Sonic The Hedgehog: an oldie

Intro

After watching Sonic grow over the years and seeing his many incarnations, I've decided to go back and talk about an arguably a classic in the Sonic-cartoon world. I'm referring to the second cartoon made based on Sonic the Hedgehog. This cartoon, that appeared in 1993, featured Sonic and Tails with a whole new set of friends and a more solidified storyline. The story didn't follow the game at all. Sonic and Tails are a part of a group of freedom fighters assisting Princess Sally Acorn. Sally, of course, was Sonic's love interest and Tails, a.k.a Miles Prower, was his plucky, substantially weak, yellowish-orange, two-tailed fox, sidekick.

Who's Sonic?

Sonic: The Hedgehog was a game for the Sega Genesis. The Genesis was a home gaming console that appeared in the USA in 1989. This video game featured a blue hedgehog, going through 2-D side scrolling world, trying to stop someone name Dr. Robotnik/Dr. Eggman(depending on what country you played the game). The object of the game was to go through the stages, collect chaos emeralds, and defeat Dr. Robotnik, and by wining the game, you saved the other animals (who are realistic size in comparison to Sonic) from being roboticized. Roboticization is essentially turning a living thing into a robot. This process is supposed to cause the host to become completely unaware of their previous life and will only follow orders.

Hedgehog?


Hedgehog is a small insectivorous (feeding on insects) mammal who is spiny like the porcupine. In the picture to the right, some may call it cute. When threatened the hedgehog will curl up into a ball.



Plot

As I mentioned before, Sonic, an arrogant, super-fast, hedgehog, hero, and Tails are part of a group called the Freedom Fighters who fight against Dr. Robotnik. The show features mutlible anthropomorphic (having human qualities) animals fighting on a planet called Mobius in the 33rd Century. When Dr. Robotnik attacks the city, he captures King Acorn and exiles him in "The Void." This was a place that Dr. Robotnik theoretically would send all his enemies if they were too much for him. Although, I never fully understood why he just didn't roboticize all of them. He roboticized Sonic's Uncle so I'd guess everyone was fair game.

Sonic and the other animals escape into the Great Forest and created a village called Knothole. Sonic uses his lightning fast speed to fight off Robotnik's forces while tails uses his two tails to fly away. As the show progressed the storyline of the various characters opened up but it was all genreally the same. Dr. Robotnik: evil; roboticization: bad. Almost every character knew someone who had be turned into a robot and one had been partially roboticized.

The war went on for 10 years when we start the show and during this time the Freedom Fighters worked diligently to foil their adversary's plans. And in spite of the danger, they always landed on top. At least, if you forgive the fact that the King was missing and animals are constantly being roboticized but you don't meet most of them. You just know about it. The main characters seem to stay safe because Sonic usually sped in as a distraction and if he wasn't fast enough to use his speed to escape, he pulled a large golden ring from his backpack and got a boost of extra speed.

Other Characters

• Rotor a walrus with a knack for machines
  
• Antoine a French coyote and former palace guard. Although, I don't know how since he was kind of scary, a little wimpy, arrogant and didn't want to admit when he was wrong.
• Bunnie Rabbot a southern cyborg rabbit who was partially roboticized before being saved by Sonic, of course.
• Princess Sally Acorn a chipmunk and the king's only daughter. She carried a sentient mini-computer named NICOLE.

The Game

The show only lasted for two seasons, but that could be because the show was nothing like the game. Sure Sonic was fast and tails flew, but the creators where taking a big risk by adding too many characters and not being similar to the game. With that being said, I have to tell you that the games story line wasn't specific. In fact, some would say it didn't have one. The game play involved traveling through various levels, using your speed to collect gold rings, avoid traps, and enemies and using your quills, looking more like spikes, to destroy the robots and free the little animals inside. After killing a robot bad guy, a cute little, real-sized animal pops out and bounces away. After killing a boss, you release a barrel full of animals.

None of this happened in the show. Golden rings couldn't be found everywhere, sonic never "freed" any robotizied animals, and he barely used his spikes to defeat the bad guys. Once Tails was introduced in the second game, he could defeat bad guys too! He wasn't as fast as sonic, but at least he didn't just fly away all the time like he does in the cartoon.

Then there were the Chaos Emeralds: never mentioned in the cartoon. These things seemed pretty important in the game since you had to go through a little puzzle, special music played, you got an extra score, and you can only "fully" defeat Dr. Robotnik when you collect them. (This means you get a different/better ending.) Aside form these minor gifts for collecting the emeralds, Sonic could transform into super sonic! (see picture on the right) This form of sonic was super fast and could jump higher! Once you collected all the emeralds and collected at-least fifty rings you'd transform. The bad part was one ring was lost for every second in this form so staying super was hard to do. This super Sonic, however, couldn't ever show up in the game since there were no emeralds.

Although, I think it has to be said that there was one episode about a "crystal" that clearly was the chaos emerald but not given the same level of importance.

The Conclusion

Overall this was a decent cartoon. It parodied a game a lot of people loved, had a traditional good versus evil plot, and bravely tried to come up with a new plot. Even though the show was canceled early I still think they did an OK job. It's the free thinking that manifested in this show that gave way to the Sonic games we have today. The games of today are full of new and exciting characters and I think the creator's timing was just off because there have been a few Sonic cartoons since this show. Who knows, maybe the next sonic game will revisit some of the storylines introduced here.

Check out a video of the opening: