There a few iconic characters in Video Gaming that really have staying power. Many like Conker, Crash Bandicoot, Banjo Kazooie, and etc come and go. Really the top challengers is The Italian Plumber Mario and Sonic The Hedgehog who has super speed and neat sneakers. SEGA designed Sonic out the gate to compete with Mario, to be the mascot who would convert gamers to their side. What was genius is Sonic was not a knockoff, the original game on the Genesis played so differently than Mario, it was dizzyingly fast paced where you could feel the speed of Sonic as you looped and zig and zagged across zones with the screen barely keeping up. Unlike Mario, Sonic had greater success in shows like The Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog which felt very ACME Loony Toons, and the amazing Sonic SATam which with Archie’s Comics of The Blue Blur developed the mythos of Mobius with Freedom Fighters who were amorphous animals fighting the human cyborg Dr Robonik and his robotic take over of the planet. It was environmentalist to a degree, but not as stories are now.
While Mario stayed to formula, keeping the Plumber and his companions mostly the same since SNES and N64, SEGA and Archie decided to transform Sonic from his short spines and black eyes Pokemon cute form into a radical long spined green eyed teenager. This transition was heralded by Sonic Adventure on The Dreamcast console, and Archie’s blank. This bold move to age Sonic and his companions was crucial to what makes Sonic have staying power. While fans of Mario still enjoy The Mushroom Kingdom, and the child within lets them go back, Sonic ages with its fan base, so that fans who became adolescent had the Blue Blur to channel their angst and hot head feelings in, and this became most successful in the advent of Shadow The Hedgehog, who was the brooding bad boy James Dean with the cockiness of Ganon as he said, “let me show you my true power!,” and “I am the Ultimate Lifeform.” Shadow became the quintessential next step for fans, his popularity rivals and even surpasses Sonic.
The attempts to take Sonic to next step, on the verge of adulthood met abject failure in Sonic 2006, where the story with a destroyer god Ibilis & Mephiles The Dark, and the introduction of time traveler Silver The Hedgehog was met with not the same enthusiasm as The Sonic Adventure era, and the leap to Adolescence for the franchise. Sonic being in love with a human woman was strange rather than Sally Acorn of the comics and SATam or dodging Amy Rose, The Pink Hedgehog. The apocalyptic storyline was rather dark after the already mature Shadow The Hedgehog Video Game being like a Sith Lord story, retconning Shadow’s origin story which trod on Sonic Adventure 2’s better backstory. This combined with horrible game mechanics that had bugs that would throw you off courses to die, the game freezing, and long load times traveling the overworld made Sega have to step this leap forward back.
What followed was a lot of novel but unimportant entries, one of which had Sonic become a Werehog (werewolf) and even King Arthur. While these games were fun, they did not continue the mythos well, they were more like taking well known legends and tales making them Sonic. Deciding to get back to the roots of The Blue Blur, SEGA decided to change Sonic into a fusion of his cuter self from earlier days while keeping his teenage aspects, this design had spines in between the long Adventure ones and the short original look, and the face was softened and the green eyes retained. What came next was Sonic Boom!, and the motion pictures starring Jim Carrey as Robotnik. The goal was to return to what made Sonic great in the first place which was a message of environmental responsibility, fun, speed, humor, and lovable characters. The two films with Ben Schwartz as the voice of Blue Blur became huge successes with a sequel featuring Keenu Reeves as Shadow The Hedgehog in the works and a Knuckles spinoff series on Amazon. Sonic is now having a resurgence of popularity close to those early days of Archie, SatAM and Adventure era.
Why has Sonic had such staying power? Mario arguably does too, but Sonic has an edge, no pun intended. The answer is Sonic dared to evolve, and knew when to stop. It allows a place for kids and teens to be swept up in the “rolling around at the speed of sound,” (Sonic Adventure 2, City Escape). Because Sonic evolved to adolescence, romance can be explored, while Mario can only have a cute crush kinda love with Princess Peach, Link in Zelda and Sonic can actually date those they love in more nuanced ways. Also darker themes, and more adult concepts and perils can be explored due to the Teen aspect. Mario has stagnated, not in terms of gameplay, but in storytelling, you can only do so much in kiddy realms, there is so many topics off limits that teen level stories can cover.
Another reason for Sonic’s success is that is was one of few things accepted by fundamentalist Christians. Religious mothers did not object to The Hedgehog and his animal friends like they did The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zelda, and even Pokemon. Even though little did they know about the Tiki gods called The Elders in the Archie Comics who make the golden rings and emeralds, with even the evil destroyer god like Echidna named Enerjak & Mammoth Mogul an elephant Kingpin of Spider-man design rip off, but both had power with chaos emeralds of god like proportions. Despite ignorance of these and that one comic featuring Echindas evolving from fish in a Darwinesque way, Christian moms accepted Sonic, allowing their kids to play it and thus a whole demographic that shunned other franchises did not shun The Blue Hedgehog. This no doubt contributed to Sonic’s success.
Sonic when conceived was to be cooler than Mario (Netflix, The Games that Made Us), and indeed this holds true. Mario is funny and plucky as a plumber, but Sonic’s design is superior, and his speed makes him just so much more fun to play in games and watch in the films. Mario is still a great success, make no mistake, he even has his own part of a theme park now and his movie was successful, the new one, the live action one was cringe (though I do love Dennis Hopper as Bowser). Still Sonic has been faster, it has done better in more mediums than just the video game sphere, its characters just translate better in different media. For that reason I foresee Sonic blowing past into the future with the success he has had, and maybe more if the Chaos Emeralds are with him. Amen.
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