Today, June 23rd, marks the 20th Anniversary of the release of Sonic The Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis.
(Thus the recent focus on the series, naturally!)
So, Happy Birthday, Sonic! Keep on running!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sonic The Hedgehog (Part 5: 2004-2011) 「ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ」（其の五：２００４年～２０１１年）
I left for Japan in the summer of 2004, bringing with me only the essentials—my Nintendo Gamecube, my Game Boy Advance, a collection of manuals and CDs, and Miles "Tails" Prower. For the little two-tailed fox, the trip must have been quite a surreal experience: he had originally been imported from Japan, after all. For me, Japan was at once new and familiar: everything seemed to recall the shadows of old memories, once thought lost in the misty corners of a three-year-old's memory.
The move to Japan may have been a drastic change of scenery, but any culture shock I could have potentially felt was lost in the challenges of living alone for the first time. Nevertheless, I slowly but surely built a life for myself.
One person who was a great support during the first few years was a fellow English teacher, a fiery, tomboyish young woman who lived in a neighboring city. Ours was a bizarre friendship: our personalities were so completely opposite that we were ironically perfectly matched. She was, like me, a huge fan of Japanese popular culture—and of video games. We would talk for hours about a variety of topics, and we also shared games and series that we enjoyed with one another. It was she who convinced me to read Harry Potter—and was willing to talk critically about the books. It was she who told me about Eragon and her dismal opinion of the series. Together we discovered Tales of Symphonia, 「鋼の錬金術師」 (Full Metal Alchemist) and 戦国無双 (Samurai Warriors). One of the games that I introduced to her, and that she found surprisingly fun to play, was Sonic Advance 3.
Sonic Advance 3 was brilliantly designed. The story involved Eggman using the power of the chaos emeralds to split the world apart. Separated from their friends, Sonic and Tails had to work together to find their companions and stop Eggman. Not much new in the story department, yes. What was unique, however, was the way in which Sonic and Tails worked as a team. Not only did they run through the levels together, and not only could they call on one another for support, they also had unique abilities that they could only use when paired with one another. The same was true for any pairing of characters: along with Sonic and Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Cream were also available to use. The game was so good, and the play style so creative, that I forgave Cream's presence in this title. Along with great play control, a fun system, and a clever way to collect chaos emeralds, the game also had polished graphics and spectacularly good music. The nod to the Green Hill Zone was a nice touch.
And, furthermore, the game had an excellent two-player mode.
With the help of a game link cable and an extra cart, Sonic Advance 3 could be played with a firend (even if the cartridges were of different regions!). When played together, each player took one character and raced through the levels as a team, helping eachother reach the goal. If one player was killed, both players had to go back to a checkpoint, which made the going a little difficult. Having two screens, however, meant complete freedom of exploration: the players were not required to stay near one another. I, of course, played as Tails, while my friend used Knuckles, since she loved both the character and his Japanese voice actor (神奈 延年 [Nobutoshi Canna]). We finished the main story after a good day's worth of playing, and my friend remarked that she had had a spectacular amount of fun.
While I was enjoying myself, however, most Sonic fans were growing restless. They were not entirely without good reason, either: the next big Sonic series title was Shadow The Hedgehog, and it featured the Sonic's black-spined rival as the game's weapon-toting main character. The game had its moments, but it was awkward to play and exceptionally dark and brooding. The music was also appropriately dark, though one piece, "Chosen One" by A2, was just fantastic. The creators reportedly hoped to spin Shadow off into his own franchise, but fan backlash quickly put an end to that dream.
The next release, Sonic Gems Collection, was well-received, largely because it was a compilation of rare older titles such as Sonic CD, Sonic R, and Sonic The Fighters, a Sega CD title, a Sega Saturn title, and an arcade title, respectively. I found myself primarily playing Sonic R, at last able to enjoy the game's music.
I thoroughly enjoyed (and completed) Sonic Riders for the Gamecube after I got used to the controls, but was unimpressed by Sonic Rush for the new Nintendo DS, particularly due to the title's insistence on adding another new character, Blaze the Cat.
These new characters, by the way, was becoming a sore point for Sonic fans in the United States. The ever-expanding cast seemed to be taking the focus away from Sonic and making the world unneccessarily convoluted. Sonic fans complained loudly about Sonic The Hedgehog for Xbox and PS3. I never had a chance to play the title, but dismal reviews did not have me running to the stores. Fans also complained about Sonic and the Secret Rings. I did buy that title, but I found its exceptionally strange controls difficult to use and soon gave up on it. This all happened on near Sonic's 15th anniversary. To celebrate the date, a lot of merchandise was released. I still proudly wear my Sonic T-Shirt, and my Sonic statuette stands proudly on my shelves.
Sonic Rush Adventure, another DS game, was a title that I never even picked up. I was content with replaying the Sonic Advance titles, the Sonic Adventure series, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles; the original Sonic Rush just hadn't cut it for me. Sonic's sales were flagging in Japan despite the Sonic X animated series. After Sonic Rush Adventure, 小学館 (Shougakukan) ceased releasing Japanese Sonic strategy guides (a shame, too; Japanese guides are exceptionally good, and I would have loved to see books for the next several releases, since I'm something of a collector).
The Sonic X animated series seemed to have given Sonic a boost in the States, though: when I would travel home, Sonic suddenly had a place on toy store shelves. Going to English fansites, in contrast, had now become quite an experience. Fans were screaming for Sonic to return to his roots, for series to cut out all of the extra characters, for games to feature only Sonic and Eggman. Sega seemed inclined to listen.
In the meantime, however, 2008 came, and brought with it the Summer Olympics. The gaming world seemed to explode when Nintendo and Sega announced that Sonic would be joining Mario in a video game version of the Beijing Olympics, entitled 「マリオ&ソニック AT 北京オリンピック」 (Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games).
I was excited, but doubtful. Sonic would be completing in all of the events, it seemed. But what about the swimming events? Sonic can't swim!
When I bought the title and put it in, I was in for a surprise: the developers had thought of that, too. Sonic could indeed compete in the swimming events, but he wore a bright yellow life jacket and his swimming technique consisted of flailing about in the water. The fact that it was possible to make him flail more quickly than Princess Peach could do the breaststroke was just hilarious.
I was impressed.
The summer of 2008 was also the year that I was assistant coach of my high school's track and field club. The timing was great. I would meet my best friend through coaching track and field, and we occasionally would challenge eachother to 100-meter races on Mario and Sonic's turf. That game was a workout—it marked the first time that video gaming had ever given me muscle pain!
Gaming had, for me, finally become a social activity again. One of the most wonderful games to play with friends was Smash Brothers X (Smash Brothers Brawl in the states). Ever since I saw that Pit would be joining the roster, I was glued to the game's site, watching and waiting for any further announcements about the title.
The announcement that surprised me the most came shortly after the announement of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games: Sonic would be joining the roster of characters in Smash Brothers X!
This was a dream come true. The hedgehog played well; his controls were spot-on (a given, since the title was overseen by Masahiro Sakurai). Not only that, but he had his own stage, a beautifully rendered Green Hill Zone. As icing on the cake, Jun Senoue created a special arrangement of the stage music for the Angel Island Zone from Sonic The Hedgehog 3!
