The Redemption of Sonic the Hedgehog

 Introduction:

Most people agree that Sonic the Hedgehog, as a franchise, hit its stride almost immediately during the 2D era in the 90s. The franchise was a smash success in the Sega Genesis era, and the first several mainline titles (obviously being Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic Chaos / Sonic & Tails and Sonic Triple Trouble / Sonic & Tails 2) quickly established a lovable cast, a compelling protagonist, and a unique, fun and appealing world despite their hardware’s limited storytelling capabilities. 

After a rocky foray into “3D” with Sonic 3D Blast, which was more so just 3D visuals translated into isometric 2D; the series pushed itself and evolved further with Sonic Adventure in 1998, which was quickly followed up by Sonic Adventure 2 in 2001. These games elevated the franchise to new heights, featuring what was essentially a proto-open world style of gameplay for the franchise that heavily emphasized exploration, unique character movesets and a more mature style of storytelling that connected Sonic’s fantastical world to “our” world. 

However, the original 2D level design and gameplay style were still maintained in the Sonic Advance entries. Coming out on the DS (one of the best-selling consoles of all time, handheld or not) during the early-to-mid 2000s, this trilogy maintained the same vibe as the original Genesis games while still updating it to match the artwork of Sonic Adventure, thus introducing home console players to a more retro style of gameplay and allowing the franchise’s earliest fans to find comfortable footing. 

The financial success of the games also prompted Sega to branch out into other mediums almost immediately. The Sonic the Hedgehog line of Archie Comics spawned at this point in 1993, lasting until 2017; the cartoons Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (1993), Sonic the Hedgehog (1993-1994), and Sonic X (2003-2006) all brought the franchise more fans, and each adapted events from the games in unique ways while leaving their own mark on the franchise. With success in the realm of comics, animation, 2D games and 3D games, the late 90s-early 2000s really was the peak of the franchise. 

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This success did not last long, as any Sonic fan will tell you. Countless essays and video essays have been written about this subject already, and as I’m sure most gamers know, Sega quickly overexerted itself and tried pumping out more 3D home console games in rapid succession. Sonic Heroes was created to celebrate the franchise’s first foray on Gamecube, PS2 and Xbox in 2003, but its divisive experimental team-based gameplay, bizarre difficulty design (which locked difficulty modes behind specific characters) and repetitive levels its reputation in the eyes of the fanbase. Shadow the Hedgehog in 2005 was created to capitalize on Shadow’s breakout success in the previous two home console games, but it backslid on Shadow’s character development and was created (or, at the very least, marketed) almost exclusively on shock value, which most fans and critics deemed needlessly immature and dated. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), which I will abbreviate as Sonic ‘06 from this point onwards, was created to celebrate the franchise’s 15th anniversary; it was filled with so many bugs, half-baked level design, out-of-character writing, poorly thought-out storytelling decisions and unresponsive controls that it was panned upon release. Sonic and the Secret Rings was released in 2007 and created for the Wii as a cheaper alternative to porting ‘06, but it's bizarre on-the-rails style of gameplay spelled doom from the beginning. (This game also spawned a short-lived subseries of on-the-rains platformers on the Wii called the Storybook Series, but only Sonic and the Black Knight continued that trend, and it was once again panned upon release.)  

All of these games were developed concurrently, with Team Sonic (already a pretty small branch of Sega) constantly splitting their time between multiple projects. Each of these projects were mandated by Sega management to meet some sort of deadline or milestone for the franchise or company, and they all suffered from short development time, split development teams and low budgets. 

From this point onwards, Sonic the Hedgehog began a downward spiral that would continue for the next several years. With ‘06 as the biggest failure of those four games, Sega’s next several games were all created as an antithesis to ‘06 in some way; the problem with ‘06 was that it was obviously rushed and Team Sonic was stretched thin, but Sega inaccurately concluded that the real problem was that fans didn’t like the secondary cast. Consequently, Sonic’s iconic supporting cast—the very same supporting cast that made the Adventure duology and the Advance games so beloved in the first place—was almost completely removed. 

The next several games marked a new era for the franchise. From 2008-2017, Sega focused almost exclusively on 3D games in the franchise, with little-to-no 2D games in sight and media in other forms being extremely limited. Black Knight, Unleashed, Colors, Generations, Lost World and Forces have formed a strange subseries among fans. These games usually only featured Sonic and Tails in major roles, they often attempted to introduce new gimmicks (such as the Werehog form in Unleashed, the sword combat in Black Knight or the Wisps in Colors) that were rarely seen again, and all but Black Knight used a gameplay style fans dubbed the “Boost Formula,” which emphasized moving at breakneck speeds through levels, automatically annihilating any enemies in your way; this made the levels difficult and expensive for Team Sonic to develop while also being easy and monotonous to play. While Colors and Generation received positive reviews, Unleashed had a mixed reception due to its gimmick, and Black Knight, Lost World and especially Forces were all panned on release. 

