Exclusive News: Sonic's 20th Birthday!

Today Is June 23 2011, And We Celebrate Sonic's 20th Birthday Exclusive On Time To Play Games! Here Are 2 Of The Articles That We Got. The One Was From guardian.uk And metro.com.uk.

 metro.com.uk:

t was 20 years ago today  that Sega taught the world  to play. On June 23, 1991, Sonic The Hedgehog was  first released, beginning a legacy that, two decades and 70million game sales later, is still running at full speed.

But while the world’s fastest and bluest hedgehog may not age, his fans do, and excited youngsters back in the early 1990s are now likely to be in their thirties.
‘Sonic was the first video  game I ever played,’ recalls Svend Joscelyne, 25, organiser of the fourth international Summer of Sonic convention to be held in London on Saturday. ‘I remember saving to buy a Sega Mega Drive when I was about seven years  old, only to be told that I could only afford a Master System. I didn’t care, because the console had the eight-bit version of Sonic built in, so I snapped it up right there and then. I still play the game today,

‘I always loved Sonic’s attitude and how cool he looked running through the Green Hill Zone. Even though I’ve grown older and more jaded, the look of Sonic’s colourful world and imaginative Badniks [small robots] still appeals to me.’ 

Sonic, which was created as a rival to Nintendo’s Mario, ended up as one of the defining symbols of gaming in the 1990s.

‘When Sonic was launched 20 years ago, it was the Call Of Duty of its day. It was what the cool gamer was playing. It was fast, it was anarchic, it was irreverent, it was different,’ says Sega West CEO Mike Hayes.

‘There’s no doubt the modern core gamer is looking for a great deal of realism in terms of the graphics, the performance and the theme, which is why war games in particular have done very, very well. But Mario and Sonic are just as big and relative to Call Of Duty. They’re just spread over more games or, in the case of Mario, restricted to just one or two formats.’

But whereas Mario was able  to constantly evolve, Sonic suffered more when his style of two-dimensional gameplay fell out of fashion. Sega introduced a range of different games set in 3D worlds but throughout  the noughties, Sonic’s prestige was tarnished among core gamers, even as the newer game styles were lapped up by younger fans.

‘It’s impossible to have one title that satisfies the two groups as they favour different types of gameplay,’ explains Takashi Iizuka, part of the team responsible for making most  of the games in the series. ‘This is why we released Sonic 4: Episode 1 and Sonic Colours last year, each targeted towards the specific group of audiences.’

Sonic Colours, in particular, helped bridge the chasm between the two groups, combining modern graphics with old-school gameplay. Iizuka was its producer and  his secret was simple: ‘Our approach was to focus on core mechanics and not through  new features.’

With Sonic Generations, the 20th-anniversary game due out in November, the approach is almost as simple: combine the old and new approaches into a single game.

It alternates between levels where the sleek, modern Sonic runs around in his 3D worlds and others where the original more portly character moves along a 2D plane.

In 20 years’ time, it’s not too hard to imagine a video game world that doesn’t feature today’s current hits but chances are Sonic will still be around chasing Chaos Emeralds.

guardian.uk:

Would you believe that Sonic the Hedgehog is 20 years old? Since bursting on to consoles in 1991, the gaming world has changed immeasurably, yet Sonic spins on. It's a remarkable achievement in a fast-moving industry, making Sonic a powerful ... brand? Character?

"First and foremost, Sonic is a character," explains Sega Europe's chief executive Mike Hayes, although the presence of David Corless – whose business card reads "Sonic Brand Director" – suggests the company is very aware it's both.

Neither Mike nor David worked for Sega at the time of Sonic's launch. Mike was working with arch rivals and Mario-creators Nintendo: "Sonic was something we only played to see how the opposition was going."

The success of Sonic clearly echoes back to those old days of console rivalry. "Sega was the arch-enemy," laughs Mike. "It's quite ironic that Mario and Sonic came together [for the "at the Olympic Games" title]. In my day, that would have been inconceivable.

"Nintendo v Sega got big articles in things like the Mail on Sunday. It was as big as Coca-Cola vs Pepsi, Levi vs Wrangler, the Rolling Stones vs the Beatles ... At Nintendo we were more family friendly, the Beatles and Coca-Cola to Sega's Stones and Pepsi. They were more cutting edge, Oasis to our Blur, and we played it up. There was nobody else in the business and at that point, and we thought that nobody else would join. And then, of course, along came Sony and changed the game."

While 30-something (and above) gamers will remember those times, it's perhaps strange for younger gamers to consider that this was ever the case.

"Kids now are agnostic," confirms Mike. He holds up his iPhone. "My kids are all about this at the moment. That whole Xbox vs PS3 or DS, that's sort of disappeared. We can't play on those stories anymore, the big newspaper coverage has gone."

"I think part of the problem is we don't have celebrities," adds Corless. "We don't have a Brad Pitt, a Robbie Williams. That's why we play up Sonic so much: with Sonic and Mario you've got two of the only recognisable characters in the video gaming world."

The relative lack of newspaper exposure hasn't harmed the business and it's certainly become more mainstream and acceptable – and highly lucrative as a commercial model.

"At first, when I went around for dinner with friends, those with children would tut and say 'Video games? I make sure they don't play.' Now it's 'So what's the next thing? Should I buy a 3DS or wait?'. When you see that Call of Duty is 2010's biggest-selling piece of media, then it's Avatar, then it's Fifa. Out of the top three, two are video games. The biggest CD is nowhere close in terms of volume let alone revenue."

In terms of answering those friends' questions or predicting where Sonic will be in another 20 years, both David and Mike happily shrug.

"What we want to do in coming years is push Sonic further," reveals David. "How do we make Sonic even more relevant for 12-, 13-year-olds but still deliver the nostalgia to the older market? It's a challenge but quite a luxury: there are very few gaming IPs where that applies."

"Sonic's transferable across platforms, that's definitely been proven," states Mike. "We've had huge success on Apple, PSN, XBLA, all the traditional platforms, handheld and TV-based. Do we take Sonic to a freemium model for a different audience? Do we think how Sonic can be more episodic on a tablet, for example? I have no idea – that's the interesting thing – but I think Sonic will carry on, because it's such an icon."

• Sonic the Hedgehog will appear in two games released in 2012: Sonic Generations and Mario & Sonic at London 2012.

Good News! Here Are Our Articles For Today And We Are Thank You For Everyone! I Have No New Games This Week Because My Computer Was Broken. Next Month, We Have A New Games For All! Thanks, Everybody!

Raven Villanueva

T2P Games