Sonic Stories: 20th Anniversary Memories

[Barry the Nomad]

On the front page you may have noticed the new limited feature I started called Sonic Stories: <!-- m -->http://www.segabits.com/?p=9786<!-- m -->

The quote the article: In celebration of Sonic’s 20th anniversary, SEGAbits proudly presents a limited feature highlighting SEGAbits stories from writers and readers of how they got into the franchise and their history with Sonic. Want to share your Sonic story? Check out the dedicated topic in the SEGAbits forum.

I want to open up the feature not only to writers, but also to readers. How did you get into the Sonic franchise? What are your memories? What is your ideal 20th anniversary? I won't say leave your cynicism at the door, but I do encourage positive thoughts rather than rants. It's a birthday party after all. Not an intervention.  <!-- s8-) -->8-)<!-- s8-) -->

[CrazyT]

I can still remember my 3 year old me loving the master system. Playing alex kid and aladdin all day. We all sorta fell in love with SEGA and when the megadrive came out all things went crazy. My brother was a fighting game fanatic and got the megadrive together with samurai showdown. Later we got mortal kombat and streetfighter, which I really loved. It's funny cuz today you have all these ratings and I was playing those games as a 3 year old, yet it never affected me in a bad way, but that aside xD.

It was untill 1994 we finally got a sonic 1,2 and mean bean machine compilation. Man things went crazy. I friggin loved sonic 2 so much. The 2 player mode in sonic 2 was really well made when I think back to it. My older brother prefered sonic 1 and you know, that actually makes me realise that sonic 1 was really much more for the hardcore, since today I apreciate it alot more as well. Mean bean machine. I love that friggin game. I love the music, I love the robots. That game is BOSS and needs a lot more recognition even if it's just a puyo clean in a different coat, whatever XD.

great times man.

[Grant360]

It was 1991. I finally persuaded my grandmother to get me a Mega Drive with Sonic 1 bundle having had to play it at a friends house for about 6 months prior to that. It sounds pathetic but back then I was like 7 years old and every zone 2 used to get me. The Green Hill part where you had to jump from platform to platform. Marble Zone Act 2 or dieing because of no air in labyrinth. I then managed to get Sonic 2 for my next birthday and loved it rushing home from school to play it and a similar routine happened with Sonic 3. However by the time Sonic & Knuckles came out I was hooked on my Saturn and never got it retail. I loved Sonic R on the Saturn but it wasn't until they had a demo of the Dreamcast Sonic Adventure that I fell in love again with the blue hedgehog. It was incredible. Anyway Sonic 1 was the first game I ever owned and is immortalised forever!

[segaismysavior]

I remember reading about the first Sonic game in SEGA Visions magazine, but I don't recall playing it until much later. It looked cool, but I had an NES and maybe SNES at that time... so I'm not sure my friends had it either.

It was Sonic 2 that caught everyone I knew by storm. I was in 6th grade when it was released, and a lot of my classmates were talking about it during lunch and passing around the box to remark about how cool a game it was. Even the girls! Yes, that was a big deal back then. My friend had the game and Genesis system, so I'd go over to his house after school and we'd play the thing for hours. I typically played as Tails during single player, but we did also try 2 Player a lot and I had very few opportunities to win.

It wasn't until I got a Game Gear that I had a copy of my own, and I was pretty terrible at it. Still, I bought a few more Sonic games on that system and had what fun I could.

When I bought a Saturn, I thought for sure there'd be some awesome Sonic game for that... but Sonic X-treme was canned and nothing took its place. I did get Sonic Jam though, and the 3D level in that was so damn cool, plus I could finally play all the Genesis games. I doubt I played any of those beyond 4 levels, the 2D games rarely held my attention for more than a couple hours in one sitting.

Not until Dreamcast did I REALLY get into a Sonic game. Sonic Adventure blew me away... even something as simple as the NiGHTS pinball game and Chao garden had me joy-gasming about the new system. I had that and Soul Calibur at launch, but I mostly stuck to playing Sonic on my first day since it had more variety. That's really the first Sonic game that I played as much as possible before moving on.

Since then I haven't spent much time with Sonic. The next game I bought in the series was Secret Rings, but I never finished that despite enjoying it. Shortly after buying that, I bought both Sonic Adventure games for the Gamecube for super cheap, but only played the first one. It wasn't actually until this past summer that I finally played the sequel... and it was so damn good. I went out soon after to check out Sonic Heroes, but that game started to piss me off too much to play further.

Even though the XBLA port of Sonic Adventure is lacking, I am still extremely thankful that it exists simply because I can play that game with no framerate issues and controls that better match the Dreamcast. My DC copy went MIA one year during college, so beyond a "backup copy," I couldn't play it as intended. The Gamecube port was barely playable on the controller's analog stick, specifically Speed Highway.

If they were to make something similar to Sonic Adventure for the 20th Anniversary (open world hub, Chao gardens, minus the characters that were terrible to play), but less cheesy and with much better animations, then I'd be happy.

