Why I First Became a Sonic Fan
By Chaos Theory T. Echidna.
I'm a bit unusual among Sonicfans, in that I didn't come into the games when they first came out, didn't come in slightly after that when they were at the height of their popularity, completely missed both cartoon series, and the beginning of the comic book serieses just passed me right by. I was totally unconnected to any of the hype, advertising (except for a vague recollection of seeing Sonic jump from rotating platform to rotating platform in the Acquatic Ruin Zone on T.V. once...) or popularity. In fact, I was SO clueless about Sega in general that I thought that cool commercial for the original Phantasy Star was for a NINTENDO game, and that the Genesis was Sega's FIRST system! (Well, come on, you gotta give me a break on that one. The word "Genesis" MEANS "beginning", after all...) I had never heard of "blast processing" and to this day I still have no clue what it means. And the very first Sonic game that I DID play when it was new, and get into the "hype" on, turned out to be a total failure.
I played my first Sonic game, Sonic 2, at the late date of January 1996. AFTER both cartoons had been cancelled. AFTER Sonic 1, 2, 3, Sonic and Knuckles, Sonic Spinball, and maybe also Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. AFTER Sonic CD and 32-X had already been declared failures. And just when the Saturn was first starting to peek around the corner. Like everything, I got into it way too late to have been there when the fun stuff was happening. But I didn't CARE that 32-bit graphics already existed at this point and 64-bit was right around the corner--Sonic 2 impressed me. When my brother unexpectedly brought it home one day out of the blue (along with a Genesis of course--systems and games came packaged together in the good old days...sigh...), I had no idea what to think. I had vaguely heard that the games were supposed to be good, but this...this! It was so pretty, and cute, and colourful. The music was very catchy and man, he WAS a fast little bugger, wasn't he? I think it was the Chemical Plant, with its dangerous high-tech traps, its extremely cool music, and its SPEED, that first got my real attention (it remains one of my favourite levels of all time today). At that point, I knew that Sonic 2 was an interesting game and I'd like to be seeing more of it. But I wasn't a SONICFAN then, you understand. Just starting to like ONE new game--not the characters and universe as a whole.
Then... then my brother went to answer the door or something, telling me to LEAVE IT ALONE, so I did not touch the joystick--not even to hit "pause". And I saw it.
After Sonic had been standing still a few moments, he GOT BORED!! He glared angrily into the T.V. screen and started tapping his foot, then even looked at a (non-existent) watch! I was absolutely entranced. Never, ever, EVER before, in any video game I had ever played, had a character actually acted like a PERSON. They never showed any emotions or any initiative of their own, at least, not as far as I had seen, up until that exact moment. They were just passive plastic pawns that did whatever you said without question, and the main thing I felt when one of them lost their lives was frustration over having to do that level over again--not sadness because of a PERSON dying.
That all changed with Sonic. I'm not saying that I weep like a grieving friend whenever Sonic leaps off the screen with his eyes bugged out, but it does make the game that much more involving to play when it makes you feel more as if you're taking on the ROLE of a cartoon character, rather than just controlling a bunch of pixels. Sonic didn't JUST get bored, he also popped out his eyes when screeching to a stop, got progressively more nervous the more he balanced off an edge, looked tired when he pushed something heavy, and frightened/surprised when he slid out of control. Almost everything had an emotion or gesture for it, and all together it made the whole experience rather charming. It wasn't just a game anymore--it was a whole immersive cartoon world! With characters that I CARED about.
Well, from then on I was hooked. The complex levels with more than one way through them, the clever traps, the unpredictable landscapes, and the great music were all nice things, but the characters were what really sold me on Sonic. From then on, I just couldn't get enough of the little blue guy and his adorable little orange friend. I bought Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles with my own money, even though they were both still EXPENSIVE at the time. I played Sonic 1 (later buying it used), Sonic Spinball and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on the Sega channel (which my brother was paying for, not me.) And to this day, I still consider it to be somewhat of an honour to have been one of the very FIRST people to play Sonic 3-D Blast--BEFORE it hit the stores. Of course, as we all know by now, not only did that game fail but most people, even major Sonic fans, hate its guts. I don't, but that's another story...
