Gotta Go Fast!

After hearing Sega’s recent apology to their fanbase I couldn’t help but wonder what would actually come of it. I can appreciate the honesty regarding the complete flop of Sonic Boom and other tragedies such as Aliens: Colonial Marines. Part of me hopes for a revisit of older franchises such as Ristar, Phantasy Star or Streets of Rage. Yet those properties have never received as much love and adoration as their golden child, Sonic the Hedgehog. The years haven’t been kind to Sonic as he desperately grasped for any scrap of fleeting attention. Old mascots like Crash and Spyro merely fizzled out while Sonic suffered a much more devastating crash and slow burn, the start of which could be traced all the way back to the 90s. I’m not sure if I should ask why Sonic games are still being made or why there is even any demand for them in the first place. You can easily throw out the nostalgia answer and you’re probably right. I played my fair share of Sonic on the Sega Megadrive, yet every time I go back it’s just not as fun as I remembered. “You can say that for a lot of games” you might say, and yes that could be true. The point I’m trying to get at is – was Sonic ever really that good?

I’ll carry on elaborating my thoughts while I wait for you to post those letter bombs you’ve just prepared. Game Grumps have recently started playing through Sonic Adventure and Egoraptor’s constant criticism of the game (Along with most of the franchise) has garnered a lot of toxicity from the Sonic fanbase. I’m someone who both enjoyed Sonic Adventure while also enjoying Arin ripping it to shreds. It’s a game that - while certainly interesting in it’s own right – just…isn’t….that….good. Sonic has often been on the receiving end of scathing criticism and ridicule in comparison to various retro titles, so why is that? Let’s backtrack for a minute: back when Sonic was initially created, he was intended to rival Mario’s status and challenge Nintendo in the console wars. Given that video games were still a child’s activity more than anything, you would have to appeal to the tastes of your central audience and what they deem “cool”. Let’s keep in mind that “cool” in the 90s is extremely different to what we consider trendy now. Sonic was as 90s as you could get with his smug demeanour, colourful sneakers and most of all – speed. Extreme sports were big 20 years ago, when adrenaline junkies could only get their fulfilling high from performing dangerous and death defying stunts. What could be better than a daredevil for Sega’s rival platform? Mario could jump high but would merely run across the screen from start to finish. Sonic viewed the end point as a finish line and would race as quickly and fluently as possible. 

I’m going to use Sonic 2 as an example of classic Sonic, as it’s often considered the best in the original trilogy. It doesn’t take long for Sonic to blast through Green Hill Zone with little effort. In order to take advantage of the player’s speed capabilities, the levels are littered with various peaks and troughs to build momentum. This can lead to Sonic tumbling downhill at a blistering speed as he tears through Robotnik’s creations, ending in a dazzling somersault 30 feet into the air before crashing down onto the head of some unfortunate woodland mammal. It can be hard to resist such a show from Sega’s main machine at the time. Games like Super Mario World required a more methodical approach to overcoming obstacles. Metroid and Zelda were steeped in exploration while Ninja Gaiden was more about quick reflexes and trial and error. A mind blowing experience like this couldn’t really be on the Super Nintendo except for maybe F-Zero. It was the 90s, everything was bigger, flashier and most of all – faster. Sonic’s signature speed has been the main ideology for the entire series and a gameplay staple in all of the main titles. Given that platforming requires precise timing and accurate jumps, how does an emphasis on speed affect the overall quality of the game?

If we go back to Sonic 2, the second stage is the Chemical Plant Zone, which features a lot of the same thrills as Green Hill Zone. All of a sudden, most players would find themselves falling into a tanker filled with hazardous chemicals. This is one of the first instances of bringing the game to a screeching halt in order to punish the player for not timing their jump correctly. What follows next is a series of rising and lowering platforms requiring precise jumping strategies to land correctly but the problem is that this is done underwater which slows Sonic down considerably. Sonic awkwardly tumbles over to the next platform in what looks like slow motion, which is a sad sight from his previous efforts. What makes this worse is that Sonic can only stay underwater for a certain amount of time which can eventually lead to the poor hedgehog drowning to death. So while the game is brought down to a quarter of the speed of what it originally was, you’re expected to complete your task in a shorter amount of time. This is a jarring shift of tone from the previous levels which can throw the player off, requiring them to have to adapt to various conditions and hazards. But in practice, that’s not a bad thing – Donkey Kong Country has underwater levels that weren’t that great either, but the change of pace doesn’t mar the experience as much as it does for Sonic. It’d be like if a thrilling car chase in a John Woo movie took a breather so Chow Yun Fat could take a smoke break and refill his car. This is the first of many instances where Sonic is less about speed and a lot of issues become exposed. What’s worse is that the next level is a WATER LEVEL. The common video game cliché doesn’t escape the furry devil as one wrong jump can send you into a watery grave where you’re expected to complete large sections in slow motion. 

