Changes... in YOU! (as a Sonic fan)

[Tori Himemiya]

Ohhhhhh boy. I think I change a lot as a Sonic fan.

When I was first a fan I love every single game that came out and Sonic was the shit. But as of now I can't really enjoy Sonic's games like I used to. Even if I don't enjoy his recent hits I be neutral as I can if I have to review them.

Sheese. What went wrong?

[Solkia]

Not really because of the internet, but I'm just not that hyped about Sonic anymore. Hell, the only reason I'm even here is because Generations is the first Sonic game to have me hyped in years.

[Nix]

You know. I used to blindly love every Sonic game that came out, yes that includes SA2 and Unleashed.

But then the internet happened, and subsequent playthroughs resulted with me hating those games with a fiery passion.

[Tails spin]

Hmm, this topic had me soul searching for a while.

Before I came on to this forum or any sonic fourm, I thought that the fanbase was united, in the sense that yes people can have their differences but they would respect each others likes and dislikes. But as I've come to learn while Generations and Sonic 4 ep 2 were being released is that some members expell their dislike for a game and at time will bash or critisize those who try to defend the game for their positive points.

So that basically has changed me as a fan, that cloud with rainbow that one has when they find a forum where people share their common interest has turn to a hurricane of I'm right, your wrong so deal with it.

[UltDevilDoom]

I'm not in the online fanbase that much. It's a total shitstorm of fans that are so divided that you'd think that they're talking about different franchises. I have too many games to play to care.

What I would like to see happen would be the return of other playable characters (especially Shadow), and deeper storylines. Sega should definitely use caution when doing these things, but they should be done. Don't fuck it up, Sega. Really.

Edited June 28, 2012 by UltDevilDoom

[batson]

Heck, one spat with some Shadow fanboy (Blockade/Plaga, I think?) even spilled over onto TV Tropes, with the two of us engaging in a edit war over some Sonic-related entries there. Speaking of TV Tropes, I was always engaging in edit wars with other members over Sonic-related entries that I didn't like, usually something casting the series in a less than positive light.

Ha ha, i can totally relate to that. Back in aroun 2005 or so, i was a fanatic edit-monkey over at the Sonic related articles at Wikipedia. Like, literaly the first thing i would do whenever i turned on my computer was to check the articles for all the major Sonic characters to work my wiki-magic on them. Granted, a lot of those articles truly were in desperate need of editing since what people wrote in them was often terrible (filled with fan-cruft, conflicting information and just plain lousy writing). But i also engaged in a hell of a lot of idiotic edit wars over truly petty crap.

One of them had to do with which characters should be mentioned in a "list of main characters" on the page for the franchise as a whole. The guy with whom i engaged in glorious battle with was someone who thought that the only characters that deserved mention were Sonic, Tails, Eggman, Knuckles, Amy and Metal Sonic. I on the other hand argued that if Metal Sonic should get a mention, then so must Shadow, since the latter is higher on the character hierarchy totempole. So i wanted to either add Shadow, or delete Metal Sonic and thus only have Sonic, Tails, Eggman, Knuckles and Amy.

And so we fought through fire, air and water untill someone just deleted the whole "list of main characters"-section from the article to get the war to stop.

Edited June 29, 2012 by batson

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

One of them had to do with which characters should be mentioned in a "list of main characters" on the page for the franchise as a whole. The guy with whom i engaged in glorious battle with was someone who thought that the only characters that deserved mention were Sonic, Tails, Eggman, Amy and Metal Sonic. I on the other hand argued that if Metal Sonic should get a mention, then so must Shadow, since the latter is higher on the character hierarchy totempole. So i wanted to either add Shadow, or delete Metal Sonic and thus only have Sonic, Tails, Eggman, Knuckles and Amy.

You know, after all this time I would have never known that you did all that. And to think a few years back I assumed you to be almost a breath away of being a bit of a Classic fanboy regarding the characters.

Amazing what you never know about someone until they reveal it.

Of course, that's another thing that time has taught me: do not judge a book by it's cover. Kinda hard to do when they don't share all their thoughts but the ones most visible (and one of the reasons why I put everything I can about my thoughts so you know exactly where I stand), but it's kept me from calling any person who shows more interest into something "fanboy" everytime I see someone show too much of a preference towards one thing to neglect the other...although "fanboy" got replaced with the the much broader term of "favoritism" instead, but at least it's more equal opportunity.

