Sonic frontiers game series#

Sonic frontiers game series#

And in the near-term, at least, the series delivered on that potential, with Sonic CD, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic & Knuckles all launching to critical and popular praise.īut despite Sonic’s success in the early ’90s, the franchise – and Sega as a whole – experienced a bumpy road in subsequent years. Sonic 2 set the franchise’s ceiling higher than its predecessor. Sega had its hit, but it wasn’t until Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that the Blue Blur truly became a household name.įollowing an astoundingly successful marketing campaign called “Sonic 2sday” and universal acclaim, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 became the highest-selling game of 1992, outpacing other classics like Street Fighter II and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The United States ran two animated shows simultaneously, while toys, plushies, clothing, and other merchan- dise flooded store shelves. Sonic the Hedgehog became a licensing juggernaut alongside Sega’s critically celebrated games. Following an enthusiastic response from players, licensors, and other business partners, Sonic the Hedgehog was well on its way to becoming the next great phenomenon in the video game industry.īut games were just the start. In 1991, Kalinske and Nilsen began pulling back the curtain. Sega knew it had a hit on its hands, but it needed to reveal Sonic at the right time for maximum effect. All we had were drawings of Sonic, and it was pretty hard to imagine it could be as fast as he turned out to be and as good as he turned out to be.” “We all knew we needed to have a character for Sega to fight against Nintendo and Mario. “Before Al went to Japan on that trip, we’d only seen drawings,” Kalinske says. “ was what did it for me in terms of going, ‘This is going to be something special for Sega.’ It was amazing.” “They had never heard me rave about a game so much when I got back, and they just wanted to see it,” says Nilsen. When Nilsen told then-president and CEO of Sega of America Tom Kalinske about the demo, he couldn’t stop singing its praises. When Naka told him it was, Nilsen immediately got on board. He asked Naka if it was possible to combine the speed of the wireframe demo with the gorgeous background of the other monitor.

In awe, Nilsen turned to series co-creator Yuji Naka, who he had just met. Then next to it was the background for Green Hill Zone.” He was speeding through it, and my jaw just dropped. “I walked up, and here is Sonic going through the loop-de-loop in Green Hill Zone, but it’s just a wireframe. “I got closer, and I was like, ‘Hey! That’s that Sonic guy I saw on a piece of paper way back when,’” Nilsen recalls. He had no idea what it was at first, but it immediately drew him from across the room. At the same time, the second monitor displayed a beautiful, lush background beyond anything he’d seen in a video game before. On one screen, there was a wireframe environment with something speeding through it. It was the new flagship mascot of Sega’s 16-bit era of console gaming, but nobody on the Sega of America side had seen Sonic in motion to that point.Īs Nilsen entered the office, he spotted two monitors. Months before, Nilsen helped select a rudimentary drawing of a blue hedgehog. Nilsen visited Sega’s research and development team in Tokyo, Japan in the early part of 1990. Sonic Mania proved a successful retro reinvention, but the core development staff at Sonic Team has yet to deliver the final piece of the puzzle: a mainline game restoring the series’ legacy as one of the premier platformers.įormer director of marketing at Sega of America Al Nilsen will never forget the first time he saw Sonic the Hedgehog in action. The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is perhaps nearly as popular now as when it burst onto the scene just over three decades ago, bolstered by blockbuster movies, beloved comics, and promising streaming shows. However, the brand has experienced something of a renaissance in recent years. Even after a quick jump off the starting line, many feared the series was doomed to fall short of its potential forever. However, much like the roller coasters that inspired Sonic’s original gameplay and level design, the subsequent decades included plenty of highs and lows. Shortly after the 1991 launch of the Blue Blur’s debut game on Sega Genesis, his popularity rivaled Nintendo’s behemoth Super Mario franchise. In the 1990s, few characters reached the heights of Sonic the Hedgehog.