I wrote this yesterday for my DA gallery, but only just got round to adding it here So I'm a day late.
It's been 15 years today since a certain spikey blue hedgehog graced our lives.
If your into Sonic, you most likely got into him through the old school games. Sonic 1's Greenhill Zone, Sonic 2 with Tails, Sonic 3 & Knuckles...All those games still today represent what Sonic is about more than any other medium.
And of course, Dr. Robotnik, or Eggman. One of the coolest villains ever devised with a moustache you could look up to. He made being fat look cool. His jump suits defied fasion trends. He was comic foil. Deviously sneaky. Fiendishly clever. You could treat him seriously one minute, or be so retarded the next and he would still be Robotnik (or Eggman). Sorry Toby. You ASSHOLE.
I was about 8 when I first played Sonic 1 for the Master System. I'd had the console for a little while and had not yet had the money to buy a Genesis, known downunder as the Mega Drive. One day I came home from school to find a brand new game my parents had bought me called "Sonic the Hedgehog". The casing was a bit different to the usual Master System games at the time in that it had a full cover splash on the box. The character on the front was a spikey blue hedgehog with red sneakers. "Alright!" I think. "Another game to waste a few months on."
That "few months" has been running for 15 years now, and it's still going. Sonic was, (and still is,) to me like it was to most of my generation of gamers. (Unless of course you were the die hard Nintendo fans and were strictly Mario, you probably listened to the hype of the schoolyard grapevine and the decidedly geeky and very immature game magazines like Sega Megazone and went out and got a copy.) Sonic was a ground breaking, deleriously entertaining and slightly psychedelic fest of amazing graphics, furiously fast gameplay and the best music to grace a console to date. Not just another game, but a damn good one.
There's nothing more I can say about the games that none of you don't already know. We all played through the games as they came out, each game busting the hype the gaining in all levels of awesomeness which each itteration. We all felt the joy of just running (not just left to right, but up and down and in 3D...) and the freedom that the games gave you in their 8 bit and 16 bit glory.
There was the cartoons, the best for me personally being the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Saturday incarnation affectionately known as SatAM, a personal obession for me. Each show had a different feel, a different style. One gave us the slapstick and humerous nature of the games, wheras the other provided us with a more serious, darker sentiment that many of us craved.
The games and the cartoons were just the start, as two different comic series took off from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, one more based on the game continuity (with flourishes of AOSTH) and the other heavily grounded in the SatAM universe (initially with more game elements thrown into the mix.) Archie's series and the SatAM cartoon were to me everything I wanted in Sonic. Slapstick humour but with a serious story, something I could enjoy and be thrilled by with characters I cared about and could relate to. We all know how I feel about a certain princess...
The shows, comics and the games continued to be a major part of my life throughout the whole of Primary school and even high school, though obviously high school life provided more distractions. I never did let go of my fandom, collecting the comics even during their bleaker and less enjoyable days. They helped lift my spirits when I was down, entertain me when I was bored, and fuelled my imagination and interest in art and gaming. While the game series has hit a rough patch lately with somewhat dissapointing decisions in plot and characters, I still collect and play them. The comics, conversely, are only getting better, the past few issues actually seeing a feel of the old days coming back as a better writer/artist/editor team take over.
Like all relationships, my one with the Sonic series has had it's share of the good and bad moments, the spats shortly followed by the make-up sex, the hilarity, heartache, and the sentimental. And I've enjoyed every moment of it. The series is looking as strong as it always has, with more incarnations coming out thick and fast, and hopes of joining the comic development team sees me becoming even more rabid with my artwork production...
Which leads me to one of the best things about the Sonic fandom, which is sharing it with you guys. From old school chums, to my brothers, to all you DA Sonic fans, (Chad, Rachael, Toby (I love you man), Ingjald especially, thanks for the wonderful chats and general goofing off,) to FUSers, to the official Archie artwork team, I really enjoy sharing stories and art and memories with you guys every day, and personally that's what Sonic is all about to me.
That and chillidogs and blistering speed.
Here's to you true blue, and 15 years of being a major part of my life. Here's to many more just like it.
Oh, and I found a chocolate mud cake in the fridge earlier, so I wrote "Happy Birthday Sonic" on it and stuck a blue candle in it Then ate it. It was nice. =3
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So I'm a day late. 
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