The game designers are generous enough to provide air bubbles to provide brief moments of relief to give Sonic some more time. This ends up in an awkward scenario where a cautious player would stand by every breath-stop waiting for an air bubble to appear to carry on with the next section – that’s not exactly the pulse pounding, energetic rollercoaster that Sonic is usually known for. “Well, you don’t have to fall into the water and you can stay above land if you’re careful” I am told. Yes, you can stay completely on ground provided you watch where you’re going and make sure to lookout for danger ahead. This, once again, leads to the more cautious player slowing down the pace and making sure there isn’t anything dangerous up ahead. Yet this is a far cry from what the ideal Sonic experience is supposed to be. Once you’re out of the watery miasma, you’re required to complete various obstacles and challenges that I won’t specifically go into but they often carry the same core problems. The game designers have a habit of placing various hazards and enemies right when Sonic starts to get going, sending him flying backwards further than Simon Belmont. It’s common for side scrollers to put several obstacles ahead of the player to teach them that you can’t just dive in with reckless abandon. Yet it feels frustrating to play it safe with Sonic as opposed to other characters. Sonic just doesn’t handle that well whenever you take it slow; there’s an awkward floaty jumping mechanic which never feels right and can be hard to predict his landing spot. It can also take a few seconds to get him rolling to a normal speed common for these kind of games. Remember the rapidly rolling downhill moment I mentioned earlier? Sadly the many downhill drops are paired with laborious uphill climbs which can be a chore if you find yourself in the wrong spot and have to traverse over. Sonic’s spin dash can help, but not always. 

This can lead to a scenario in which the player must backtrack to an earlier speed boost to get moving which can make for an overall awkward pace. It might not sound much but those few seconds when Sonic slows to a crawl can be almost agonising – it can be likened to having to walk behind an extremely slow person when you’re trying to get somewhere. A sense of “I know this can be done faster but it won’t happen” which just doesn’t really gel with what Sega initially promised. There are still good things though; I’ve always appreciated the ring system as opposed to the common “One hit and you’re dead” mechanics in other games at the time. But the idea of Sonic just doesn’t really live up to the reality of what it really is: a series of stop and start scenarios where all you want to do is just get back up to speed again and pull some crazy jumps. The slower parts have a lot of trouble finding their place in the game and doesn’t carry any sense of enjoyment. It’s not rhythmic like Donkey Kong Country or fluent like Super Mario Bros 3. Even slower games like the 8 bit Castlevanias have an appropriate tempo. Simon Belmont’s slow jump and plodding footsteps feel suitable for what the character is and what his capabilities are. “Well you just suck then”. Maybe I do but I’ve heard the “Stop and Start” criticism of Sonic being used before – I’m not exactly breaking new ground here. You can go online and look up several A-rank videos of top class players never missing a beat when it comes to Sonic but this often requires a lot of time and patience. Anyone can pick up and play Metroid or Zelda and eventually play it the way it was intended within a short amount of time but it often seems a lot of trial and error is required to play Sonic in the most appropriate way. And I’m not sure if this was Sega’s original intention or just a good idea not really living up to its promises.

Regardless of my rumination and analysis, the Sonic series launched with phenomenal success and saw many titles and sequels for the 16 bit era. 

Thank you for your terrifying deduction, Knuckles.

Sadly, Sonic had trouble finding his place once the advent of 3D launched and took over the entire platforming genre. After missing out completely on the Sega Saturn (with the exception of some spin off titles) a lot of people hoped he would get back into his groove and dazzle everyone with the power of the Sega Dreamcast. This lead to the title that I mentioned at the start of this video: Sonic Adventure. A few years had passed as other developers worked out how to fine tune gameplay within a 3D plane. Sonic was lagging behind other franchises like Mario, Spyro, Banjo Kazooie and Crash Bandicoot who all got a head start to figure out the kinks. Adding an extra dimension to Sonic’s scope opened up a lot of room for creativity but also gave the player more room for error. Moving from left to right on a digital d-pad was both restrictive but safe; now that we had moved to the age of analogue sticks, “up” can have various degrees of where you want to go. Moving up can still place Sonic slightly to the left or to the right. Add this control scheme to the complicated paths and spirals that Sonic is supposed to traverse and this can create a shaky game feel. Speed is still an issue, causing Sonic to divebomb into several traps and bottomless pits because you were two inches slightly from the left. 

