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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."
But all I saw was a blue blur.
A cute little hedgehog is more marketable than a short fat plumber who plays with mushrooms.
My favorite had to be the Sega CD game...and it had a kickass soundtrack!
You're all bastards!
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,
Everyone knows that Sonic was stolen. Shlomo the Hedgehog, know THERE was a 16 bit hero! Y'know... his epic battle with Rabbi Rabotnik, Dradles, his sidekick... Does no one remember?
All the times I've played Sonic it's been like... Hold down right and press jump on the right times, correct any silly little errors that I might make, and win the level. It's nothing fancy :P
and we all had a sister or cousin who thought green hill was hard..
I like muppets.
You can play a neat spinoff Sonic flash gamehere.
Anyone else think of this Penny Arcade strip?
My religion forbids the use of sigs.
Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music.
On the same topic, Lost Levels had an interesting article awhile back on Sonic X-treme, the would-be flagship game for the Saturn and how it went through development hell and eventually ended up being scrapped. You can read about it here
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
still hum the theme to the Green Hill Zone? I swear that little ditty ranks up with the Super Mario theme for cachiness.
:).
Still, after the Green Hill zone the rest of the game felt a little rushed. Not bad, just not as fully realized as the Green Hill Zone. I remember seeing a magazine article with some of the features that didn't make it into the release cart. And the game just felt a little short (like most early Genesis games). Still an amazing game, and Sonic 2 more than made up for any short commings of the first game
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Why has the popular percetpion of the "Gamer" been composed of bratty MTV esque focus group, as seen in this 1up sight, and on the G4 TechTV channel?
For example
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.
.. on me at least.
As someone who was a SNES owner and longtime Nintendo fan, I remember feeling jealous of the Genesis after reading some gaming magazines which showcased Sonic/Genesis as a faster and cooler system. It is true that at one point the Genesis became the more desirable console to own, largely due to Sonic. The pure speed of Sonic appealed to me as a new angle for side-scrollers.
What this article didn't touch on was how Nintendo's SNES eventually won in the end (due to its much more extensive 3rd party library and probably a few other things). I did not regret going with the SNES after DKC. Zelda (Link to the Past), Super Metroid, etc.
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.
As much as I love Sonic, I can't stand what they keep doing to him.
My gf and I both own Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut and Sonic Heros (game cube games). While the games are both fun, the image that Sonic and friends give off is excessively Tacky. Tacky in a really annoying matter (ie: they have dumb sayings like "Lets Blast off with sonic speed! Alright! OK!")
And have you seen the sonic cartoon currently playing on The WB ? Those characters are beyond goofy and dumb. When I was a kind (10 years ago?), There used to be a really nice sonic cartoon on Saturday mornings (ABC broadcasted), and it had a much more serious look and feel (animation wise).
Sega & Sonic Team: Stop screwing up Sonic and licensing it to all the wrong people
Sunny Dubey
NO spellcheck of any kind was used, deal with it.
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
Unfortunately Sonic didn't have the staying power that Mario had / has. Sonic sucked after Sonic 2 and the Genesis ... Mario was / is alive and kicking on almost every Nintendo system to date.
Not mention eventually inspiring the name for a crucial signaling pathway, one imperative for the normal development and patterning of numerous human organs.
But I'm not a fan of the early Sonic games. Maybe you don't get the same experience from playing the Mega Collection disk on your 'Cube, but I played each for about ten minutes before getting bored. It's just so repetitive. Run to the right, don't get hurt. That doesn't apply to Sonic 3D, but I don't like that either. The same goes for the early Mario games as well. Super Mario World is often thought to be a simply amazing game, but after a few days with the ROM I got bored.
It's like that with any 'mindless' game. I don't know why I can't them for long. Maybe I just don't feel like I'm progressing. Maybe I just suck too much and am too lazy to keep playing until I improve. I dunno. There's no doubt they're good games - but they just aren't my style. Everybody else seems to love them, I hate 'em.
all the computers in your house have sonic the hedgehog related hostnames..
I'm on flicky right now... Mobius is my file server.
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
Don't forget the inspiration of the name of the morphogenetic protein.
"2 - Sega Master System fails" - True, it didn't dent the NES's popularity in the US, but it was by no means a failure. Lots of sales, lots of support.
"3 - Sega Genesis is a moderate success due to Sonic the Hedgehog (but has no competition for 2 years)" - What rot. The Mega Drive quickly lassoed upwards of 80% of the market and didn't drop below 50% until a significant amount of time after the release of the SNES. That success was not due solely to one game, nor lack of competition. This is where Sega most significantly influenced the course of the 'console wars' - the MD completely wiped Nintendo's incumbent NES monopoly, and indisputably brought forward the development and release of the SNES.
"6 - Sega Genesis fails" - I think you'll find the machine was still healthy up until the point Sega prematurely pulled the plug on all their existing systems to concentrate all resources on the Saturn. Even the Playstation took a little while to inherit all of the 16-bit market.
Hmm, so every machine that doesn't have at least a 90% stranglehold on the market 'fails'? My advice would be don't get into any arguments with Apple fans.
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Right then.. Sonic.. what can we say about it.... hmm.
