Just yesterday Bob Mackey posted about his experiences with Sonic the Hedgehog. Naturally, this put me in mind of my own rather odd relationship with Sega's troubled mascot. Back in the days of the 16 bit wars I was deep in the Nintendo trenches, so anything that came from Sega was of the devil. Sonic was an enemy general to be assaulted on any playground where gamers collided in verbal combat. Okay, enough with the war analogies. After growing up and leaving my blind brand loyalties behind, I decided to try and like the guy. After all, with such a large fan following, Sonic games had to be pretty good right?
My first introduction to Sonic was on the GBA with Sonic Advance. I bought it when it released and finished it. Rather, I got the “bad” ending because there was no way in hell I was going to collect the Chaos Emeralds and get the good ending. While the main game was okay, the Emerald mini-game was awful: a pseudo 3-D race to collect gems that had terrible collision detection. I really didn't enjoy Sonic Advance enough to put up with that kind of pain. Sold it.
The next Sonic game I played was the Gamecube release of Sonic Adventure. There's really no nice way to put this: it stunk. The cut scenes were among the most painful experiences I'd ever had in a game, sporting abominable animation and horribly written, horribly acted dialog. I enjoyed the first area I played and the rest of the game was passable enough that I finished it with Sonic. When I tried to continue with Tails, however, I was totally stonewalled by glitches. After falling through the ground, running through walls, and being carried to oblivion by what was supposed to be a helpful wind several times, I decided I'd had enough. Back to the rental store with you!
The less said about my time with the Sonic Heroes demo disc the better.
Next up was Sonic Rush for the DS. I found myself actually enjoying this one, in a sort of mindless way. The game was nice looking and sported some great music. I have yet to beat Rush, but it's still in my game library and I fully intend to play it to completion. So far I was having better luck with the 2-D games so what better games to try than the classics?
Along came the Wii and its Virtual Console. My understanding was that Sonic 2 was one of his best games, so that was what I bought. I think I got to Zone 3 or 4 before putting my controller down in disgust and deleting the game off my system. It's official. I do not “get” what people ever saw in Sonic the Hedgehog. Truly, one would think that by this point I was finished, ready to wash the blue stains off of my hands for good, but no, there was one final game I wanted to try before giving up: Sonic and the Secret Rings.
I rented Secret Rings and liked it. Actually, I liked it quite a bit. It suffered from an abysmal story (who writes this crap?), questionable game mechanics and design choices, but I had genuine fun with it. In fact, I liken the game to a teenage guy with really bad acne. Sure, on the surface his skin resembles a pepperoni pizza, but underneath all of those zits is a really nice face. I even ended up buying the game to play again.
I'm not sure why I've been trying so hard to enjoy Sonic the Hedgehog, especially after such a lousy track record, but there you have it. Ultimately I'm with Mr. Macky in wanting to see less Sonic and more Panzer Dragoon (the moment Sega becomes competent again). Even so, I'm looking forward to playing Sonic Chronicles and giving Sonic Unleashed for the Wii a fair shake. Even a blind man playing darts is going to hit the bull's eye at some point, right?
Related Links:
FMV Hell: Sonic CD
Trailer Review: Sonic Unleashed
Creator of Sonic the Hedgehog Returns