There are still some good things in this mess. After the lawsuit with Ken Prenders—a writer for the Archie comics series who made a massive lore because he famously had no supervision, then burned all of his bridges by suing Archie and Sega for copyright ownership—Sega took the Sonic comic license away from Archie and gave it to IDW. The new line of comics by IDW spin out of Forces and tell a genuinely compelling story that pays homage to each generation of the franchise, while managing to be remarkably consistent with past games and future installments. 

However, these victories are few and far between. In the last decade, many Sonic fans gave up hope that the franchise would ever return to its former glory days. But this past year really turned the situation around, and despair at a once-great franchise gave way to hope and surprise in a way none of us could have anticipated. 

2022, Sonic’s Year:

2022 was a huge year for the franchise, and of those three main “branches” of the franchise (2D games, 3D games and non-game stories), two faced a major resurgence. After Sonic Mania resparked interest in 2D games a couple years prior, Sonic Frontiers revitalized the franchise’s 3D design, whereas Sonic Prime and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 revitalized the non-gaming branch. 

I’ll start with the film. It’s well-known that Hollywood has a massive problem adapting video games to film (and television, to a lesser extent), and in my own summation, I believe this comes from a few things. 

• By their very nature, video games are characterized by their interactivity. Removing that interactivity negatively hurts a lot of franchises when adapted, since the fun of controlling a character that is always associated with that property is gone. 

• Hollywood tends to gravitate towards adapting the highest-grossing game franchises, and they tend to adapt very kid-friendly franchises to reach the lowest common denominator. This makes sense, since very kid-friendly franchises also comprise some of the most successful series in the realm of video games (such as with Mario, Pokemon, Legend of Zelda, etc.). However, this reinforces a very dated notion that video games are “just for kids,” and it forces Hollywood writers to work with franchises that tend to have very bare-bones plots. We’re seeing the effects of this right now with the Super Mario movie, which is sparking discourse on social media as adult fans of the franchise are mocked for enjoying it. 

• Building off that prior problem, Hollywood often feels the need to alter the story in some way. Sometimes it's to add a story where there wasn’t one—in which case, you might need to reconsider the entire adaptation if there was never much story to begin with—but sometimes it is with the intent of making it more “approachable” for western audiences. Of course, altering the core aesthetic, setting, structure or pacing of a video game’s narrative consequently alters the thing that made that story appealing in the first place, which, while not bad on its own, is doomed to disappoint fans of the source material. 

It seems that the logical approach is to either create a new, more mature story in a well-known world (as is the case with Detective Pikachu) or adapt high-grossing, well-established and critically-acclaimed video game franchises that were aimed at adolescents and adults (as is the case with The Last of Us and Uncharted). Even so, the former approach is very risky, and the latter approach has critically failed just as often as it has succeeded—look at Tomb Raider, Warcraft and Assassin’s Creed. 

With all of that being said, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 have somehow succeeded as the best video game-to-film adaptations and that…just completely baffles me. I’m not even entirely sure how. Presenting both films in live-action should’ve taken away from the cartoony charm of the games, taking away the high-speed interactive gameplay should’ve made this unenjoyable, having Hollywood actors do the voice acting should have made me cringe, adding so many OCs and making it firmly set in Earth should’ve ruined the plot, but somehow, none of that happened. By god, none of that happened. 

While the first movie fell squarely into the category of “Good, and definitely better than I thought it’d be, but nothing spectacular,” the second movie genuinely blew me out of the water with how well it adapted Sonic the Hedgehog 2, 3 and Knuckles. Ben Schwartz has consistently proved the excellent comedic voice he honed in Parks and Rec translates perfectly into the realm of animation with Rise of the TMNT and Sonic. Idris Elba did a shockingly good job as Knuckles, and Jim Carrey has embodied the spirit of Dr. Robotnik in a completely unique, fresh way that we’ve never seen before in a live-action video game adaptation. It made me genuinely excited for the third live-action movie, and I’m ecstatic at how they’ll adapt Sonic Adventure and Adventure 2. 

