The Cruel March of Time: Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic the Hedgehog is my first memory of playing a video game. My parents got me a Mega Drive system from the local Cash Converters and set it up with a CRT TV on top of an old, broken down washing machine repurposed for use as a table. I was drawn in by the colours and the fast gameplay, and of course, the ‘cool’ hedgehog running around those bright levels. In just a few months’ time I had become a fan, and had amassed a collection of STCs (Sonic The Comic), and tapes of the Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog show.

A hit of pure colour and nostalgia
(image from http://www.soniczone0.com/games/sonic1/greenhill/)

At his core, Sonic was the embodiment of 90’s culture and the cheese associated with it. Everything in the 90’s was ‘X-Treme to the max!’, and most products were sold by young teens wearing sunglasses and skateboarding, while also shouting ‘whoa!’ in their best Bill and Ted accents. That is why he has aged so badly.

Cool is a term that is always changing. What is trendy right now won’t be trendy with the passing of time. With the rise of the Internet and the faster-paced social culture we now in, memes can be created and destroyed in a matter of hours. We now live in an era of ‘viral’ culture.

Which is why to base a character purely on ‘coolness’, like Sonic, is ultimately dooming him to a life of cringe.

Look at any memes on Sonic the Hedgehog and you will see what I mean. He is the butt of most internet jokes. Every critic loves to loathe him, and every Internet persona loves to mock him. Sonic is not just uncool, he is the unfortunate victim of a pile-on at the hands of the whole Internet. 

I’m not trying to say that the position is undeserved; after a spate of low-quality titles and cringy attempts to redefine the character, ultimately coming to a head with Sonic 2006 and now the much-reviled Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, that blue hedgehog is just about the most mocked character that one can think of.

As a fan from being a child, and someone who managed to cope with years of bullying thanks to the blue bomber (and yes, someone who even made DeviantArt recolours, I was one of those people), it makes me sad to see the public image that has befallen Sonic. While many do appreciate him as a mascot, most agree that he was a product of his time.

The problem with all of this is that Sonic’s bottom line was ‘coolness’. He was meant to be the next big thing that made the last big thing look lame. He was designed to be inherently ‘faddy’. That I called him the quintessential symbol of the 90s is testament to that fact. He had adopted just about everything that was a trend in those times, including sunglasses, guitars, a Macy’s Day Parade balloon, and an awkward stint as a DJ in a Dreamcast promotional video. 

Roll on the 2000’s; the popularity of the PS2, and the Xbox 360 generation after that. Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto and the modern FPS, and a new focus on ‘gritty action titles’ became the flavour of the day. There was no room for a Way-Past-Cool Blue Hedgehog; that was kiddy stuff. Even the big N itself suffered a little at the hands of the Gritty Times; look at the poor reception of the Gamecube, and the trouble it is having even to this day with its image of being ‘childish’. Thanks to the Nintendo Wii targeting a different audience, and 2010’s hipster-retro trend, Nintendo properties have survived, however, relatively unscathed. On the other hand, SEGA treated the world to Shadow the Hedgehog, in a desperate attempt to stay cool in this ‘gritty’ era.

The issue is that Sonic was never made to last. Mario was never meant to be everything ‘trendy’ about a particular era. He was always just himself; a colourful, impactful mascot. He never had to do anything cool to be popular, because Nintendo relied on a different bottom line than SEGA did when they designed Sonic the Hedgehog.

While there has been a recent uptick in the quality of titles released in the Sonic name, such as Colours and Generations, Sonic the Hedgehog has never, and will never, become quite as significant or as ‘cool’ in the public consciousness as he once was. Thankfully, his original Mega Drive games are good enough to stand the test of time; it is only a shame that as a mascot, Sonic hasn’t stood that same test.

But in another way, maybe Sonic the Hedgehog has stood that test. Maybe he is not meant to be cool today, but rather, an ironic look back at the things we did in the 90s that made us cringe. Maybe instead of trying to keep up with the times, what Sonic needs to do is own his cheese. Most of what the Internet now sees in Sonic they are using to mock 90s culture and laugh at it, and maybe that is a way forward for SEGA’s mascot. With Sonic Mania coming out, I feel confident that the developers are ‘getting it’, and understanding that Sonic is a product of his time, and using that ‘time’ to sell, rather than the mascot himself. By aiming for our nostalgia, Sonic has been kept somewhat alive, but lacking of an identity as eponymous as Mario’s, he has not thrived in the same way from that nostalgia. But maybe if his developers look hard enough and achieve the right balance of mocking 90s culture while at the same time embodying it, perhaps there is a way to take such mocking memes as Sanik and ‘Gotta go fast’ into something popular.

I have mentioned before that the march of time is always cruel, and Sonic perhaps more than most has suffered from that. I think that he was doomed from the start, because being a blue talking hedgehog that spoke in cliché slogans was never going to be edgy for long. As gaming has matured and its audience, perhaps in an immature way, called for gritty ‘realistic’ games, the Sonic franchise has stumbled and struggled to find its identity. However, recent iterations like Colours and Generations show some magic and life in the hedgehog yet, and I believe that now the marketing around Sonic may just be able to find that right balance of 90s mockery and nostalgia to inject a new life into the mascot that he may be able to set himself above his current, meme-fuelled disdain.