Somehow the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise that has overwhelmed the internet in a way no other property has been able to. Understandably, a lot of people are baffled by it. Sure, it has a massive amount of media to it, including several TV shows, an extremely long-running comic, and an upcoming movie. But the reason most are driven to the series is its games, notable for their gigantic range in quality. To an outsider, a couple great Sega Genesis games followed by endless games with mixed to awful reception with a few “diamonds in the rough” should not garner so much attention, but it has. As someone who became infatuated with the franchise along with the fanbase, I feel that I have an accurate-enough idea of why people get so invested.
For starters, it’s the classic Genesis games which tend to draw people in. In fact, despite being over 25 years old, it’s rare that you’ll find someone who hasn’t played the games due to their classic status. Most people who bought a Genesis back in the day got either Sonic 1 or 2 bundled with it. By the time that era had ended, the franchise had gotten very popular and rereleases became common, allowing players too young to own a Genesis to be able to give them a spin.
But the reason for that popularity was because they were not just good games, but exceptional ones. The core gameplay was well-conceived from the start, adding depth to the average platformer by allowing the player to gain and maintain speed, giving it a natural-feeling and refreshing flow. They also had replayability that was through the roof. They were easy games thanks to the health system only requiring the player to have one of the thousands of rings scattered everywhere to be able to take a hit, and any rings lost could be regained. Yet, the player was always driven to do well because of the satisfaction maintaining a high speed would give. In addition was the fact that, instead of straightforward challenges, the environments you were running in were massive and dynamic, offering multiple paths to explore and rewards for exploration. Every time you played a level, you faced the possibility of finding an area you never knew existed, and that added a sense of unknown to every new playthrough.
Displaying the excellent gameplay was the exceptional aesthetics. The visuals were colorful and detailed and terrain varied in such a way that the world it was portraying felt alive. The backgrounds would often incorporate several layers of parallax, giving a sense of depth which conveyed a space between the foreground and background which made it feel like a cohesive place. The sprites were well animated, giving personality to the character’s actions and giving natural movement to the enemies which demonstrate what they are capable of. Additional touches like the animals which hop out of every enemy you destroy and animations in the terrain keep the screen visually engaging. There is also the music, which is notable for its memorable melodies, is also exceptional in how it sounds like it was made for the Genesis’ sound chip. The FM synthesizer is good at making varied percussive sound, and the arrangement of these games’ songs takes full advantage of that. With the expert craftsmanship that went into them, these games feel like they defined what the Genesis was capable of, rather than the other way around.
The reason these games turned out the way the did was due to a combination of passion, popularity, and the backing of a big company. From the beginning the gameplay was in danger of getting stale because expansive, dynamic environments were what kept the game engaging. These were games which required an exceptional amount of effort put into everything to fully realize the potential they had, and the popularity of the franchise and amount of talented, creative people available made achieving that possible.
This was exemplified with Sonic 3 & Knuckles, a game with its own uniquely engineered cartridge which broke the boundaries of what a Genesis game was capable of. This was a game that was ruthlessly ambitious, somehow releasing half finished with more than the second half releasing later to compensate. This was a game with original compositions by Michael Jackson, yet the rest of the soundtrack was great enough that they didn’t stand out. This was a game with a multiplayer mode made up of completely different assets from the main game. This was a game which could import its own new character into its predecessor. This was a game in which even its special stage could be played with a near-eternity of unique content. There’s a reason it can hold up as an all-time favorite game a quarter century later.
For context, Sonic 3 & Knuckles was conceived as a behemoth of a game with 23 massive multi-pathed levels, each containing their own unique art, gimmicks, music and boss fight. There were also two additional stages dedicated to boss fights, five unique lap-based multiplayer stages, three bonus stages, and a pseudo 3D special stage capable of loading seed-based random layouts. In addition, there were three characters to play as, each with their own unique abilities, and the new character Knuckles often getting his own paths through the levels and modified bass fights. For a 16 bit game, this was far beyond the scope of most any game that came before it, yet as a package it was able to do everything in an exceptional way. What also amazes me is the way they were able to bring this game to the consumers. The game was split in half so the first half could meet their deadline, so, to allow players to play the complete game, a cartridge slot was added on top of the second half Sonic & Knuckles. The idea was that you lock on Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles to get a complete game, but knowing how most Genesis owners had Sonic 2 already, the developers implemented compatibility with Sonic 2, allowing Knuckles to be playable in it. In addition, locking on every other Genesis game opened up a solo version of the special stage with each game having its own seed. Finally, Sonic 1 would do the same thing, but allow the player to input their own seed. A limitation of the time was used to open up possibilities rather than inhibit them, and even though it meant buying two games at the time, it improved the overall quality of the result, further boosting this game’s legacy.
That’s not even getting into the game itself, which has all the great aspects listed above, but in spades. The level design was more complex, allowing for plenty of opportunities to gain speed and rarely requiring a skilled player to lose their momentum, keeping the flow of gameplay that the Sonic games are best at. The art is gorgeous, riding the fine line between realistic and cartoonish. The animations and parallax are used to pull off some neat tricks such as water which uses changing perspectives to bridge the gap between the foreground and background and two layers of terrain which move relative to each other. The game is packed with set pieces and bosses which change up the game before it ever feels like you’ve been in the same place too long. The game uses worldbuilding effectively, too, with locations changing throughout the levels and cutscenes which explain how the characters go from one place to the next, giving a sense of location to the island the game is set on. It’s a game that never fails to be exciting, and that’s extremely admirable.
I feel like Sonic 3 & Knuckles is a gold standard that the franchise will so often try to live up to, incorporating many of the elements which make it great, but they can never capture the creativity and passion that made that game what it was. There is always something setting them back, but I could argue that is part of the franchise’s appeal. The eternal struggle of Sonic Team has been trying to make a Sonic game with gameplay as universal and polished as the one that defined these classic games, and I can’t help but be intrigued by their attempts.
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