Diary of a Mad Sonic Fanboy: Chapter One

I’ll never forget Christmas of 1991. I was an impressionable 8 year old child opening all of my gifts that I had received. While I had loved them all, one clearly stood out amongst the rest. I had received my first game console that my parents had bought for me. Up until that point I had to share the NES with my older brother, but now I finally had something I could call my own. My parents bought me a Sega Genesis. I was happy. I knew when I saw that shiny black box with silver lettering I had something special. I was gonna find out what Genesis does that Nintendon’t. While the Sega Genesis is not exactly my favorite game console, it’s my most treasured and one I find most nostalgic. One of the major reasons for this is because the system came packaged with one of my personal favorite game franchises of all time, Sonic the Hedgehog. However, over the years this love has waned. It has transformed from love, to apathy to loathing hate. This then, is the reflection. This is my life experience with Sonic the Hedgehog. National Kenographic presents.....

Chapter 1: The Genesis of Fanboyism

Truth be told, I hadn’t always wanted a Sega Genesis. I was perfectly happy in the 80s with the NES era and I didn’t really think videogames could become much greater than Super Mario Bros. 3. I played that game to the death. I had seen in various gaming publications of a new gaming console, called the Sega Genesis. They ran various ad campaigns on TV and magazines crowing about how great it was and how NES was a joke in comparison and this and that, and while it looked neat, it failed to really capture me as a gamer. Not that as a kid I didn’t go “Wow those graphics are purty!” but any of the games just failed to make a lasting impression with me as I wasn’t much of a sports gamer and I never could get into Alex Kidd. It just seemed like a poor Mario clone to me. All of that changed when I saw this….




Yes, the original ad for Sonic the Hedgehog. Now Sega gets laughed at for poor marketing strategy and rightly so, however during the early 90s Sega had made absolutely brilliant marketing decisions and strategy. Alex Kidd simply was not pushing Sega consoles and they needed a serious viable contender to the Super Nintendo onslaught. In steps this man...

The face of a man that realizes he is indeed all that and a bag of chips

The Sega Corporation should be sending a good 5 percent of their paycheck to this man every week for literally putting them on the map in videogame history. Many characters were submitted by Naka’s team to replace Alex Kidd, interestingly enough a lot of those scrapped designs would be used in later titles, such as Vector the Crocodile, who finally would make an appearance years later. Eventually the team settled on one design, a small hedgehog with an ability to run extremely fast. Dubbed Sonic due to his super speed, he was the obvious choice for the new mascot and was given the color blue to coincide with the trademark Sega logo. Sega wanted it so that when you think of Sega, you think of Sonic the Hedgehog, just like Mario with Nintendo. It was an instant overnight success. Sega had created an amazing attention getter. Sonic was the true alternative to Mario. The character was a perfect representation of the 1990s attitude. Outrageous, wild, out of control, in your face, fast paced and colorful, it made Mario look like an ancient relic of the past in my impressionable elementary mind. The choice was clear. I had to get Sonic the Hedgehog. For the first time ever, Mario and Nintendo had a true viable contender to his throne. That Christmas, Sega Genesis sold 65% more units than Nintendo. It was official. Sonic had knocked Mario off of his throne he held for nearly 10 years. A new sheriff was in town and his name was Sonic. It will easily go down as the greatest marketing strategy in the companies history. Of course, the game was fun too.