[CrazyT]

Hey so, I just wondered if we are getting more frontpage stories because personally i'm really interested in reading more :D

(LOVING THE YAKUZA THEME BTW)

[tarpmortar]

My brother was the big SEGA fan back then, as such the choice was really made for me. With that said the first game I ever played was Sonic 2, I was ~4 years old. Probably the only SEGA game I liked for a significant period. I would later see Sonic and Knuckles though and actually end up preferring Knuckles over Sonic, surprised he has become less popular than Shadow and Tails. Now I prefer Sonic though.

Still at that young age I rarely got past Emerald Hill Zone, and I ALWAYS drowned in Chemical Plant Zone. That sucked, I loved the tunes for that zone but it always signified my soon-to-come death when it started to play.

My ideal 20th anniversary? Sonic Generations might fit the bill, I'd like to see them experiment more with larger less linear levels for the 3D portions. I also hope they re-imagine some of the 3D levels from SA 1/2 in 2D. We'll see though, I am excited.

[Barry the Nomad]

Hey so, I just wondered if we are getting more frontpage stories because personally i'm really interested in reading more :D

(LOVING THE YAKUZA THEME BTW)

segaismysavior and cube have expressed interest. I also assume nuckles will want to write one.

Expect two a month, which means people better get crackin'!  

[tarpmortar]

Jeez louise, just played some Sonic 1 on the ole Genny tonight. I always forget how much more intensive the game feels. The difficulty ramps up faster than Sonic 2 or 3 I feel, my friend ended up losing most of our lives (we were trading off). Oh well, great night, thai food, Sega discussion, some Spiral Knights and Sonic, and bit of table tennis.

Now I am gonna watch some Cheers.

[cube_b3]

That explains why I prefer the sequels over the original.

[CrazyT]

@Barry,

Great to hear man.

@cube

Because of it's difficulty?

[tarpmortar]

@Barry,

Great to hear man.

@cube

Because of it's difficulty?

Not sure for Cube's reason but you can take a look at level maps and tell the game is a tad different in regards to level design compared to S2/S3&K. It might not be for everybody but I love it and think it is a great game.

[cube_b3]

Well the reason I gave myself back as a kid was that it didn't have the spin dash and an absence of Tails.

I also remember a lot of spikes, and bottomless pits.

So I didn't play the game beyond the second stage I kinda bought all Sonic games in the same year (with a monthly interval starting with 2 then 1 then 3 and finally S&K) so I played through the best and 1 was just crap to me.

[tarpmortar]

Well the reason I gave myself back as a kid was that it didn't have the spin dash and an absence of Tails.

I also remember a lot of spikes, and bottomless pits.

So I didn't play the game beyond the second stage I kinda bought all Sonic games in the same year (with a monthly interval starting with 2 then 1 then 3 and finally S&K) so I played through the best and 1 was just crap to me.

Crap is a tad harsh, it is still a really good game it is just harder.

[cube_b3]

That is what I thought then and as the series progressed they improved the things that worked and removed the things that didn't forexample those god awful special stages.

I think in terms of 2D gameplay Sonic 3 is still the best.

[Nathan0_0]

Ever since I could really remember, my family has been one of gamers. So, as a result of that we've always had the latest game console out at the time, (As far as I can remember.) NES, Genesis, SNES, etc. etc. The one I took the most fancy to was, indeed, our Genesis. Well, it's the one I remember playing the most. Now, I can't remember the day we got it, or how happy I was to be the owner of my very own 16-bit gaming console. I do remember the first time I played Sonic 2 though.

I was about 7 at the time (this was in 1996, I got a psx this year too.) didn't know anything about game genres, a console war, or of any substantial information about videogames, only that I enjoyed them. My dad was really into the Mega Man series; he hogged the NES and SNES ALL THE FUCKING TIME. Needless to say, the Genesis my console. I liked it that way though, in my mind I had the better console. Though, I think I just wanted to believe that really, really bad. (turns out I was right hurrhurr) So, the summer of my 7th year of living. I remember playing the genesis in the basement of my childhood home. It was a Lion King kind of day. (I played the hell out of that game, never beat it.) I got to the ostrich level and gave up because I couldn't stop dieing.  Frustrated and downtrodden, I put the game away (I threw it) and proceeded to look for something else to play. I don't know if it was just the box art itself, or that sexy blue hedgehog. I knew when I saw the box art of Sonic 2; Dr. Robotnik grabbing the '2', seemingly wanting to eat it. Sonic being all like "Bish please" with his arms crossed. I dunno, I just had to play it.

I don't really know what I was expecting, given it was such a long time ago. Though looking at the back box... I probably thought it was some sort of racing game. Yet, when I put the game in, sang along to the catchy SEGA chime, and saw the opening menu. What I got was a game that would emanate years of fanboy-ism to come. "What is this game?", I expressed with great ignorance. What I truly remember is: spin dashing was complicated, I hated the fuck out of "Tails" and if you hit a spring dashing you forward, press down. It was very challenging for me as well, I remember. So hard in fact that I didn't beat it until I was 13.

Good times... good times.