Sonic: A history of our favourite hog

Posted by Adam Hartley on Sat 29 Nov 2008

A bolt from the blue as Sonic arrives back on the scene

Sonic’s world’s been bust apart by the evil Dr. Eggman, so he has to dash about the place to hoover up the power of the chaos emeralds to save the day!

Yup, that’s right folks. The UK’s favourite videogame character, that rascally lil’ speedy blue hedgehog is back, in the latest multi-format offering, Sonic: Unleashed. But will the new game bring cheer to the legions of fans out there (and in the T3 office)? Or will it cause (yet more) heartache amongst the SEGA faithful? We talked to fans and the game’s Japanese producer and renowned director of Sonic Team, Akinori Nishiyama, to find out.

Firstly, how has Nishiyama-san seen Sonic change over the ages? “Well, the original Sonic from the MegaDrive era had a smaller head and tail and a more cartoon-like character than he does now, yet still had a cool edge.”

As Sonic became increasingly popular with children through the 1990s, the Sonic Team boss notes that he “became a milder character… losing, for example, his furrow on his brow.” That was until the classic “Sonic Adventure” for Dreamcast, where the developer recalls that the team went back to Sonic’s origin and “made him more cheeky, fearless and cool.” And thus, the 21^st-century Sonic was born.

Sonic fans are amongst the most hardcore (and often hard-to-please) group of gaming nuts on the planet. In a recent survey, Sonic was voted the UK's favourite game character. What was the teams’ reaction to that news? “We were simply very happy when we heard the news. To be honest, I was a little surprised too, since I’m aware that we have so many popular characters now. Knowing that so many people in the UK support Sonic is a great pleasure and will motivate us to keep creating good games in the future. Thank you all for your support!”

And while reviews have generally been well above average for Sonic: Unleashed, the user reviews scores on metacritic are notably higher than the ‘professional’ critics – a sure sign of a game with a solid community of fans. So what new and cool features have the team dropped into Sonic: Unleashed to keep the hardcore sweet?

“Until now, the tradition has been to make appearance of a new character, who will have a new action or feature to provide new gameplay,” Nishiyama-san tells T3. “On the other hand, we have rather tended to keep any changes to Sonic as an action game character to a minimum. This time, we thought of having Sonic do a “new thing” and introduced a new feature in which Sonic transforms at night.”

Clever stuff indeed, because by doing this, the game also “became something of a “best-of” Sonic game which has good bits from both 2D and 3D Sonic games, not to forget to mention the fact that the night-time Sonic (Sonic the Werehog) offers completely new gameplay with powerful combat actions and athletic actions.”

Fans are already lapping up Sonic’s latest outing, with members of the illustrious Sonic Stadium community having played the game at a special SEGA preview day, posting: “Difficult as this may seem to grasp to both the classic and modern fanboy…the general feeling for the game was positive. And we’re talking [from POV of] a group of Sonic fans from all angles and opinions here.” A feeling of upbeat positivity that, according to these fans, “comes from throwing away whatever preconceptions you had about what Sonic Unleashed is or rather, SHOULD be.”

Not all are as taken with the introduction of the new Werehog stages though, with UK:Resistance’s Gary Cutlack (arguably the UK’s number one SEGA fanboy and lapsed Sonic fan) sadly telling T3: “Oh man, I haven’t gone through my usual routine of getting really excited, trying to maintain excitement and eventually giving it more out of then than it probably deserves in a review simply because it's Sonic.”

“I think when I saw the phrase "Werehog" being used to describe the initial screens a part of my brain switched off. Or died. I'll have an opinion about it when it hits the bargain bucket for £7.99 and I pick up a copy which, judging by the review scores so far, ought to be next Thursday.” Ouch!

“Of course we have greatest respect to past Sonic and Sonic games,” says Nishiyama-san, when asked about what it’s been like working with a legend like Sonic, adding that game development should never be ‘too retrospective’. “We have an old saying that goes back to Confucius that goes “Learning from the old, You know the new.” When we make games, we always take the stance to “take whatever good from past, and crystallize them to create new things.””

“I think any creator should always be going half a step further forward than users’ imaginations,” he adds, “but one step forward would be too far ahead.” Though he is also quick to add that he doesn’t really consider Sonic to be a ‘legend’, telling us “I have spent too much time with him, so I see him more as a cheeky little fella who’s always beside me.”

And finally, what of SEGA? How has the legendary Japanese gaming giant changed over the ages? “It’s a hard question to answer because it can mean a lot of different things,” says the father of Sonic, noting that obviously, “the biggest change would be that we no longer make consumer game hardware.

“By leaving hardware and focusing on software, I feel that we are no longer capable of think of strategy beyond each franchise/ sequence… On the other hand, by leaving hardware, now we are able to provide software to many hardware [formats], providing a wider opportunity to present Sonic to different audiences. So this was a good change to us.”

Link: Sonic Unleashed