:( ). Labrynth still haunts me.. the jaws theme has NOTHING on that thing...
Sonic was so reconiseable in the early 90s (my era as a kid) that even my parents reconised him. I didn't have a genesis for quite a while (I had a SNES instead. I got the choice, a SNES or a pony... I picked the SNES and never looked back).
Everything was perfect in the original 2 sonic games (Sonic1 and 2). They did everything right and it was down right fun. I still look back and remember that video I got with a magazine showing hill top Zone and going "FUCK I WANT IT!". At the time I didn't have a mega drive (genesis) so I waited for the Master system version (took a while but it came).
So it wasa school day and I remember sitting there itching to get back to my MS, The weather was vile (rain and wind), the shops had a huge queue but my parents agreed to get it for me (I was disabled for some of my life so they never objected to my games playing).
So off I dashed, home I met and played Sonic 2 I did. Everything felt good and right with the world... Untill I got to that fucking hang glider. Even to this day I don't know how that fucking things works, but it sure drains lives.
So years later I get a Mega drive to go with my SNES (and like 9 games with it, so lots to play). and I remember thinking I'd just got a few videos, maybe a SNES game and a football or some crap I didn't want (my parents tend to get what I ask rather then general crap, it's easier and cheaper in the long run). So there I was with my Mega drive, playing sonic over and over.. cursing the spikes (why didn't we get the updated version with the fix?
Sonic 3... well what can I say.... lost it's feel. It was all "COOL KNUCKLES!" and then it became "..just fucking kill him already!" and so on and so forth. The feel of the originals (bright, colourful and damn fun) just seemed lost.
Apply knuckles and repeat 3 and you get the same. It's not sonic no more... I miss tails being a cute little kid who can't write (they will show the classic sonic on satalite here... Nothing says fun like Sonic telling kids not to be molested).
Sonic Xtreme gets canceled due to health and polotical issues, we all lose the saturn and in turn lose Sega.
Dreamcast comes out, everyone adores it, yay for dreamcast (still love mine). Sonic totally rockson it, keeps the original feel but adds in cool new elements (and loads of extra characters no one likes).
Rinse and repeat for the cube.
Advance comes ago... takes sonic 3s feel and then adds in attacks (WTF!?). It becomes almost a parody of it's self losing the fast feel more for "pick a path, any path you'll never remember them all because they all look the same".
Sonic Advance 2 and 3 comes out. I ignore
Sonic heroes come out.. every character gets majorly nerfed... I buy, find fun but semi regret..
So yea thats a better idea of sonic. It started out amazingly well, I have OC remixs of Sonic 1 and 2 music on Winamp all the time. I still adore Sonic 2 (and 1) and even set up my Mega drive to play them some times. After that Sonic starts to lose his edge on the market, loads of spin offs take place and it just feels cheap and nasty now.
Once when you said Sonic you had the picture of a blue hedgehog tapping his foot and waving his finger and then dashing off across the land scape, he WAS the cool guy of the 90s, to me that Sonic still is cool and always will be.
Now he's "just another platformer" blending in with all the others. His design has changed (you probably won't notice much, but the spikes are very different now), his character has become "lets do whats right!" rather then "Meh, it's fun lets annoy him some more and laugh" (Heroes even says Sonic is no longer a danger to robotnik and more of a "friendly rival" ffs!).
I'd point out all the flaws with the other characters (Shadow, Rouge, big etc.) but yanno, it's not worth it.
To me Son
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.
When I was a kid, I spent many hours paying sonic 2. Now I can play it through emulations on my computer or xbox. It's the perfect example how a good game doesn't depend on great graphics or an internet connection, but just a good idea.
How dare you insult Sonic 3 & Knuckles! It's the best Sonic game (well, it's technically two Sonic games). It's also one of the best looking Megadrive games ever.
But the 3D games have mostly been average I agree. I half feel like getting a Sonic Advance game to see if they're better.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
Does anybody else find it ironic that Sonic is now on the GameCube and GBA?
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
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...
12 month ago when I read my embryology book, I read about sonic hedgehog proteins, a protein that controls development of left and right. It is rather funny that scientist name a protein after a character in a computergame.
Have anybody similar stories.
Best regards
Rune
"10 - Sony Playstation popularized, N64 fails"
30+ million units sold != failure.
"Derp de derp."
And don't forget that the playstation was origionaly a cd add in for the Super NES that nintendo backed out of. Sony the partner in the deal produced the playstation.
The CD addin was intended to allow the SNES to have the capibility to hold as much game data as the Sega Saturn.
Poverty is not in and of itself a virtue.
Wealth is not in and of itself a vice.
Envy is in every way a vice (or worse).
Some people have parents that can afford ponies.
Some parents, like my own, can't.
Some people, such as myself, have loving families.
Some people don't.
Life is a mixed bag, and bitching about it just cheapens yourself, and causes you to overlook the good bits.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
There is so MUCH Sonic fan art on deviant art that it practically deserves its own category.
Since the only Nintendo fan art I've seen on DA is fetish pr0n, I guess that attests to the popularity of the Sonic series.
Me, I was more of a Mario fan.
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.
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