Look at me trying to justify my words.

Edited June 28, 2012 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Kuzu]

I've become a lot more jaded towards the games, but at the very least I mellowed out a lot.

[Your Vest Friend]

I think the internet has had an opposite effect on me than most people. I've always like theorising and gaining knowledge from much younger, but with only myself to talk about them with in the older days, I just kinda went off and on again with the franchise since there was very little to work with (bear in mind all I had was Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic and Knuckles, AoStH and very faint memories of Sonic Underground to go off). And then when I discovered the interest, I found out that there was lots and lots and lots of information to be had which I wanted to get my mitts on. And then I discovered that there were forums out there. Places where I could talk about my thoughts and have somebody out there reading them?! MIND BLOWN. I got really, really hooked then.

Off that note, being on forums really helped me cut out the more implausible and stupid ideas I had (you might remember my first run on here in 2007...), and slowly over the years the various forums have streamlined them into proper critical thought with acceptable coherency, and an even greater passion for the franchise than ever before.

...I may or may not be mad as a hatter, in retrospect.

[UltDevilDoom]

When I was younger, I thought every single Sonic game was the best. My real gaming personality didn't start until I got a PS2 when I was eleven and started playing other games. I don't need to tell anyone that Sega was starting to fuck up the Sonic franchise around that time.

Now I look at the Sonic franchise with cautious optimism. Sega announced today that they are closing many European studios today, and continuing to work on its very few core franchises. I am a big Sonic fan, but this news only deepens my concerns.

Good luck, Sega. Make us some more great Sonic games.

[batson]

You know, after all this time I would have never known that you did all that. And to think a few years back I assumed you to be almost a breath away of being a bit of a Classic fanboy regarding the characters.

Amazing what you never know about someone until they reveal it.

My sense of character importance has nothing to do with the age of the character per se, it's a lot more complicated than that. It has to do with both history and recognizability. These two aspects (the second one in particular) are in turn indeed connected to where and, yes, when the character has been prominently featured. But the point is that the sheer fact that a character appeared prior to another one doesn't make the first one more important than the second one.

I like Metal Sonic a lot better than Shadow, and Metal Sonic holds nostalgic value to me that Shadow doesn't (at least not to the same degree) but this doesn't change the fact that i have to admit that Shadow is the more important character.

Edited June 29, 2012 by batson

[Tylky]

Way back in 2003, when I got back into Sonic for the first time (I was hooked between '98 and '00, playing the Megadrive games) I found so much stuff on the internet, including the SSN! (The Sonic Spriters Network, anyone?) That really got me into making my own fan character, but at the young age of 11/12, the best I could come up with was a blue Knuckles re-colour, named, of course, 'Bluckles'! How original!

That didn't last very long. Shortly after, say the latter half of 2004/2005, I requested for a new fan character, who was a dog by the name of Tylky. Made sense since that was (and still is) my username. Back then, he was the first 'Dog' fan character that I did come across (on the internet anyways) so I thought it had some originality there.

I used to draw a lot! I still have a DA account with the drawings on there. They weren't fantastic, but they weren't the worst drawings for someone at the age of 13.

I made sprite comics! Yes, when I was 13 I started a website which would host my sprite comics, though as awful as they were, I enjoyed making every single one of them.

I was obsessed with any and ALL soundtracks to the Sonic games. I actually downloaded everything I could find on the internet (Shadow of a Hedgehog, FastFeet Media etc) and made a huge and respectable library with them. Heck, in the latter half of 2005, I tried to 'remix' and 'mash-up' two Sonic songs. They were awful, but back then I didn't see many topics about remixes unless they were OC. Again, I was trying to be original.

Then Sonic '06 came out, I didn't have an Xbox 360 or PS3 and that upset me, since between '03 and '06 I bought every Sonic game and I really wanted this one. Then Sonic and The Secret Rings came out and I didn't have the funding for it. By the time I started missing several games, I slowly lost interest in Sonic The Hedgehog.

I come back in 2011 and Generations reignited my interest! My display picture currently is a sprite rendition from all those years ago, I'm not credited for this work but an old friend created it for me way back then. Again, this is just to show something unique and try and not fade into the background.

