Today marks the birthday of Sonic the Hedgehog! Well, sort of… Sonic made his debut on the Genesis on June 23, 1991, and on American soil, no less.
On a total coincidental note, I just finished reading a fairly interesting interview with one of Sonic’s creators, Yuji Naka, who runs Sonic Team. It’s actually the first interview I can recall in which Naka wasn’t asked about NiGHTS 2, though at this point, I’m almost certain he’s probably insisted that such questions not be asked. Not only is it a sore topic, it’s a really old one at that.
For a while I used to be a big time Yuji Naka fan, and would follow all of Sonic Team’s projects closely, particularly during the late Saturn/early Dreamcast years. But after the abysmal Sonic Adventure 2, any interest in the Sonic franchise more or less faded away. There’s always been Phantasy Star Online, but I’m not much of a RPG fan, let alone an online RPG fan (if they release a proper Phantasy Star 5, I wouldn’t mind giving that a shot). Plus the time they absorbed UGA and gave little reason for Mizuguchi not to leave was when I pretty much gave up on them. Right now on the shelves is a Sonic game which is in 3D, but seems to have “finally gotten it right”, and it’s been there for months, yet I have no real interest whatsoever to even give it a try.
Though despite any problem’s I’ve had with his studio’s decisions or games in the past, I’ll always have respect for the man. I’ve always felt bad how he was more or less thrust into the spotlight as “Sega’s answer to Miyamoto” which was ridiculous for so many reasons. Hence why the failure of NiGTHS was not only hurtful (it was his pride and joy) but embarrassing. His studio’s games have always been (unfairly and unrealstically) positioned as the light at the end of Sega’s tunnel, and since it’s never really worked out that way, he ends up unnecessary blame for Sega’s woes, and that has to frustrate the guy.
Hence why I feel Sonic Team’s output is so poor these days, or why you hear all these stories nowadays of Naka being some prick no one can tolerate working with. I’ve always gotten the sense in interviews, especially ones right after Sega left the hardware business, that he’s simply tired of the attention and just wants to go back to simpler times, and it’s even echoed in this one.
Anyways, one really interesting tidbit was how Naka at one point created a Famicom (NES) emulator for the Mega Drive (Genesis)! This sorta reminds me of the time when someone developed a cart that had the Mac OS which turned the Genesis into a full fledged Macintosh! It’s not such a strange notion when you remember that the Genesis has a Motorola 68000 as it’s core processor, which is what powered the very first Mac. Granted, the Genny-Mac couldn’t have had anything higher than System 6 running on it, but still, that’s pretty amazing.
All this proves is how unbelievably versatile the Genesis hardware really was. Maybe that’s why I loved the system so much as a kid; the very best games (and the folks behind them) really pushed the system beyond the limits, and you could just sense it… they had no choice really, with Nintendo breathing down their necks… but the end result were some the best games to come out during any era, and ones which I treasure the most. I don’t think I’ve every been happier with video games as I were in the summer of ’94, in which I spent the hot summer weeks perfecting Sonic 3, Gunstar Heroes, Lightning Force (Thunder Force 4), and the ultimate manifestation of brilliant Genesis programing, Virtua Racing.
Mind you I also had a Super NES and was enjoying its collection of great games as well, like Super Mario All Stars, Zelda 3, Starfox, Mega Man X, U.N. Squadron, and Pocky & Rocky. Plus the arcade had Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA, so it was a VERY good year to be a gamer. But it was still all about the Genesis, and games like Ecco the Dolphin, Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi (plus Shadow Dancer), Quakshot, Dynamite Headdy, Ristar, Vectorman, Ranger X, Crusadrer of Centy, Rocket Knight Adventures, Cool Spot, Contra Hard Corps, and Street Fighter 2: Special Championship Edition and the greatest video game controller of all time… the Genesis 6 button arcade pad.
But back to the subject of Sonic and Sonic Team real quick, I just came across the Secrets of Sonic Team , one of the best sites dedicated to all things Sonic I’ve ever seen. There’s a ton of obscure info and screenshots, and there’s even a video of the never released Sonic X-Treme for Saturn which I have never seen before.
I know it was having a ton of problems, hence the decision to cancel it, but damn… it looked fucking good.
