Sonic the Hedgehog (universe): Difference between revisions

By 1988, [[Sega]] had released its 16-bit successor to the Sega Master System, the Mega Drive, worldwide. It was renamed as the Sega Genesis for its North American release due to Sega's inability to secure legal rights to the Mega Drive name in the region. Nintendo's flagship {{uv|Mario}} franchise was at the height of its worldwide commercial success, with the recent release of ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' in Japan, a week before the Mega Drive's launch, and both the North American releases of Nintendo's own 16-bit system, the Super Famicom, renamed as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and one of its launch titles, ''Super Mario World'', would be released in mid-1991. Sega made a conscious effort to directly compete against Nintendo's powerful brand with a reliance on a new mascot for both the console and the company itself, one that would help sell systems and broaden its market demographic, and thus began development of its own platformer in April 1990 (two months after the North American release of ''Super Mario Bros. 3''). The game placed an emphasis on horizontally-lengthy levels that could be navigated with a player-character that could run and roll through at a high velocity, with movements that were dictated by elements of momentum-based physics. The original concept for an emphasis on speed was that most video games in the 1980s did not have save files, and thus players would often memorize level patterns and attempt to speed through them as fast as possible to make any real progress. The screen scrolled as fast as it needed to keep up; it was a very technically difficult process to create the game's graphics engine so that it could allow this speed without sacrificing graphical clarity. The end result was the worldwide debut of the eponymous character [[Sonic the Hedgehog]], whose game was released in June 23, 1991 in North America, 2 months ahead of the SNES's launch in the region.

The game ''Sonic the Hedgehog'' was both a critical and commercial success, and greatly increased the popularity of the Sega Genesis in North America, especially when it replaced ''Altered Beast'' as the game bundled with the console, as part of the console's notable advertisement campaign led by then-CEO and president of Sega's American division, {{s|wikipedia|Tom Kalinske}}, despite the wishes of the company's Japanese division. As a result, the Genesis outsold the Super Nintendo nearly two-to-one during the 1991 holiday season in North America. The game, which would eventually sell 15 million copies and become the best-selling Genesis game in its lifespan, is credited as single-handedly changing the course of the 16-bit generation of video game consoles and providing a legitimate alternative to ''Mario'' in the eyes of many consumers, as well as influencing the development of various 2D video games in the following years (many of which were centered on their own mascots). For the first time since 1985, Nintendo was briefly overtaken as the leader in the console market. This subsequently gave way to one of the most notable video game rivalries in the industry's history, the fourth-generation "console wars" of Nintendo's SNES versus Sega's Genesis, which were symbolized to some degree by the image of Mario versus Sonic. The stiff competition between the two 16-bit consoles arguably stimulated both companies' stables of video game franchises, and also spawned some famous historical pieces of marketing; the SNES was technically superior in every specification, with the exception of its clock rate, and Sega capitalized on this by advertising how the Genesis had a "faster" speed in its games, but in place of reciting this technical difference in commercials, Sega marketed it under the name of "Blast Processing". The term itself originates from the [[wikipedia:Direct memory access|DMA unit]] in the Genesis' VDP graphics processor's capability of "blasting" data to the latter and the [[wikipedia:Digital-to-analog converter|DAC]] at high speeds, allowing for techniques used to great extent in ''Sonic'' games for the console, such as mid-frame palette swapping.<ref>[http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/11/the_man_responsible_for_segas_blast_processing_gimmick_is_sorry_for_creating_that_ghastly_phrase The Man Responsible For Sega's Blast Processing] (''{{s|wikipedia|Nintendo Life}}'')</ref>

Sonic starred in many high-profile follow-ups, not just on Genesis, but on each of Sega's follow-up consoles and handhelds, in a similar pattern to Nintendo customarily releasing a game centered on or involving Mario at or near the launch of each of its own consoles or handhelds. ''Sonic the Hedgehog 2'' was received as a marked improvement over its predecessor and is regarded as one of the best games on the Genesis, while ''Sonic & Knuckles'' became the only Genesis game that could have another Genesis cartridge inserted onto the top of it (marketed as "Lock-On Technology"), and this was used to turn the game into a physical expansion of the previous game, ''Sonic the Hedgehog 3'', when that was inserted (''Sonic & Knuckles'' was supposed to be the second half of ''Sonic the Hedgehog 3'', but schedule constraints forced Sonic Team to develop a separate game to wrap up the story). Following the Genesis, however, Sega's fortunes as a competitor in the console market began to buckle in as the company's Japanese division began to make a series of questionable decisions for its future hardware plans — two expensive, separate add-ons for the Genesis, the Sega CD and Sega 32X, failed to attain their own significant libraries and stretched the company's resources thin, and what was intended to be the appropriate next-generation follow-up, the Sega Saturn, was made after Sega of Japan rejected a number of hardware plans with the Sega Saturn with other companies, which would later spawn the console's two main rivals, the [[Nintendo 64]] and PlayStation. The console was also infamously released four months earlier than anyone anticipated, including other game developers, in an attempt to gain an edge over Sony and its recent PlayStation console. However, the Sega Saturn, like its predecessor’s peripherals, failed to develop a substantial library of games, including the release of a ''Sonic'' game considerably late in its lifespan. Many other problems with the console, such as it being highly difficult to develop for, along with it competing with consoles with vastly more notable libraries, have resulted in its short lifespan and commercial failure. Despite Sonic continuing to star in games intended to sell these consoles, Sega had soured many on its own company brand too much, and while some titles during this period such as ''Sonic CD'' for the Sega CD are considered to be among the best in the series, they were not enough to support Sega alone.

Sega's final console to be released, the Sega Dreamcast, was released in the West on September 9th, 1999. As the first console of the sixth generation of video game hardware, it was widely hailed as ahead of its time, both technically and for its pioneering of online console gaming, and is retrospectively agreed to have been a much better-thought-out and executed system by Sega. The one out of its eighteen total launch titles that became the undisputed killer app for the console was ''Sonic Adventure'', the first game in the series to feature free-roaming three-dimensional gameplay. It received glowing reviews for its successful transition of the fast ''Sonic'' style into three dimensions and became the best-selling Dreamcast game. But despite the console's financial success, Sega was in dire financial straits because of its failed hardware plans in previous years, and when the other high-profile consoles for the sixth generation were unveiled — the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo GameCube — Sega discontinued the Dreamcast in the West early March 2001, a year and a half after its launch, and withdrew from the console hardware business altogether and restructured itself as a third-party developer.

Nonetheless, there have also been commercially successful forays back into the series' platforming roots, particularly throughout the 2010s. ''Sonic the Hedgehog 4'' releases on modern consoles' downloadable services in an episodic format starting in 2010, albeit ending prematurely at ''Episode 2''. ''Sonic Colors'' was released exclusively on Nintendo hardware in 2010, bringing the focus back to a simple lighthearted story premise and introducing new power-ups to the franchise known as “Wisps.” ''Sonic Generations'' was released for the [[Nintendo 3DS]] and other home consoles in 2011 and celebrated the franchise’s 20th anniversary by revitalizing many levels from the most noteworthy core games in the franchise in both the modern “boost” gameplay and the classic momentum-based platforming gameplay, the latter of which also brought about the reintroduction of “Classic Sonic” as his own entity. The most recent of these back-to-basics forays is ''Sonic Mania'' for eighth generation consoles, including the [[Nintendo Switch]], which was developed by experienced indie developers in the ''Sonic'' fan community and received universal acclaim for its gameplay and presentation, with many outlets claiming ''Sonic Mania'' to be the best game in the franchise in over 20 years.