My view on the Sonic games isn't as obsessed as it was back then, as all I do now is play a Sonic game, listen to a few soundtracks and post on here. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Johnny Boy]

I used to be quite the shitty fanfic writer back in the day. No really, I remember when I wrote a Sonic Adventure 3 fanfic (yeah I used to be one of those SA3 nuts back then), where Eggman actually succeeds in taking over the world, kills creams mom, convinces cream to join his side and try to kill Amy, and he ends up turning into this demon like version of himself in order to fight super sonic. Like I said, extremely shitty.

Of course as young as I was back then I thought it was the greatest thing ever written and I couldn't take a lick of criticism. Hell, when I shared this on the (now defunct) forums on the official Sonic Facebook page I even went as far as to block people who didn't like my fanfic. Of course as I grew older, I matured and saw that my fanfic really wasn't as brilliant as I thought it was.

A couple of years after that I wrote a Sonic Heroes 2 fanfic and a Mario and Sonic fanfic and I think they are a massive improvement of my shitty SA3 one. And my past fanfic and my past behavior about it serves as a reminder on what not to put in a fanfic and how not to act towards criticism.

[Ryusuke]

I'm a little less insane now then I was back when I was a little tyke. XD

[Rexeljet]

Here's my story:

I first began liking Sonic in 2006. My first exposure to the games was a Mega-Play system at the clubhouse of a camp site in north Devon. I played Sonic 2 and loved the game almost instantly. For the first year or so, I still wasn't prepared to delve into the depths of the 3D Sonic games, for many reasons. One was that I believed that if I hadn't completed or played all the classic games then I wouldn't 'get' the modern ones, and also the fact that games like Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06 were clearly a lot darker than the classics, and I didn't consider that to be my thing.

So I decided to just play the old games. I first played Sonic 1 in christmas 2006 when I got a 'Play TV Legends' system for christmas, and the same year I played Sonic CD for the first time on a friend's copy of Sonic Gems collection (the compilation confused me as it contained the 8-bit Sonic 2; I couldn't understand why it was called Sonic 2 if it was so different to the one I played...)

My first 3D Sonic game was Heroes, the following year, on the PS2. I thought the graphics were alright (I hadn't played many 3D platformers. ) and liked the fact that you had so many characters to chose from, but from the get-go I found the game frustrating, and that the physics and level design didn't cooperate. I bought Sonic Adventure DX (PC) about a week or so later, and found that to be the better game.

This was where I went through a phase of having a mini-obsession with the series, creating cartoonish comic strips (wasn't aware of either comic series, really) and sprite animations that I haven't and won't upload because they're horrible (though I did make all of the sprites, no copy pasta). Although I preferred the classic titles I tried to 'unify' the classic and modern games by featuring characters like Shadow and Rouge in my comic strips (giving them classic forms in the process) and having references to most of the games.

During autumn 2007 I found out about the Sonic hackers at Sonic Retro and the like, but had no idea how to make a hack myself. I had a few goes, though I've only ever uploaded one and it's now removed; here's a list

• A terrible sprite hack of Sonic 1 with shadow as the main character (2007)
  
• 
  
• Sonic 1 prototype hack; basically a few hex and pallete edits of Sonic 1 (2009)
  
• Sonic 3 Beta, pretty much the same as above (2010)
  
• I've made a few ASM hacks since then, but just for mucking about.
  

I found making hacks incredibly frustrating and had very little fun making them.

For Christmas 2007, I wanted Shadow the Hedgehog (the game), so that's what I got. I thought that it might be a fun game, with a branching story mode that would allow one to choose their own adventure, and at the time I thought that Shadow was awesome (but I also thought that Mighty was awesome, the truth was I just like characters that played like Sonic) but was quite disappointed, so disappointed that I peeled the quality seal off of the game's cover.

Around this time, I found out about the Sonic YouTube community (as opposed to the saner people from on here and other forums, and such). the trend was that 3D sonic games, particularly those after Sonic heroes, were trash.

It was around this time where I became a Classic sonic fanboy for a while. I look back at these times and wince, but I actually started agreeing with all these "Bawwww 3D sonic sucks, he only works in 2D, no more shitty friends! waaaa!" traditionalists. I chose to shelter myself from all things Modern, which wasn't a good idea.

I stopped liking Sonic for most of 2008. I missed Sonic Unleashed's unveiling and hype, because I was more into trains (surprisingly, not cartoons or comics) but I decided to play a few sonic games again, and put Sonic Unleashed on my christmas list (along with an Xbox 360) and was very surprised to find out that I liked it, and I stopped being a classic sonic fanboy.

