>>95749546How is this franchise still a thing?
Seriously, this goes on the same pile for me as stuff like Digimon, Yu Gi Oh, and so forth: the continued obsession with and viability of Sonic the Hedgehog as a cultural entity is one of the single most mystifying oddities in the world to me.
I mean I like that classic run of Sega Genesis games (and the one Sega CD game) too. They're good. Those were and remain fun, solid 2D platformers. But that's all they are, a couple dozen hours worth of mindless fun. Everything else? The later games, the cartoons, the comics, the crossover games, the straight to video films, the fanfiction, the general fixation on Sonic's "mythos" and "universe" (which is about as dense and worthwhile as Mario's: it may as well not exist, its a flimsy clothesline to hang a few sidescrollers on, there's no "there" there and there never was, etc.), the batshit online obsession, the new theatrical film. All of it. Everything. The whole "phenomenon" as it were. I don't get it. I've never gotten it, I never will.
The character had a decent run of games in the very early goings, but the fact that its had any sort of a life at all beyond that is one of the most singularly inexplicable things about fan culture across and throughout the 2000s. This is a franchise that hasn't produced a single solitary worthwhile piece of content since well before a giant chunk of its present fanbase was even born, or at least cognizant, and yet its become one of the most enduring and heated touchstones of the last couple of generations of geek culture. I think Sonic has inspired a degree of heated, impassioned rage and debate across the internet that sometimes seems roughly comparable to any stated/active religious creed or political platform. That never ceases to utterly baffle and perplex me.
