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A Look Back at Sonic the Hedgehog
SonicHero writes "Part of its Essential 50 series, 1UP has posted a very interesting look back at Sonic the Hedgehog. It discusses how the character came about, how Sega marketed him, and how Sonic ultimately changed the course of the 16-bit platform wars."
Take a look at the Open Directory Project's category on it.
God, I remember staying up nights back in 91/92 finishing the Sonic games. It's enough to make me want to go plug the console in right now and spend some time with Sonic&Knuckles + Sonic 1.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
You can play a neat spinoff Sonic flash gamehere.
I just finished playing Supertux. It brings back all those feelings of the old NES days. Highly recommended!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The true timeline, sans hyperbole:
1 - Nintendo Entertainment System is popularized
2 - Sega Master System fails
3 - Sega Genesis is a moderate success due to Sonic the Hedgehog (but has no competition for 2 years)
4 - Super NES is popularized
5 - Sega Genesis moves to second place
6 - Sega Genesis fails
7 - Sega 32X and Sega CD fail (despite Sonic games for each)
8 - Sega Saturn released to mild popularity
9 - Nintendo 64 released to mild popularity, Saturn fails
10 - Sony Playstation popularized, N64 fails
Sega "fought" in the "platform wars". They never won. Their competitor lost, too.
Ya know, I try to be nice on these forums, but could you RTFA before asking questions? 'Cause this is answered there. 'Blast Processing' refered to
1) the fact that the CPU in the Genesis ran more than twice as fast as in the SNES (7.6MHz vs. 3.58MHz) and
2) that the Genesis could draw one screen while rendering another.
Yeah, I know, I shoulda just linked to the article. That woulda been the smart-ass thing to do...
(tig)
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
Don't forget the inspiration of the name of the morphogenetic protein.
To all those replying to the parent, STOP. The parent poster *knows* there are people in darkened rooms taking magic pills listening to repetitive electronic music. That was the *POINT*.
Do posts need bludgeoning straightforwardness before anyone here on slashdot understands the punchline?
Sig: this is a bludgeoningly straightforward post
Kinda the point... nothing really happens,it'sjust flashy graphics. But back in the day it was damn impressive.. Just got to enjoy it and shrug. Enjoy the level design and not what you must do to get through it.
I like muppets.
Reading articles like this really upset me. Sega is (or was) a brilliant company. For years I was amazed by the risks that Sega would take to release some really brilliant games. While everyone else (i.e. Sony and Nintendo) were releasing the same old first-person shooters and guaranteed sellers, Sega was taking real risks with trying new types of games. Some of my favorite Dreamcast examples are
- Samba De Amigo
- Jet Grind Radio
- Seaman
- Typing of the Dead
- Space Channel 5
- Chu Chu Rocket
- Ooga Booga
I'm sure there are some I'm forgeting.The Sega Dreamcast was an absolutely great console. The games for it were bizarre, but brilliant and amazingly fun. Their biggest mistake(s) was not basing it on DVD and of course their partnering with MS. The death of the Dreamcast marked a severe turning point in my thinking. It was when Sega announced the death of the Dreamcast that I truly became a hater of MS and it marked the end of me being an enthusiastic gamer. Forget the XBox and the PS2, when I want to play some fun games I still turn on my Dreamcast
As a side note I would have loved to be in the room during the meeting when the idea for Samba De Amigo was pitched
OS X, Linux, Tivo, Amiga, my fascination with cult-like technologies would intrigue any psychiatrist.
How fitting that this article should come out, as I've been on in constant euphoria playing Sonic 3 & Knuckles for the past week.
...but I'll tell you one thing, beating the crap out of Robotnik in the Doomsday Zone as Hyper Sonic has to be the best final battle I've played in any action game of its time.
It's as I was telling a friend a couple days ago: I loved it when video game companies could increase their already vice-like grip on the market by taking a tried, tested, and true concept and adding a "Super" in front of it.
"Hey kids, Sonic is pretty fuh, huh?"
"Sure, I guess...it's a little old now."
"Oh, really? Uh,...well...did I mention Sonic...uh,...can be Super Sonic, now?"
"Wow!!!"
Of course, when that got old, just change "Super" to "Hyper" (or, alternatively/additionally, throw in a "Turbo", "Ultra", "Mega", or perhaps "Neo").