Jun Senoue's composition was also given a CD release, on True Blue: The Best of Sonic The Hedgehog. Sonic had enjoyed years of great music, and I soon made a point of gathering as many of the Sonic music CDs as I could—I now have a nearly complete collection. I was particularly happy to get my hands on Digi-Log Conversation, the soundtrack to Sonic Adventure. And I got it for a good price, too!
Something that came as a bit more of a surprise was finding a manual to Sonic The Hedgehog 2 in a warehouse-style store of used games, toys, and hobby goods. Such stores are common in Japan, and are a joy to walk through for collectors like me. When I opened the manual, I was blown away: the manual was bright and colorful, and full of story information, profiles, and concept art! I imediately set about collecting the other Genesis-era game manuals. With a good deal of effort, I eventually came into possession of the manuals for Sonic The Hedgehog 1, 2, and 3, as well as for Sonic CD, Sonic Spinball, and Sonic & Knuckles. All of the manuals are great reads, and all of them are rife with art. They, along with most of my other possessions, got shipped from Japan, and I wasn't able to sleep well until I had them safely here.
I had a few more Sonic titles to look forward to while I was in Japan, however. 「ソニック・ワールド・アドベンチャー」 (Sonic World Adventure, known as Sonic Unleashed in the US) was a spectacle of sight and sound. Stateside fans ripped it apart because of the clunky sections in which Sonic was transformed into a lumbering beast-like werehog, but I enjoyed the game a lot. I do have to admit, though, that the werehog stages wore thin after a while, particularly one stage in which the player has to jump across a series of tiny moving rafts using the extremely temperamental controls. Werehog Sonic has difficulty with small movements.
The music, too, is unbelievably good. Each area of the world features appropriate world music, created using real instruments. The violins that accompany Windmill Island were an early favorite, and each of the cities and villages, with their daytime and nighttime versions of their themes, are simple joys. I bought the soundtrack at the first possible opportunity, and the main theme, Endless Possibility, became my personal theme song during my last year at the high school where I spent the first five years of my Japanese working life.
However, while Sonic World Adventure was a great game, Tails plays only a small role in the story, and Knuckles was nowhere to be seen. Sega soon announced Sonic The Hedgehog 4 as a downloadable program, but I found that game, too, lacking. Fans tore it apart because the physics engine was laughable; I just found it lonely. Sega seemed to be responding to fans' demands to get rid of all of the extra characters, but losing Tails and Knuckles is like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Fans adore Sonic 2 and Sonic 3; those games have Tails and Knuckles as playable characters! To me, any side-scrolling Sonic game in which Tails doesn't follow Sonic around is missing a key component of what makes Sonic so much fun. I think that yes, the series had expanded to give too many characters the spotlight, but I think that Sonic Advance had the balance just about right: I'd like to see a game featuring just Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles. And maybe Amy, if for nothing more than to keep things interesting.
Sonic and the Black Knight was released, but reviewers had already begun to complain about it before it was even released. I did not buy the game right away, but I did get the CD soundtrack after watching a promotional video. Drums, guitars, and violins seemed like an amazingly good aural combination. Say what you will about Sonic and the Black Knight: it has high production values. Not only is it full of fanart, but the music is just inspired. My best friend and I made a point of listening to it when he was driving, and he became particularly fond of Camelot, with its seemingly unending series of musical feints.
For my part, I love the references to earlier games, particularly the quiet, contemplative versions of It Doesn't Matter and Believe In Myself, performed on violin. And the use of the traditional piece Ash Grove as a menu theme was a brilliant choice. The soundtrack was a collaborative effort on the part of many artists, and their dedication shows. Both the composition and the instrumental performance was in a class by itself. It is not an exaggeration to say that I made my decision to buy the game because of the quality of the soundtrack. Unfortunately, I bought the game shortly before leaving Japan, so I have not had much change to play it. I am looking forward to taking it for a spin when I can finally hook my Wii back up.
Winter of 2009-2010 brought with it the Winter Olympics, and Sonic and Mario took to the slopes to compete with one another in 「マリオ&ソニック AT バンクーバーオリンピック」 (Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games). I love the Winter Olympics, and so I had great fun having Mario ski, Sonic snowboard, and Tails break records in figure skating. I only wish that figure skating had featured music from the Mario and Sonic series as selections to skate to.
My best friend and I also spent a good bit of time playing that game together, though he didn't become as fond of it as he had been of Mario and Sonic's summer outing.
Sonic Chronicles arrived. A DS game created by Bioware, Sonic Chronicles was a Sonic Role-Playing Game. The game was fun and the system creative, but the timed touchscreen battle controls were frustrating and really got in the way of gameplay for me. It was irritating to enter into a round of battle only to have all of my attacks fail, and the precision required for success made it unrealistic to attempt playing the game on a bus, train, or airplane. Sonic Chronicles eventually saw a release in Japan, but it remains virtually unknown there.
Near the end of my time in Japan, Sega gave me one more treat: Sonic Colors. It was, at last, a game that seemed to make the fans happy. Most of them, anyway—it, like nearly every Sonic game before it, has been the subject of much online derision. Seeing the online community react to Sonic Colors brought to mind one ironic tounge-in-cheek comment by a fan: "True Sonic fans hate every Sonic game." Cute.
Sonic Colors came close to the sweet spot for me. The game was lighthearted, and the levels were fast and colorful. Tails was not a playable character, but he figured prominently in the game's plot and was Sonic's constant companion. One of the most interesting things that I noted in the game was that the game's dialogue (and some story points) differed dramatically between the English and Japanese versions. For example, listened to in English, Sonic and Tails are sneaking into Eggman's amusement park, Sonic is convinced that Eggman is up to no good but Tails thinks he has reformed, and Sonic and Tails both take credit for victory by good-naturedly ribbing one another. In the Japanese version, Sonic and Tails walk into the amusement park as regular guests (the vehicle they enter with is used by all park guests), both Sonic and Tails are suspicious of Eggman's reformation from the start, and Sonic and Tails each insist that the other is responsible for their victory. Both versions of the dialogue are fun (the jokes in the Japanese are downright hilarious), but you'll need to understand Japanese to follow that script, since the English subtitles were made with the English script in mind.The DS version of the game, too, was made with exceptionally high production values. There is an alternate version of the opening movie, the movies are of comparable quality to the Wii version, there is enough variety in the gameplay to keep both editions interesting, and the music is actually of the same level as the Wii version of the game.
Oh, did I mention that the music is spectacular?
I reserved Vivid Sound x Hybrid Colors, the Sonic Colors soundtrack, just before I left Japan for Christmas of 2010. The CD was due to be released the day before my flight, but the store actually provided me the music the day before its release date. I had been a good customer, too: my point card was so full that I got a $20 discount on the purchase. I immediately loaded it into my MP3 Player, and had something great to listen to on the long ride home. Sonic Colors was the highlight of that winter; my little cousin had also become a huge Sonic fan, so we played the Wii version a bit together at my aunt's house, and I polished off the DS version during that trip home.
Oh, and "Reach for the Stars" has become one of my favorite songs.
My last months in Japan were extremely bittersweet. It had been great to live and teach there, and I would miss my friends terribly. When I was packing things away, my best friend came over for one last round on the Wii before I put it in a big box and shipped it home. We played some 「戦国無双３」 (Samurai Warriors 3), which was a favorite of ours, and then I asked him to pick one last game, our very last to play together before I left.
His choice?
Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games.
How appropriate for two people who had become friends through running.
