Few video game characters or franchises have experienced the tragic downfall that Sonic the Hedgehog has. Sonic went from ruling the video game world to being somewhat of a recurring joke whose games are enjoyed mostly by members of creepy subcultures. Still, it's hard to find anyone who grew up in the 1990's who doesn't have some fond memories of the games.
In the early 1990's, Sega was looking for a character to compete with Mario. Not only did Mario star in a series of great games, he became synonymous with the Nintendo brand as well. Sega hoped they could bottle that lightning and give them a fighting chance since they had more or less gotten curb stomped by Nintendo in the 8-bit war. Sega's original mascot, Alex Kidd failed to set the world in fire. How many people did you know that owned a Master System and played Alex Kidd? Exactly. Some of the original designs for a mascot included a rabbit who could grab things with his ears(a concept that was later used in the Sega game Ristar) and a fat guy in overalls(This "Not Mario" guy eventually became Dr. Robotnik). The design that was settled on was a slick blue hedgehog who fought evil scientists, and moved at super speed. Credit for the original design usually goes to Yuji Naka, but Naoto Oshima and Hirokazu Yashuhara also had a hand in designing the character.
Sonic was the antithesis to Mario. As a character, Mario was fun, but completely harmless and maybe even a little boring. Kind of like how Mickey Mouse is seen nowadays. Sonic was made to be cool. He possessed that vague characteristic known as attitude, especially in the Western artwork. In Japan, most Sonic artwork featured the character with a slight smirk, this was replaced with a cocky grin in the American releases. Sonic's foe was a developer who turned innocent woodland animals into machines which jibed pretty well with the eco-conscious sensibilities of the 90's. This approach really resonated with both gamers and gaming journalists. Sonic, along with Sega's more lax censorship policies gave the Genesis the "cool" image that the SNES did not have. This helped propel the Genesis ahead of the Super NES in sales in America. The whole anthromorphic animal mascot with a 'TUDE motif would be copied by several other companies throughout the era.
Sonic's heyday was in the early to mid 90's. The games began to lose their touch sometime around when the Saturn came out, and the series would eventually become a total horror show but let's take this one step at a time. Let's look at all the major Sonic releases. Or at least the ones I've played!
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic benefitted from not only having an appealing design, but a pretty darn good first game as well. One of this game's strengths is Sonic's speed and the game design worked to accommodate this. Sure you moved fast, but Sonic could always take a hit as long as he had at least one ring so there was rarely any worry about losing a life because you ran into a spike because you were going too fast. The rings scattered when you were hit, but you could always recover a few. It also helped that rings were as ubiquitous in Sonic as coins were in Mario. Sonic's main form of attack was curling up into a ball and rolling or jumping. As long as Sonic hit a vulnerable part of an enemy it didn't matter whether Sonic hit them above, below or on his side. It made cruising through the many of the levels as fast as possible fun and a good idea. Going fast would often give you enough momentum to reach higher areas of the level which had more plentiful items. The game was divided up into six zones with three acts each. At the end of each zone you encounter Dr. Robotnik in his ship altered in some way to fight you. In one zone the ship might have a wrecking ball on it, another will shoot fire and so on. This form of boss battle is used in most, if not all of the early games in the series.
The first zone, the Green Hill Zone is one of the best designed areas in a game ever. You are encouraged to use Sonic's speed to zoom through the levels and find new areas. You also never really feel punished for falling to a lower area of the level. The music is great too, definitely one of the best Sonic themes. Unfortunately, the following level, the Marble Zone feels way out of place. It moves slowly and features lots of block pushing puzzles and waiting slowly for spike traps to get out of your way. The Spring Yard Zone picks things up a bit with a less restrictive environment, but throws in a few too many spike traps. The Labyrinth Zone spends half of the time underwater, which is a total bane of Sonic games. The Star Light focuses on speed once again and finally the Scrap Brain Zone combines elements from some of the previous areas.
Another staple of the series that was born here was the Chaos Emeralds. Seven macguffins that have powers that vary from game to game. In the early Sonic games, they have to be obtained through a series of maddeningly difficult bonus rounds. Your reward for collecting the emeralds usually involves a better ending. Unfortunately, the good ending in this game realllly isn't worth the effort.
Despite being a great game, Sonic the Hedgehog feels rough around the edges. About a 1/3rd of levels feel half baked and the "good" ending isn't worth your time, but it's nice to play a pure Sonic game. It's just the hedgehog and the evil doctor. No annoying buddies or long cutscenes.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
No doubt about it, Sonic was a big success and Sonic Team went immediately to work on developing a sequel in conjunction with America's Sega Technical Institute. Sonic 2 was pretty similar to the original but with some of the shortcomings about the original addressed. For starters, the level design is much more conducive to Sonic's speed. The Chemical Plant Zone is a prime example of this, except for one small portion towards the end. There's more overall zones as well, thanks to having only two acts per zone instead of three. Despite the greater variety of levels, the game feels really long and starts to drag about the time you hit the 7th zone(Oil Ocean). Honestly though, it's more of a case of the game's length being acceptable when you're a responsibility free twelve year old, but maybe not when you're twice that age. The music is about on level with the original game was well, providing several memorable tracks. The game is overall a bit faster than Sonic 1, and Sega coined their famous buzzword "Blast Processing" around the time of this game's release. Blast Processing basically referred to the fact that the Genesis had a slightly faster processor than the SNES(more or less). They really played this up for the advertisements as you can see here.
The biggest new addition was Sonic's buddy Tails. This two-tailed fox is the first in a long list of critters Sega would add to the games and a big part of the reason the series is considered such a joke nowadays. Anyway, Tails follows Sonic around and can be controlled by the second player if you wish. Though this is kind of fruitless since the screen follows Sonic. The player controlling Tails will probably be left behind most of the time. If Sonic does lose Tails, he will fly back on screen in a few seconds using his twin tails like a helicopter rotor. It's impossible to make Tails fly manually. Talk about a missed opportunity! Give a cool new ability to your new character and don't even allow the players to use it! Tails got a chance to shine in the new split screen versus mode though. Despite the scrunched screen, it's actually a pretty fun distraction since you can sabotage your opponents using teleporters.
Sega also added some nice incentives for going through the hell of collecting those damn Chaos Emeralds. The good ending is much better this time around and collecting all seven emeralds gives Sonic the ability to transform into Super Sonic who moves really fast and is completely invincible.
Sonic 2 is considered by many gamers to be the best game of the series. This isn't surprising. Sonic 2 is sort of like Mega Man 2 in that it's a sequel that takes the concept of the original game, trims the fat and polishes it to the point where it's a complete classic. Future games would continue to add more content, but Sonic 2 manages to hit that sweet spot that makes it one of the most, if not the most appealing game in the series to come back to.
That's enough talking about Sonic for the time being, tune in...later when I decide to update!
