Games of the Abstract: Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)

 

Developer: Sonic Team

Publisher: Sega

One Player

Originally For: Sega Mega Drive (Genesis)

 

There is a challenge to ask myself of, honestly, what else can I contribute about a legacy defining game for Sega, expect my mind turns to a phenomenon that came to pass, the notion coined that "Sonic was never good". This was from a YouTube episode of Game Scoop, a show for the video game and multimedia website IGN, were the panel of four took a very negative stance on the franchise. Watching the video, the man who is pinned for the most hatred for the Sonic games, collaborator Brian Altano, was not the one who actually coined the infamous phrase, but he is the one linked to that that July 31st 2016 episode¹. He would recant the statements from this analysis in the Dec 15th 2022 IGN's Beyond! YouTube video², but as brought up in that video six years later by him, it was not helped by the period post-Dreamcast when Sega moved out of the hardware industry and Sonic went through a series of games, the most notorious of which being Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), that damaged the franchise's image.

Sonic is a cursed monkey's paw as much as it is a loved institution, and none of this is the character’s fault. Sega’s mascot and bread winner, now he has successfully gotten into cinema since 2020, is still strong, but he can be a mill stone around their neck, in how to exactly to bring his world and style of game over each continuation, including the questions of how the games work still in three dimensional space. Barring Sonic and Mega Drive/Genesis, Sega have also taken an unfortunate back seat on most if not almost all their other licenses, barring promises of a Saturn mini-console undermined by the computer chip shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic³ or turning old IP like Virtual Cop into mobile phone games with cute anime girl personifications⁴. Sonic does not deserve a kicking at all, nor Sega for wanting their mascot the best, but the phrase "putting all one's eggs in one basket" is apt, especially as Sonic the Hedgehog is a big franchise, which crossed over into the mainstream, which has a lot of pressure on its shoulders, and that this tension to have to bring out a game to match this expectation is a stress that they have went through countless times since the first 1991 game. It is also in mind that, whilst developed as a needed big hitter against Nintendo when they brought to the West the SNES console, it almost feels effortless how the first game came to be, even if with a lot of hard work behind it, as if the originally named Mr. Needlemouse, like Athena out of Zeus’ head, came out fully formed from the forehead of Naoto Ohshima, the original character designer⁵, running out at the speed of light collecting rings from the get-go.

The irony is knowing that despite watching the 1993 cartoon, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog as a kid, and having a plush Sonic of my own, not even an on-sale one but a display version my parents got kindly from a store for me, I never had the a Mega Drive, and my proper introduction to this franchise was Sonic R (1997) for the Sega Saturn, a non-canon racing game, and the demos for Sonic Jam (1997), a well regarded compilation of the first three games, and Sonic 3D Blast (1996), the Saturn update of the Mega Drive game. These are more ironic in mind that Sonic Extreme, meant to exist for the Saturn, was cancelled and that 32 bit console never got an official Sonic follow on. I missed most of his career onwards entirely, still am, with the original game only now coming to me in retrospective compilation form. It causes one to wonder as a result, if you step away from his mainstream popularity, or his rabid fan base with their idiosyncrasies and fan fiction, alongside shouting at Brian Altano all these years, what Sonic is if I was to describe him to someone who has actually been living in a cave and has less knowledge than myself on this character. It is funny to realise this legacy defining mascot is an interpretation of a hedgehog, which is cute as, in Britain where Sonic rode a huge cultural wave, hedgehogs are a common mammal in the gardens where I grew up with. They are something I was brought up with knowing they liked saucers of milk, were slow and could not run at the speed of light, and you had to check the bonfire for on Guy Fawkes' Night before lighting it, all because the bundle of sticks and wood were a place they were fond of nesting in.

Jokes aside, Sonic's world is a beautifully surreal one. Barring some narrative, this comes from from the video game logic where you did not have to explain why all the steel spikes were there as a threat against the blue hedgehog, even in his idyllic Green Zone, nor the TVs planted everywhere with power-ups or the gold rings floating in the air to collect. Arguably one of the concerns for this franchise, alongside having to transfer to the three dimensional, was trying to add a lore to this franchise; fans will talk of it, but even they will admit sometimes, like the infamous romance with a human woman in Sonic 2006, there were struggles as much as there have been successes for that franchise. Considering this was first a game meant to also appeal to a family audience, especially kids, and you can see whilst that appealed to adults then and still does now that this was a game whose logic in its visual language and little story was very simple in an accessible way. Considering as well that there was originally meant to be a human girlfriend back in this version of the character, a statuesque blonde named Madonna⁶, so Sega whilst strangling that idea were in danger of going off the rails even back then.

The closest thing to a plot to the first game, in this idyllic world of anthropomorphic animals, is the disturbing idea that Dr. Robotnik, a mad scientist, is capturing animals, brainwashing them and encasing them in robot armour to create a cybernetic army. Thankfully, we have a super quick blue hedgehog to prevent this and lighten the tone, and in terms of gameplay, there has been the paradox that Sonic is fasting then a speeding train, but you have levels (separated into three stages with a boss fight in the third) which encourage exploration and watching out for traps. It feels less an issue for me, and I cannot help but think that, in the era of 2D platformers at their boom period, there were games in this genre players suffered through with sluggish protagonists in terms of movement speed, making the kineticism of Sonic a breath of fresh air, let alone that being part of the huge technological aspects to the game as a 16 bit production for the Mega Drive to challenge competition. The controls are perfect, jump intuitive and the spin attack used in the air and rolling on the ground, even if brief and without the ability to rev it up as Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) introduced. The speed is as much, because of this, an intended goal once you memorise and learn the layout of the levels, reaction time helped by how fast Mr. Needlemouse is and how swift the jump button reacts. You can eventually, with this logic, zip around the mazes of some levels, find the secrets, use the speed (as intended for even a beginner) to reach some secret power-ups, and collect the rings needed to access the bonus levels quicker than most people.