We booted up the game and decided to challenge the 400-meter relay. We had never had great success with the event before, but this last day, we nailed it. We broke both the Olympic Record and the World Record that were set in-game. And then, after that last adventure, the Wii turned off, went into its box, and set out for the United States.
Of course, a big part of what made Japan so magical was the students. I loved teaching them, and even when they were obnoxious, I couldn't get enough of them. Furthermore, my students' familiarity with video game culture had allowed me to do some creative things in class. For example, shortly after the release of Sonic Colors, I was teaching a writing class to my high school seniors. Writing essays was not easy for them, but they had to do it for their college applications (which, by the way, are in the form of tests). Not only did they have to write essays, they had to do it in English.
One problem that was tripping them up was a question that asked them to write about a character from a book, movie, or other medium that had inspired them in some way. A lot of my kids said that most of what they read were manga (Japanese comics), and they thought that teachers would scoff at an essay about a comic book character. They struggled to come up with characters to choose whom they thought would impress college admissions.
I stopped them then and there. The importance of these essays, after all, was to be genuine: writing about something that was meaningless to you would be immediately transparent and would result in a weaker essay. If comic book characters had inspired them, they should by all means write about comic book characters. If they could support their ideas and write clearly, their essay would have an impact—and a personal touch. I vowed to give them an example the next day.
The next day, I came to class with a small bag. I set it on the table and said, "I would like to introduce you to the character who most inspires me: Miles Prower."A few of the students looked up in interest: they knew who that was.
The rest of them became equally attentive when I lifted Tails out of the bag and set him on the table.
And I spoke.
I told them how Tails had been awkward; he had always been teased for his two tails, for being different. I, similarly, had not fit in when I was a kid, and so Tails resonated with me.
Tails found someone to look up to in Sonic, a person to aspire to and become friends with. I learned from Tails that I, too, should find role-models whom I could respect and trust. Tails found that in Sonic; I found it in the teachers who put so much effort into my education. I was set on the path toward being an educator.
Although Tails was always following Sonic, he wasn't content with being a fan and a burden; he found ways to support and help Sonic, becoming a valued friend without ever undermining his hero. I learned from Tails that it was important for me to give back, for me to help the people whom I so admired. I aspired to support others, to be useful without being disruptive. I became a director's assistant, a faculty aide, a team-teacher, a supporting cast member, the harmony in a chorus. I found that I was at my best when standing at another's side, rather than seizing the spotlight.
Tails admired Sonic, but he also came to recognize that Sonic's strengths were different from his own. Tails was not Sonic, he was Tails; he had his own unique skills and contributions to make. Sonic is the wind, speedy and effortless. Tails is electricity, the flash of inspiration. Tails's strength was in machines; he could build and design machines on a par with Eggman himself. Not only that, but Tails could fly. His two tails—the very thing that everyone had mocked about him—were actually his greatest strength. I learned from Tails that my weaknesses could actually become my strengths. I have a bizarre mind; I'll be the first to admit it. I always have three trains of thought going on in my brain at once. Connections would form between diverse concepts automatically; I would often get lost in my own imagination and was besieged by nightmares as a child. I would ask unusually abstract questions about mundane topics and baffle my teachers. Other kids, understandably, thought I was weird. But, just as Tails's two tails allowed him to reach new heights, having three mental processes always on the go allows me to look at problems from angles that others may not have considered. In theater, I was in my own element: three trains of thought meant that I could have one thinking as my character, one keeping track of the script, and one monitoring my acting. In writing, in art, thinking in a way that doesn't fit in with everyone else becomes the very definition of creativity. While abstract connections occasionally result in unusually long prose (like this five-part article), I believe that they serve me well.
When I finished talking, my students stared at me in amazement. They had never before heard someone talk about a fictional character in this way. The essays that they wrote that day were about their comic book heroes—and they were stronger than ever. Teachers came to me asking what I had done to so transform the students' writing.
"I introduced them to Miles," was my simple reply.
It has been a rocky road with Sonic and Tails, but they've been good to me. Sonic's 20th anniversary is nearly here. I don't know what Sonic Generations will bring, but one thing's for sure: it's going to be a wild ride.
I only hope it includes Tails, because that little fox has been with me during my rough middle school years, as I rediscovered myself in college, and as I expanded my horizons in Japan. I was very surprised to find, during my first two months back in the United States, that the thing I was most desperate to get from the boxes that I shipped was not my books or my CDs, or even my Nintendo Wii.
It was my Tails doll. I had felt guilty putting him in a box in the first place, and it gnawed at me as each day ticked by with no sign of my luggage.
Perhaps it's not the most widely accepted thing for a thirty-year-old male to admit, but it's true: my boxes finally arrived a little over a week ago, and the very first thing that I did was frantically tear open boxes until I found Tails. I'm not ashamed to admit that I clutched the little fox to me for a full thirty minutes after finally freeing him.
Welcome home, little buddy. I missed you.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Sonic The Hedgehog (Part 4: 2002-2004) 「ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ」（其の四：２００２年～２００４年）
At about the same time that I was rediscovering Sonic with Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle was being released on the Nintendo Gamecube. There was no question about what I wanted for my 21st birthday.
I am sure that I would have loved Sonic Adventure 2: Battle whether I had played the previous title or not. However, since the two titles were tied together so well, I know that I appreciated the Gamecube title all the more because of Sonic Adventure.
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle was streamlined compared to its predecessor. There were no longer large adventure stages (which I missed terribly, though I am certainly in the minority on that point) or individual characters to select. This time, players chose either the Hero side, consisting of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, or the Dark side, consisting of Dr. Eggman and two new characters, Shadow The Hedgehog and Rouge The Bat. The two sides ran parallel to one another throughout the story, and when both sides were completed, a special final chapter opened up involving all six characters. The new characters played important roles in the plot: Shadow the Hedgehog filled the gap that was left when Knuckles became more of a friend to Sonic than a rival. Brooding, mysterious, and yet strangely polite (his referring to himself as 「僕」 "boku" in the Japanese dialogue is particularly endearing), Shadow drove the entire story of the game. Rouge, a selfish jewel hunter with connections to the government, proved to be an excellent foil for Knuckles. Each character on the Hero side basically had a mirror image on the Dark side: Sonic and Shadow were focused on speed, Knuckles and Rouge were treasure hunters, and Tails and Dr. Eggman, both confined to strange walking machines, had shooting stages like those of E-102γ in Sonic Adventure, so the variety of gameplay was somewhat reduced compared to its predecessor. There was, thankfully, no fishing. Perhaps because pairs of characters now played similarly to one another, each character's stages were unique: there was none of the clever multiple-character level design that I loved so much Sonic Adventure.
I spent most of the summer parked on the couch in my room, controller in hand, undertaking the monumentally difficult task of collecting all of the game's 180 emblems. This task was made even more challenging because of the game's plethora of bugs: characters would occasionally fall right through the ground to their deaths, and the controls for Sonic's and Shadow's stages were temperamental at best. I grew to hate grinding on rails or using Sonic's homing attack or light speed dash, since those would more often than not result in a sudden plummet to my doom, due to no fault of my own.. When most of the challenges in the game required perfect, no-miss performance, these bugs had me screaming maniacally at the television all summer long.
"So stop playing!" my mother would say.
"I'm having too much fun!" was my reply.
It was true: never before or since did I find so much enjoyment in playing such a buggy game. The temperamental controls on an already difficult game meant that when a level was played through perfectly, it felt—and looked—really good. Finding the game's secrets, like Knuckles's air tank upgrade in Aquatic Mine, was also exceptionally rewarding.
