MY RETRO LIFE
ENDLESS RUNNER
Why I’m still going fast with Sonic three decades on
PERSONAL STORIES ABOUT OUR SHARED PASSION
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we look back on 30 years of Sonic The Hedgehog this month, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about how I relate to Sega’s speedy mascot. It’s no secret that I’m a fan, but it does go a bit beyond that – far beyond that, in fact. The truth is that there is barely an aspect of my life that hasn’t somehow been affected by the Sonic series, from the way I spend my leisure time to the job I do, and even the people I hang out with.
I was on board with Sonic from the very beginning, and if you’ve ever wanted a demonstration of the power of TV advertising, this is probably about as convincing as it gets. I had some early experience of videogames, mostly through my dad’s Atari 2600, but Sonic wasn’t like anything I’d seen before – the game looked a world apart from what I knew, and Sonic himself was more than a sprite, he was a full on character. When my dad started talking about getting a Mega Drive, I don’t think I knew anything else about the system, but I was desperate for him to get Sonic with it. He did, and the game lived up to all of the expectations of my five-yearold mind – though I did pass him the pad whenever I encountered a boss.