RUNNING THE GAMUT
WITH PLENTY OF TOYS, TV SHOWS, A MOVIE AND MORE, SONIC’S WORLD HAS ALWAYS STRETCHED FAR BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF VIDEOGAMES ALONE
» Tiger Electronics made quite a few
Sonic products, and even bagged the licence for a
Game.com handheld game.
» The Sonic movie was a big success for Paramount and Sega, so a sequel is currently scheduled for 2022.
Courtesy Paramount Pictures and Sega Of America.
» Sonic The Comic is particularly beloved by many UK fans, despite (or perhaps because of) Sonic’s tendency to be a jerk.
Ifit feels like Sonic currently enjoys a higher profile than he has for quite some time, you’re probably right about that. The Sonic The Hedgehog movie starring Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey and James Marsden became the highest grossing videogame adaptation of all time in North America, and a sequel is in the works. IDW Publishing launched a new comic series in 2018, and there has been plenty of new merchandise to coincide with the arrival of Sonic’s 30th anniversary. “We’re never going to shy away from a project just because it falls outside of videogames! In recent years, we’ve really been focusing on restoring fans’ trust in our products and continuing to grow and position our brand for the future, so the possibilities are endless,” says Iizuka.
Of course, Sonic has been here before. The enormous success of the early Sonic games quickly catapulted Sega’s hero to superstardom, to the point that it’s claimed that during the early Nineties, Sonic was recognised by more American children than Mickey Mouse. That kind of fame naturally caught the interest of people outside the world of videogames. In fact, two TV cartoons ran at the same time – the comedic Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog and the darker Sonic The Hedgehog, the latter of which provided the basis for a comic series by Archie Comics that ran from 1993-2017. UK-based readers instead had Fleetway’s Sonic The Comic from 1993-2002, and its characters and stories have been continued by dedicated online fans since 2003. These adaptations weren’t always tremendously faithful to the source material, but with the limitations of how the classic Sonic games told their stories, the TV shows and comics were essential for fans who wanted to dive deeper into Sonic’s world. The way the games work has changed over the last 30 years, but that desire for a richer world hasn’t gone away.