As difficult as the normal stages were, however, getting the emblems for raising the little creatures called Chao wound up taking far more time than completing the main game ever did. The labor-intensive Chao Garden held my patience simply because the characters were so lovable, and also because being in the Chao Garden was the one chance for Tails to get out of the giant Cyclone walker machine that he was stuck in elsewhere in the game.
For the entire next year, I would put Sonic Adventure 2: Battle into the Gamecube when I wanted to relax after a difficult day of classes. Even now, I put the game in to run through a familiar level now and again. The gameplay itself is fun, but listening to that music is also a joy. Jun Senoue again did a spectacular job. Each character had his own theme song (the Sonic Adventure 2 version of Sonic's theme, It Doesn't Matter, is one of my all-time favorites), and subsequent pieces of music for that character's stages was in a similar style to the character's main theme. There was rock, there was smooth jazz, there was even hip-hop with bizarre lyrics. Almost all of the music incorporated real instrumental performances, particularly guitars played by Jun Senoue himself. In all, the music was excellent: I quickly picked up Tokyo Pop's domestic release of the soundtrack and gave it a home in my CD player.
That game remains my favorite game of the Gamecube years. I've clocked over 130 hours on my save file. On an action game, mind you. A short, buggy action game. Amidst all of my playing, I also did some research, and found that this Sonic Team, headed at the time by 中 裕司 (Yuji Naka), that was putting its name on all of the Sonic products, had spent years preparing for Sonic's break into 3D. They did, I felt, an excellent job, and I began to frequent Sonic Team's Japanese website, even when I couldn't yet read what was posted there.
While Sonic Adventure 2: Battle was living in my Gamecube, Sega also released a Game Boy Advance title, appropriately-titled Sonic Advance. The game featured a character roster of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, with each character playing differently. The game even had a special code to unlock a Sonic 2 mode where Tails would follow Sonic around the levels. The gameplay was tight, the music was wonderful, and the animation was charming. I played that game a lot, and it traveled in my little purple GBA on more than one occasion when I went to visit my grandparents. One day, I became so engrossed in the title that I took only the system and the game home with me, and left all of my other games at my grandparents' house!
Shortly thereafter, I found myself with access to most of the previous Sonic titles: Sonic Mega Collection, a compilation of Genesis titles, was released on the Gamecube. I suddenly had a huge collection of titles at my fingertips, including Sonic 3D Blast, the lackluster title whose reviews I had confused with Sonic Adventure's. One of my favorite features on that disc was the inclusion of the opening and ending movies for Sonic CD; I would sometimes pop the disc in just to watch those movies..
Speaking of great animation, I also picked up ADV's domestic release of the Sonic The Hedgehog Original Video Animation. Marketed as Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie, I had thought that the program was a domestic production and would feature original American characters like Sally Acorn. Imagine my surprise, then, when I put the title in and found that it was a Japanese production, overseen by Sonic Team, and animated in the same style as Sonic CD. I brought the program in for viewing by my college's Anime Society, and it was one of only two titles seen that year (the other being Please Save My Earth) that was universally enjoyed by the club's members..
I also managed to pick up Sonic R on the PC. My computer at the time couldn't play Redbook Audio for some reason, however, and so I played the game without the benefit of music. It was still a fun title, but I would be blown away years later when I would actually hear what the game sounded like with songs like Can You Feel the Sunshine playing in the background.
It was at about this time that Sonic Team did the first thing that truly irritated me. Sonic Advance 2 was announced, featuring a new character: Cream The Rabbit, a little bunny who could fly by flapping her ears. Why did the Sonic series need another flying character? Tails was already in Sonic Advance 2. With two characters who played very similarly, Sonic Advance 2 lost some of its charm for me. Add that to the extremely convoluted method of collecting chaos emeralds, and the obnoxious boss fights, and the title became a game that I had little motivation to play. It was a shame, too: the graphics and music were a cut above those of Sonic Advance.
My collection of old Sonic titles would be further bolstered by the release of Sonic Adventure: DX, an enhanced release of the game that rekindled my love for Sonic, this time on the Nintendo Gamecube. It was wonderful to replay the game with improved graphics, and this time, there was a huge motivation for collecting all the emblems: a full collection of Sega Game Gear titles and a playable Metal Sonic. The game's new mission mode was occasionally exceptionally frustrating (such as collecting tiny flags while snowboarding down a hill) and the game was still extremely buggy, but at least I could import my champion Chao, Dash, in from Sonic Adventure 2: Battle to win all of the Chao events for me.
Then, just before my last year in college, Sega released Sonic Heroes. I had been looking forward to the game since its spectacular preview in the Mario Kart: Double Dash bonus disc, and I eagerly leapt into the game.
The graphics were great, the music was fantastic, and the atmosphere was a bit closer to the Sonic titles of old. I thoroughly enjoyed playing through Team Sonic's story; the new mechanic of using Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles all at once was very creative and the dialogue between the characters was a lot of fun. The Gamecube version did not offer Japanese voice acting, but the English voices were wonderfully fitting, particularly those of Sonic, Knuckles, and Eggman, not to mention William Corkery's youthful and energetic Tails.After I finished Team Sonic's story, though, I suddenly found that I had to play through the story with the other three teams—all of whom played similarly and had similar stages to complete. My patience waned. I did complete the game, however, and I often go back to replay stages—but only Team Sonic's.
Finally, just as my college career was ending, Sonic Battle appeared. A bizarre Sonic fighting game (but not the first), the game was notable for having an absolutely brilliantly-written story. The gameplay was strange, the ending bittersweet, but it was a wild ride, and it helped to even further define the characters' personalities. Amy Rose, Sonic's self-proclaimed girlfriend, was particularly fun to see in action: her dialogue betrayed a dangerously unstable personality. Though it was not a traditional Sonic title by any stretch of the imagination, I still feel compelled to revisit the title from time to time..
It was about that time that I discovered the import store Game Music Online (now sadly defunct), and so swiftly leapt at the opportunity to purchase the Multi-Dimensional Sonic Adventure 2 Original Soundtrack, as well as the CDs for Sonic Heroes. Unfortunately, I could not get my hands on the soundtrack to the original Sonic Adventure, but the three CDs that comprised my Sonic Heroes collection lived in my CD changer during my senior year of college, and the upbeat music helped me to wake up every morning before class.
That was not my only prized Sonic possession, however. During my junior year in college, I also managed to get my hands on a doll of Tails. Modeled after his Sonic Adventure appearance, the little toy was perfectly-sized and had a bright smile. As a grown man, I probably shouldn't readily admit this, but I snuggled that toy quite a bit. My closest friends in college came to associate me with the toy, but rather than tease me about it, they chose to find it charming (I had good friends in college). My best friend during my college years, a dedicated video game fan herself, also appreciated the presence of a huggable Tails on more than one occasion.
During those years, the Sonic series was such a source fun and relaxation, and Tails such a source of comfort, that I felt compelled to give the little fox some sort of recognition. I had particularly came to appreciate Tails during the end of my senior year. Writing a senior thesis can be daunting, and there was many a late night that I spent huddled in front of the computer, Tails sitting snugly in my lap, as I frantically typed away at the keyboard or fought what would ultimately be a losing battle against my spectacularly uncooperative printer.
