Sonic Turns “Sweet Sixteen”

Over this past weekend, a milestone was hit when Sonic the Hedgehog officially turned 16 years old. Sega’s mascot has been a teenager for some time now, but still has quite a rich reputation that he’s brought to the table in the gaming world, along with bringing a few friends with him for the ride on the gaming rollarcoaster.

What does this mean in terms of what is going to happen in the future for the blue speed-demon? Well, lets first recap on our beloved hedgehog’s life thus far.

Sonic first came into being on June 23rd 1991 when he debuted on the Sega Genesis/Megadrive as the hero of his first self-titled game. Through 16-bits of glory did Sonic pierce the gaming realm that had up until that point been ruled by the likes of Mario and Link on the Genesis’ rival console, the NES. Ever since, Sonic has become one of the best known video game characters of all time, even being inducted into the “Walk of Game” achievement alongside his aforementioned rivals. Sonic’s success spurred the creation of 3 more mainstream titles and 2 side-story games on the Genesis, along with several spinoff games for the Game Gear, Sega CD, and Sega 32X. This popularity in the game also lead to Sonic recieving his own comic book series (which is still printed to this day), as well as a Saturday morning cartoon.

Sonic then made the jump to the world of 3D with the introduction of Sonic Adventure for the Sega Dreamcast. This, as many Sonic fans will swear, is where the Sonic series started to truly take a dive. On the 10th anniversary of the original Sonic game’s conception, Sonic Adventure 2 was released – first for the Dreamcast, and then ported to the Gamecube. This was the first time Sonic would ever be released to a non-Sega console, as the Dreamcast at the time was dying due to poor advertising and the popularity of the Playstation and Xbox. The game notably suffered. Things continued to decline for the blue hedgehog as Sega died, merging with Nintendo, which lead to games such as the Sonic Advance series and Sonic Rush being released to the Gameboy Advance and DS respectively. (I won’t even acknowledge Sonic X as a respectable tv show, and nowhere near as good as the original cartoon in the 90’s)

When the series 15th anniversary came to pass, the creators thought a revamp in the game was needed, and released Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) for the Xbox 360 and later the PS3. Unfortunately, the beautiful new graphics provided by the power of the next gen consoles couldn’t boost the series, as shoddy controls and confusing gameplay took a large chunk out of the game’s hype. The story also left much to be desired. Sales of the game ended up being much lower than expected. The recent release of Sonic and the Secret Rings on the Nintendo Wii have have boosted Sonic’s reputation in the gaming world, but not so much that he’s anywhere near his former glory.

In Sonic’s future, along with the release of Sonic Rivals 2 for the PSP, there is word of a Sonic RPG game being released by BioWare in 2008 for the Nintendo DS. Does this mean new breath and originality being brought into the series, or will this be yet another large disappointment for our spiney blue hero? We’ll all know soon enough. Until then, Happy Birthday Sonic! You’ve brought happiness to gamers everywhere, and hopefully will continue to do so for a long time.