Sonic The Hedgehog

The original Sonic the Hedgehog for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive first launched in Japan on 23rd June 1991 - 30 years ago today.

Sonic himself is actually a couple of years older. Like the Nintendo mascot he was engineered to replicate, Sonic first popped up elsewhere - in 1991 Sega arcade racer Rad Mobile - before getting his own game.

But it's that 1991 side-scrolling classic which defined Sonic's appeal, as well as the series' gameplay, design and villain Doctor "Eggman" Robotnik.

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Sonic The Hedgehog 2

We knew a Sonic the Hedgehog movie sequel was coming. We knew its release date - April 8th 2022, with full production starting next month. And now we know what it's going to be called.

A short video shared on the film's official Twitter account revealed the title - the somewhat predictable, unimaginative but nevertheless brilliantly evocative Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

It shares its name with a certain video game sequel, of course, which many consider the high point of Sega's iconic series. It certainly seems there'll be some similarities between the two, as those who've seen the original will know.

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Sonic The Hedgehog

How Sonic the Hedgehog was conceived to help Sega compete against Nintendo in the early 90s was discussed during a postmortem for the original game at this year's Game Developer Conference.

Most of the talk was about Sonic's appearance came to be. Though the decision to make Sonic a hedgehog was seemingly a straightforward one - allowing him to deal damage by curling up into a ball and rolling around, designer Hirokazu Yasuhara explained - it actually wasn't Sega's only choice of character design.

"[Sega said] we definitely want to see something like an old guy with a moustache. We also want to see something like a hedgehog, or porcupine, as well as a dog-like character," he told those at the talk, attended by Eurogamer.

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Sonic 3D Blast™

By any conventional definition, Jon Burton has lived at least three careers: first, a multi-hyphenate founder-programmer-director at Traveller's Tales, best known as the scrappy studio behind a wide variety of licensed movie-games; second, a producer and director of films, primarily in the inescapable Lego mondo-franchise; and, now, a burgeoning YouTuber with nearly a hundred-thousand subscribers to his channel, Gamehut. And while it might seem like a wild leap to some, to hear Burton tell it, it's a natural outgrowth of his existing hobbies, which now includes remastering his old games.

"I was one of the first wave of people making video games, and I'm getting older, and I want to fiddle with stuff," he says. "At first, I just wanted to document all my old games, since all this physical media is going to be lost to time. I wanted to look back on the programming choices I made, and maybe exhibit some prototypes. I didn't do any promotion of the channel or anything. It was for my own entertainment, which is one of the best reasons to do things, if you ask me."

During the early days of Traveller's Tales - or "TT," as he refers to it - Burton was the studio's sole programmer, a role that he relished far more than his mundane managerial duties. After some early titles, TT worked with Sony on a string of licensed Disney games in the mid-to-late '90s, starting with Toy Story, one of the first to launch alongside its parent film - usually, the game would come six to nine months later. When the side-scrolling platformer racked up millions of sales - despite its now-infamous difficulty curve - TT discovered that timing was indeed everything. "We had found our business model, and people started to emulate it," recalls Burton. "For the next 10 years, we were on seven-month deadlines."

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Sonic Generations Collection

2017 could so easily have been the Year of the Hedgehog thanks to the arrival of two high-profile Sonic releases. It goes without saying that Sonic Mania is something truly special, a brilliant return to classic 2D platforming for the franchise - but on the 3D side of things, Sega came up short. Sonic Forces was a disappointment, a real shame bearing in mind just how good Sonic Generations was - especially on PC. The game has aged remarkably well, has exceptional modding support and runs well and looks wonderful at full 4K on GTX 970-level hardware.

Sonic Generations was released on PC back in 2011, a few weeks after the console versions. Unlike those 30fps efforts though, the PC version allows for smooth 60fps gameplay and higher resolutions. It's powered by the Hedgehog Engine and offers visuals that still hold up beautifully even in 2018. Indeed, in our opinion, the sheer quality of workmanship in the visuals makes this game stand up better than its successor.

The visual quality stems from a combination of great art direction, an accomplished post-processing pipeline including a soft-focus depth of field and good quality motion blur, detailed models and rich texture work. The star of the show is its solution to global illumination - a feature created for the original Sonic Unleashed, designed to simulate realistic light bounce across these expansive stages. The lighting data is pre-calculated, stored in textures and then streamed in during gameplay while characters are blended into the scene using a technique dubbed 'light field'. For an engine that began development in 2005, it's an impressive achievement.

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Sonic 3D Blast™


SEGA exec Alan Pritchard has revealed more about the company's plans to delist less-than-stellar Sonic games - suggesting the publisher may take a leaf out of an old rival's book.


"We've probably been guilty of bringing too many Sonic games to market too quickly," he told Joystiq.


"If you look at Nintendo as a comparison, they have been a little bit more strategic with the way they bring their Mario titles to market. If you look at 2006 to 2008, there were a number of Sonic titles coming to market on various platforms with very little time in-between."


Pritchard went on to describe the Sonic titles released in the last five years as "a real mixed bag", which is a polite way of putting it. He said in the future, SEGA will aim to release only games which score 80 per cent-plus - even though those which are poorly critically received seem to sell well anyway.


"A Sonic game can sell if it's a 60-percent Metacritic game, that's not an issue," he said. "But is that really what the consumer wants? Is that what we should be doing as a publisher and a developer? We should be bringing much higher quality products to market to deliver a better experience for the consumer.


"If Sonic were a Disney franchise or Sonic was a Nintendo franchise, how would they treat Sonic? Sonic, at the end of the day, is 20 years-old next year. Sonic is our crown jewel."


That would explain why, as announced recently, SEGA is planning to delist the rubbisher Sonic titles.


"[The policy will] be tailored to each individual country, and it'll be tailored by retailer. And we'll just approach it on a case-by-case example," said Pritchard.


"Rather than flooding the market with $15 or $20 products at the time when you're bringing out a $50 game, it's just reducing the quantity, making sure those older titles are in a different part of the store."


According to Pritchard, SEGA has "two very exciting, huge announcements" planned for early next year, which will provide "further evidence of how we're looking to improve and enhance our Sonic strategy". Sonic to turn orange? Vector to not be rubbish? Let's just hope it's nothing to do with 3D.

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