Post by red16 on Jun 23, 2011 17:31:01 GMT -5
Sonic The Hedgehog, Sega’s answer to pesky plumber Mario, celebrates his 20th birthday today - proving he is a gaming character that has stood the test of time.
It was 20 years ago today that Sega taught the world to play. On June 23, 1991, Sonic The Hedgehog was first released, beginning a legacy that, two decades and 70million game sales later, is still running at full speed.
But while the world’s fastest and bluest hedgehog may not age, his fans do, and excited youngsters back in the early 1990s are now likely to be in their thirties.
‘Sonic was the first video game I ever played,’ recalls Svend Joscelyne, 25, organiser of the fourth international Summer of Sonic convention to be held in London on Saturday. ‘I remember saving to buy a Sega Mega Drive when I was about seven years old, only to be told that I could only afford a Master System. I didn’t care, because the console had the eight-bit version of Sonic built in, so I snapped it up right there and then. I still play the game today,
‘I always loved Sonic’s attitude and how cool he looked running through the Green Hill Zone. Even though I’ve grown older and more jaded, the look of Sonic’s colourful world and imaginative Badniks [small robots] still appeals to me.’
Sonic, which was created as a rival to Nintendo’s Mario, ended up as one of the defining symbols of gaming in the 1990s.
‘When Sonic was launched 20 years ago, it was the Call Of Duty of its day. It was what the cool gamer was playing. It was fast, it was anarchic, it was irreverent, it was different,’ says Sega West CEO Mike Hayes.
‘There’s no doubt the modern core gamer is looking for a great deal of realism in terms of the graphics, the performance and the theme, which is why war games in particular have done very, very well. But Mario and Sonic are just as big and relative to Call Of Duty. They’re just spread over more games or, in the case of Mario, restricted to just one or two formats.’
But whereas Mario was able to constantly evolve, Sonic suffered more when his style of two-dimensional gameplay fell out of fashion. Sega introduced a range of different games set in 3D worlds but throughout the noughties, Sonic’s prestige was tarnished among core gamers, even as the newer game styles were lapped up by younger fans.
‘It’s impossible to have one title that satisfies the two groups as they favour different types of gameplay,’ explains Takashi Iizuka, part of the team responsible for making most of the games in the series. ‘This is why we released Sonic 4: Episode 1 and Sonic Colours last year, each targeted towards the specific group of audiences.’
Sonic Colours, in particular, helped bridge the chasm between the two groups, combining modern graphics with old-school gameplay. Iizuka was its producer and his secret was simple: ‘Our approach was to focus on core mechanics and not through new features.’
With Sonic Generations, the 20th-anniversary game due out in November, the approach is almost as simple: combine the old and new approaches into a single game.
It alternates between levels where the sleek, modern Sonic runs around in his 3D worlds and others where the original more portly character moves along a 2D plane.
In 20 years’ time, it’s not too hard to imagine a video game world that doesn’t feature today’s current hits but chances are Sonic will still be around chasing Chaos Emeralds.
It was 20 years ago today that Sega taught the world to play. On June 23, 1991, Sonic The Hedgehog was first released, beginning a legacy that, two decades and 70million game sales later, is still running at full speed.
But while the world’s fastest and bluest hedgehog may not age, his fans do, and excited youngsters back in the early 1990s are now likely to be in their thirties.
‘Sonic was the first video game I ever played,’ recalls Svend Joscelyne, 25, organiser of the fourth international Summer of Sonic convention to be held in London on Saturday. ‘I remember saving to buy a Sega Mega Drive when I was about seven years old, only to be told that I could only afford a Master System. I didn’t care, because the console had the eight-bit version of Sonic built in, so I snapped it up right there and then. I still play the game today,
‘I always loved Sonic’s attitude and how cool he looked running through the Green Hill Zone. Even though I’ve grown older and more jaded, the look of Sonic’s colourful world and imaginative Badniks [small robots] still appeals to me.’
Sonic, which was created as a rival to Nintendo’s Mario, ended up as one of the defining symbols of gaming in the 1990s.
‘When Sonic was launched 20 years ago, it was the Call Of Duty of its day. It was what the cool gamer was playing. It was fast, it was anarchic, it was irreverent, it was different,’ says Sega West CEO Mike Hayes.
‘There’s no doubt the modern core gamer is looking for a great deal of realism in terms of the graphics, the performance and the theme, which is why war games in particular have done very, very well. But Mario and Sonic are just as big and relative to Call Of Duty. They’re just spread over more games or, in the case of Mario, restricted to just one or two formats.’
But whereas Mario was able to constantly evolve, Sonic suffered more when his style of two-dimensional gameplay fell out of fashion. Sega introduced a range of different games set in 3D worlds but throughout the noughties, Sonic’s prestige was tarnished among core gamers, even as the newer game styles were lapped up by younger fans.
‘It’s impossible to have one title that satisfies the two groups as they favour different types of gameplay,’ explains Takashi Iizuka, part of the team responsible for making most of the games in the series. ‘This is why we released Sonic 4: Episode 1 and Sonic Colours last year, each targeted towards the specific group of audiences.’
Sonic Colours, in particular, helped bridge the chasm between the two groups, combining modern graphics with old-school gameplay. Iizuka was its producer and his secret was simple: ‘Our approach was to focus on core mechanics and not through new features.’
With Sonic Generations, the 20th-anniversary game due out in November, the approach is almost as simple: combine the old and new approaches into a single game.
It alternates between levels where the sleek, modern Sonic runs around in his 3D worlds and others where the original more portly character moves along a 2D plane.
In 20 years’ time, it’s not too hard to imagine a video game world that doesn’t feature today’s current hits but chances are Sonic will still be around chasing Chaos Emeralds.
but still fond memories.
