WeView Verdict: Sonic the Hedgehog

I’ll put this simply, Sonic is the best game ever made. Sure, Peter pretty much said that when he wrote this week’s WeView but it’s such an important point that it obviously needs to be restated. Even for those of you born after 1991, and if you were why are you so young, you need to recognise just how good Sonic still is. It may not be quite as influential as Super Mario Bros. was, but as an example of how good platformer design can be it’s without peer in my opinion.

Of course this isn’t about how much I love Sonic, it’s about whether or not you love Sonic; although if you don’t I worry for you. We’ll start with OriginalJonty, mostly because they were first and share my experience of Sonic as one of their earliest memories. The blue blur may not technically have been where I started with gaming, but he was where I fell in love with it.

Sonic The Hedgehog was the first game I ever played about 19 years ago (19 YEARS!) and Sonic is what started my love affair with gaming. I don’t think I could think of a better introduction to the gaming realm than Sonic. Sure, Mario is the posterboy of gaming but Sonic was what made it cool.

Now, although it does concern me that some of you were negative in your opinions, don’t let it be said that I’m not fair. Just because I disagree passionately doesn’t mean I won’t let them have their voice. First let’s turn to The Mysterious Phantom Bear (I’m not calling them mysterious, that’s actually their name) who recently reconfirmed their opinion of the game.

For me, the experience of going back to play retro games is always an intriguing one. Certain games that I have revisited from my childhood have stood up particularly well, others have not. Even when Sonic was out at the time I always found it to be vastly overated and lacking the depth, ingenuity and sheer variety of Super Mario World which at the time was a major rival.

Playing Sonic retrospectively now (thanks PS+) I stand by my assessment as an 8 year old cub. It’s a pleasant diversion, colourful and fast paced but ultimately it can’t rise above being quite a hollow ADHD based experience.

Next up is KeRaSh, who stays with the negativity. However, like The Mysterious Phantom Bear they do have some good reasoning behind it. In fact I agree with their reasoning, although I see it as a positive rather than a negative.

The problems I have with StH are almost always the same for any 2D Sonic game. It is kind of neccessary to know the entire level by heart because when you are running at high speed into an unknown world you will probably end up falling into a giant pit of lava and that is not fun. I never beat a single Sonic game back in the old days until the Dreamcast came along with Sonic Adventure which is where I felt the situation got better because in a 3D world you were actually able to see what is in front of you.

I absolutely adore the challenge that Sonic presents because of that aspect, it’s the same reason I really enjoy Super Meat Boy. You have to keep playing over and over to learn exactly how to do it. Sure, Sonic definitely doesn’t take it to the same extreme, but I still love that challenge.

For our final opinion we turn to a WeView regular, 2ofclubs. Why? Mostly due to the use of the word smörgåsbord. I can’t ignore that.

Like a lot of people it seems, Sonic was my first foray into the world of video games at the tender age of 6. While my young eyes were instantly drawn to the veritable smörgåsbord of colours and movement, as I played it more I found the challenge as addictive as running round outside pretending I was the hedgehog himself. It certainly kept me fit that’s for sure. Even going back and playing recently I still have the same admiration for its masterclass in platforming and the way in which it proves how the simplest ideas sometimes end up being the most timeless.

Now onto the verdict. I wasn’t expecting Sonic to be a controversial title, and even though we did have a few negative views the response was completely overwhelming. With seven of you taking part, all seven of you gave the classic Sega title a rating of Buy It. I couldn’t agree more.