Sure, it's the same old formula: Make the Chaos Emeralds into SUPER Chaos Emeralds, then instead of Sonic going SUPER Sonic, he goes HYPER Sonic...
Why hum it when you've learned to play it on guitar?
For those interested, there are several Videogame tabulature sites
VGJam and Nintendo Tabs are some of the better ones I've found. VGJam has a nice selection of Sonic tabs, though.
The show you're probably refering to was entitled "Sonic the Hedgehog" but most people refer to it as SatAM (Saturday Morning Sonic). It was the most serious and darkest of all the Sonic cartoons.
The first Sonic cartoon was "Adventures of.." which was very Road Runner-esque. Cartoony and set the in desert with a lot of goofy characters.
Then 'SatAM' came along and revolutionized people's thoughts on Sonic (And Jaleel White [Urkel on Family Matters] did an awesome Sonic voice).
A few years after it got cancelled or whatever happened to pull the plug, "Sonic Underground" came out. It was horrible, I won't even go into it... Some people swear by it, though.
Now, there's "Sonic X," it being done in Japan instantly makes it popular. Trying to make sense of the nonsensical Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 (and even the GBAdvance games) plots, it's thrown in a lot of weird elements, but.. a lot of people like it.
Arguably, SatAM was the most serious and well done (Character wise) and had a continual plot. Sonic X is doing pretty good, but we'll have to wait and see how it finishes out.
It also had a lot to do with SNES "cleaning up" violent games. You could see blood and exploding skulls on Genesis games, not so on SNES.
But with the Genesis' CPU power and smart programming, you could do 3D effects without special hardware. There was a never released Wacky Races game for the Genesis that was a Mario Kart clone that used the CPU to calculate an effect similar to what the SNES could do. Not as versitile or smooth, but still pretty good.
Look at these Genesis games. NONE of them used any special chips.
Gunstar Heroes (3D Treasure logo, crazy amount of explosions)
Contra Hard Corps
Sonic 3D Blast/Flickies' Island (FMV Intro)
Duke Nukem 3D (More like Wolfenstein though)
Zero Tolerance (!!!HOLY CRAP!!! 0wns the above. You can even see blood splatter against the walls and slowly slide down.)
Kawasaki Superbike Challenge
Race Drivin'/Stunt Drivin' (Race is better)
F15 Strike Eagle II
F1 World Championship
F22 Interceptor
LHX Helicopter
MiG 29 Super Fulcrum
F-117 Night Storm
Out of This World (Better frame rate then SNES port and no load times)
Red Zone (!!!HOLY CRAP!!! FMV, scaling, rotation, polygons... By the same people as Zero Tolerance)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
3D graphics where nowhere around the time the genesis was created. At most they where a clever idea done in a few games. Space Harrier, Outrun and Afterburnner wheren't really 3D and wheren't anything new technology wise by the time they where out. 2D was still where it was at. If you where talking about Saturn, then you're kind of right.
From what I understand, Sega didn't expect the PSX to be as powerful as it was. They where still shooting for a $200-$250 dollar console. When the saw what Sony was doing, they panicked, and instead of redeigning their console, dropped another main processor in it to make up the difference. Problem is this was a hack, and a bad one. There was a ton of bugs in Saturn hardware, it was more expensive to produce, and the main processors where a bitch to program for (only one could access memory at a time, and you needed to do some complex tricks to use both because of it. This lead to a lot of programmers only using 1/2 the Saturn's power). Virtual Fighter 2 may have been amazing, but it was also hand coded in Assembly by Sega's best programmers. Third party venders couldn't really be expected to do that.
It didn't help that Sega of America treated their 3rd party venders like shit. Look up the crap they pulled on Working Designs some time (long story short, Working Designs wanted to sell Sega memory cards to thier users so they's stop bitching about losing saves due to bad memory cards. Sega basically said no/fuck off, and no one's sure why). Oh, and sega kept other 3D fighters out of the US market to decrease compitition with their own games. For a company that relied so much on third party developers in the Genesis days, who knows what the hell they where thinking. One thing's certain, Bernie Stolar will forever be hated by all true Sega fans. After running the company into the ground in the Saturn days he ejected with a nice fat Golden Parachute.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I feel like a huuuuuge nerd understanding that joke.
For those who don't, here's a quick view on red/blue shift
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.