So, it was only natural that I include a subtle nod at the end of my two pages of acknowledgements:
"I extend deep and heartfelt thanks to Miles for helping me believe in myself and fly ever higher."
Tails always wanted to be a hero. Well, little guy, you're certainly a hero to me.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Sonic The Hedgehog (Part 3: May 2002) 「ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ」（其の参：２００２年５月）
I was a sophomore in college. When I had enrolled in college, my mother was absolutely certain that console games would be the death of my higher education, and so she decreed that I would not bring my Nintendo systems with me to the dorm.
This edict, it turned out, was a phenomenally bad idea. Video games were my primary outlet for tension, and the biggest way to engage my imagination. Games were important to me; they were a part of me. Even without games on hand, their presence in my mind was undeniable. For example, I wrote an essay on games that first year that received the highest grade of any essay in my Japanese culture course. That, however, is another story.
What matters now is that the first years of college were a pivotal turning point of my life, and without my favorite escape, the stress began to get to me. I was attempting to learn Japanese at the same time, and my performance in the course was less than exemplary (今は信じられないけどね). I was learning new things about myself that were difficult to accept. Amidst all the chaos, I wanted games to play, and the little offerings that were available on the Internet simply didn't cut it.
Now that I think about it, it's a testament to my upbringing (and probably my arrow-straight personality) that I didn't turn to drugs or alcohol.
Somehow, I survived, and life continued into Sophomore year. I was involved in a number of extracurricular activities, but life in my dorm room was horrid. I wanted an escape, something that I could do to relax. Near the end of that second year, one of the graduating seniors in my House posted an ad on a mailing list: a Sega Dreamcast, complete with two controllers and a VMU memory for data backup, along with Sonic Adventure, for $40.
It didn't require much thought on my part. I answered the ad right away. I had played the Dreamcast before, and though it was competition for Nintendo, I respected the system greatly. Besides, now that Sega was out of the console business, the company was no longer competition, now, was it?
I was curious about Sonic Adventure, but not enthused. I had not given much thought to Sonic in years, and, in fact, thought that my years as a Sonic fan were over. I had read somewhere several years ago that Sonic's experiment with 3D had been a dismal failure, and had ceased to follow the franchise shortly thereafter. Still, terrible or no, the game was a Sonic title; it might be fun to see what had happened to the character over the years.
Little did I realize that the review I had read had been referring to the bizarre but tepid isometric Genesis title, Sonic 3D Blast. Thinking that it and Sonic Adventure were one and the same, I plugged the Dreamcast in and loaded up the game.
And was blown away.
The game was loaded with impact right from the very beginning. The opening movie is an apocalypse in motion: an entire city being destroyed by an explosion of water. Then, the water begins to take a vague shape, and a giant opens right in the middle of the thing—and a little strain of English, "Open Your Heart", makes it through the chaos of the soundscape. A moment later, the hard rock starts. This was not the bright, cheery Sonic world that had been on the Sega Genesis. This game had an edge.
The game definitely looked pretty. The characters, redesigned by 上川 祐司 (Yuji Uekawa) had a new appeal and confidence all their own. Sonic sported long spines and piercing green eyes; Tails was a bit more confident and athletic and yet was still a cute blue-eyed boy, and Dr. Robotnik, was now sleeker and more devious-looking than ever. Dr. Robotnik now also went by the moniker of Eggman, which had always been his official name in Japan.
Though the graphics caught my eye almost immediately, the other thing that caught my attention was the music. Created by 瀬上 純 (Jun Senoue), Sonic's world was full of melody, from the upbeat city theme in Station Square to the peaceful rhythms of Mystic Ruins. Even more than that, there were vocal songs. English vocal songs. GOOD English vocal songs. Jun Senoe (an exceptionally talented guitarist as well as a composer) and vocalist Johnny Gioeli would soon team up to make their own band, Crush 40, which would headline many future Sonic titles.
So, yes, I loved the music. While music is usually what clinches a game for me, however, it was only part of a phenomenal mix this time around.
Sonic looked GOOD in three dimensions. The worlds were laid out extremely well. Sonic's control was tight and responsive, though occasionally a bit buggy. The action was fun and flashy.
And then there was the story. A fully-voiced story, at that. With language options. I, having struggled dismally the previous year with Japanese, saw the opportunity to refresh my ears and set the language option to 日本語. I was happy to find that the Japanese voice acting was excellent.
Not only that, but the characters have their own unique take on stages, as well. Unlike other games (even later Sonic games!) in which different characters have completely different stages or play through exactly the same stages with just subtle gameplay differences, Sonic and his companions go through exactly the same environments in drastically different ways. While most of the stages are built with Sonic in mind, a certain part of each stage is opened up for another character to travel through in a completely different way.
And, of course, there was Tails. Miles "Tails" Prower had his own take on the story. The little fox, separated from Sonic for parts of the story, learns to believe in his own abilities, eventually thwarting a threat to the city all on his own. Tails's theme song, appropriately enough, is entitled "Believe in Myself."I played that game all through May and June. My dorm room gradually became brighter, the air became fresher and warmer, and by the time the year was up, I was a bigger Sonic fan than I had ever been before.
Never before or since have I had such low expectations for a game, only to have them be so completely exceeded. When I went home that summer, I dug out an old copy of Next Generation magazine in which I vaguely remembered a review of Sonic Adventure appearing.
Four stars. How had I missed that?
Unfortunately, my abject admiration of Sonic Adventure was not shared by everyone. One of my favorite parts of the game was the Adventure Stages, the open worlds that connected the Action stages of the game. I loved exploring them, talking to the people and searching for secrets. Flying around the jungle with Tails quickly became my favorite way to relax after a day of classes. Unfortunately, I seemed to be in the minority: Adventure Stages did not appear in any subsequent game.
The large cast of characters, too, has since been the subject of many complaints. I, for one, loved playing as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and E-102γ. Amy, I could take or leave. The bizarre fishing stages for the obese Big The Cat, however, I could easily have done without. And the Chao, a Tamagochi-esque artificial life system, was charming, yet extremely labor-intensive.
For me, it was the best Sonic game I had ever played.
For others, though, it was the beginning of the end of the world.
I, blissfully unaware of the unrest that was brewing in the Sonic community, was still in Hedgehog heaven, however, and I was about to hit the most enjoyable gaming summer of my life.
Monday, May 30, 2011
A Gamer Looks at Thirty 「３０歳になったゲーマー」
Today is a big day: my 30th birthday. Measured in console years, I'm about 480 years old. That's saying something, I guess. I've watched the industry grow and expand since the beginning of the NES era, (1983 in Japan and 1985 in the US) and it has been quite a ride. Gaming has moved from motion-sensing Power Gloves to... motion sensing Wii Remotes. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.As gaming has aged, series that have shown staying power have begun to get well-deserved recognition. Even relative newcomers such as 戦国無双 (Samurai Warriors), released in 2004, and 戦国Basara (Sengoku Basara), released in 2005, have begun to count anniversaries. Being born in 1981 makes me older than most of these storied franchises. Counting from their original release dates in their respective regions, I predate Pokémon by 15 years; Soul Calibur (then Soul Edge) by 14 years; The King of Fighters and Warcraft by 13 years; Doom by 12 years; Kirby by 11 years; Sonic The Hedgehog, Fatal Fury, and Lemmings by 10 years; Fire Emblem and Wing Commander by 9 years; Sim City and Populous by 8 years; Pool of Radiance (the first licensed Dungeons & Dragons computer game) by 7 years; Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, and Mega Man by 6 years; Kid Icarus, Metroid, Castlevania, Dragon Warrior, and The Legend of Zelda by 5 years; Gradius and Super Mario by 4 years; Punch Out!! and Tetris by 3 years; Dragon's Lair and 信長の野望 (Nobunaga's Ambition) by 2 years; and BurgerTime by 1 year. On the other side of the coin, I have a few elders: Pac-Man was born one year before me, and Space Invaders three years before me. Even those two elder franchises are both still going strong, and I can but tip my hat to all of them they celebrate each 5-year milestone in their lives.
