Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game series and media franchise that originated from the 1991 game of the same name for the Sega Genesis, which was spawned from franchise publisher Sega's request for a mascot to compete against Nintendo's Mario. Following the game's success, numerous sequels, successors, spinoffs, television series, and feature films have been produced, each with varying levels of success and critical reception. While initially successful, the series gained a negative reputation during the 2000s for its poorly-received installments and has frequently been a subject of mockery. Over the course of the franchise's multidecade history, Sonic the Hedgehog gained a significant fandom, whose members have created extensive fan works, including fan art, fan fiction, fan games, modifications and websites. Fans often create original characters called Sonic OCs which had become popular outside the fandom. The subculture intersects with the furry fandom and internet culture. Several Sonic-related Internet memes have surfaced from the fandom, with some having been referenced in official Sonic media. While generally tolerated by Sega, the fandom has occasionally been criticized for certain fan-produced content and fan behaviors.
Background and history The Sonic the Hedgehog series and its main protagonist Sonic gained significant popularity among children in the 1990s. It expanded beyond video games to include animated series and comic books. The Archie Comics series gained popularity among Sonic fans for being based on the Sonic SatAM (1993) animated series and released during the video game series' decline. Fans of the comic series created websites hosted on GeoCities. During the mid-1990s, Sonic's prominence declined due to fewer releases and competition from the rising popularity of Sony's PlayStation console. It began to recover following the announcement of Sonic Adventure (1998) for the Dreamcast. The games released during the 2000s received poor or mixed reviews—especially Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), likewise poorly received by players. The fandom fragmented and diversified, but survived. The game's impact led fans to coin the term "The Sonic Cycle" in 2008, originating on NeoGAF, describing the pattern of hope followed by disappointment with each new Sonic game. The formulation of "The Sonic Cycle" consisted of three stages; the announcement, the reveal of recurring characters, and poor reception. The cycle then repeats with the next major Sonic announcement. Titles that followed this cycle included Sonic and the Black Knight (2009) and Sonic Free Riders (2010). Some fans were not negatively impacted by the 2000s entries; Nick Thorpe, Retro Gamer writer and a fan of the series, stated that he was always looking forward to new entries in the series and its fandom in spite of the poorly-received entries. Sonic games prior to the release of Sonic Mania (2017) were criticized by fans for its gameplay, abundance of characters, and dark storylines. By 2014, Sonic had been mostly known for its romantic fan fictions and comedic fan art. Despite the series' decline, some fans held hope for the series' return to glory, and other celebrate it for some reasons. According to Takashi Iizuka, fans' practice of creating original characters influenced the character customization system in Sonic Forces (2017). He also stated his team chose not to create different body types and shapes because most original characters resembled Sonic's design. When the teaser trailer for the 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film was released, director Jeff Fowler asserted that the team behind the film received heavy criticism towards Sonic's design. Fowler then confirmed that changes to Sonic's design would be made. Numerous fan edits then went viral on social media platforms such as Twitter. Writing for Vice magazine, Samantha Cole reported that many members of the furry fandom thought the design was ugly and argued that Paramount Pictures should hire one of them to design Sonic instead. However, member Amethyst Basilisk found the design to be appealing and interesting for the furry fandom.
Fan base
Analysis Analysis has found that fans of Sonic the Hedgehog form strong emotional connections with the franchise's protagonist, Sonic, often identifying as his companion. The children's book author Caleb Zane-Huett discusses that Sonic has always been a character who has his own personality; for example, Sonic would break the fourth wall with annoyance. Zane-Huett said that the first game Sonic the Hedgehog (1991), does much to persuade the player that Sonic is not just a player-controlled character, which provides a vision where the player questions who they are in the game. Game developer Nick Splendorr added that players may identify as friends with Sonic or his companion rather than himself. Intelligencer writer Colin Spacetwinks wrote how the Sonic franchise fits in between Christian media and popular culture. He describes that Sonic embraces coolness, without the use of sexual or violent imagery, as the character has a personality and an attitude which Spacetwinks describes him as the "cool" alternative to Mario during the Sega-Nintendo console wars. Despite not having any explicit references, the franchise had feature plots and characters that Christian youth can relate to. This results in the franchise's mass appeal to the Christian youth demographic, usually those limited to Christian alternatives of mass media. Many of those Christians would join Sonic fan forums, with the intent of blending in with non-Christian fans. The Christian fans often make fan content for the franchise that aligns with their religion. Media scholar and gaming culture researcher James Newman has examined how differences in regional releases of older titles in the series, such as the distorted graphics and deaccelerated music and gameplay of the European PAL version of Sonic 1 compared to the Japanese and North American NTSC versions, has been a topic of interest amongst nostalgic players, and led to debates about authorial intent, canonicity, and preferred or inferior qualities of each. These practices also occur within the participatory culture of the fandom, in which texts (both fan and official localized translations) are judged based upon their compatibility with the series' canon and original Japanese source material, with fans often rectifying perceived inconsistencies through the creation of fan theories.
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