The Chaos and the Emeralds: Why I Still Love Sonic the Hedgehog
Everyone who loves video games has that game. The game that truly changed a casual affair into a full-blown passion. For me, it was Sonic the Hedgehog, and the rollercoaster of brilliance, sloppiness and outright disaster that the series has brought in the 30 years since has endeared the blue blur to me far more than if he had been in Mario’s more routinely successful shoes.
One of my favorite childhood memories is getting a Sega Mega Drive for my birthday. This moment was special mostly because this was the first console that was just mine, not a family one. What made it really resonate for many, many years after, to the point I’m still happily playing games and writing about them now, was that first time playing Sonic the Hedgehog.
That first time seeing and hearing the now immortal call of ‘SEGA’ before the title screen continues to echo through time, flashing before my eyes like it was just yesterday when I wore questionable shellsuits, and a had really bad haircut (now only one of those things is true!). Then the title screen! That music! Green Hill Zone! That music! The first boss! That music! It was this, again and again, all the way magical, terrifying, frustrating, and beautiful. Fittingly, these things remained true of Sonic as a franchise, even if it has often been laden with more of the terrifying (Sonic Boom, Sonic 06) and frustrating (the mating call of the 3D Sonic game) than the magical and the beautiful.
I literally cannot count the number of times I’ve heard those first bars of the Green Hill Zone theme as I spent 30 seconds blasting through Act 1 as fast as I could. I did it again today! I go through it every year at least once, and it’s still such an utterly pleasing feeling, removed from the scrutiny and decay of time that afflicts pretty much any other game I’ve played since. In that opening act, I genuinely feel like I’m hopping into a very niche time machine where it’s Saturday afternoon, I’ve tidied my room, I can smell dinner cooking, and Sonic T. Hedgehog is once again doing loop-de-loops as I hum the music in an obnoxiously loud manner. Whatever else Sonic might have become to others, to me, that’s what it will always be.
Sonic 2, of course, then ended up being the first game I was ever really hyped up for. Getting scraps and slivers of it on TV shows and in magazines only bred the obsession. Again, this prominent first that could never be replicated came from Sonic, and the fact that the game itself was everything I hoped it would be and more made the anticipation retroactively sweeter.
Sonic 2 gave me fresh all-time gaming memories. It gave me Miles ‘Tails’ Prower, the horrifying stress and giddily exciting soundtrack of Chemical Plant Zone, the hypnotic allure of the Special Stage, and close to my spooky heart, it gave me Mystic Cave Zone. The original game holds greater meaning to me overall, but Sonic 2 is perhaps the greatest follow-up to an original game ever. Biased as that statement may be.
While I don’t hold any of the games that came after them in anywhere near the same regard, there’s always been that spark of excitement to a new Sonic game. Sonic Adventure blew me away on first seeing it in action, and I truly cannot express how joyous Sonic Pocket on the Neo Geo Pocket made me by managing to bottle that old Sonic magic in portable form. The closest I’ve really got to having that original sense of wonder was when Sonic Mania came out and did everything the unfortunate Sonic 4 didn’t in replicating the classic 2D Sonic aura.
Sonic fans have endured years of ‘nearly’ and ‘whoah, you got that all the way wrong’ efforts, often bringing mockery for the spiny blue speedball. Yet Sonic endures because Sonic means something different to everybody. When your iconic character lives on for three decades, it undoubtedly ends up that way. There are people who are swept up in the 3D era’s ever-growing cast of characters, those who are really into creating their own original characters, and bless them, even apologists for Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. What matters is that no matter how much ridicule and disdain Sonic receives (and let’s be honest, it’s a lot and it’s often fair), something about him and his world connects with folk of all ages…me included. If the next Sonic game is another disaster, that’ll be a bummer, but I’ll always be able to go back to Green Hill and fall in love all over again.
