Right, I suppose I need to come clean – I’ve been following Sonic the Hedgehog for nigh on thirty years now, and I’m still not really sure why. Well, that’s not fair; I know exactly why it started. Summer of ’91, at my mates Dave’s gaff in Stockport, his older brother had just bought himself a new Sega Mega Drive with a game about a blue hedgehog. As I’d been very much Amiga through and through at that point (had my faithful 500 humming away at home, playing stuff like Speedball 2 and whatever Sensible Software were churning out that month), I hadn’t ever really considered console gaming, or indeed that there was such a thing as “console gaming” per se. We were the computer gaming crowd.
Watching Sonic whizz through Green Hill Zone was mental, though. Pure velocity, that’s all I can say. My Amiga could do some pretty cool stuff, but this was a different animal altogether. My mate Dave’s brother was showing off, of course, looping and ramp-jumping while I sat there with my gob hanging open like a muppet. I’d been used to games that demanded patience, strategy, careful planning etc., whereas this was chaos – and a good kind of chaos.
Of course, I wasn’t going to go out and buy a Mega Drive on the spot, being a stubborn Amiga lad and all that. Took me till Christmas ’91 to finally give in to begging my folks for one, and even then it was only because they’d had enough of hearing me bang on about it. Underneath the tree I found the console and Sonic, and I swear I didn’t leave my room for three whole days. Mum had to wheel in the telly dinners on a tray because I was utterly fixated on getting every level spot on.
One of the great things about Sonic – and I think a lot of young gamers today are missing the point – is that it totally redefined what platformers could be. For years we’d all been playing Mario knock-offs, games that relied on precision jumping and careful movement. Then suddenly, here’s this bloke in a blue hedgehog onesie who says you’ll get better grades if you go fast, take risks and build up your momentum, and rely on your reflexes. It was a revolution, no two ways about it. The physics in the engine were unbelievable – you had to understand how Sonic behaved, how his speed influenced his jumps, and how momentum transferred from loop-de-loops to springboards etc.
Sonic 2 turned up the following year and somehow managed to top perfection. The spin dash – Jesus, how did they not think of that sooner?! Coming back to the first game after playing Sonic 2 was like trying to run with your shoelaces tied together. And Tails! Brilliant addition. My younger cousin could join in, lend a hand without getting in the way, and therefore family gaming sessions that didn’t result in tears were suddenly a possibility. That underwater section in Chemical Plant Zone still sends shivers down my spine – those long, open straights where you could really let Sonic loose, followed by those water tunnels that had me quaking in fear as a nipper. That drowning countdown music is stuck in my head to this day.
Then Sonic 3 and Knuckles came along and basically demonstrated how to do lock-on tech properly. The idea of connecting the two cartridges and playing through one massive story was just insane. I spent an unbecoming amount of money collecting every last Chaos Emerald, finding every hidden route through every level of every zone. The level design was top-notch – multiple routes that rewarded both speed and exploration, secrets tucked away for players who wanted to slow down and sniff around. And the music… even with all the Michael Jackson baggage surrounding it, that soundtrack was absolute class.
This is where things get a bit painful to talk about. The transition to 3D gaming in the late nineties was a disaster for many franchises, but Sonic’s transition was particularly brutal to watch. I bought a Dreamcast specifically for Sonic Adventure – import-ed it from Japan before it was released in Europe, I was so desperate to get my hands on it. The opening scenes, with Sonic tearing through the city while that killer whale is chasing him, were absolutely breathtaking. Visually, it was everything I’d dreamed of. But the camera… oh, bloody hell the camera. Playing it now is like wrestling with a cranky badger while attempting to platform.
That said, there were some fantastic moments. The speed sections still had that classic Sonic rush perfectly, and exploring Station Square was revolutionary at the time. I must have spent hours just wandering around, chatting to the NPCs, and generally feeling like I was inside a Sonic game rather than playing one. Adventure 2 improved things no end – City Escape is one of the best Sonic levels ever created. Skateboarding down those San Francisco hills while “ROLLING AROUND AT THE SPEED OF SOUND” is blasting away… pure gaming euphoria.
