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."

Comments

More info (directory of sites) on Sonic Games

[Etcetera]

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. :-\

Sonic flash game

[Anonymous Coward]

You can play a neat spinoff Sonic flash gamehere.

For the nostalgics among you...

[RAMMS EIN]

I just finished playing Supertux. It brings back all those feelings of the old NES days. Highly recommended!

Sonic "changed the course" of the "platform wars"?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Whatever was "Blast Processing"?

[The Infamous Grimace]

Was "blast processing" anything more than a superficial marketing term? Was it referring to anything in particular with the hardware?

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)

Morphogenetic Protein

[Ann Coulter]

Don't forget the inspiration of the name of the morphogenetic protein.

For me Sega has always been brilliant

[mingrassia]

This may be a bit off topic, but here I go ...

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 ...

1. Samba De Amigo
2. Jet Grind Radio
3. Seaman
4. Typing of the Dead
5. Space Channel 5
6. Chu Chu Rocket
7. 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 ... "A monkey with maracas and dancing?"

Um, no...

[rsilvergun]

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.