There were good parts to Sonic Adventure; this can be seen in the first stage Emerald Coast, in which Sonic outruns a killer whale that destroys the path behind the player. This provides a temporary rush of adrenaline and gives an idea of what Sonic is ideally about. Egoraptor mentions this in the first video of the Game Grumps playthrough, stating “That shit sold the Dreamcast”. I remember seeing this on my cousin’s Dreamcast at the time; a moment like that was hard to top. Yet what Arin states shortly after stuck in my mind for a while: “All I did was press up”. A lot of the show-stealing moments in the Sonic games (particularly at the beginning) need to draw the player in to make them feel accomplished and capable of performing similar stunts. Yet in order to accommodate newer players they need to be hazard free and require little input from the player themselves. This leads to just having to press left or press up and jump a few times for the entire duration. It leads to a nice spectacle but it could probably get old after a while. So what is better for Sonic? A series of sightseeing tours with little gameplay depth or a collection of unpolished platforming hazards? I’m not entirely sure, I’m just trying to analyse what might be wrong with Sonic at a core level and why he might not be as durable as a lot of other retro gaming franchises. 

It didn’t help that Sonic Adventure suffered from an identity crisis. It initially looks as if it wants to do it’s own thing; a series of linear platforming levels and stages punctuated by cutscenes with a half-baked plot. Yet it starts to unravel this weird hubworld shortly after the first stage, which was what all of the platformers were doing at the time. This left the player to explore the dim, lifeless streets with brain dead NPCs and migraine inducing background music. The whole hubworld felt very token, as if it was just created because everyone else was doing it. Another odd feature of Sonic Adventure was the ability to play as several characters; Tails, Knuckles, Amy and even Big the fucking Cat. Yet the actual depth of these characters have never felt particularly captivating and just feel like Sonic with an extra paintjob and power up. (Tails is exempt from this criticism – who doesn’t love Tails?) What probably hurts Sonic Adventure the most is the god awful voice acting and facial animations. Every time Sonic talks is another opportunity for disaster; his eyebrows shuffle up and down while his mouth is nothing but an endless loop of a red circle opening and closing. There’s no fluidity or care taken into bringing these characters to life, a contrast to the success of the old Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon in the 90s. If you thought giving Samus a voice in Other M was the worst handling of a character I advise you to look at Sonic Adventure some more. Why does background music blare over the characters dialogue so much that it almost drowns them out? Why can Robotnik just take a chaos emerald by simply grabbing it out of Sonic’s hands without Sonic being able to do anything? Why do the villains and heroes just stand across the room and shout at each other for long periods of time without doing anything? Who penned this story?

But that doesn’t mean that Sonic Adventure was a complete loss, it delineated an interesting blueprint for what 3D Sonic could be. Sadly 3D Sonic got worse as Sega didn’t know what to do with it: Sonic Heroes only added to the problem of an over bloated cast of characters, Sonic Unleashed jumped on the dual world gameplay trend at the time and ripped off God of War and as for Sonic ’06, well…y’know. Sonic Generations came out in 2011 and served as a “Best Hits” compilation of the Sonic series, providing a modern interpretation of a level from each game – even Sonic ’06. (For some reason). To be concise, I had a lot of fun with Sonic Generations. It seemed as if it wanted to distil the elements of what made the series fun without too much complication. The story was just a standard time travel mess that didn’t try to be overly dramatic or take itself too seriously (Unlike Sonic ’06). While the cast of characters didn’t go away from this game, they didn’t feel as overly intrusive as they used to and were only ancillary to the main game as opposed to mandatory in Sonic Adventure. The hubworld wasn’t pushed into the game for the sake of it and was merely just a level select screen. And while the gameplay wasn’t perfect, it still felt fun and enjoyable without too much of the frustrations that plagued the earlier series. 

Also, the voice acting and facial animations didn’t suck complete balls. It seemed as if Sonic knew what it was and didn’t try to chase any trend or fad. It wasn’t an instant classic or a huge hit but I’d recommend it for a cheap price or a rental to get the most out of it. After beating the game I felt that, despite some core issues, there is still a lot of fun to be had with Sonic the Hedgehog. While there are many platforming franchises that have surpassed him in quality, Sonic has outlasted them all. Perhaps it’s something I’m overlooking or just don’t get but there does seem to be something to salvage from Sonic after all. Personally, I felt like Sonic Generations could have been the last game in franchise, as it encapsulated everything the franchise represented. Some of its flaws may have been exposed but there was still enough good in it to embrace it for what it was.

Sadly they followed it up with Sonic Boom which just looks like Sega are just falling into bad habits once again. At least we got some funny Let’s Playmoments out of it.