Tuesday, 30 June 2009

• Happy Late Birthday, Sonic the Hedgehog!

  
  Did anyone notice last Tuesday was Sonic the Hedgehog's birthday? Indeed, on June 23, 1991 Sonic ran onto shelves to wow and annoy the world over. 18 years later he's got a whole lot of crappy games and a handful of good ones to show for it all.
  
  Yeah, complaining about what happened to the series is too easy. There's too much to list: a useless and infuriating supporting cast, terrible game design with awful controls and a worse camera ... With the original members of developer Sonic Team abandoning the poor rodent there's little hope. Can you imagine Nintendo turning their back on Mario? Of course not! So it's bewildering and tragic that Sega allowed such a meteoric drop in quality in Sonic games in the past decade. If you want to really dwell on the blue hedgehog's sad state check out this series of videos detailing what's wrong and what can be done.
  
  But wait, it's Happy Birthday not Too Bad Every Game You're in Now Stinks Birthday, so let's look back at Sonic's glory days.
  
  

  
  

  
  I agree with the videos linked above. The four original games on the Sega Genesis - Sonic 1, 2, 3, and & Knuckles - definitely constitute a golden age. Sonic 1 really did show what Nintendo couldn't do at the time - platforming gameplay at blistering speed. Sonic 2 introduced Tails so another player could join in on the action, and Sonic 3 introduced the last decent character, Knuckles, and came out at the height of the character's popularity. The marketing was insane - Burger King toys, cartoons, comics, a balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, way before Pikachu would float down 5th Avenue. Sonic 3 even pushed the plot further, without the aid of godawful cutscenes or atrocious voice acting.
  
  When Sonic & Knuckles debuted with its lock-on technology, which allowed you to plug in the previous games to open extra content, jaws dropped. It extended the entire life of the series, years and years before anyone even thought of downloadable content. And Sonic Adventure, the last game in the series that's worth a damn, helped usher in a whole new generation of gaming, a full year before Sony's Playstation 2 would debut with its clunky, embarrassing software launch line-up.
  
  There's one other "golden age" game that doesn't often get the attention it deserves, and that's Sonic CD... probably because it was released on the unsuccessful Genesis add-on, the Sega CD. But man, what a game. Developed by a team led by Sonic's creator, Naoto Ohsima, it boasts a peculiar CD-quality soundtrack, a complicated time-traveling system that affects the game's levels and endings, and the craziest level design of the series. The placement of enemies and series trademark springs and bumpers borders on cruelty at times, making it the most challenging of the classic games. Just look at this. Level design like that belongs in a museum.
   
  Sonic CD crackles with fantastic style and personality. It's the game Sega needs to look back to. Plus, it's one of the first games with anime cutscenes, at a time when anime was "Japanimation" and Akira and Sailor Moon were the only ones anyone knew about.

  Watch that. How can that not pump you up?
  
  So, what are your favorite Sonic games? Did you manage to snag any of the Burger King toys way back when? Still read the Archie comics? If you like the recent Sonic games (post-Sonic Adventure)... well, gosh, why do you like them?

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