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

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?"