As I went further into the games, I discovered a whole NEW favourite character--a certain bright red critter with almond-shaped eyes and long, flowing dreadlocks. Yep, that's right, Knuckles. I liked him from the second I saw him. Even when I saw him the first time on the box of "Knuckles Chaotix" for the 32-X (and at the time I had NO clue what a 32-X was) and originally thought he was a "pretty exotic lady hedgehog"--that his longer spines signified a long girl's hairdo, NOT that he was a different species! Even after I read the instruction booklet to Sonic 3 and found to my disappointment that not only was he NOT a cool, strong, dangerous female character (darn) but not even a hedgehog--he was something called an...echidna? What's that? (And so, a VIDEO GAME caused me to learn scientific type stuff, as I went and looked them up at the library! I looked up hedgehogs too while I was at it, and use the information gleaned from both books to enhance my fanfics today.) Even when he was being a major pain in the butt at the beginning of Sonic 3, I STILL liked him! And he remains my favourite character from the "Sonic-verse" now.
It was Knuckles, with his cool looks, mysterious background, darkness, and sympathy factor that pushed me to the NEXT level of fandom. Now I didn't just casually like the games--I was a FAN-fan. Which means, I was fascinated by the universe and characters themselves. I started wondering how they would act in their spare time, what kinds of food and drinks they would like, what their hobbies were, where they lived when they weren't running all over the place to fight Robotnik, etc. I especially wanted to know what had happened to Knuckles' missing people and HOW they could have disappeared "long, long ago" but left a FIFTEEN-year-old behind! (I think Sega didn't quite think that sentence through if you ask me...) But I didn't get around to writing my story off of it until later. Fanfic, I wasn't quite ready for. I didn't even know there WAS such a thing as Sonic fanfic. But I was willing to make up plenty of other stuff! Such as my two first fan-characters--complete with rather crudely-drawn pictures!--Electra the Hedgehog, Sonic's (originally twin) sister, and her friend (and originally sidekick) Jolt the Squirrel. I made them a team like Sonic and Tails and gave them their own game abilities--including what happens when they go "Super"--something I had just heard rumours of but been unable to do so rar, at the time. I also made up an ELABORATE alien planet and REALISTIC hedgehog-people culture, the Erinaceans. In those scribbled notes, I described everything from exactly how they evolved and what was different on their planet than on Earth to allow it to happen, to more common, every-day things such as what kind of clothes they wear (almost none). It was fun and interesting, and I enjoyed the project even though I was afraid to show it to anyone. And another thing of note is that, like my own theory (and many other peoples') about Mobius--the Erinaceans' unnamed home planet was ALSO an alternate-universe version of Earth.
And then...THEN...came 1999, when I first thought of looking up Sonic stuff on the Internet. (I had had the 'net since fall of '97 but due to my Genesis being broken, I had not thought about Sonic until I finally by some miracle got it working again, in early '99.) Can we say FAN EXPLOSION, boys, girls, and hermaphrodites?!! When I originally set out with the innocent intention of finding a place to buy Sonic 1 on-line, I had no IDEA what I would find! TONS of fansites! Novel-length, complex, involved fanfics! Two entire comic book series I had NO idea existed before! Two cartoon series and a one-hour anime, AND a new cartoon rumoured to be in the works! Mobius? Princess Sally? Wait a minute, PRINCESS anything at all?! Since when do they have a monarchy?! That wasn't in the games! Julie-Su? Time-stones? Amy Rose? Little Planet? MECHASonic? Freedom Fighters? Dark Legion? Brotherhood of Guardians? Echidnaopolis? What IS all this stuff? Wow, I had no IDEA this universe was so HUGE!!
It was the Sonic HQ that first got me hooked. I just read that website with my mouth gaping open in awe for hours at a time. From there, I found links to other sites, looked up Sonic message boards and became a regular poster on a few, got ideas for SEVERAL fanfics, bought a couple of new games, wrote one huge fanfic about Knuckles, participated in a Round-Robin, made up MANY more characters while modifying Electra and Jolt--and even toyed with the idea of doing a Sonic website of my own. What started off as a simple joke idea--to take the name of a Zone on the Floating Island that few people like but I do, (the three choices I narrowed it down to were Hydrocity, Marble Gardens, and Sandopolis) and the names of two characters associated with Knuckles that don't get featured on websites very often (Charmy and Mighty--Espio is MONDO popular and gets used EVERYwhere; and Vector of course works at the Sonic HQ)--has, well...GROWN! When I started "Sandopolis" (then known as "Marble Gardens") I had no intentions whatsoever of making it such an elaborate website. But now Sandopolis has had near 1,500 visitors to the main page alone, belongs to four webrings, is linked to by several pages including the Sonic HQ itself, has won an award, and has over THREE HUNDRED files in its directory, including over fifty midis! That's a heck of a site, for a free one. And I am in the middle of my third Sonic fanfic and have plans for a fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh.
And to think...all of this was caused by the mere tap of a cartoon animal's foot.
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curious tourists have been stupid enough to dare to read Chaos Theory's essay since August 22, 1999. Of course, they all passed out cold with boredom.