User blog:Sammyfun1/What Went Wrong Volume 2: Sonic (How the Blue Blur got to here and how he can come back)

Few gaming icons are as fashionable to scorn as Sonic the Hedgehog. Poking fun of werehogs is an easy sport, to be sure. But his last few adventures, including the recent Sonic Unleashed, have fallen short of his celebrated original run, at least by reputation. Some critics claim Sonic never really survived the jump to 3D and exists today only on the fumes of nostalgic good will. Others think the trouble started much earlier, when Sonic raced along so fast that nobody noticed the ground had run out beneath his trademark red sneakers.

IGN Insider's Michael Thomsen goes so far to decree the whole franchise a sham from the beginning, saying "Our fondness for Sonic is a generational illusion."

Sonic the Hedgehog was created by designer Naoto Oshima, now president of development studio Artoon. Oshima responded to a call from SEGA management wanting a mascot to replace Alex Kidd and compete with Nintendo's Mario, who was at the time synonymous with the entire videogame industry in the same way Pac-Man was in the early eighties. His hedgehog hero was picked from a number of competing designs and then assigned to Yuji Naka and Hirokazu Yasuhara as the central figure for a new action platformer series.

The big difference between Sonic and Mario was speed. SEGA even coined the marketing term "blast processing" to create an aura of performance that Super Mario World, the white-hot first Super NES entry in the Super Mario canon, could somehow not match. Other than the rocket ship velocity and an injection of "attitude" to make Sonic hipper than the comparatively staid Mario, the two games are really not all that dissimilar. Thomsen boils it does to this:

"You collect rings, stomp on enemies' heads, and fight a boss every now and again. You just do it at a faster speed than Mario. Instead of character altering powerups to give you a mulligan if you get hit by an enemy you just lose coins, er, rings."

Sonic was about one thing: speed.

If you go back now and play the original Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis, it is impossible to deny the essential truth to this. And it is doubtful SEGA would either. Sonic is a reactionary force to Mario. There are organic elements to his games, though. The villain, Dr. Robotnik (later Eggman), is a pretty clever riff on Teddy Roosevelt. The Chaos Emeralds that Sonic quests for just has a cool ring to it. The level design in the original game is especially strong, with well plotted stages full of exciting real estate, like the loops that Sonic races through when he's going full speed.

Regardless of the purity of intent behind Sonic the Hedgehog, SEGA fans ate it up to the tune of approximately four million copies. The original Sonic the Hedgehog was a massive success for the Genesis and the console's success in North America is rightfully attributed in large part to the embrace of the new mascot. Perhaps some of Sonic's success can be assigned to SEGA fans just wanting a mascot to glom on to and hold up to their Nintendo-owning friends in schoolyard videogame debates. But it was a bracing experience the first time you roared through a stage at full speed or brought down one of Robotnik's metal monsters.

Charles Onyett, editor on the IGN PC team remembers, "You ran incredibly fast while killing and collecting. If you played enough and learned all the paths through the stage, you'd collect better stuff while continuing to go really fast. Then you'd tell the story to your friends, talking about the ramps you sped up and around, of the shortcuts you'd found, overwhelmed with the thrill of it all. That's what Sonic was to me, that's why I loved it."

No surprise then that with millions of fans having a similar experience to Onyett, SEGA immediately powered forward with a sequel. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 appeared in late 1992, only a year after the franchise debuted. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was an instant success, outselling the original game by almost two million units. By this point, the formula was set in cement and SEGA wasted zero time moving on to the inevitable Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

SEGA waited to release Sonic the Hedgehog 3 until 1994, bridging the gap instead with two Sonic spin-offs in 1993: Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and Sonic Spinball. The extra development time was not necessarily used to alter the formula, though. Sonic the Hedgehog 3, save for a few exceptions like bonus stages, plays largely like the first game. And the sequel. In fact, the stage design in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is not generally viewed as the strongest in the series.

Mark Ryan Sallee, Editor-in-Chief of IGN Guides sums up the design flaws of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 this way: "The level design started going downhill, with random ramps that'd launch Sonic into bottomless death pits or against spiked walls, ramps that looked like every other ramp you were supposed to take at full speed, ramps you wouldn't know were certain doom until after they'd killed you. These obnoxious design traits have carried over to even their modern 2D Sonic games, including the Sonic Rush games on DS."

