Right, so I need to come clean about something – I’ve been following Sonic the Hedgehog for over three decades now, and I’m still not entirely sure why. Actually, that’s not true, I know exactly why it started. Summer of 1991, round at my mate Dave’s house in Stockport, and his older brother had just picked up this new Sega Mega Drive with some game about a blue hedgehog. Now, I was proper Amiga through and through at that point – had my trusty 500 humming away at home, playing the likes of Speedball 2 and whatever Sensible Software had cooked up that month. Console gaming was still a bit foreign to us Europeans, you know? We were the computer gaming crowd.
But bloody hell, watching Sonic tear through Green Hill Zone was something else entirely. The speed was mental – like nothing I’d seen on any platform. My Amiga could do impressive things, sure, but this was different. This was pure velocity made digital. Dave’s brother was showing off, naturally, spinning through loops and launching off ramps while I sat there with my mouth hanging open like a proper mug. I’d been used to games that required patience, planning, methodical thinking. This was chaos – beautiful, brilliant chaos.
Course, being a stubborn Amiga kid, I didn’t immediately run out and buy a Mega Drive. Took me until Christmas 1991, and even then it was only because my parents got sick of me banging on about it. Found the console under the tree with Sonic bundled in, and I swear I didn’t leave my bedroom for three days straight. Mum had to bring meals up on a tray because I was absolutely obsessed with perfecting every single level.
The thing about Sonic – and this is something I don’t think younger gamers quite grasp – is that it completely redefined what platformers could be. We’d all been playing Mario clones for years, games about careful jumping and precise movement. Suddenly here’s this hedgehog who rewards you for going fast, for taking risks, for building momentum and trusting your reflexes. It was revolutionary, honestly. The physics engine was mental – you had to learn how Sonic moved, how his speed affected his jumps, how momentum carried through loops and springs.
Sonic 2 arrived the following year and somehow managed to improve on perfection. The spin dash – Christ, how had they not thought of that from the start? Going back to the original after playing Sonic 2 felt like trying to run with your shoelaces tied together. And Tails! Brilliant addition. My younger cousin could jump in and help out without getting in the way, which meant family gaming sessions that didn’t end in tears for once. Chemical Plant Zone still gives me shivers – those long straightaways where you could really open up Sonic’s speed, followed by those brilliant underwater sections that absolutely terrified me as a kid. That drowning countdown music is burned into my brain forever.
Then Sonic 3 and Knuckles came along and basically showed everyone how lock-on technology should work. The fact that you could connect the cartridges and play through one massive adventure was mind-blowing. I spent embarrassing amounts of time collecting every Chaos Emerald, exploring every secret path, trying to find every possible route through each zone. The level design was incredible – multiple paths that rewarded both speed and exploration, secrets tucked away for players willing to slow down and investigate. And the music… even with all the Michael Jackson controversy swirling around it, that soundtrack was absolutely sublime.
Here’s where things get a bit painful to talk about. The jump to 3D gaming in the late 90s was rough for a lot of franchises, but Sonic’s transition was particularly brutal to watch. I picked up a Dreamcast specifically for Sonic Adventure – imported it from Japan before it hit Europe because I couldn’t wait. Those opening sequences with Sonic running through the city while being chased by that killer whale were absolutely stunning. Graphically, it was everything I’d hoped for. But the camera… oh, the bloody camera. Playing it now is like wrestling with an angry badger while trying to platform.
Still had brilliant moments though. The speed sections captured that classic Sonic rush perfectly, and exploring Station Square felt revolutionary at the time. I must have spent hours just wandering around, talking to NPCs, feeling like I was living inside a Sonic game rather than just playing one. Adventure 2 improved things significantly – City Escape remains one of the absolute best Sonic levels ever created. Skateboarding down those San Francisco hills while “ROLLING AROUND AT THE SPEED OF SOUND” blasted away… pure gaming bliss, that was.
