Memory’s a tricky thing; time has the ability to cloud our interpretations, turning jaded pastimes into heroic exploits through the donning of the proverbial rose-tinted spectacles. Sometimes this can be a good thing (so many conversations I’ve had with people that I’ve wanted to forget). Others…not so much. In gaming terms we all have individual accounts of certain titles; software that’s etched permanently into our frontal lobes (for better or for worse). There are rare incidents though where our subjectivity is no longer a factor and we all stand unified in our love for the same game. Games like Half-Life, Zelda and Grand Theft Auto III. And games most definitely like Sonic the Hedgehog.

We all know the story; it’s 1991 and Mario’s popularity is in full swing. Nintendo is exerting their dominance via the NES/Famicom (short for ‘Family Computer’) and the 16-bit era is about to succeed the former generation. Following the Master System, Sega needed to fight back. Like the greatest Liverpool/Manchester United northern derbies, the battle lines were clearly defined; Nintendo had their talisman, their ‘Steven Gerrard’ (Mario), all Sega now needed was their ‘Wayne Rooney’. And so a plan was hatched; a scheme from the Japanese outlet’s top brass to create a character to rival ‘Ninty’s’ mustachioed plumber – a mascot who could shift Megadrive units as well as win over the critics. He would need to be fast, he would need to be blue…he would need to be Sonic.

The Original Sonic the Hedgehog hit like a tsunami of flash and creativity. Bright, vibrant and elegantly designed, turning on the game was like walking through a wall of colour and imagination. I say elegantly designed as everything seemed sharp and well-placed – levels were divided into three stages and never seemed to drag; the concept of collecting rings gave incentive (and the fear of possibly losing them in a single blow – providing you didn’t have a shield on the go) and no matter how efficient your ring-acquiring skills became, there was constant expectancy of meeting good old Doctor Robotnik at the end of every level (a fact that elicited both nervousness and excitement).

However, structure and originality are worth nothing if things don’t handle correctly and fortunately the boys & girls of the ‘Naka Bunch’ had paid attention to this. Whilst the series has since become synonymous with a poor camera and flaky controls, the hedgehog’s first outing bore no such troubles. For all the talk of how kinetic the original was and its emphasis on completion as quickly as possible, Sonic had an equal amount of poise to boot. The 2D plane has always been the series’ ally and the ‘hog never looked more comfortable than when he was zipping from left to right. The linear progression of each stage allowed the development team to bestow players with an affable amount of control, in turn allowing us to aim, spin and jump through the landscapes with surgical levels of precision. And I suppose this where we come to the game’s more memorable facets – level design/music. These days it’s easy to get lost in the computer game experience; audio and visuals blur together during intense sessions of titles such as Prototype or Crysis. But 22 years ago the mix of such things wasn’t as engrossing. Developers had to work hard to find the right marriage of looks & sounds in order to make each stage feel unique. And to me, that kind of hard work was put in by Sega and clearly paid off. Areas such as Marble Zone are recognisable purely from their theme songs, and whilst Mario won the numbers game in this regard, it’s arguable that Sonic’s playthroughs were more distinctive.

During the halcyon days of the 16-bit generation, the hedgehog could do no wrong. Sonic 2 (his best outing next to Sonic CD) gave us better graphics and faster gameplay, Sonic 3 introduced knuckles and gave us tails as a fully playable character (and we all know what a joy it was being able to play as the echidna in the adventure that followed). The move to the third dimension effectively signalled the end of the hedgehog’s supremacy (and maybe the start of the downfall of the once mighty Sega empire). One thing’s for sure, though; if you talk to anyone who was around in the early 90s and ask them what their favourite childhood memory was, I’d put money on the fact that someone would say ‘turning on Sonic the Hedgehog and seeing the Green Hill Zone for the very first time…’