As soon as I hooked up my Genesis and booted it up I was instantly blown away. The first thing you recognize is that Sonic has a personality. He isn’t just some sprite. I could see his facial expressions as he nearly falls off of a cliff, the determination he has when charging at full speed and his sense of humor as he gets angry at you for not getting a move on already and his surprise when he gets struck by an enemy. I got a sense of accomplishment and thrill at besting Dr. Robotnik on the first stage and watching him race away in fear. I felt like I was playing as a bad ass and could instantly get a sense of their characters without one word of dialogue or background story being spoken. I only made it to the second Zone on my first play through, but I still remember it vividly to this day. I played the game all day for hours on end. Everything in the game just came together. Green Hill Zone was a fun romp to introduce you to the world of Sonic. The lush backgrounds, the beautiful music and gorgeous backdrop were placed to give you a sense that “Yes, this is what you are fighting for.” Marble Zone the music gets a bit more dramatic, the stages a bit more challenging before changing gears with Spring Yard Zone and the dreaded Labyrinth Zone, a perfectly named stage that many gamers finally get stuck on thanks to it’s difficulty and somewhat confusing layout. If you can manage to clear that the game brings you Star Light Zone. A peaceful calm setting with beautiful relaxing music to reward you for getting this far. This was also the game’s way of relaxing you before the final stretch, the Scrap Yard with another music track that invokes the feeling of “Hey, this is the end, don’t give up!” Every aspect of game design came together beautifully and after much practice I was finally able to best Dr. Robotnik and he was finally mine. …..Or so I thought and he just flew off again and I was sad and disappointed. But hey, Sonic saved the world for his little forest friends and everything would be ok, at least for now. Sadly, I never could get all of the Chaos Emeralds in that game. The images of Dr. Robotnik taunting me at the end with the remaining ones he had irritated me to this day. I would spend the next year or so beating the game and trying my damnedest to destroy that damn Robotnik at the end and prevent him from getting away but to no avail.

The first of many, many and I do mean many battles with the Doc

Suffice to say, this was my introduction to Sonic the Hedgehog and I became an instant fan. I finally had found a game that made me realize I really did love to play videogames and this was up to that point my clear favorite and still remains a game I play off and on regularly throughout the years. I became a Sonic fan boy.








Next Time: In Chapter 2 we revisit 1992 where the best just got better and I determined that all I needed in life were 3 things. God, family and Sonic the Hedgehog.

And thus did many used game retailers clutch their stomachs and laugh heartily at Sega's empty threats.

Every Fall Sony Has a Dumb Idea.

2008

2009

2010

JRPGs are a slave to anime and I want no moe.

JRPGs and Prince have something in common. They both party like it’s 1999. For the past 10 years now JRPGs have grown into a period of stagnation where no new fresh ideas are flowing down the pipes and creativity and originality are simply a stalwart of the 1990s and were promptly left behind along with flannel shirts. Their popularity and influence in the industry continue to wane further and further. The reason for this is quite simple. JRPGs have become a slave to anime, they have no idea where to innovate and most important of all, they no longer let the player assume a role, which is the core idea behind an RPG to begin with. JRPGs are instead excessively lengthy films with a pointless minigame or two tossed in.



Now JRPGs have always had a somewhat close relationship with anime, but never before in the history of the genre have the two just been so closely connected. Its also not that I have some seething hatred with anime in particular either. It’s just that ever since Final Fantasy VII literally took the world by storm which was obviously the most anime inspired FF game to date, JRPGs have been stuck within a bubble of Japanese pop culture from which it can’t escape. Nearly every main character of a JRPG today is some effeminate moe zippers and hairspray pretty boy who looks like he just came off the set of a music video. He is often accompanied by other anime archetypes as well. Cute traditional Japanese looking Mary Sue? Check. Pretty boy hot guy with glasses? Check. Cute lolicon/catgirl? Check. Emo pretty boy warrior who is the strongest in the land? Check. “Sexy” older and more mature mysterious girl with a large rack? Check. Cute animal thing with a squeaky voice? Double check. Nearly every JRPG in the last 10 years now have had those sort of silly redundant stereotypes. Mixing and matching the settings and locales won’t alter this fact. Be it Tales of Whatever in a medieval setting or Xenobabble in space, or even Wild Arms in what I guess is supposed to be some warped vision of what the Wild West is supposed to be, all of these games mix and match all of these stereotypical archetypes we’ve been seeing in anime since the early 90s. While RPGs have been known to have clichés in the past, it’s abundantly clear that nearly every single RPG these days contain cookie cutter one dimensional characters you’ve seen before.

