A Brief (And Super Snarky) History of Sonic the Hedgehog (VIDEO)

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Now, it’s early on a Monday morning. We’ve only just sobered up/awoken from our couple-day hibernation. It took me a half hour to get my damn pants on the right way round. Nobody wants to shuffle bleary-eyed into another working week and be greeted by a history lesson. Giant gorilla gonads to that.

Still though, as my ol’ pa used to say, Ego-history is good history. Following on from our Resident Evil twentieth anniversary celebration last week, it’s time to salute an even older icon of the gaming world: Sonic the Hedgehog.

Back in the early nineties, a battle was raging that rivaled anything that happened betwixt Eminem and his mama. We weren’t passive-aggressively cleanin’ out any closets here, this was serious shit. This was… Mario vs Sonic. The battleground? Schoolyards across the world. The time? Recess. The weapons of choice? Name-calling, refusing to let Nintendo/Sega fans join your game, and general get-you-after-school beatings. It was almost as hardcore as the turf war between rival Pokemon Go teams.

Sonic the Hedgehog’s first game, imaginatively titled Sonic the Hedgehog, hit in 1991. This was the time when ‘tude was everything (and had to be spelled like that), and Sonic exuded it from the tip of his edgy blue spikes to the laces of his cool sneakers. He bought with him a whole new kind of platformer, a world that managed to rival the almighty Mario.

As far as plot goes, Dr. Robotnik (throwback to the days before he was lumbered with the craptacular ‘Eggman’), nefarious scientist, has stolen powerful artifacts called Chaos Emeralds, and imprisoned cute and fluffy-ass animals inside robots. How the hell there’s a connection between these two acts, I’ve no idea, but there it was. It’s enough to send the ‘hog off on a quest to defeat him, anywho.

Now, here’s the USP, the hook. Sonic’s a hedgehog, but he’s –plot twist—really fast. We’re talking shit-your-pants speedster. Levels take place across a variety of zones, starting at the legendary Green Hill Zone, with a battle against Robotnik in one of his battle-bots at the end of each. In between those, there’s all the high-octane ring collecting and loop-the-looping we all know so well.

That’s the series in a nutshell, right there. That good ol’ fashioned core gameplay changed little over the early years, but Sonic’s dreaded half-assed entourage started to creep in. The second game hit a year later, and we were all cool with that. This introduced the main man’s first sidekick, Tails, a three-tailed fox who could fly a lil’ bit by spinning them. Which is awesome and all. What’s not to like?

I was even down with 1994’s Sonic and Knuckles, which added the titular Echidna to the mix. This guy could climb walls with his spiky claws, which I guess is a reasonable party trick too. These were the glory days of Sega’s Sonic, the height of the movie star’s success before the substance abuse problems and sex scandals hit the papers. And hit the papers they did.

I n this guy’s case, his modern and edgy ‘tude just couldn’t take the transition to 3D gaming. He floundered around in the late-90s like our grandmas, befuddled by rap and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air inspired fashion that was the style back in those days. What the eff’s going on, our grandmas asked, and so did Sonic.

To this day, it’s hard to name a truly classic 3D game starring the blue dude. Which isn’t to say that the poor bastard hasn’t tried. He was there through all the innovations that hit gaming since, it just didn’t work out so well. What did he bring to the table when Wii’s motion control wonderment arrived? Sonic and the Secret Rings, that’s what.

If you’d ever wanted to ‘steer’ the mascot around like he was a weird mammalian motorcycle on legs, this was your chance. Thing was, though, you haven’t ever wanted to do that. Which is why I picked the game up in a bargain bin for $1.99. Then there was 2009’s Sonic and the Black Knight, set in the world of King Arthur, which equipped our hero with a ballachingly irritating talking sword. For, y’know, reasons. Instead of keeping true to his lofty legend status of yore, Sonic’s become a bit of a gimmick magnet in recent years.

My real beef with the character, though, is the gang of dumbass cronies he’s surrounded himself with. He’s now got a bigger entourage than the average rapper, and they’re all complete nonentities. Do you know who Big the Cat and Rogue the Bat are? Amy Rose? I don’t either, but if I did, I wouldn’t be assed.

Sonic’s at his best when he’s being pure, unadulterated, no-effing-around Sonic. Just him, some sweet level design, and some goddamn speed. No frills or gimmicky BS. There have been glimmers of this in recent years, with releases like Sonic Colors and Sonic Rush, but overall, there’s been nothing but disappointment from Sonic Team for quite a while now.

In short, the series is in much the same position that Resident Evil is. As we saw last week, that franchise has strayed pretty far from its roots too, and it’s hard to say what the future might hold for the games. One thing we do know, though, is that it’s a name and a legacy worth saving. There’s a lot of history here, a quarter of a century of it.