While he may have struggled in recent years to meet the same rapport with gamers as he did back in the more retro era of video game consoles, I think it is safe to say that Sonic the Hedgehog and his friends won’t be going away anytime soon… at least not while there are Olympic Games for the former rivals Mario and Sonic to take part in! Having now passed the 20th anniversary mark for the franchise, French publisher Les Editions Pix’n Love put together this sizable artbook coming in at 300 pages in length. Udon Entertainment since acquired the rights to this book, and are on their second “softcover” run which launched a week or so ago. Contained within these pages is a treasure trove of information, designs and more relating to the series which in my opinion would easily make this the most comprehensive published guide currently available on the English market.
The History of Sonic the Hedgehog begins just where the title suggests it starts, by detailing the history about how SEGA was first born in the 1960’s and how that expanded into their experiments in the gaming market and finally produced the biggest threat to Super Mario in the 90’s. As someone who didn’t get into video gaming until the late 90’s and didn’t even follow the series until the GameCube release of Sonic Adventure 2, the first ninety or so pages were incredibly interesting and easily a highlight of the book.
After a couple of interviews that spans twenty or so pages, the book focuses on all the different video games produced in the Sonic the Hedgehog series over the years – split into 2D, 3D, handheld and finally spin-off games that spans another hundred or so pages. Given the sheer mass of games published featuring Sonic and Co. there is a lot to read. However the conversation pieces tended to focus more on the positive aspects and varied in length – with Sonic Adventure (1) receiving three double-page spreads while the more un-notable Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Sonic Unleashed were reduced to one page features with very little more than a synopsis. Each game has associated trivia with it, but I couldn’t help but feel like more should have been done on the games development rather than describing games that most fans would have had the opportunity to play.
As I mentioned in the “Negatives” section above:
They do tend to sugar-coat notable issues present in some of the later games. Given how impossible it is to actually play Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). The quote “as this tough game seriously tested players’ reflexes and accuracy” should have been replaced with “…as this buggy game seriously tested the players’ sanity and luck”.
I don’t think you can write-off game breaking bugs as being “tough” points in a game.
The third and final primary chapter of this book is the “Characters” section, which serves more as the design compendium component of the book. While highlighting the biography, appearances and specifics for many of the characters who have held prominent roles in the franchise over the years, more interestingly they also provided an insight into how they went about initially designing the characters and how their appearances have adapted over the years. Wrapping up with a “Funny Cameos” section, you have what is essentially a really nice guide book to the whole franchise.
There were a few notable omissions that could have made this book even better such as going down the “design compendium” route in my opinion, however what you have here is a solid book that is filled to the brim with imagery and text, and should hopefully appeal to Sonic the Hedgehog fans from all generations. Interestingly they also didn’t include the many different television series that have aired in the past which despite not being a video game were still key components of the history of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Coupled with an impressive layout that indicates a lot of effort went into producing this book and a solid localization effort – this is one compendium from Udon Entertainment that I could happily suggest fans of the franchise consider checking out. But on a more solemn note, given recent events you have to wonder how much longer this momentum with the series will continue, and if the next twenty years will be anywhere near as prosperous. I do have my doubts that we will be seeing a 40th Anniversary Book.
