Interestingly, none of these narratives has created more negative outcry than a 2006 game in Sonic's history where the ageless hero was portrayed in a kiss with a young human girl.Ĭynical net art often chooses Sonic as a consciously-ironic central subject, as if in homage to the nerd tragedy of his fall from grace, or in mockery of the fans who do poorly-drawn but earnest Sonic fan art from a place of endless youth. Now fans can pair Sonic with his dark, mysterious rival Shadow the Hedgehog, with chipper, endlessly-admiring Tails, or with hot-headed, sullen brawler Knuckles. Here, Sonic appeals to foot and sock enthusiasts.Ī new edition of the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon that makes his adventures the subject of adolescent drama has helped serve material to such fantasists. Here is fetish art of Sonic being 'inflated' like a balloon for titillation. He is a popular subject for artists and writers involved in the anthropomorphic "furry" subculture, which often sees cartoon creatures portrayed as sincere, smoldering and often kinky love objects. Sonic is both a dead-serious topic and a joke at the same time, a curious condition for one of gaming's longest-lived icons. Serious fans even see reasons to celebrate where no successful return has been made apparent – this video of a hyper-energetic kid shrieking exhortation for fans to stop picking on Sonic (“SONIC HAS BEEN REDEEMED”) might be sincere and it might be a joke, but the video has 135,000 views because no one really cares either way. He remains as recognizable as Super Mario or Lara Croft, yet eminently less playable. Yet everyone still seems to care, urgently hanging onto the idea that there should still be some dignity for Sonic, that the radical blue guy with the bright red sneakers deserves a real game, and that every new announcement from a Sega struggling in the modern business environment might finally be Sonic's return to glory. Today's fans hunger after a memory of something that never really existed in the first place. Nonsensical robotic machinery and casino lights colonise the natural landscape, jarring. The primary rival is a mustachioed man who looks like an egg, prancing on tiny legs.
His loyal buddy, the flying two-tailed fox Tails, bumbles off-screen regularly and gets crushed obliviously beneath pillars as the sour-faced Hedgehog struggles uphill, leaps awkwardly toward platforms that lurch away. Sonic gets fired like a shot into the impossible depths of violet liquids and dies, choking open-mouthed. The irksome sounds of his repetitive, fruitless jumping – woop, woop, woop – join the rough hiss of his "spin dash" engine revving, weep-weep-weep-weep, in an impotent sound collage. Here's a confronting idea: what if the Sonic franchise was never that good to begin with? As he wheels through golden loops and collects rings in our memory, the real-life classic Sonic gets stuck on invisible pixels, makes frustrated leaps endlessly upward among spinning columns that loom just out of reach. Effort after effort's been made to revive the classic, flashy gameplay people fell in love with in childhood – Sonic even now makes grudging regular cameos in Nintendo games – but it's never seemed to be enough.Ĭome to think of it, revisiting the old games is actually a wildly disappointing endeavor. As a gaming brand, poor Sonic hasn't been competitive in years, as the franchise made weird left turns into role-playing games, cartoons voiced by Steve Urkel, and the addition of tons of other widely-unwanted furry friends for the hedgehog hero. He's a mascot for saucy romance fics, comedic fan art and basically anything other than “cool". The speedy, loop-the-looping Sonic the Hedgehog, who zoomed through halfpipes and cut a blue streak across any obstacle, who furrowed his brow and tapped his foot impatiently at idle players, became the hottest thing on the school playground.įast forward to 2014, and Sonic remains an icon – but not necessarily in the way anyone might have predicted.
When one thinks about speed and attitude, "hedgehog" isn't necessarily the first animal that comes to mind, but maybe that was part of the plan – take something weird and unexpected and make it cool.Īnd it worked, for a while.
SEGA AND SONIC FAN GAMES FULL
It would be cooler, faster and full of attitude. In 1991, Sega had a plan to contest Nintendo's console market dominance with a franchise of its own.
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