The Chao Garden became an obsession. I’m a 49-year-old IT manager, and I’m admitting publicly that I spent months raising virtual pets in a Sonic game. My wife still takes the piss out of me for it. But there was something genuinely relaxing about caring for those little creatures between the high-octane Sonic stages. Weird design choice, but it absolutely worked.
Then came what I like to call the “lost years.” Sonic Heroes had potential but never quite clicked – the team-based gameplay felt forced, like they were trying to solve problems that didn’t exist. Shadow the Hedgehog with bloody guns… I mean, who looked at Sonic and thought, “You know what this needs? Firearms.” Still bought it though, didn’t I? Still have it sitting on my shelf as a reminder of how spectacularly wrong developers can get things.
And then Sonic 06 happened. Sweet suffering Christ, that game. I queued up at Game to buy it on launch day like a proper mug, convinced the trailers had shown us the future of Sonic gaming. Instead, I got loading screens longer than some entire Mega Drive games, glitches that would make Big Rigs look polished, and a storyline involving hedgehog-human romance that still makes me uncomfortable to think about. The tragedy is you could see glimpses of what could have been brilliant buried under all that rushed development and corporate interference.
Series needed a complete reset after that disaster, and thankfully Sonic Colors and Generations delivered exactly that. Playing the remade Green Hill Zone in Generations was genuinely emotional – like reconnecting with an old friend after years apart. The concept was perfect: celebrating Sonic’s history while acknowledging what made him special in the first place. I may have gotten a bit misty-eyed revisiting Chemical Plant with those gorgeous updated visuals. Don’t judge me.
The character design evolution has been fascinating to watch – and occasionally horrifying. From the compact classic Sonic to the lanky modern version, to that… thing… in the original movie trailer. My wife, who knows absolutely nothing about gaming, actually gasped in horror when she saw that first Sonic movie design. Thank God they listened to fan feedback and fixed it. Some design changes worked, others really, really didn’t. It’s like watching a mate go through various questionable fashion phases.
Sonic Mania was the game I’d been waiting twenty-plus years for. Christian Whitehead and his team of fans-turned-developers understood what made Sonic brilliant in ways that Sega themselves seemed to have forgotten. The pixel art was gorgeous, the remixed music was sublime, and the physics felt absolutely perfect – like someone had reached into my teenage memories and made them real. I completed it twice and bored everyone within earshot talking about how they’d perfectly recreated the Genesis games’ feel while adding mechanics that felt completely natural.
The newest direction with Sonic Frontiers has been… well, it’s certainly different. Open-world Sonic sounds mental on paper, but there’s something oddly compelling about seeing the hedgehog in these vast, melancholic landscapes. It’s like they crossed Breath of the Wild with Sonic in what must have been the most surreal pitch meeting in gaming history. The combat system actually works for once, though some of the puzzles drag on longer than a Manchester United injury timeout. At least they’re trying new things rather than just rehashing the same formula for the thousandth time.
What’s always fascinated me is how Sonic remained culturally relevant even during his worst gameplay periods. The character transcended the games completely. The cartoons, the comics, the endless memes, and now successful movies – Sonic became part of our cultural vocabulary. My mate’s eight-year-old son knows who Sonic is despite never touching a Mega Drive controller. That’s staying power.
There’s something endearing about Sonic’s refusal to stay down. Every time the series face-plants spectacularly, it picks itself up, dusts off, and tries again. Reminds me of myself, really – still buying new Sonic games at 49 despite knowing there’s a coin flip’s chance of disappointment. There’s probably a life lesson buried in there somewhere.
So why do I keep coming back? Simple really. It’s that feeling when everything clicks perfectly – when Sonic builds momentum and you’re flying through a level with complete control, weaving through obstacles without breaking flow. When it works, there’s still nothing in gaming quite like it. I’ve got gray creeping in at the temples and a bald spot that’s expanding faster than my understanding of why Sega keeps making questionable decisions, but for those perfect moments, I’m 17 again, gripping a six-button controller and marveling at how anything could possibly move that fast.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
