What Does SONIC Mean To You, As A Fan

What does SONIC mean to you, as a fan?

Desire and passion. They rule us all. Be it the desire to do something momentous, leaving a mark on history, or passion. The passion that burns inside us all, the passion to succeed? The passion to continue? Or the passion to try. It matters not, what matters is that inside each one of us is a feeling we cannot describe a feeling that burns like fire in our veins, it screams from beyond our control rattling our brains until it has no where left to run too. Slowly the fuse is lit and all of a sudden the rage explodes from within and then with all the rage of a demon unleashed from it’s shackled chains it lashes upon us scaring our minds forevermore.

Is that a good way to describe the feeling we all had when we encountered the ‘bouncy barrel’ in Sonic 3 for the first time? What was it about a dam little barrel that caused me to restart Sonic 3 from scratch to see if there was another way around. Why did I spend one month glued to the screen jumping up and down trying to figure it out. Why did I buy every single Sega magazine that month from Sega Pro, Sega Power, Sega Mean Machines, Gamesmaster and even those cheap ￡1:50 ones which had Simpson’s jokes in where the reviews were only one paragraph long! Why did I spend more time on that one puzzle than I ever did on anything Silent Hill or Resident Evil had to offer, heck even Laura Croft’s puzzles are like the fisher price block in the hole games in comparison. And all what I had to do was push up and down in an even rhythm! For one whole month of my young life I thought nothing but a dam puzzle in a videogame.

In fact I even wrote a song to express how much of a burden it was. And by a coincidence the lyrics go really well to “The Time Warp” from ‘The Rocky Horror Show.’ I call it ‘The Sonic Bouncy Barrel Show’ Just put these lyrics to the tune.

It's astounding, time is fleeing
Madness takes its toll
I’ve got to focus, not for very much longer
I've got to keep control

I remember doing the bouncy barrel
Smacking controllers over ma head
The futility would hit me and the void would be calling
Let's do the bouncy barrel again...
Let's do the bouncy barrel again!

It’s just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
With your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the push it up and down that really drives you insane,
Let's do the bouncy barrel again!

It's so schemie, oh simplicity free me
A month you won’t see me, oh no not at all
I’ve developed dimension, with voyeuristic intention
Well-secluded, I see none
With a bit of a mind flip
You're there in the time slip
And one life goes down the drain
You're spaced out on frustration, like you're under termination
Let's do the Bouncy Barrel again!

Well I was walking down the street just a-having a think
When a magazine gave me an ickle wink
I opened it up, took me by surprise
It had a hint book of the pocket size.
It stared at me and I felt a change
Bouncy Barrel was nothing, I cud win again
Let's do the Bouncy Barrel again!

That was the last time I would ever say the phrase “Mum can we go to the circus?”

But… that was not the first time I encountered Sonic, the first time I was him was when I was very young a small boy where Kingston Upon Hull was the world. And I was the king of all young men. Standing in a videogame shop holding my grandmas hand with only a successfully completed Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64 under my gaming belt. From high above I could see a black TV screen that looked like it was the size of a house… later I would learn that all TVs were as large as that until a man would come along and invent the flat screen. But behind it’s protective glass as a moving image. A blue figure standing in a green environment. Suddenly as he moved a blue/purple flying bug came and tried to attack him. But he carried on, the music… the music made me hum. As I watched the blue and green colours on the screen my heart began to flutter. I did not know what was happening but I liked the feeling. Slowly I felt myself jumping barely an inch off the ground very quickly as though I had found Aladdin’s gold. Little did I know then that the trip I took with my Mother and Grandma that Saturday afternoon would begin a 15 year legacy that would take such a large part of my life, constantly coming back to a simply blue character with red pointy shoes.

Was I ranting? I apologise. But the question presented cannot be answered in a simple paragraph. It’s impossible. No-one can do it. I’ll explain why later. For now, allow me to indulge myself in another little anecdote. The Christmas I got Sonic 1 and my Megadrive I’ll never forget, it was the first Christmas I can remember crying. My dad was at work; my mum had let me open up my Megadrive and Sonic 1. But we had never used something like a Megadrive before. We couldn’t get the TV to pick up the Megadrive channel as she called it. This was before scart leads were standard where you had to plug the connection lead into the TV antenna socket. For 3 hours I shed tears, I hated the Christmas day and my mum could do little to comfort me… I’m sorry mum, really I am. At the time that Megadrive and Sonic was the centre of the world nothing existed on that day other than my desire and passion to play that game. But when my dad came home… we fixed it, and I got to play Sonic for the first time… so it began… was it a blessing? A curse? Maybe the answer is yet to come.

At the time Sonic was the centre of the world, as with many Sonic fans. This rare x-ray image taken during the early 1990’s of a child Sonic fan shows just how their love for Sonic affects their brain. As the picture shows, shockingly Sonic at this time was a powerful influence which spilled into schools spirally off hundreds of smaller pieces of merchandise and cartoons, until it was too late to stop it, the ear of the hedgehog had begun. As with many thousands of people around the world I too felt that the only things that mattered were ‘hedgehogs’ and ‘Sonic.’ My life revolved around everything else that was in the game. Nothing existed outside the game… much to my parent’s displeasure. My desire to play the game along with those thousands of other gamers shone brighter than a supernova in the darkness of space. Our passion for Sonic had influenced the media to a point where now TV schedules altered to compliment my/our hero.