The levels, after decades, are now iconic, and in terms of the console arms race, when Sonic was created it was in mind the Nintendo SNES was coming the West and challenging Sega's 16 bit console, they come from a game playing to Mega Drive's technology and idealised game type, this from its colourful sprites to the music chip used fully. These levels, even the more obscure ones, have so much to admire about them, whether it is Masato Nakamura's vibrant score with the limits of the chips, and working around them, to the level designs. Whether it is the iconic Green Hill Zone, with its lush and vibrant environment, to Labyrinth Zone, with its aquatic set design, this also connects to the actual challenge of the levels. There is a sense of having to remember the levels or hesitate on the first attempts of speeding to fast, like using the brake on a car when reaching a hairpin corner, but there is a credible challenge here without being too mean for the most part. The sudden shift, turning down the speed, for Mable Zone when you first play it as the second world, when you have to ride on top of lava and avoid pop out spikes, is at least a warning that you have to traverse your levels ahead with environmental awareness. With decades before me to be aware of this game’s challenges, I came to the first Sonic game more prepared even with my lack of talent; the best example of this is with Labyrinth Zone's infamy as the water level with its child traumatising music cue for when Sonic is about to drown. For both the newest ports and for Sonic Jam, there were wisely enough oxygen bubbles that, barring one lengthy passage, this notorious part of the game even when running through the treacle-like water is still fair with warning. You also have a novel and ultimately rewarding mechanic for health too, that as long as you have a gold ring, you have more than one hit to survive all but crushing and bottomless pits. For a heavily marketed and ultimately successful game, one whose influence in pop culture made those floating rings iconic, it does mean a lot that, whilst also creating a personality in little details, these also provided rewarding mechanics for the benefit of the player too.

This is also factoring in the bonus levels, surreal elements to an already fantastical game, where you are absorbed into a pinball table of an alternative consciousness, whose mechanics whilst jarring does make sense to play once you make sure not to just land on an exit immediately. The only aspect which feels mean is the final boss, where with no rings to fall back on you have to negotiate instant quick kills and try to hit Robotnik barring if one wants to be stuck in the loop ad nauseam. This is the one pain as, in reflection to the game before, all the boss battles beforehand with him make sense in the ease in what their puzzles are and just making sure you do them right. In general, reflecting on the first game there was already enough figured out in the template which made it a success. Only the Chaos Emeralds, which you earn in the bonus stages but are still mere trinkets here, reflect both the greater expansion in the game and even in its lore, which in hindsight was there and frankly weird in having cosmic crystals that are needed to control the world. Weird in a good way as, sympathetic to the hardcore Sonic fans even as an outsider, even a game clearly targeting kids who never played these games, as it was with myself, Sonic having this side of the esoteric is a quirk I have to admire.

There is, unintentionally, a poisoned chalice now as a result of this, when you manage to have such success with the first game you can make sequels and then can have a cultural institution which is meant to be continued forwards on and on. The Sonic sequels for the Mega Drive are all well regarded, and that comment I opened the review with, that Sonic was never good, is absolutely nonsensical when it comes with the 1991 Sonic the Hedgehog game, and comes as a statement from an outside to the debate, without the diehard fan base obsession for these characters and world in the first place but as a casual player. Later games post the Mega Drive, if I come to playing them, are where things will get interest in this issue of the quality brought into the franchise, reflecting issues that a) you are stuck having to add new weight and touches to this franchise to keep it going, which reflects a problem even in other mediums for successful franchises, as well as the whole issue of the polygonal and three dimensional era of gaming which became possible after the 32-bit consoles. Forcing a new type of gaming to what were originally platformers designed for two dimensions was always going to be something of a struggle even if Sega succeeded. The first game in context raised the bar at the time it was released, and that was always going to pose problems for any video game franchise, having to figure out the game’s template from the Sega Saturn onwards. Finally getting to this game properly long after this complicated history of trying to match it, I see fully that Sonic the Hedgehog was a well made game then in context, and still is, the circumstances around it making its virtues more meaningful.  

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1) The infamous Game Scoop episode.

2) The "redemption" video for IGN's Beyond!

3) Sega Has Considered Dreamcast & Saturn Mini But Is Worried About Extreme Costs, written by Liam Doolan and published for Nintendo Life on June 5th 2022.

4) New mobile game turns retro Sega games into sexy anime girls, written by GameCentral for Metro, and published on February 10th 2023.

5) Sonic the Hedgehog's origin story, according to the devs who made him, written by Alex Wawro and published for Game Developer on March 21st 2018.

6) Sonic dated Madonna, and four other bizarre facts as the blue hedgehog turns 30, written by Ed Nightingale for The Pink News and published June 23rd 2021.