Sonic and the Black Knight and Sonic 4 followed, and I got very oblivious to Sonic for most of 2009 and 2010, although I'd still play the games. I got a Saturn for Christmas 2009, but this was mostly because I'd always wanted to play NiGHTS into Dreams. I don't have a Wii so I couldn't care less about Sonic Colours. It was Sonic Generations that got me back into the series, and I began lurking some of the forums before I actually joined a forum (this one) eventually. I'm more interested in Sonic now than I was a few years ago and ended up buying a real Mega Drive because I of how much I like the games, though since 2009, I think I may have become less of a Sonic fan and more of a general Sega fan.

There are still times when I lose interest in Sonic mostly because I also like cartoons and (humour) comic strips, both watching/reading and making them.

Despite the fact my 'Classic Sonic Fanboy' days are long gone, I still consider the classic trilogy to be my favourite games, though I'm beginning to prefer Sonic Generations to Sonic 1.

[Tornado]

Look at this asshole:

So young. So helpful. So friendly and full of life.

Scary, the naivete in place pre-ShtH and pre-STH '06. Thank god I'm now a cynical old bastard.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Tornado

[Nepenthe]

The pre-ShtH days were kinda like some awesome, hippie, wild-west days, when the absolute worst you had to worry about was some seasoned veteran pointing out why your hedgehog recolor was a terrible character.

[Tornado]

The pre-ShtH days were kinda like some awesome, hippie, wild-west days, when the absolute worst you had to worry about was some seasoned veteran pointing out why your hedgehog recolor was a terrible character.

"No, it doesn't make any sense for your character to be Sonic's long-lost brother. I think you need to rethink that part."

[Tylky]

Look at this asshole:

So young. So helpful. So friendly and full of life.

Scary, the naivete in place pre-ShtH and pre-STH '06. Thank god I'm now a cynical old bastard.

Just curious, how did you get that screenshot of your old postings? I wanna see if my posts are archived anywhere just to see my 13-year old self!

Oh and also, if anyone's interested in my old Sprite Comic website from days of yore, here's the link: http://milesknuckles.bravehost.com/

Enter, if you dare.

[1991boy]

Sonic has shown how to believe in myself and how to be strong

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Look at this asshole:

So young. So helpful. So friendly and full of life.

Scary, the naivete in place pre-ShtH and pre-STH '06. Thank god I'm now a cynical old bastard.

You actually saved that shit from the old board? lol

[the blu blur]

well, I stopped doing this...

Outside of that though, I guess I don't look at things as black and white anymore when it comes to opinions regarding the Sonic series. I used to not be a big fan of reviews for Sonic (you know what i mean), so that was a peeve of mine. I could not understand why there was such hate for the series, and at times it was kinda depressing.Nowadays, things are better now. Not as many cynics as before, and my horizons have widened regarding opinions of the series. Sonic 4 taught me that. Also, as a aspiring game developer, I have an idea of the big picture,so seeing these wide range of opinions regarding game series like Sonic, is more enriching than before with the many different taste that come from being a gamer, and that in the end we are all gamers here, and all we really want (most of us) is to have a good time with the blue hedgehog that rolls around at the speed of sound.

I've also been more distant with the series as of late. Not as devoted as I was during the post 2006/revival era of 2010. This year I have been catching up on many games I have played in the past, games I have never beaten like Metroid Prime and Pikmin, and working on y skills as a game maker. alot has changed in the 10 or so years as a Sonic fan. I still enjoy the series, but I'm older now, and know what tickles my fancy.

I think the Sonic fanbase as a whole has changed. some of those cracks are not as big as they used to be.Time is very good as healing most wounds.

Edited June 30, 2012 by the blu blur

[Sparky]

...Not much has changed for me as a Sonic fan. As a Sonic fan, I've always had the need to research, draw, watch, read, and play everything Sonic. I've even desperately wanted Sonic 06, even though I knew that it wasn't really the best game ever... although for some reason I can't find it anywhere around my house. I guess it retconned itself out of existence in real life as well!

The only thing I can think of for any change is that my eyes have opened to a lot of things, I guess... although I can't really remember what. And I've grown to love the Modern gameplay style, compared to my younger self who that the gameplay was auto-run (as in it's running automatically and you only control moving him from side to side and jumping).