Was Sonic already starting to spin his wheels this early?

"It's the gaming equivalent of nitrous," points out Thomsen. "An immediate rush to the brain, and then a numbing comedown afterwards." And at this point, some gamers wanted off the ride.

But else something happened between the second and third chapters that was a harbinger of future concerns over the direction of the series. Sonic enjoyed a little company in the second game: Miles "Tails" Prower. Tails was welcomed by fans, so SEGA added another member to the cast. Knuckles the Echidna. Knuckles was popular enough in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 that he got marquee billing in Sonic & Knuckles, which was released later that same year. Now, Sonic & Knuckles introduced the world to lock-on technology, which was a fun gimmick that juiced previous Sonic games with extra play. Gamers seemed legitimately happy with Knuckles as a member of the growing team. But did SEGA overestimate the length of the welcome mat?

Three wasn't quite a crowd for Sonic and his friends, but SEGA went overboard introducing new characters. Starting with Sonic Adventure, SEGA aggressively rolled out an ever-expanding menagerie of heroes, many of them straying far from the core mechanic that made Sonic a success. "Sonic started to amass an assortment of boring friends who, for whatever reason, we were occasionally forced to take control of," comments Onyett.

Who buys a Sonic game to go fishing with the lumbering Big the Cat or swat bad guys with Amy Rose's hammer? As the series continued, both the main games and the spin-offs like Sonic R and Sonic Shuffle, SEGA just kept stuffing new faces and names into the game, pulling attention away from their hero. Vector the Crocodile. Cream the Bunny. Rogue the Bat. The list keeps going. These characters started suspiciously seeming not like organic additions to Sonic's buddy list, but try-outs in hopes of finding the next would-be mascot, such as Shadow the Hedgehog. Or catch-up to the changing tastes of a fickle gaming public without abandoning the Sonic brand.

These extra characters and their associated mechanics, such as Shadow the Hedgehog's shooting, represent the central problem of Sonic's evolution to Hilary Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of IGN's Xbox team. "Sonic is a victim of his own success, or rather, SEGA's reaction to his success. The core of Sonic gameplay is there, even in the worst Sonic iterations. But the production value is often poor, the games tend to be buggy, and there are added elements meant to modernize or expand the gameplay that pretty much always fail," says Goldstein.

There is another suspect in the case for Sonic's wavering fortunes: the advent of 3D. Sonic the Hedgehog rose to fame on the ability to run faster than any character before and to achieve that, level design had to be spot-on. In 2D space, it is easier to manage a rollercoaster-like stage because points A and B are connected by a linear path. The struggle to make 3D manageable during the hardware shift of 1995 wore on a lot of developers. SEGA tried to develop a 3D Sonic to keep up with the nearly universal move into 3D gaming and failed. Sonic X-treme, shown at the 1996 E3, never made it to market. Instead, Super Mario 64 came along and laid down the first real rule set for 3D gaming. Mario had again beaten Sonic to the punch. SEGA did eventually attempt two 3D Sonic games on the Saturn: Sonic R, a racing game that felt like a reaction to Mario Kart, a Sonic 3D Blast, an isometric platformer that also appeared on the Genesis.

Not counting these two exceptions (or Sonic Jam, which is a collection of Sonic games on the Saturn), SEGA missed an entire generation to deliver a Sonic game that existed in the main thread of titles. SEGA was determined not to make the same mistake with the Dreamcast and so the console arrived in 1999 flanked by Sonic Adventure, a 3D Sonic game with plenty of speedy sequences. Unfortunately, it also included a huge cast expansion that introduced the aforementioned Big the Cat and a robot with a laser gun. It also did the one thing Sonic games never should do, it slowed down.

Sonic Adventure shined when Sonic was blasting through colorful levels, such as the memorable race to avoid an orca that was chewing up an entire harbor. But then you reach a city and slow to walking speed. Big the Cat does not run. The robot clanked along. Amy Rose and Knuckles weren't exactly speedsters, either. The game may have looked great save for a few camera issues, but it wasn't what some fans wanted.

