The Mystery of Sonic

How is Sonic even a factor in today’s game market anymore?

The furry blue bastard hasn’t had a good game in at least nine years, and that’s if you consider Sonic Adventure good, which is a slightly tenuous proposition.

But Sega keeps churning out the games like gunked-up, fugly clockwork anyway, which can only mean one thing: they’re still selling.

For the love of God, why?

Are old Sega fanboys that attached to their beloved hedgehog that they’ll buy anything with him in it without so much as a second thought?  Is it pure nostalgia and nothing else that keeps this wearied character going?

Somehow I doubt that particular explanation.  Most Sonic fans from back in the day are now older, grown up, and more particular about their game purchasing.  Age tends to give people the discretion necessary to tell a good buy from a complete clunker.  I’d like to think that it’s a pretty safe bet that most of these people, as much as they may hope and yearn for a new Sonic adventure to come along and fill them with that same sense of wonder and enjoyment as the Genesis games did when they were younger, are still smart enough not to buy the trash that Sega is now slapping Sonic’s whored-out name on.

I mean, I’m a Sonic fan, but I’ve been actively avoiding his recent games, not buying them.

So who is buying these games and keeping the character going?

Unless I’m missing a major demographic, that only leaves younger folks; new Sonic fans; the uninitiated.  And again, I am forced to ask: why?

Why would younger gamers have any interest in this character?  He hasn’t been in a game really worth playing since some of them have been born, for heaven’s sake.  Marketing blitzes can do a lot to make up for poor quality, but you’d think the little furry dude’s bad reputation would start spreading around after a while.

Besides, don’t kids these days have been things to than cling to shiny, colorful mascots from the early 1990s?

Like buy more Mario games?  Or blow people to meaty little bits in Gears of War?  Or anything in between?

The world has moved on, for better or worse, from the way it was at the height of Sonic’s popularity.  Yet Sega, and the mysterious customers who are somehow keeping his crap raft afloat, have not.

Poor Sega has fallen quite a long way from their glory days as well, just like their beleaguered mascot.   There’s quite a similarity when you really think about it.  The details of the company’s fall are a topic for another rant, but suffice it to say that I miss the days when I could count on Sega’s products to be cool, innovative and, you know, worth playing.

Sadly, that’s not the case anymore.  Sonic Team, along with the rest of Sega, seem to have completely lost the ability to make a decent game.

So what is this strange phenomenon that is keeping Sonic alive?  Where is this money coming from?  Who is providing it?  What can we do to stop them and finally make Sonic go away?  Isn’t it about time we put the spiky rodent out of his damn misery?

When you really think about it, it’s a little strange that Sonic has remained as important as he has for this length of time.  Compare his track record to Mario’s.  Sonic has been in a scant few games in his career that were truly memorable, just about all of which were Genesis-era.  Mario’s track record isn’t made of solid gold or anything, but I think it’s safe to say he’s got a good deal more quality to his name than the furry rodent does.

Yet both characters continue to live on long after most of their colorful mascot ilk have died off and become ancient relics of a time gone by, when there was no third dimension, when analog was a word only audio professionals cared about, and when the glorious CD glimmering on the horizon was going to revolutionize the world.

Obviously there’s something about Sonic that still appeals to somebody.

I just can’t for the life of me figure out what or for whom.

I guess it’s just part of the little blue guy’s mystery.  Maybe one of these days, if they don’t first suffocate him under a grimy pillow stuffed with terrible products, Sega will finally do right by the little guy.

A fan can dream, can’t he?