sonic-paper.gifThere are a ton of postings around the web to acknowledge the blue-hairs 15th, but I think Sega Japan has the best thing going, papercraft. That’s right, there’s a downloadable .pdf file with the pieces to re-create the 1st level from the first game, the Green Hill Zone.

Click here to download the coolest papercraft you’ll ever see.

I just might have to do this. With my boss out of work all week I think I just may spend a good part of my workday rebuilding a video game level from my younger days. If this actually comes together, I’ll be sure to post a picture. And if anyone else out there does this, send me a pic and I’ll post it.

15 years ago this week Yuji Naka, Naoto Ohshima, and Sega unleashed a new character on the world, who in many ways typified the nineties with his extreme x-games like attitude. Sonic the Hedgehog, with his spiky blue hair and his in-your-face attitude hit the scene like an atombomb and really put the Sega Genesis on the map. He was the perfect mirror of Mario’s clean-cut image, and solidified the Genesis as the more grown-up console.

How popular was Sonic? By the mid-nineties his Q Rating (a rating similar to Neilson that rates popularity of brands) was higher than Mickey Mouse among children. Meaning that more kids recognized Sonic than Mickey Mouse. Then the boys at Sega took a page from George Lucas’ playbook and plastered the ring-grabbing hedgehog on everything from cartoons to instant pasta-in-a-can. Then, as fast as you could say Bubsy the bobcat, Sonic’s star was starting to fall.
sonic15th.gifI can still remember first turning on the machine and hearing that typical “SE-GA” jingle. At the time the games were fast and furious. Then they just started churning out game after game after game. While there were a few gems out there, few of the follow-up games could ever reach the success of the first two games. Though Sonic & Knuckles did have that cool feature that let you plug the older games into the cartridge then into the system to add new features.
By the time Sonic Adventure came out on the dreamcast all you really had to do to play the game was hold right to run and jump every once in a while. While the quality of Sonic games seemed to decline steadily through the late-nineties into today, he’ll always hold a special place in videogame history.

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