The Chao Garden took over my life. I’m a 49-year-old IT manager, and I’m telling you, I spent months raising virtual animals in a Sonic game. My wife still gives me grief about it. But, there was something weirdly relaxing about looking after those little critters in between the high-speed Sonic levels. Odd design choice, maybe, but it bloody worked.
Then came what I like to refer to as the “lost years”. Sonic Heroes had potential, but never really clicked. Team based gameplay felt forced, as if they were trying to resolve issues that weren’t even there. Shadow the Hedgehog with guns… I mean, who looked at Sonic and thought, “You know what this game needs? Guns!” Still bought it though, didn’t I? Still got it sitting on my shelf as a reminder of how badly developers can screw things up.
And then, of course, there was Sonic 06. Holy hell. I queued up outside Game to buy it on release day like a muppet, convinced the trailers had shown us the future of Sonic gaming. Instead, I got loading screens longer than some of the Mega Drive games, bugs that would make Big Rigs look slick, and a plotline featuring hedgehog/human romance that still makes my skin crawl to this day. The tragedy is, you could see glimmers of what could have been a great game buried under all the rushed dev time and corporate meddling.
The franchise desperately needed a total reboot after that disaster, and thankfully, Sonic Colours and Generations delivered precisely that. Revisiting the remastered Green Hill Zone in Generations was emotionally moving – like reuniting with an old flame after all these years. The concept was genius – celebrating Sonic’s past while realising what made him special in the first place. I might have gotten a bit misty-eyed replaying Chemical Plant with those lovely, new graphics. Don’t judge me.
The evolving design of the characters has been interesting to see – and sometimes terrifying. From the tiny classic Sonic to the gangly modern version, to that… thing… in the first Sonic movie trailer. My wife, who knows nothing about gaming, literally gasped in horror when she saw the first Sonic movie design. Lucky for us, they listened to fan feedback and sorted it out. Some design choices worked, some definitely didn’t. Watching a mate go through various questionable sartorial phases is similar to seeing the design evolution of Sonic.
Sonic Mania was the game I’d been waiting over twenty-five years for. Christian Whitehead and his group of fans-turned-developers obviously understood what made Sonic great in ways that SEGA themselves seemed to have forgotten. The pixel art was lovely, the remixed music was sublime, and the physics felt absolutely spot on – like someone had dived into my teenage memory and brought it back to life. I played it twice and bored everyone within earshot talking about how they’d perfectly replicated the Genesis experience while adding features that felt completely organic.
The latest direction with Sonic Frontiers has been… well, it’s certainly unique. Open world Sonic sounds mental on paper, but there’s something odd about watching Sonic in these huge, bleak environments. Like they crossed Breath of the Wild with Sonic in what must have been the most bizarre pitch meeting in gaming history. The combat system works for the first time too, although some of the puzzles take a bloody eternity to complete, like a Manchester United injury break-out.
What’s always amazed me is how Sonic remained culturally relevant even in the worst of times, and even in the worst of gameplay. He became a part of our pop culture lexicon. My mate’s eight year old son knows who Sonic is, despite never having touched a Mega Drive controller. That’s longevity.
I reckon there’s something charming about Sonic’s refusal to fall over. Each time he crashes spectacularly, he gets back up, dusts himself off and has another bash. Sounds a bit like myself, really – still buying new Sonic games at 49, despite knowing there’s a coin toss’s chance of it being rubbish. I’m sure there’s a moral somewhere in there…
So why do I keep coming back? Easy. That moment when everything clicks perfectly – when Sonic has built up enough momentum to be flying through a level with full control, dodging obstacles without losing a beat… When it works, there’s still nothing in gaming quite like it. I’ve got grey creeping in at the temples and a bald patch growing faster than my comprehension of why SEGA keeps producing rubbish games, but for those moments of perfectness, I’m 17 again, holding onto a six button controller and marveling at how anyone can possibly make anything move that quickly.
Elena is a librarian in Dublin with an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure European computer games that most English-language gaming sites completely ignore. She champions forgotten systems—the Commodore 16, the Spectrum 128K, the Atari ST’s untapped potential—with infectious enthusiasm and genuine expertise. Her writing documents regional exclusives and hidden gems that barely made it to print before the companies folded, preserving gaming history that would otherwise disappear entirely. She approaches retro gaming as cultural preservation, not mere nostalgia.
0 Comments