Sonic The Hedgehog Dissected!

Hey, what's up guys!  Typical Call of Duty/"Let's Play" Youtuber intro.  So I want to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog.  Anyway, I'm on deviantArt looking at furry porn fan art and whoop, what do ya know--I run into some Sonic flash movies.  This is from a guy named Roger aka "Rogerregorroger" from the Netherlands, home of windmills, the Nintendo 64 champs and marijuana legalization before it was cool.  All of his "Sanic Gaem in X minutes" videos are already on YouTube:

Well, maybe you find them hilarious, maybe not.  But there's more!  I suggest you check out Roger's "Dissecting Sonic" series of Flash movies.  To my knowledge, they're only on deviantArt.  Each one only takes 5 or 6 minutes to watch but you should watch all eight eleven in order.

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6  Part 7  Part 8  Part 9  Part 10  Part 11  Part 2 of Part 11  WHEEEEE!!!!

The reason I bring these up is because it makes you think about Sonic games in a much different light.  Most of what is mentioned has to do with the story & characters as opposed to gameplay.  But here's a few things I learned that I basically agree with:

* You talk about Sonic characters and you will always get a bunch of haters, "no more of Sonic's friends," so to speak.  But most every video game series has a huge cast of characters (see Mario for instance) and they always get away with it.  So what is Sonic doing wrong?  Because Sonic was a character with weaknesses.  Sonic is fast, Tails is smart, Knuckles is strong, Amy is sociable.  They just worked together.  But post Sonic Adventure 2 (when most agree the series took a huge dip), they turned Sonic into a character with no weaknesses whatsoever.  Sonic shows up, kills everything, and cracks a stupid joke.  Eggman is never on par with Sonic as he has become the gag villain for too long.  All other characters are tacked on just for fan service.  People aren't complaining about the characters--they're complaining about the characters being used incorrectly.  Cheesy voice acting & dialogue doesn't help either.

versus...

* Sonic Adventure 2 debateably has the best Sonic story for the 3D games.  Even if it's in cheesy "stuff just happens" Sonic fashion, I agree with this.  The game's excitement peaks and drops like a good movie should as new information is revealed at regular intervals.  Sonic needs help and shows emotions besides "cocky and in control."  The characters are actually doing stuff and events pay off in the future and make for a satisfying story.  Meanwhile, a lot of modern Sonic games like Secret Rings, Unleashed, and Colors usually have the characters stand around exchanging time-wasting dialogue and the action only peaks near the end when you fight a boss that you saw at the beginning of the game, spoiling the surprise and making it less exciting.

* As for gameplay, this is addressed in Part 8.  Some people compare Sonic to Mario and say "if Mario can do 3D platforming, why can't Sonic?"  Well Sonic has always gone a step above Mario in terms of obstacles such as the loops, the City Escape truck chase, the Final Chase rails, etc.  Meanwhile, all Mario has to do is have Mario run around the world jumping off stuff.  Not that what Mario does is bad or that bad Sonic gameplay is excusable, but it makes you think twice about why Sonic Team chose to program their games the way they did.

Go ahead and watch the videos if you haven't already.