My childhood wasn’t a happy one, I suffered a lot at school and dint have many friends… yes I know the pity card comes out you say… but no… this isn’t a tale of pity, it’s a tale of hope. Each time I held the thick chunky plastic in my small hands fingers bashing those three circle buttons, thumb pressing on the right d pad button Sonic would run, and as he got faster and faster breaking through the badniks, inside my head stories would form, stories that I knew one day would bring myself and someone else happiness. With each passing level came new difficulties and new challenges for the hedgehog. My desire to beat the game made Sonic go faster, blazing through each level until it seemed impossible to keep up. With each boss defeated and each badnik smashed I gripped the pad so tight it groaned as the integrity was tested to its limit. I started to see myself as Sonic. Me the little Hull boy who didn’t have many friends a hero saving the planet? Why not? After all a hedgehog could do it? Each day I entered the world with hope, like Sonic I would fight against overwhelming odds, each day I would perform better and faster trying to break all records without sacrificing quality of what it was I would do. My running times and swimming times improved. I felt happy at last! Still I did wait though for Dr Robotnik to attack so I could save us all with my super speed. But I couldn’t do a spin attack… at least not yet… soon very soon. To me, Sonic was a symbol of hope. Someone who could lead me out of the darkness into the light. Someone who make me feel alive again. He was a character that welcomed everyone and didn’t judge, he was a symbol of good purity that would fight to protect and to stop evil from taking over. And one he does it his reward is… nothing…. What better role model is there? Children around the world now had a hero to look up to and to desire to be. A selfless hero who also had a good lifestyle message… that being… run a lot. Go exercise! Run everyone run! Those were the good young days.

In the years to come I can recall sitting in my Grandmas cold bedroom on the edge of the bed, Grandma didn’t have good heating, especially in her bedroom where my Megadrive lived. I would sit for nearly the entire day. Outside the sun rose and set in a time when childhood innocence ruled and the IRA were in the news, shivering constantly with a small wool blanket wrapped around me, but in my small little hands my fingers danced away at the pad as Sonic 2 arrived. Again as before the feeling of excitement was the same, only now I was slightly older and wiser, but one thing hadn’t changed, my passion and desire to play the game. Like that small child in the videogame store on that Saturday afternoon, as I opened up the Christmas present my heart fluttered and I jumped up and down again. But this time I knew how the Megadrive worked. Within a week I had completed it with all the emeralds… But I wouldn’t stop playing it until late into the New Year. I don’t think I’ve ever done that with a game since… how strange… why was this? I knew the story, I had done everything, but something kept drawing me back, like a ghostly whisper it pulled me to the game. Each time I tried to switch off I would look at the black switch and stare at it, Sonic would be calling be, pulling me back to the edge of the bed asking me to play just once more. And as though I had been seduced I obliged and continued. Again a warm feeling of pleasure engulfed my body pulling me back time and time again. No other game that I can think of has done this… why this one? I hope to have an answer soon.

I understand that some people may claim that I could be making all this up. Anyone can find an old copy of Sonic 1 and post it… but to give an idea as to how much I loved Sonic. Have a look at some of my fan art that I made back in the years 1995 and 1996. Have a look!

Ah yes, you see what I wanted to do was picture my heroes as giant sized Godzilla like monsters fighting and attacking other giant things and basically causing havoc. A bit like an end of the world apocalypse thing.

As with the next and last picture I ever did. I was going along the same lines as the previous ones, a total destruction type thing that doesn’t make much sense. As there are two Sonics in this picture for some reason and a lot of fictional things. But unlike the previous pic this one was set at night and from a new perspective. And doesn’t it put all those dev. pieces of crap to shame! Not bad for 12 year old who hated drawing. There are two others that I did at an even earlier age, one was a ‘94 Rampage’ and a ‘95 Summer Smash Rampage’ but I can’t find them so those will have to do. So you can see my passion for Sonic has existed since it first came out, hopefully it’ll convince people who don’t believe my Saturday afternoon story that it did happen, as has everything else… It’s also strange; unlike any other game I have never spent huge lengths of time working on fan art. Sonic is the exception to that claim. With Sonic I made hundreds of drawings and even started a small mini comic once… but that is never going online… way too embarrassing. What was it about this one character that had influenced me to such a point that I was now developing artistic talents towards it?

I am 21 years old now. In the last few years I’ve been through school, college and now coming to the end of university. Thanks to my courses I can look at different medias and watch things and analyse them getting deeper into the narrative and spotting themes better than most people. In adult education you can do these subjects, theatre, music, film, art, media and English Literature. Each of those subjects looks at hidden meanings in books, plays, films and music. There is no videogame studies subject. Despite many people looking deeply at cryptic games like Silent Hill posting huge essays looking deep into the narrative structure and outside influences. I asked myself. Why not do it for Sonic? What’s so different? There’s so much in the game as well as it’s outside universe and influence surely there’s something there. And there is an un-charted chasm of unknown ideas, theories and thoughts that people never seen to notice. Be it the Cold War influences, The Fox and the Hedgehog essay, or my favourite the love/relationship between Sonic and Amy. Things like this are barely explored other than the odd comment based on events that happen in comics and the few cut scenes in game. Few people consider looking at the whole spectrum and the history of the entire series as well as the body language to come to a conclusion. But I do. I like doing this. For me it makes the newest games more enjoyable. If we know the characters we can see them more as real and then we can see them as beings beyond the fiction world but almost real life characters and we watch and control their lives from behind our control pads. My passion to do this had allowed me to learn a lot about Sonic and his friends. With each game I get a new desire to seek out new or deeper elements of their personality for my enjoyment. But I don’t do this for any other game; especially not in the detail I do it to Sonic. Sonic is a fascinating character, he has no past, no origin and even his home planet isn’t universally known… only speculated. How is it someone like this has raised to the level of cultural icon? Worldwide he is recognised and use in some of the wildest ways, even to fight Nazism.