Now,
About Sonic the hedgehog.
It Began in 2002 on the end of November and the beginning of December, where I had to go to an only five week daycare/School Tour at a new different Christian school (And to be honest: is way better than the other middle Christian school Ive gone to.)
there were these activates that range from: regular recess- playing outside, which as a huge playground or inside and play with toys and video games ect. There PE is way cooler too; They have different play days to do like: kick ball, Softball, Tag, even Archery (that one was REAL fun!) So on a Wednesday I've decided to play inside and conquer my so called fear: Playing some Video Games. Once I've enter, it was already a welcoming environment: Warm lighting, not too many Kids, comfy couches with bean bag chairs and many, MANY Video Games Consoles: Sega Master System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Neo Geo, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis + Saturn, Dreamcast and PlayStation 1+2; it was quite overwhelming for me, but nevertheless I circled this big Gaming Station until I heard this lovely melody. This funky Tune caught my ear and saw a familiar Blue little hedgehog running like the speed of light in a Colorful setting, I've found my winner!
So I sat down on the soft couch, Grab the Sega Genesis controller and...just stared at the screen; just letting the negative thoughts go by my head all while sonic is looking at me doing his iconic "I'm Waiting..." Pose
and next thing I knew: I press the a button and sonic walked, and then I did it again and he ran, and next thing I knew I really Press the button hard and sonic was back in business. I've Jump, Wait and speed through the levels to the next; really giving his name the blue blur for a reason, and I had a blast with him too.
I also played some others games as well that day and Ive never been so proudof my self; on Friday, ive decided to play another different sonic game on the Dreamcast: Sonic Adventure and man.., the shift to 2D to 3D was weird yet, amazing to me and some other kids who were behind me thought so too, because once I put in the disc in the Consoles the tense, yet badass opening exploded in front of us! Then the next thing I knew, I was the cool kid playing and the different gameplay was like night and day for me, from speeding face first to walking and sightseeing the game colorful world; exploring environment in different levels was both very intimidating yet exhilarating for me and I was only half way done with my Sonic journey because once I was picked up by my mom and told her all the fun times I had at the church as my mom was driving (and mostly about Sonic which she never understood, but she's glad im happy and had a great time too).
Time skip to March 2005
and not only are there other games I wanted to play (Sonic Heroes, Sonic Advance Series, Sonic Rush and Sonic Mega Collection) but one other game that coming that year: Shadow the Hedgehog. I really wanted to play this game because one: when I first saw him in Sonic Adventure 2 I thought he was the coolest looking character, and Two: I saw that cool Commercial for the video game at my nephew house; and by this time I was searching up Sonic stuff to fuel my Sonic craze, including DeviantArt (Yes. Seriously.)
that's when I found YouTube for the first time. Yes. For the very first time. And it looked very interesting; I mean posting your own videos to Create fun, cool and funny videos to Simple, helpful videos and even just normal vlog videos before vlog became a big thing( really give a whole meaning of "Broadcast Yourself"). I was browsing videos by a storm: Music videos, Cats/other animals, Anime, Video games and more. But the first Sonic related video I Found Was this one A low 360p video of the 3rd Trailer for Shadow the Hedgehog (the second Sonic related video was this tails video) and by that point i was searching up more Sonic related videos: Trailers, Game Soundtracks, GMVs(Game Music Videos), those werid text-to-speech Skit Videos, Fan-flash/Animation and fan-music, Gameplays and many more. (here's my YouTube Playlist of those videos; I've tried my best remember them because there was a lot.)
But while I was having a great time with this discovery, behind the scene of this series wasn't so good. The franchise was struggling and Sonic 06 was the game that made me finally see the cracks.
On February 2006 I was at my cousin house playing Sonic Riders with one of my cousin brothers (An pretty Fun game to play with your friends, but make sure you learn how to ride first, because it took some time for me) and as we were drained out and got something to snack and drink; my cousin was surfing some gaming Website, that's when he suddenly shouted: wait! new Sonic game?! That's when I carefully ran back to his bedroom with our snack and drinks and saw the still image of Sonic moving through a realistic version of Green Hill Zone with the E3 Trailers for the series' 15th anniversary.