So, what of 1981? There is one major franchise that saw its birth in that year: Donkey Kong. The big ape, and, by extension, his yet-to-be-Super nemesis Mario, then named Jumpman (Nintendo counts Mario's anniversaries from 1985, when Super Mario Bros. was released, however), first hit arcades that year. Another well-known release? Frogger. So, I share my birth year with a barrel-throwing simian, a freeway-crossing frog, and a carpenter-turned-plumber. Not a bad year, really.
Thirty years later, I've played countless games and have read even more books about games. I've gone to concerts and events, sometimes rubbed elbows with some big names, and have even finally become a small part of the industry that I so love.
What will the future bring to Videoland? Who knows? I can say this much, though: as long as our princess is in another castle, as long as the soul still burns, as long as robots fight for everlasting peace, and as long as another quest will start from here, Videoland will always be an exciting place.
And I, for one, am happy to call it home.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Lemmings 「レミングズ」
Lemmings came about almost by accident, or so the story goes: the staff of DMA design was working on creating little men to be victims of the title character of another title in development, Walker. The challenge in development was to animate a character using only an 8 x 8 square. When the rather violent demonstration was completed, someone noticed that there could be a game in the hapless little creatures. Thus, lemmings were born.
Lemmings made a huge splash on the Amiga and PC, but the game stayed largely under my radar until March of 1992, when Sunsoft's SNES version of the game was featured in Nintendo Power magazine. I remember reading the review over and over again, particularly because the pictures were so cute. Lemmings showed up again in Volume 37, this time earning a place on the cover in honor of the NES release. The puzzling title looked interesting, but while I read the reviews several times, I hardly expected to actually play it..
That changed, however, when I went to a new middle school in 1993. The school was just in the process of upgrading from a pair of old Apple IIc machines, and got a few brain-intensive titles on its new Macintosh computers.
What's more, the characters were cute and lovable, and the cardboard box of the game got passed around from student to student as the kids spent time looking at everything that was going on. The music, too, was catching. There were a few unique melodies, but many more were borrowed from folk songs and classical music, such as She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain, London Bridge is Falling Down and Orpheus in the Underworld. I know a lot of people who, even today, hear one of those pieces and say, "That just reminds me of Lemmings." Poor Offenbach.
Furthermore, as Sonic The Hedgehog 3 had done for the echidna, Lemmings had students wondering just what, exactly, a lemming was. Having been assigned to teach a student workshop to students in lower grades, I knew an opportunity when I saw one. I researched the little arctic rodents, created a few activities, and announced that my workshop would be on lemmings. The class was booked solid in days.
Around the same time, we received Lemmings from a neighbor and close friend. The little disk, however, proved to be temperamental, and I never got it to work on my DOS computer. The manual, however, with its colorful comic, became a treasure.
One of the students in my grade at the time, who remains a close friend today, often invited me to spend time at his house. When we would get together, he would sometimes rent an Super Nintendo game from the local video store, and we would play it together. His decision to rent Lemmings one day gave me my first chance to try the game's hectic 2-player mode, in which players compete to direct the little lemmings to their own exits. The game can quickly devolve into a lemming massacre as each player tries to sabotage his opponent. The 2-player mode was sadly missing from the IBM-compatible version of the game, but it was great fun.
In the end, however, I played little of the original Lemmings while I was in middle school. Where my attention was devoted was to the sequel.
When I was a sixth-grader for the second time, I quickly befriended a student who was in the same grade as I. We played a number of games together, and he introduced me to many that I had never seen before. One of the best of thse was Lemmings 2: The Tribes.
Lemmings 2 took the original Lemmings formula and greatly expanded it. The goal was still to guide the little lemmings from Point A to Point B, but instead of 8 skills, there were now a whopping 61 (though only 8 were available on any given level). There were still digging and building skills, but there were new skills like running, jumping, and firing a bazooka. The mouse cursor became more important, too. Certain skills, such as the flying SuperLem or the grappling-hook-firing roper, would aim for the cursor, while a new button allowed the cursor to turn into a fan and blow around certain wind-related lemmings, such as the twister and a lemming wearing Icarus wings.
After reading the storybook, I immediately went out to Kay Bee Toys and bought my own copy of the game, on 5.25" disks. Much to my dismay, I found no storybook inside my box: it appeared that the book was a limited-edition bonus. I had good friends, however: when I later bemoaned my not getting a storybook of my own, my friend generously offered me his.
I feel bad that he gave me his only copy of the book, but I am extremely thankful. I love that book and have read it many times; I still own and read it today.
In the meantime, however, there was a third Lemmings game, Lemmings Chronicles (All New World of Lemmings in the UK), which landed on computers in 1994.
This game I bought immediately. And loved.The game's graphics were much improved, with a more detailed close-up view of the action allowing much more expression on the part of the adorable lemmings. The music was excellent, though my old computer refused to play Redbook audio, and so it was quite some time before I got to know what just how good the music was. Furthermore, the gameplay was completely different from that of the previous two games. The Classic, Egyptian, and Shadow tribes were trying to establish themselves in their new home, and now individual lemmings had to collect tools from the landscape before they could be used. Bricks, shovels, bombs, grenades, parasols, suction cups, and life preservers all made appearances, and well as hadoken-like fireballs that existed to defend lemmings from the new threat of monsters. Individual lemmings were a bit brighter this time around, too, and could be instructed to block one another, jump, and even turn around. The inclusion of these skills allowed for a little finer control, as did the fact that lemmings now took actions when they walked into a given block, rather than at the very pixel at which they were commanded. Planning and multitasking, however, were still massive challenges.
Overall, Lemmings Chronicles fit my playing style perfectly, and I played the game more than any other Lemmings title. I also bought the game's well-written strategy guide, which I used little for level-clearing advice and enjoyed mostly for the abundance of flavor text. My friends also enjoyed watching and playing the game, as the slightly more forgiving timing and placement techniques made it easier for an observer to communicate an idea to the player, and for the player to execute that idea, then had been the case in the previous Lemmings games. The more detailed graphics were also a draw to group play. One of my friends became particularly enamored of one of the monsters, the Lemme Fatale, which would cause other lemmings to become lovestruck and haplessly follow it around until they gave up and killed themselves. The Lemmings series certainly had an odd sense of humor. Still, that was part of the series's charm, and I loved it. I played the game nearly to completion. When I had only a few levels left in each tribe, however, we got a new computer. Lemmings Chronicles, sadly, did not work on our Windows 95 machine, and I had to leave my charges tantalizingly close to freedom.