"The extra dimension eventually added to Sonic games didn't inherently bother me, but all the other frills like bloated story arcs, bland exploration, and NPC interaction were real turnoffs," says Onyett. "If I wanted that kind of thing, I'd go play a role-playing game. I don't care what Sonic or his friends have to say, I just want to control Sonic as he runs really fast while collecting and killing."

Still, Sonic Adventure was a bestseller for the Dreamcast and so there was a sequel with striking mechanical similarities. SEGA slowed Sonic down even further with Sonic Shuffle, a board game that was a play for the new category created by Nintendo's surprise hit Mario Party. At this point, Sonic was more brand than character, a way for SEGA to play keep-up with Nintendo, much like the circumstances that led to his creation in the first place. That situation though was different. Sonic was borne of necessity. Sonic Shuffle was borne out of a need to make a Sonic-branded board game.

Now, Nintendo puts Mario in a lot of non-Super Mario situations, too. And not all of those are exactly stellar outings. But these side shows do not come at the expense of the canon Super Mario games. "When it comes to the core Mario game, the one-every-three-years title, they pour resources into the project, take their time, and make sure it is amazing," points out Goldstein.

Sonic's core adventures were starting to suffer and the brand was being diluted. There was a serious disconnect between the original idea of Sonic and what was happening to the character. It seemed like SEGA understood this to a degree when it created the Nintendo DS series of Sonic games, like Sonic Rush. But the console games? They kept on tripping over the same problems that were turning off the franchise's older fans. If vocal gamers did not like all of the extra characters in Sonic Adventure, why did SEGA blow out the cast of Sonic Heroes?

The answer requires you to spin around in your chair and look in a mirror instead of your monitor. We keep buying these games. For a franchise that's endured scathing editorial and plenty of message board howling, SEGA's mascot still enjoys solid sales. Sonic Unleashed was trashed by critics but still put up solid worldwide numbers. The Wii edition of the game recently crossed the 800,000 threshold. That's a lot of rings. Why wouldn't SEGA want to keep on keepin' on with the hedgehog? After all, many of its other efforts are not so handsomely rewarded.

"For many years, SEGA invested considerable resources into games that were critical hits but financial failures," observes Goldstein. "SEGA chose to break up the teams that made Jet Set Radio, Panzer Dragoon Orta and Gunvalkyrie, three of the best SEGA titles of the past generation, and focus on products that made cash."

Perhaps the ultimate reason for Sonic's situation is that he was based on an idea and that videogames as they are defined now outgrew that idea. Sonic Unleashed may have been savaged for the werehog sequences, but the platforming scenes were almost universally praised. The rush of blasting through rollercoaster stage is still potent. But that concept is now seen too small in the era for $60 videogames.

"When sitting down with the developers of Sonic Unleashed they explained that to keep a character moving at an incredible speed requires a huge number of assets and very long levels," explains David Clayman of IGN Insider. "This means that the 'fun' parts must always be broken up by stops in the action in order to make a game that is long enough to be considered a full game."

Is that what's plagued Sonic since the sunset of the 16-bit generation? Fear that the concept is no longer enough to fuel an entire game? If so, then Sonic's salvation may be upon us with the embracing of shorter, download-only games by hardcore gamers via services like WiiWare and XBLA. "There was never anything complicated about the Sonic formula for success. If the reason games like the old ones can't be made because they won't be considered full titles," suggests Onyett, "then make shorter games and charge less for them. The only thing that's supposed to break up the pace of a Sonic game is a boss fight, a loading screen, or a trip to the bathroom. Everything else is clutter."

Yet there may be hope, with the recent release of Sonic: Generations. SEGA has finally delives on their generation-old promises that SEGA "does what Nintendon't." They have finally re-purposed Sonic as a platforming mascot that is, for the first time in ages, wildly definable by its own merits instead of trying to play catch up, tagalong or sorority sister with its mustachio partner in crime. Instead, Sonic Generations decides to ditch the plight of spending decades chasing Mario's happy go lucky hop and bop, vacational romps through paradise in favor of a vigorously fast and unforgiving speed drive through dystopia that honors expertise over bubbly luck.

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