And from the looks of it...it was okay. I mean the trailer alone it was a nice solid Demonstration of what's to come; with sonic running, fighting the evil robots and the part when a giant aircraft comes in and dropping more robots and sonic then going super sonic was cool. But the real second full game Trailer was something else; First The weird options: realistic Eggman-...need I say more. The gameplay-it still looks wonky and looks like needs a little more work and touch ups and this is coming from me Who don't play Video Games that othen! But the Cool Parts: the Beautiful settings, the game sequence animation is Amazing and NEW CHARATER: SILVER!! He looks cool and I couldn't care less what any others think of him (and he still my favorite to this day) and the Music was memorable. But overall The game as a whole left me feeling uneasy and for once i'm not the only one, the whole fandom said that the game still looks unfinished and little did we knew that's exactly what happen
The Sonic Team rushed the final stages of development, ignoring control problems and bug; Not only was the Xbox 360 release imminent, but the PlayStation 3 launch was scheduled not long afterwards. This put tremendous pressure on the team to develop for both systems; The Sonic Team was unable to finish Sonic 06 by its deadline, but Sega decided to release the unfinished game anyway to coincide with Sonic's 15th anniversary, but the fandom either didn't know that part or already knew but didn't tell others online and just played devil's advocate for the funnies. that was my calling to stay off that side of the fandom and stay on the fun side. (as much as I could of course)
For GMVs: There are (or were) plenty of Gaming Music Videos of Sonic; featuring: just one character, Ships or just showing off their editing skills.
For Animations or Flash: I just go to DeviantArt or YouTube to fine cool or Funny Flash Like: This one or this one or this one or if you want the whole meal: Sonic Paradox-Sonic Shorts
For Trailers: I look at fake trailers of other Movies and mix them to Sonic (some of them were really good) Check. These. Out.
For Fan Games: because if I cant play with the big guns, I can always play on the computer and play some flash games Like: Tails Cosmic Rush, Ultimate flash sonic and of course Final Fantasy Sonic X.
Even if I had a good time in this fandom, our so called reputation was pretty bad: from the gaming reviews they did everything to make sure that sonic as a whole was the bane of existence. Which is not fair because there ARE some pretty good games to play, but that doesn't mean that The Whole Sonic Games catalog was bad. There was games that were not good because of poor management, low on money and decision making. And the Last Great Sonic Game in the 2000s was Sonic Unleashed in 2008; from speeding through Windmill Isle for the first time during day to the beat em up demons in Dragon Road during nights, its functioning gameplay, worldly setting and that AMAZING Game opening sequence (Thank You Marza Animation Planet!) just a Good game with great childhood memories alongside.
in the 2010s they where really trying to rebrand the series as a whole (which to be honest that was around 2015) Games like: Mario & Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games (My favorite Series), Sonic Colors (A fun game) Sonic Lost World (it was alright...), Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (Yikes!) and Sonic Generations which was a good tribute to the franchise.
But I think the Series really rebranded itself was in 2015; The Sonic Team Moved and made more new teams and at that time in July 2016, Sega announced TWO new Sonic games for its 25th anniversary: Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces! Now this was a big deal for the fandom and they were really hyped for these games.
Then in 2019 Sonic Frontiers (it was surprisely good) was announced which was the first open-world in the series and was received some pretty good reviews.
But back On October 2, 2017, Paramount Pictures announced that they had acquired the rights to make a Sonic Movie, Than on 2020 the first trailer came out and....WOW. I think I've seen that much hate for the original design for a long time, so much so that the whole film had to delayed to re-design Sonic and released the movie in February 2020. The 1st Movie got the usual mixed-to-positive reviews and I though it was cute, but once I saw that post-credits scene featuring Tails I knew they were cooking; as of a whole The first film was a box-office success, becoming the sixth highest-grossing film of 2020.
Then the Second film grossed $405.4 million worldwide
And the Third film was a box office success, grossing $492 million on a budget of $122 million, becoming the highest-grossing film in the franchise, the second highest-grossing video game film.
And it's crazy to think this all started with a little audience testing
As of right now im still a Sonic fan to this day and I'm glad other sonic fans who grown up with this series can also join the crazy ride as well, with new comers along the way.
So as of right now: Stay Cool, Reach for the stars and Stay Golden 💛
