An odd feature of the 16-bit days was the idea that every console needed a mascot, some game character that was solely tied to that brand. Nintendo’s mascot Mario was long established by the time the Sega Genesis (MegaDrive in Europe) was released, so it wasn’t long before the teams at Sega had to come up with an answer. Their response came in 1991 with the release of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Now, Sonic isn’t your everyday kind of hedgehog. Quite the reverse in fact, being bright blue in colour, and amazingly fast. At the time, Genesis was becoming the cool console to have, and so Sonic fit the bill perfectly. The speed of the game was like nothing before seen, and the trademark loop the loop section has become a staple of the Sonic games to follow. The beauty of the game came in its level layout. Starting at the top of a hill, you could run down, rolling into a ball to build up the speed required to then soar round a loop the loop, bounce off a spring high into the air and land on another hill to continue the sequence. Fast reactions were a must!

A novel idea at the time was the collecting of rings. Before Sonic, such mechanisms in games were generally for bonus points, and possible an extra life if you collected enough. Sonic added an interesting new twist in that the rings became a life line. When you got hit by an enemy, all the rings you had collected would bounce away from you, but if you were quick you could collect some of them back again. Only if you had no rings in your possesion when you got hit would you actually lose a life.

Sonic was pitted against the evil Dr.Eggman (known as Dr. Robotnik in Europe for some reason), who appeared at the end of each world as the end of level boss. When Sonic had managed to disable whatever weird contraption Eggman was attacking him with, Eggman would beat a hasty retreat to fight another day. Following the boss encounter, Sonic would then release all the animals that Eggman had captured back into the level by hitting a button on a big metal prison cage.

Sonic 2 saw Sonic joined by his companion Miles Prower, otherwise known as Tails, an orange fox with two tails! In the single player game Tails would follow Sonic around the level, getting left behind as Sonic sped down hills and round loops, but catching up again as he flew in using his twin tails as a helicopter. In two player mode, the game became a race between Sonic and Tails to complete the level.

Although Sonic first appeared on the Genesis, versions of the original games also appeared on the Master System and Game Gear. With the release of the Sega Saturn, Sonic was forced into an odd isometric 3D game which is widely regarded as a bit of a mistake. While not necessarily a bad game, compared to the games on PlayStation and Nintendo 64 it was seen as being behind the times. The general lack of popularity of the Saturn didn’t really help either.

Sonic continues to be a mainstay of Sega’s output, with the developers Sonic Team having produced a wide range of games featuring the hedgehog or his chums. We’ve had Sonic Spinball (an odd take on pinball, with Sonic as the ball), Sonic Adventure and even a Sonic Beat ‘em up. Most recently there’s been Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog (a spin off game with a spin off character) on the current round of consoles, and coming soon there’s Sonic Riders (an airboarding game).

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