Today, June 23rd 2021, marks 30 years since the release of Sonic The Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive for the rest of the world.) Quite a different beast in gaming compared to other platform titles like the Super Mario Bros. series, Sonic the Hedgehog was, first and foremost, based around speed. In fact, that gameplay mechanic, ironically, was inspired by the fact that generally people playing Super Mario Bros. tend to try to get through the first level as quickly as possible (effectively speed running before that was really a thing) and developer Yuji Naka came up with a game idea where the focus was speed. Mix in aspects of pinball and make the protagonist a small mammal with spines and you get Sonic the Hedgehog, a game I’ve loved since I was a kid, and a series that, while it really hasn’t impressed me too much in the past 20 years, I’m still partial to.
I recall a friend, Matthew, who lived just a little ways away from me, who had a Sega Genesis; this was probably around mid 1992 or so, and he had a copy of Sonic the Hedgehog, among a few other random games. All I had was an NES which I did enjoy, but the Genesis was a 16 bit beast that said “HIGH DEFENITION GRAPHICS” right on the top of it. A sleek black beauty, and with Sonic in it he and I had an absolute blast. The game was just an incredible experience, both visually and audibly, and when he and I could we would go to his room and do our best to get as far as we could. We never beat it, but damnit we tried. Hey, we were 7 and 6, what do you expect?
Move on to Christmas of 1993 and I would get my own Genesis with Sonic 2. It was just paradise for me — the game was incredible. My neighbor at the time had the first game and I’d borrow that often from him before getting my own copy — the game was still a challenge for me, but eventually I did complete it. Sonic 2 I played so much I had no trouble completing it, save for natural childhood attention span limitations, and the fact that odds are at most I had 30 minutes to play the game before another TV show I wanted to watch would come on. You know, kid in the early 90’s problems, right?
Move on to 1994 and of course I’d get, albeit late, Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles. Oh, I could say so much about those two games along, but I’ll save that for a future entry and / or review — suffice it to say they would be something I’d spend probably as much time as I would in any RPG (read, well over 100 hours) playing. Sure, that doesn’t sound like much, especially today, but back then that was an incredible amount of time to devote to a game — getting every emerald for all 3 characters, that was an accomplishment I’m still proud of my younger self for doing at least 3 times over. Hell, I had such a strong urge to play the game years later that in high school, long after my original Genesis had broken and been tossed away, I’d buy another one just to play Sonic 3 and Knuckles.
To say in 1996 I was disappointed in Sonic 3D blast would be an understatement. While the game wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the same, and it made that Christmas kind of a dark one. It was the last year I would get any Genesis games, as the system was well close to dead by then, and I never would get a Saturn or a Dreamcast in the following years as they came into their own (only recently getting both… my Dreamcast still at work long overdue for repairs I’ve been too busy to make.)
I don’t recall hearing anything about the eventually canceled Sonic Saturn or Sonic X-Treme, so my next encounter with my blue friend was, incidentally, when I was in high school: September 9th, 1999, and the release of the Sega Dreamcast. I was pretty hyped, I recall, for this system and would eventually play Sonic Adventure on a Dreamcast kiosk at a local Target (one I’d eventually work at) and was, honestly, disappointed. The game was cool — I remember being fixated on the demo, and playing it at a friends place often, but never really getting too into it. It just didn’t feel right to me, and honestly, none of the 3D Sonic games really have. They aren’t bad, but they just aren’t the same, which is certainly intentional — they are 3D games after all, but it just isn’t for me. I do like a few — Sonic Forces had my attention for a while (I need to get back to that one actually) and I had high hopes for Sonic Generations, but that game really seemed to go way overboard with the “new” sonic aspect and still, even in its side scrolling sections didn’t feel right.
Sonic the Hedgehog 4, an episodic return to side scrolling Sonic wasn’t bad but felt like a forced mess to me, and not having a GameBoy Advance meant I missed out on the Sonic Advance titles. That’s not to say I didn’t get to experience portable Sonic the Hedgehog – I did have a Game Gear with Sonic 2 and Sonic Chaos, but that too was long gone by the late 90’s.
The series had really just gone a way I wasn’t going to follow, until Sonic Mania. This was 2D Sonic at its best, and what should have been done more with the series, in my opinion. An odd creation of circumstance, it was primarily developed by some of the more notable people in the Sonic ROM hacking community, and it shows – it’s incredibly adventurous, but nothing that feels out of place. It’s the game I wish Sonic Adventure had been, and set a standard that should have been continued, but as it stands looks like it won’t be.
I could go on, but this was meant to be a “short” retrospective on the series after 30 years. Some incredible games released when I was a kid, and then I just lost touch with it. I still play the original games regularly. I just love them to no end, and my friends are very aware of this and my skill with them. I’m no speedrunner, but I’m still capable of some impressive displays in some levels, I doubt I’ll ever grow bored of them, they are just too much of my childhood to not like — it’s how we all are, we all have soft spots for things we enjoyed as kids, and thankfully I’ve no limit to the options I have to play these classics, be it on a modern collection release, emulations, or on the real hardware with the same carts I had as a kid.
Here’s to one of the defining entertainment franchises of my childhood. Gotta go fast!