Lemmings 3D (3D Lemmings in non-American territories) was slightly friendlier to newer computers, though not by much. I bought the game, but did not find it very absorbing. While this new offering quite literally added a new dimension to gameplay, I found the focus on camera management distracting. I'm sure that many people enjoyed the title, but it seemed to me that the game was better when it was in simple 2-D. Also, the fact that the lemmings skill set had reverted to the original eight skills (plus a new turner, who redirected lemmings by ninety degrees) was a turn-off to me, as I had really come to know lemmings through the 61 skills of Lemmings 2. Furthermore, the rich story that had developed through Lemmings 2 and Lemmings Chronicles had been completely abandoned. I loved the universe that had come to surround the Lemmings world (remember the storybook?) and was sad to see it abandoned.
I do not regret buying Lemmings Paintball, however: it came packed with a wonderful bonus: Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings for Windows 95. I finally had the chance to play the original titles! Though I had been reared on the variety of Lemmings 2, I quickly came to appreciate just how fiendish puzzles could be when built around eight simple skills. My progress through the game, however, was continually frustrated by the title's unwillingness to cooperate with my various computers. For the most part, bugs were limited to sound and music not working properly, but the irritation that those errors caused me compounded the difficulty of the game, and I always found it hard to keep moving.At around the same time, I got Lemmings for the Nintendo Game Boy. It was great to have the freedom to play Lemmings on the go, but... well, it had been difficult enough to give commands to lemmings on a color computer screen with a mouse! Now I had a miniscule grayscale LCD display and a control pad. I actually did quite well for myself, considering the circumstances, and I enjoyed the game quite a bit, though I never made it very far.
One game that I did play quite a bit of, however, was the PC demo of Adventures of Lomax, a lemming-themed platforming title. As with Lemmings Paintball, the game had little in common with Lemmings, and featured a medieval lemming using a magic cap to fight off an aggressor known as Evil Ed. Lemming skills did make occasional appearances, however, which is more than could be said for Lemmings Paintball. The game was colorful, fun, and extremely well-animated. I played it mostly as a diversion, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
So, why all the obsession with Lemmings, if I spent so little time playing most of the games? Well, for one, brilliant titles like the first three Lemmings games (particularly the original Lemmings) deserve notice and admiration. Also, the little characters and the story surrounding them for those first several titles was engaging and endearing. Where Lemmings really became a boon for me, however, was in my imagination. A lot of the time that I spent playing Lemmings was spent away from a computer.
Perhaps I should explain.
Having ADHD means a lot of things, but two things in particular that come of the disorder are an exceptionally active imagination and a distinct lack of patience. I dislike waiting now, but when I was younger, being put in a situation where I had to wait quietly was excruciating. My savior was my imagination. Under the right circumstances, I could become lost in my own world and time would pass very quickly. This was, however, easiest for me to accomplish if I had freedom to move about or if I had paper to draw on. Without either of those, I was in trouble.
One day, however, while waiting for my mother after church, I found myself staring up into the rafters, as I had often done as a little child. This time, however, a strange thought occurred to me. What if, I thought, picking a spot near one wall, lemmings came in here, and had to get out over there? Suddenly, a new game was born. I spent so much time working out a solution for the quandary I had placed my imaginary lemmings into, and then playing that solution in my mind (I needed more blockers than I had anticipated, and found that the lemmings hit their head in one place where I had thought they'd be able to build) that an entire hour passed without my noticing.
Lemmings fans, try it sometime when you have to be patient for a while. Pick two places within your field of vision, one for the lemmings to come in from and one for them to get out of, decide on a scale, and then work out a way to get a tide of lemmings from point A to point B with only the original eight skills. I'm confident that you'll find it quite engrossing. Remember too, by the way, that lemmings cannot burrow through metal. If you feel like it, you could even bend the rules a bit and decide that the environment might not be rigid and unmoving—something might happen if too many lemmings attempt to climb that bell pull, for example.
This game became a favorite mental exercise for me when I had to sit still and wait for long periods of time, and I still play it on occasion. Waiting rooms, theaters before the show started, airport terminals, train stations, bus stops—all were particularly good locales for lemmings expeditions. Car rides, however, don't work as well: the rushing guardrails that speed by outside the window are much more suitable for one of Sonic's speed.
Years went by, and while Lemmings continued to play in my mind, the series seemed to be all but forgotten by publishers. In Japan, I found that Lemmings was similarly little-known, though it had once been very popular. I got 3D Lemmings for the Playstation and Lemmings for the SNES, but had little motivation to play the former and little time to play the latter. I also acquired the Lemmings strategy guide, written for the Japanese SNES version, which was a very fun read.
A good friend of mine during my last year and a half in Japan, a fellow teacher, talked occasionally of Lemmings, as he had a demo of the newest installment on his Playstation 3. His dream was to see a Lemmings title on the Nintendo Wii or the Nintendo DS. Pointer controls or touch screen controls would be perfect for a Lemmings title, he said, and I could only agree. However, I soon realized that there was little hope for such a release. Psygnosis, publisher of the first several Lemmings games, was acquired by Sony in 1993, and now the entire Lemmings franchise belongs to Sony Comptuer Entertainment Europe. Will a pointer-friendly Lemmings title ever appear again? I don't know, but I'm hopeful.
And so, here I am back in the US, still playing Lemmings. Amazon's extended reach recently allowed me to get the original Lemmings Compendium, which is full of information, and the two UK-published Lemmings Adventure Gamebooks, which are fun stories and are packed with illustrations. The Windows 95 version of Lemmings finally agrees with my system, putting Lemmings and Oh No! More Lemmings at my fingertips. Best of all, with the magic of DosBox and a little technical tweaking, I can once again play Lemmings 2: The Tribes and Lemmings Chronicles. Perhaps now, 20 years after Lemmings was published, I will finally be able to lead my little green-haired friends to freedom.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Sonic The Hedgehog (Part 2: 1993-1996) 「ソニック・ザ・ヘッジホッグ」（其の弐：１９９３年～１９９６年）
It turned out to be a very good decision. My life remained rocky, but my new education exposed me to new ways of learning, gave me an appreciation of nature and history, and allowed me to spend more time in Salem, Massachusetts, my favorite city in the United States.
Where does Sonic fit into all this? Well, I changed schools in September 1993: the same month that the Sonic animated shows hit the airwaves in the United States. Even though I didn't have a Sega Genesis and disliked the company for its opposition of Nintendo, my fondness of Sonic was unmatched. I collected Sonic merchandise like crazy, particularly the Sonic board game and the Sonic 2 Tiger Handheld LCD game. My Sonic T-shirt was one of my most prized possessions, and the VCR timer was programmed to record The Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog every weekday.
The opening months of the school year ticked by. Sonic CD was released to much fanfare, as was Sonic Spinball, a surreal pinball-like adventure which I found interesting but had little opportunity to play. The pinball game was unusual in that it attempted a tie-in with the American cartoon series, since many of the unique characters in the cartoons and comic books appeared in the stages and bonus rounds. Tails had little presence, however, and so my interest in the game was limited compared to Sonic 2.
Around this time, my school had a field trip. My unusual little middle school followed a brilliant one-room schoolhouse style, and so children ranging from kindergarten to the eighth grade had regular exposure to one another. The student sitting next to me on the bus, my partner for that day, was a quiet fourth-grade boy. As the bus pulled away from the school and headed down the city streets, we attempted to establish a rapport with one another in that uncertain way that kids sometimes have when shoved together for the first time.
"What's your favorite TV show?" came the question.
