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If Sonic reamained Classic, would you be here?


MetalSkulkBane

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Follow me and ponder the question "What If?"

Let's pretend that Sonic went on a loooooong hiatus in 1997 till Mania in 2017. And yet somehow you were still exposed to him and to his world.

Would you still be here? Would you still be Sonic fan, if Modern part of him never existed?

(If this idea is too abstract, image similar scenario: that tomorrow Sega decided to pull "Star Wars" and everything past Sonic R is no longer canon, Mania is our Force Awakens. Would you this fundamentally ruin Sonic for you?)

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I grew up with Classic Sonic, so it wouldn't bother me.  However, it really depends on if the games are still good, even if we only had Classic Sonic.

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I only became a fan in the first place because of the classic series. If they had kept making games like that I probably still would have played them, though sometimes when franchises play too much by the book I just get bored so I can't say for sure. Kirby and Pokemon were obsessions aruond the same time too, but to me something about them couldn't hold my attention after a while

I'm not sure if it would have stuck with me quite as hard in my adolescence without all the pandering to anime fans they started doing though. Games like SA2 and games like Blaze really kept the series fresh for me. It might be less of a lifelong obsession and more of a nostalgic favorite, which...might have been for the better. Hmmmm.

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Grew up with the classics, so yeah, I'd still be a Sonic fan. Don't know if I'd be the kind of fan who posts on fan message boards if there was literally zero Sonic for two decades before Mania's release, though.

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Yeah, that's a very complex what if... scenario. I was born in 2003 and likely just become a fan by around 2009-2011. The odds of I'm still finding Sonic by then probably drops to very low levels.

But still, let's try to imagine exactly the scenario you described. I was around 12 years old and Sonic R was released.

The first thing it comes to my mind it's that much likely, Sonic wouldn't be my favorite franchise anymore, if it even grew up to be my favorite in a 6 years period. Likely I would have moved to something else like Mario or whatever. Consequently, this implies Sonic would just be a one more franchise I enjoy, like Phantasy Star, Tomb Raider, Simpsons etc., without being a "hardcore" fan.

Still, Classic Era is still possibly my favorite era, so I would have bigger appeal to it. And going straight to the point, I probably would still be hyped. Maybe not the kind of game I'd take on the release date, but possibly on sale on Steam. All this if the game didn't come with poor reviews as, if Sonic Mania is already considered unoriginal with 4 new levels, it would probably would be seen even poorer with the game covering too much of the few that was already released.

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Not sure. But I wouldn’t mind Blaze being green. More likely I would have fully devoted myself to BIONICLE. By proxy, I might have never discovered Puyo Puyo if it weren’t for the later eras of Sonic. Unless they pushed that series, of course.

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I wasn't old enough to really participate in the online communities in 1997, but I was reading them. Prior to Sonic Adventure's release, SatAM was the biggest, most vocal part of the fandom, but by 98/99 the hacking/fangaming communities were already coalescing. So in the short term, the only notable difference might have been the lack of kids yelling about how much they loved Shadow on the Sega forums, while we'd have still gotten lots of fan works. SatAM fandom probably would have remained more prominent for a while, particularly if the Archie/Fleetway books had continued publication.

That said, I think the continuous releases of bad Sonic games probably made longtime fans' reverence for the classics all the more, uh, reverent. Without Sonic Heroes, for instance, BlazeHedgehog probably never publishes the article that criticized the early 3D games for being unnecessarily complex and speed-driven, and coined the phrase, "Sonic isn't about speed, Sonic is about momentum." And in the long run, a game fandom really needs games to keep momentum going. Things would probably be significantly more peaceful, and Sonic fans as a whole wouldn't be nearly as splintered, in that the community wouldn't be subject to The Law of Fan Jackassery. But things wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting, either. xD

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's hard to be sure, but I think I would. I've had somewhat of a fixation on the lil guy since I was a kid way back in the 90's before the games really even gave him any character and I would interact on SEGA fan forums off and on since the early 2000s. Oddly enough, I used to frequent Sonic Stadium pretty regularly as they hosted alot of portals to other sonic fansites and forums, but only made an account this year lmao. it was only a matter of time I guess.

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I've been a fan for so long the idea is nigh-incomprehensible to me. I don't think the odds are very likely I would have ever gotten into it if there was absolutely no content for the entire time I had been alive up until 2017. Maybe I would have checked it out of curiosity, but I definitely wouldn't have been enough of a fan to join a dedicated forum. 

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