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.

Lemmings 「レミングズ」

In 1991, the Scottish developer DMA design, which would later change its name and go on to create the notorious Grand Theft Auto series, released a software title on the Amiga that would create a whole new dimension of puzzle game.

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.

Mindlessly following the landscape in front of them, the adorable little green-haired lemmings enter a stage in droves, and it is the player's task to make the little guys reach the exit.  To get there, lemmings can be assigned one of eight tasks: Climber, Floater, Bomber, Blocker, Builder, Basher, Miner, and Digger.  Some of these allow a single lemming to traverse an obstacle, others allow lemmings to redirect one another, others allow lemmings to build bridges or dig holes, and still others cause them to self-destruct.  The violent spirit of the original demo lives on not only in the lemming's tendency to explode, but also in the myriad of ways that they can get themselves killed between the entrance and exit.  Traps, falls, holes, and water are just a few of the things that can cause the lemming population to plummet.

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.

Among these were Lemmings and its expansion, Oh No! More Lemmings.  Within days, the entire school was hooked.  Students would crowd around the machines at recess as kids struggled to find solutions to the various levels.  For abstract thinking and problem-solving, the game couldn't be beat.
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.

The world of the lemmings, known as Lemming Island, now had twelve tribes, whose differences were purely cosmetic.  There were the original Classic lemmings, the Medieval lemmings, the prehistoric Cave lemmings, the Egyptian lemmings, the Sports lemmings, the Outdoor lemmings, the Space lemmings, the blue-hued Polar lemmings, the ninja-like Shadow lemmings, the Circus lemmings, the tanned Beach Bum lemmings, and the red-haired Highland lemmings.  Each tribe had its own theme music, which often followed the trend of the original game and borrowed its melodies from traditional sources.  The Highland lemmings, for example, had The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond, while the Polar lemmings had a medley of Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and the Space lemmings had—what else—At the Beautiful Blue Danube.  The story of the game was an endearing one in which the twelve tribes sought to bring together their pieces of a magical talisman, which could power a flying ark that would carry them from their doomed land.  The story of the game was told in a richly illustrated storybook, appropriately entitled The Story of The 12 Tribes of Lemming Island ...or the Day Jimmy McLemming Wished He'd Stayed in Bed.

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.

My friends quickly became enamored of Lemmings 2, mostly because of the myriad ways that the lemmings could meet with disaster.  Playing the game with friends was difficult, however, mostly because only one person could control the mouse at a time.  Even if you could plan a perfect route to the exit, success often required pixel-perfect timing, while failure would put great stretches of time to waste.  Not the best for groups.  I put some effort into playing the game on my own, too, of course, though I must admit that I had little success.  I spent most of my time mucking around in practice mode, since finishing the actual stages with minimal casualties sorely taxed my patience.  Time went on, and I soon lost the ability to use 5.25" disks.  When that happened, I returned to the toy store and bought the game on 3.5" disks, though the advent of Windows 95 was soon to make Lemmings 2 all but impossible to play.

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.

Lemmings 3D sticks in my mind not for the gameplay itself, but for a bizarre cheat code.  I guess the programmers became irritated with saving lemmings at some point, because they put in a code that could be typed into the game during play: "rasputin".  Typing in that word would turn the cursor into a crosshairs, and now clicking on a lemming would kill it messily, complete with shotgun sound effect.  Tasteless, but good for a cheap thrill, and something that I always happily showed off to my lemming-literate friends.

It seems that shooting was becoming increasingly popular with the publishers, since the next title, Lemmings Paintball, involved little more than paint-filled gunfire.  Sporting an isometric viewpoint, the game involved few puzzles, focusing instead on riding platforms, shooting lemmings, and capturing flags.  Past the title screen, the game didn't feel like a Lemmings game at all—the little green-haired characters could have just as easily been replaced by rabbits or people or little ducks.  I found the controls unwieldy and soon abandoned the title.

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.

Eventually, in 2000, Psygnosis released another Lemmings title: Lemmings Revolution.  The game used hardware acceleration that frustrated my poor ancient Compaq computer, but it still worked—usually.  Under more modern computers, however, colors quickly became corrupted, which I found to be a huge irritation.  In the end, the game seemed to me to be little more than the original Lemmings wrapped around a cylinder, and so I found little incentive to leap through technical hurdles in order to play that particular title.

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.

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）

I was not doing well in my public middle school.  I got excellent grades and got along well with my teachers, but was something of an odd duck and was mercilessly tormented by my classmates.  My life at home was also at its rockiest, and so I found little stability in my life outside of video games.  Perhaps my being bullied was part of the reason I was so fond of Tails: I empathized with the fox's being teased for being different.  I had not yet found someone or something to inspire me to believe in myself as Sonic had done for Tails, and so I floundered.  Things hit a nadir in the middle of my sixth-grade year, and the teachers intervened on my behalf.  After that, things began to improve at school: I found a circle of friends who stood by me and I began to integrate myself a little more into the class.  My mother, however, perhaps fearing that my situation was unstable or maybe just wanting to give me a brand new start, decided that it would be a good idea to send me to a small private school for a while, and to repeat sixth grade at the same time.

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.

1994 came, and with it one of the greatest games to ever hit the Sega Genesis: Sonic The Hedgehog 3.  Sonic 3 was colorful, fast, and a great improvement over its predecessor.  It also introduced the character of Knuckles The Echidna, Sonic's red-hued rival who would later become his trusted friend.  The hype surrounding the release of the game was substantial, and there was a massive movement among my schoolmates to determine just what an echidna was.  Why an egg-laying spiny anteater was chosen as Sonic's rival, nobody can say, but the character inspired an entire student-taught workshop at school.  How's that for games being educational?

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.

Rather than play as Sonic and have Tails tag along, I decided on this venture to play as Tails alone.  I was rewarded with the discovery that in this extended game, Tails also had a super transformation.  After gathering all seven of the Chaos Emeralds, and then gathering all seven of the Super Emeralds, the little fox could jump up, pose in mid-air, and begin flashing.  In this form, Tails was invincible, faster than before, and surrounded by a flock of super Flicky birds that would attack enemies.  The Flicky birds, by the way, were among the enemies captured by Robotnik, but had originally come from a previous game, the appropriately-named Flicky, which predated Sonic by several years.

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.