Classic Sonic's Sustainability

With this year marking the release of both Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces, a worrying trend seems to have stuck itself to new Sonic games; that of leveraging ‘classic’ imagery and sentiment as a crutch to stay relevant. This isn’t entirely new, but it is an unsustainable method that will only yield returns for so long before we get tired.

Sonic Mania looks like a wonderful throwback to a time gone past, and looks well worth playing – the reviews of the game agree with this point. But the problem is in the game’s premise rather than its execution. It is part of a growing number of ‘flashback’ titles that leverage a desire for Sonic to ‘go back to his roots’ (a cliché phrasing of modern Sonic criticism if ever there was one).

How sustainable is this idea, really? Between Sonic 4 episodes 1 and 2, Sonic Generations, Sonic Mania, Classic Sonic’s return in Sonic Forces, not to mention a huge number of re-releases on virtual console systems, how much longer can SEGA milk what’s left of gamer’s nostalgia before gamers get bored of this trend? We can only see remakes and re-releases of Green Hill Zone so many times before it will inevitably lose its charm.

The unfortunate fact is that despite major positive steps forward in the form of Sonic Colours and Generations, the series still evokes an image of Bambi on ice, with shaky foundations that look so horribly precarious it’s almost hard to watch as the series goes on.

In its struggle for an identity in modern times, Sonic’s leveraging of its classics may have been a successful experiment, with the appearance of Classic Sonic in Generations and Forces, but now the trend is quickly becoming a tired trope. It’s time for gamers’ favourite hedgehog to drop these crutches and run – after all, isn’t this what Sonic is best known for?

More than anything, SEGA needs to reinvent Sonic’s identity, perhaps by looking at current Sonic conventions and throwing them out of the window. The transition wouldn’t be painless; many fans cling dearly to their nostalgic love of the ‘classic’ Sonic series that ended in the 90’s. But it won’t be long before this love runs out and instead we groan every time we see SEGA march out Classic Sonic only to expose him to further indignity. Let Classic Sonic rest now, and perhaps nail the final coffin in Modern Sonic’s grave, and give us a true reinvention of the character and his conventions before he winds up stuck in that grave permanently. 

My Favourite Boss Battles Part 2: Robotnik (Sonic 1)

What makes this boss battle so purely memorable for me is simply that it is my first boss battle. I had reached the end of Green Hill Zone Act 3 only to be met with this monstrosity swinging a ball at me. I felt that panic of not knowing what to do after I hit him only to find he was still alive; up until this point all of my enemies had died in the one attack. The boss battle music served up dramatic tension while I was destroyed by what was probably one of the easiest boss battles in gaming. What can I say, I was a noob.

However, there are interesting aspects to this boss battle beyond just being my first; the way the ball swung in a predictable manner forced the player to learn how to time Sonic’s jumps, and got us especially familiar with the mechanic; the time that Sonic hovered in the air, the height of the jump itself, the speed at which he fell to the ground. In this boss battle we were forced to confirm that we knew how to do the jump attack at a proficient level enough to move on. As far as teaching players go, the overall result is effective.

Not only that, but this battle taught us about the structure of the game; we had been through three acts, and now we had a boss. Now we knew to expect that the next zone will have three acts and a boss. It taught us a lot about the story; if you didn’t read the manual, you’d be forgiven for wondering why there were robots patrolling around, but this game gave you the smoking gun; there’s a bad guy.

It seems elementary to this day, but in the retro gaming era these lessons were big things, and it is clear that Sonic’s developers took the thinking that a game should be teaching you its mechanics as you play. Sonic 1’s first boss might not be the most memorable to many gamers, but for someone playing his first ever videogame, it is probably one of the most important teaching exercises in a game that I’ve experienced.