond that persists today. I even recall a day that he and I came home from school to find our mother sitting at the kitchen table where we had the little 10” screen and Genesis hooked up. She was playing! Our mother - the woman who couldn’t stand hearing the sound of video games - was playing Sonic 2! Granted, she was only on the second level of Green Hill zone fighting Robotnik, a process that had apparently taken the better part of the afternoon, but she was still playing and that was a feat Mario had never accomplished.

A full 25 years later, my brother and I still love Sonic the Hedgehog and the memories he represents, even though the character has sometimes stumbled in the effort to try something new. As I mentioned, myself and other fans alike have been waiting for a Sonic game that brings us back to those cherished memories, and it looks like we finally have had our prayers answered. Sonic Mania, recently released for current consoles and PC, harkens back to the golden age, the Genesis of Sonic, recreating and remixing some old favourite levels while also adding new ones. From what I’ve seen, the speedy and intense platforming from the originals is at play here, and for the first time in years, I’m excited to play a new Sonic game.

Sonic the Hedgehog and his crew of furry friends (read: furry, not FURRIES) are an important part of my career as a gamer, and responsible for many of my favourite memories growing up. Though I began as - and currently continue to be - a Nintendo fan boy, there was a time when I was firmly in Sega’s camp. My cousin had introduced me to Super Mario at a young age, and some of my earliest memories are of playing those games together. After playing Sonic the Hedgehog though, my allegiance shifted and suddenly I was siding with the other school kids, believing Sonic could take Mario in a fight any day of the week.

While Sonic may have reached similar heights in popularity as Mario (I didn’t even mention the two cartoons), it seems that his games haven’t had quite the same staying power through the years. If you’re interested in learning more about the Blue Blur first-hand, I would highly suggest checking Sonic Mania, out now on current consoles, or Sonic Mega Collection, a treasure trove of classic Sonic titles.