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Moving on to the world of video games, Sonic Frontiers took the world by storm in a way we haven’t seen in quite a while. Despite going up against fucking God of War Ragnarok, Frontiers sold remarkably well and was critically praised. Hailed as one of the best 3D sonic games, Frontiers is absolutely a flawed game, and critics and fans are aware of this. The final areas are quite bland, the combat can be tedious, and there were technical issues, as per usual for this franchise. 

But Frontiers is, in many ways, a bold new step for the franchise and a victory for Sonic fans in terms of mechanics. The open world is awesome, and despite being a bit repetitive for some people, I found myself having an amazing time with it. In particular, I loved how the game was split into many smaller areas, each of which were their own mini open-world, as opposed to being one massive open-ended area. It helped with my choice paralysis when it came to deciding what to do, and after experiencing this in Ghost of Tsushima and God of War (2018), I’m convinced this is the optimal way to design open worlds. My enjoyment was not merely derived from just the world design and layout itself, but due to how it synthesized with the great environmental design, the sound design, and the music. Sonic has always had great music, but for the first time, it felt more than just energetic and powerful. At its best, Frontiers’ music is also melancholic, somber. Haunting, even. 

Frontiers’ boldness permeates its writing, which, for the first time since Adventure, feels creative, daring and mature. Frontiers manages to advance character arcs in a meaningful way we’ve never seen before by having Tails, Sonic, Amy and Knuckles all decide to split up and pursue their goals. Sonic is obviously heartbroken, but he loves his friends enough to support their decisions. Combined with Sonic’s new English voice actor, and the blur has a newfound maturity appropriate for his story. 

One of my favorite parts about Frontiers’ writing is how pays homage to the past games, the comics and the animated shows. The attention to continuity is all over the place, which I mean in a good way—the game’s attention to continuity permeates many different parts of the narrative. For instance, Eggman references Maria in his dialogue for the first time in decades, and Sticks is established as a friend of Sonic’s, meaning that she’s canon to the main continuity and not just Boom. 

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Finally, we have Sonic Prime. In a trio of surprising products, Prime was the one that surprised me the most. I’m the sort of person who grew up on Sonic X, and I watched Boom for the fourth-wall-breaking humor with my friends, but I genuinely never thought we’d see a 3D animated Sonic series that takes its story seriously, brings the franchise in a new direction that we’ve never seen anywhere else, and looks pretty fucking great while doing it. 

Indeed, Prime manages to do all of those things. Bringing with it a slightly more goofy light-hearted tone than Frontiers (which is to be expected), Prime nonetheless manages to be charming in its own right. It’s not quite a kids show, since it feels like it was made for older fans who grew up on the games, but that doesn’t mean it's inaccessible to younger fans either. If I had to describe it, Prime nails the vibe of Sonic X so well that it almost feels like what older fans remember the animated shows being like. That is to say charming, goofy and vibrant, but also able to take the fastest hedgehog alive into some genuinely interesting and new story directions. 

I’m still only a few episodes into the show, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m genuinely quite pleased and surprised with what we’ve got. Sonic is once again voiced by a new VA, and yet, just like with Frontiers and Sonic the Hedgehog 2, I found myself really enjoying the new guy. Roger Craig Smith is always going to be the go-to Sonic I have in my head, much like Kevin Conroy for Batman, but that doesn’t mean I’m not open to seeing new interpretations of the character. Deven Mack seems relatively new to the game, but he’s already acquired a rather impressive portfolio in just the last 2-3 years, appearing in Bakugan, Ninjago, The Dragon Prince, Total Drama, Daniel Spellbound and Transformers BotBot, among others. I’m eager to see what Prime and Mack bring to the table in the second season, and I consider Prime another great success for the franchise alongside Frontiers and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. 

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It’s surreal to even be in this position, a position where I can confidently say, “Yeah, the last Sonic game, the animated Sonic show and the live-action movie were all pretty fucking good.” But here we are. 

It’s odd to say for Sonic of all things, considering this franchise is known for driving fans away with its tendency to experiment with every mainline entry and constantly switch up gameplay and story gimmicks; but it almost feels like experimentation and trying new things was the X-factor that made these three products so great. Prime brought in a multiverse concept we’ve never seen before, the live-action films had the absolutely nutty idea of integrating the arcade games in the real-world and they somehow made it work by just leaning into the absurdity of all, and Frontiers went in a completely new direction with its level design, yet it still justified this new direction in the context of the franchise by constantly referencing and integrating older material into its script. 

I have no idea what the takeaway is here. I don’t even know if there is one. All I can say is, I’m excited to see where things go from here, not only with the games, but with Prime’s second season and the next live-action films. 

Stay strong, Sonic fans. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again.