I hesitated. In public middle school, my near-obsession with video games had alienated me from my classmates. Somewhat uncertainly, I muttered, "It's a bit embarrassing. Sonic The Hedgehog."
The boy next to me immediately brightened. "Sonic's my favorite, too!" Then he paused. "Why's that embarrassing?"
I didn't have an answer.
We talked animatedly for the duration of the field trip. By the end of the day, my new school didn't seem so scary.
A few weeks later, we had another trip, and as luck would have it, the same boy was a part of my group for the day. We also had a little third-grade girl with us, and lo-and-behold, she was also a huge fan of Sonic.
We had a great day. The trip was to the salt marshes, and we walked around, sketching pictures and writing notes. At the end of the afternoon, we walked with one of the other guides clear to the other end of the marsh and watched as he collected the samples. We had a great experience, but the teachers were understandably unhappy with us for wandering so far afield.
On the bus ride home, I rested my head against the window, with the fourth-grade boy asleep on my shoulder, and the third-grader, in turn, asleep on his. That bus ride remains in my memory as one of the most peaceful, contented, secure moments of my middle school life.
Now, a budding friendship between a third-grade girl and a sixth-grade boy, no matter how innocent, is the kind of thing that is sure to make some parents nervous. That friendship didn't survive through the end of 1993. The fourth-grade boy, on the other hand, became a fast friend.
In the opening months of middle school, I made another friend, a fellow sixth-grader. We played a myriad of games together, not the least of which was Sonic 3.
The play style of Sonic 3 suited me wonderfully. The graphics were bright and crisp, and the game contained a save feature, which was a very welcome addition, as we could start the game one day and continue it another. The play control was tight and responsive. And the music! The music was phenomenal. Each act within a zone had its own theme, and all of the themes were spectacularly catchy. The level design was also gorgeous: even the very first Angel Island Zone, which went from lush jungle to blazing firestorm, was an impactful addition. The special stages, which were cleverly hidden within the Zones and had to be completed in order to get chaos emeralds, were much more suited to my playing style than Sonic 2's ring-filled half-pipes.
Sonic had also gained some moves, particularly the ability to create in instantaneous shield in mid-air in order to protect himself from harm, and the ability to use special abilities when equipped with shields of fire, water, and electricity. The electric shield was particularly fun: it attracted rings, items that helped Sonic survive damage.
And, finally, Tails could fly. Not only could he fly, but he could carry Sonic! This brilliant play mechanic gave true value to the second-player role. I, naturally, insisted on using Tails. The freedom to fly! The ability to lift Sonic out of trouble! We played that game quite a bit, though the farthest we ever made it in one playthrough was the Carnival Night Zone--we got stuck on top of a moving drum because it never occurred to us that alternating up and down on the control pad would increase the magnitude of its movement range.My birthday came around that May, and I had a small party with my four best friends. While three of them argued over who could have a turn playing Extra Innings on the SNES, my fourth-grade friend and I chatted on the den couch. As a birthday present that year, he presented me with a simple slim envelope. Inside it was a hand-drawn card containing Spunky of the cartoon Rocko's Modern Life, and a postcard announcing that he had given me a year's subscription to the Sonic The Hedgehog comic book.
Not being an ardent fan of the comics, the gift went underappreciated at first.. However, when Sonic comics continued to arrive in my mailbox month after month, I came to love that gift. It was like having my love for Sonic rekindled every month. There was a short delay before the subscription finished being processed, of course, and so my year's subscription extended into the following August, making it seem much longer than it actually was. My final issue was the comic's 25th outing, a Sonic CD tie-in featuring above-average art and a nicely-presented silver cover. Not a bad way to round out the subscription.
In the meantime, Sonic & Knuckles had been released. I had a few abortive opportunities to play it, but as Tails did not make an appearance running alongside Sonic in the game, there was little room for two-player play. While Knuckles was available to play and featured clever climbing and gliding skills, that mode suffered for reasons similar to Sonic's I did not realize until much later that the game was not just a sequel to Sonic 3, it was intended to be played as the second half of the game. Full functionality could be attained by inserting Sonic 3 into the lock-in slot at the top of the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge, which would allow the full story to be played with any of the three main characters—and also with Sonic and Tails as a team. The fact that the locked-on version was the true game was poorly documented in the instruction manual, however, and so it did not occur to my friend or I to play through the game in locked-on format.
Sadly, neither the fourth-grader nor the sixth-grader stayed at my little private school through graduation. The friend whom I had befriended on that field trip kept in sporadic touch for some time, and we managed to continue our tradition of winter sledding for a while, but we gradually grew apart. I miss them intensely.
Only shortly after losing touch with those friends, I was at another acquaintance's house, browsing through his pile of comics. The Sonic cartoons had finished, and I had not been engrossed in a Sonic title since Sonic 3. Lo and behold, I found a pile of Sonic titles in amongst the comics.
I browsed through them and was thrilled to find a solo Tails adventure, which was to launch a three-issue miniseries for the little fox.
I read the content of the issue and was horrified. The story involved Tails falling in love with a female fox, who turned out to be a robot created by Dr. Robotnik. Tails finished the story by crying at the robot something very much like "You robbed me of my innocence!"
Well, I wasn't having that. Tails is an eight-year-old. You may recall that my deep fondness of Tails is due largely to his being an youthfully innocent character, and I could not accept the comic series's throwing that out the window. Miserably, I put the comic down. I did not know that the Archie comic series had become to take on a life of its own, and thought that everything in it was Sega canon. I was already unhappy with Sega and had no Sonic game on hand to engage me; the abrupt change in Tails's personality was enough to alienate me from the series altogether. I kept all of my Sonic merchandise, but made little effort to get more of it.
Years passed.
I did not continue to read the Sonic comics, which may have been a very good thing as the comics continued to get progressively darker and more serious. With all due respect to the comic's legion of fans, I was personally much happier with the upbeat, lighthearted early issues, before the publication began to run wild with characters, storylines, and alternate universes.
I did, however, pick up Sonic CD and the Sonic & Knuckles Collection after they were released for the PC. I had a lingering fondness for Tails, and so gave little attention to Sonic CD apart from watching the opening movie, but I did play through the combined Sonic 3 & Knuckles adventure, the way the game was meant to be played.
Apart from that one game, however, I had little exposure to Sonic. The Sega Genesis became choked with peripherals before finally giving way to the Sega Saturn and then the Dreamcast. Each system had its share of Sonic games, but I had read bad reviews about several of them and eventually stopped paying attention.
College came. My freshman-year roommates were not big video gamers, though one of them had a PC demo of the competition mode from Sonic 3, which he played incessantly. I thought it interesting, but when I mentioned the game he said that he knew nothing of it, so I gave it little thought in the long run.
As 2001 began, Sega announced that they were exiting the console market. I felt a grim satisfaction, and surprisingly a sense of pity, in that they were no longer competition for Nintendo, but at the time was more concerned about Sony, which had broken into the market and had all but taken it over.
Sega was out, and I noticed with some irony and more than a little interest that Sega would be producing games for Nintendo. It was a nice turn of events, and I was happy that the two companies, once fierce rivals, had decided to cooperate.
I was intrigued, but not excited. I had not been engaged by a new Sonic title in many years, and I paid little attention to news of new titles.
I thought that my Sonic fandom had finished running its course, and that I had long since laid it to rest.
But then, when I least expected it, the spring of 2002 came along: and brought with it a Sonic Boom.
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