Quite a few Sonic the Hedgehog items today, and not by design; they’ve simply stacked up. In fact, I’ve opted to include all of the SEGA/Sonic stuff here, for those interested; I’ll add the rest of what I have later.

1. Remember Icons on G4, before they sold their soul and made it so anyone who did anything could appear on the show? Yeah, I rather enjoyed it when it was about video games; if anything, its problem was that a half hour with commercials was simply much too short.

   In any case, GameTap tried their hand at something similar, with a four-part Sonic the Hedgehog retrospective that you can find in its entirety here on Kotaku.

   From his birth as a desperate attempt to steal some of Nintendo’s thunder by artist Naoto ?shima and programmer Yuji Naka, to his latest rash of sub-par console titles, GameTap’s Sonic the Hedgehog Retrospective covers it all. Thankfully, however, the first three episodes of the 24-minute special are dedicated to the 2D Sonic classics, only delving into the 3D games during the last segment.

   Not to speak ill of the 3D games (deserving or not), but I get the feeling that the 2D stuff would be more interesting, anyway; it seems whenever something like this is recapped, most of the anecdotal material comes from the old days. Which is too bad, in some ways: I’m sure more than a few of us would love exposition of “what were they thinking” when it comes to hedgehogs with guns and interspecies romance.

2. And speaking of the old days of Sonic, I’m sure most of you have seen this, but just to make it official: “That Guy with the Glasses” presents The Nostalgia Critic, covering The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. What’s more, he doesn’t stop there, but also covers the SatAM series, too.

   Quite entertaining, this. Though I have to admit, I did rather enjoy Adventures back in the day. Probably in part because it treated Tails like an actual character.

3. Over on 61 Frames per Second, Bob Mackey gets into the action by digging up a NeoGAF thread wherein the secret origins of Sonic the Hedgehog are said to be revealed. This includes weird stuff like growing up a superstar athlete with a mom and siblings in Nebraska. Crazy stuff.

   The Sonic Retard, name aside, usually seems to know his stuff when it comes to all things Sonic, so I’m inclined to believe this is on the level. Unless, y’know, it’s been disproven or something.

4. Ever wonder why Sonic can’t swim? Well, wonder no more!

   One part gets me: “…that’s another gaming mystery solved. Perhaps one day we’ll discover why Mario eats mushrooms and stamps on tortoises.”

   Does this really need explaining? I mean, it should be obvious to anyone working in this biz.

5. Strategy Informer gets in on the retrospective action by bringing to us SEGA Ages: A Retrospective, which seems like a more personal tale of the writer’s involvement with the systems growing up, rather than any sort of company history.
6. Gamer Limit, on the other hand, has something more traditional with Untold Stories: Pt 1 – The Decline of SEGA (The Mega Mistakes). Whew, what a mouthful. So far, however, it seems that there is no “Pt 2.”
7. Finally, IGN takes a look at the character many considered SEGA’s mascot before Sonic hit the scene in their Alex Kidd Retrospective.

   (The real mascot of the time was a spaceship named Opa-Opa.)

   I always sort of felt bad for Alex Kidd, getting stuck in a bunch of lousy games. It seems like there might be some potential there, provided someone capable were to take him under their wing. But I think it mostly came from the Japan-only Dreamcast game, SeGaGaGa, which shows what happened to him after Sonic came along:

   

   That’s right; once Sonic came along, he had to make do by working in a video game store. That is, until SEGA called him back for SEGA Superstars Tennis. Which would be great, if not for what I’ve heard about the game not being very good.

   You can find out more about SeGaGaGa here on Hardcore Gaming 101, and they have a pretty expansive article on Alex Kidd, too, which you can find here.

–LBD “Nytetrayn”

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Points of Interest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.