Can’t sell plushies on J-List without one of these things in your game.

That’s not to say that JRPGs haven’t tried to innovate….the problem is that they have no clue as to where the innovation should be begin. Giving a car with a bad fuel pump a fresh coat of paint doesn’t help it run any better. The real areas JRPGs need innovation in aren’t being addressed. Instead we are constantly bombarded with crazy nonsense battle systems and confusing menus and dumb mini games. Nowhere is this more evident than in Resonance of Fate. It takes the average player nearly five hours just to grasp the basics of that game’s combat system. Meanwhile the plot literally goes nowhere as the character’s names aren’t even given any introduction much less any back story as to who they are or where they came from. Placing the game in a steam punk setting doesn’t cover up the inherent clichéd mess of a plot and boring characters and overly complex battle systems doesn’t give the game any more originality than other JRPGs. Final Fantasy for all of it’s attempts at trying to innovate has made progress in some areas but not enough in the key areas. Sure, Final Fantasy 8, 10 and 13 have all made attempts at innovation, however FF12 was the most innovative FF game in the past ten years simply because it knew where to innovate. It took key lessons from western RPGs and incorporated them into traditional Final Fantasy, but even that game had an identity crisis. That ugly anime influence crept into the game as a main character in Vaan was hastily inserted into a plot that really had little to do with him. It was clear Square-Enix was afraid to lose sales if an effeminate male didn’t play the lead. They were afraid to leave from their protective bubble. They are a slave to anime.

The by-products of focus tested schlock.

The only real JRPG series that has managed to thrive and retain it’s credibility over the years and stay fresh and interesting is Shin Megami Tensei. Now, of course this would seem instantly contradictory given the heavy Japanese influence of these games, namely the Persona games, but there is a bit of a difference. SMT has anime influences, but just like older JRPGs of the past, they aren’t a slave to it. They aren’t bound by familiar stereotypes or appearances. The characters are usually multifaceted in Persona and have realistic personalities. They learn and grow through life experience. SMT overall has managed to stay fresh by not being afraid to try something different. Even the latest in the franchise Strange Journey has deviated from its Japanese cultural roots and taken a nod to American Sci-Fi films and nearly all of the cast is American.

However the one thing that sets those apart and this is the biggest reason JRPGs simply aren’t as fun anymore; no longer do you play a role. Essentially role playing games are supposed to be that. You assume a role and from there the story around you unfolds, you are a part of the story and your choices directly influence it. Developers went through painstaking lengths to try to create this illusion with the limited technology they had in the old days, but fundamentally JRPGs have actually regressed somewhat regarding this. Far too often in JRPGs (and this is my biggest complaint with FF13), is that the player does not assume the role of that character and instead simply moving that character from one plot point to the next. No choices can be made that actually affect the outcome of the plot, they’re simply there along for the ride. At best the player is a fight choreographer for a movie. Shin Megami Tensei sets itself apart by still giving the player control of not just how they build their player, but the choices that character makes. In some games major choices can even effect who will become your allies, or your enemies. It’s this feeling of being in control, feeling as if you yourself take an active role in the events unfolding that helps you better connect with the plot and retain interest.

JRPGs are stuck in a rut, creatively. However, that doesn’t have to be the case. If they wouldn’t be afraid to step out of the anime cliché bubble for once and focus on the basics of what an RPG is designed to do, rather than focus on silly overbearing combat systems that serve no real purpose in extending the vested interest of the player, this genre would be a lot better off. And no, no amount of online or social networking will change that Square-Enix. Atlus seems to be on a lone boat sailing away from the trappings of what is expected out of an RPG in the land of the rising sun. I oblige other companies over there to do the same.

Is the world...

....not utterly sick of this Chitlin Circuit bullshit yet?

More like, why did Tyler Perry make another fucking movie? Seriously, go away. I wish I could write the same bullshit year after year and get paid millions to do it.