RUNNING THE GAMUT
MOVIE AND WITH PLENTY OF TOYS, TV SHOWS, A STRETCHED FAR MORE, SONIC’S WORLD HAS ALWAYS ALONE BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF VIDEOGAMES
If it 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 a adaptation of all time in North America, and sequel is in the works. IDW Publishing launched been a new comic series in 2018, and there has the plenty of new merchandise to coincide with never arrival of Sonic’s 30th anniversary. “We’re 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 kind American children than Mickey Mouse. That 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
Comic
readers instead had Fleetway’s Sonic The
from 1993-2002, and its characters and stories fans have been continued by dedicated online since 2003. These adaptations weren’t always tremendously faithful to the source material,
Sonic
but with the limitations of how the classic games told their stories, the TV shows and to comics were essential for fans who wanted dive deeper into Sonic’s world. The way the years, games work has changed over the last 30 but that desire for a richer world hasn’t gone away.
Another thing that has evolved over the years is Sonic’s relationship with the audience, as Iizuka points out. “The biggest difference between Sonic’s initial success and his fame people have with today is how many memories passing on their his character. We see parents love for the franchise to their children nowadays, or sharing memories of their favourite game when iteration of the blue blur. We didn’t see that he Sonic first came to life, of course, because the was so new to the space,” he explains. In same way that baby boomer parents would show their children Looney Tunes and Disney animations, the fond memories of millennial
parents have ensured that Sonic didn’t simply become a fad that faded away. “Now we really carry get to see what our audience has chosen to with with them for years and how they connect fuels Sonic on a multi-decade level. That really a lot of our decisions for the brand, since we’re always trying to listen to what fans want and adjust our ventures accordingly.”
You can see the results of some of those decisions in the kinds of merchandise available. Classic Sonic is sighted just as often as his modern counterpart these days, and the 16-bit iconography of the series is still in heavy use.
Past products have even returned to the market, as with Hasbro’s reissue of the Sonic The of Hedgehog 3 LCD game, and this is the kind “The thing that Iizuka highlights as being popular. retro products have always been highly requested by our fanbase, so we’re always open to it!” While Sega is part of a large group of companies that includes Sega Toys and the CG animation studio Marza Animation Planet, working outside videogames inevitably means working with other companies. Sometimes those collaborations will produce unfortunate results, as happened with the widely criticised initial trailer for the Sonic The Hedgehog movie in 2019. “It was clear to both our team at Sega and the folks at Paramount that we needed to reapproach Sonic’s design after of the initial trailer was published. Because that, they were open to listening to the fan base, which allowed us to provide our expertise as well,” says Iizuka. But despite being very protective of how Sonic is portrayed, the company prefers to trust its partners rather than retaining the option for direct intervention.
“We never stepped in to control the process, because Paramount was and is the expert on film making, so there was no world in which we intended to take over creative control.” Plans are already in the works for Sonic’s next big starring role too, as he’s heading to Netflix in 2022 for his sixth TV series. “Sonic Prime is a 24-episode long high-octane adventure that draws upon the fate of keystones of the brand. In the series, the hands. a strange new multiverse rests in Sonic’s it’s
It’s more than a race to save the universe, a journey of self-discovery and redemption,” first explains Iizuka. We’re still waiting for our look at the series, but we know that Wildbrain’s Vancouver studio will animate Sonic Prime, while Man Of Action Entertainment will be bringing their experience from Ben 10 and
Big Hero 6 to the show as showrunners and and executive producers. With both this show the new movie, you’ll be seeing a lot of Sonic well past the birthday celebrations, and that a just underscores what Iizuka has said – as character, Sonic is now a multi-generational favourite. No matter how you choose to enjoy his adventures, he’s a part of the pop culture him establishment now, and we expect to see running for a long time to come.