Blue Sonic

**Blue Sonic** is the worst *Sonic the Hedgehog* "original character" ever to exist. He appears as a picture of Sonic colored blue in Microsoft Paint, despite the fact that Sonic is already bright blue. Blue Sonic also wears red shoes, recolored red from Sonic's, which again are already red in the first place. He has a rather cocky, "too-cool-for-you" personality, like, again, Sonic has already, but of course Blue Sonic's dialogue is written even more embarrassingly.

## **The Impetus** - a Serious Cultural Analysis by Tabitha

In his 1968 masterpiece *Song Cycle*, American pop artist Van Dyke Parks illustrated a stunning picture of civilzed peoples' discontents. The album's second track, "Palm Desert", contains the line "dreams are still made in Hollywood" (Parks). Things have changed since then, but in the late Sixties, Hollywood was certainly a cultural Makkah for the young and impressionable. Every civilization in every culture, at every point in time, has had one: ever since the promises of eternal life woven by conniving Egyptian royalty, this overarching structure of civilization has continued and unfortunately thrived. And, yes, it was Hollywood in the sixties and for quite a while. Nowadays, it's Silicon Valley. It's smartphones and social media. But from the late eighties until just recently, it was video games.

As video games go, *Sonic the Hedgehog* was and still is a masterpiece of deception, a tried and true testament to the ignorance of the bourgeoisie. It was brought to life with a formula too diabolical, too violently impure, for the children of America to have any chance of survival. Its cute, simplistic characters enticed them to come forward. Its fast gameplay and perfectly-calculated difficulty curve kept them occupied, even after they had defeated Dr. Robotnik hundreds of times. And then came the sequels…

I'm going to tell you a story about a man named P.T. Barnum.

You've heard of him, haven't you? Ever been to, or do you know about, Barnum & Bailey Circus? Yeah, that Barnum. Did you know that in the late 1800s, Mr. Barnum was the central "person of interest" in American culture? Do you know how weird that is? Throughout American history, the person of interest in the US has always been the President. Bono from U2 came close in the '80s, but that's beside the point. Basically, the fact that P.T. was in the center of this aural popularity contest certainly illustrated the point that America's collective moral compass was going a little wonky. If you're interested in economics at all, you gotta know about this guy. But that's also beside the point.

Basically, what P.T. had set up was a "freak show" in the streets of New York. Inside the thin walls of the colorful tent were the sort of brainless attractions that the people of the time period loved to fawn over: for example, Barnum would get his men to paint an elephant white and then display it as a rare White Elephant. People ate this stuff up, and thousands of customers walked through Barnum's tent of *trompe-le-monde.*At the end of the show, however, was P.T.'s greatest trick of all: a sign displaying the words "Great Egress" next to a mysterious, alluring curtain.

In case you weren't aware, a Great Egret is a lovely bird. An egress, conversely, is an exit. So, Barnum's customers, expecting to see this legendary avian, would walk through the curtain and find themselves back outside of the tent.

And you know what they did next?

They looked around for a few seconds, confused.

They started chuckling to themselves.

And then…

They went back in.

That is why we have sequels. Maybe now you understand.

And that is how Sega introduced their template to the market: in the same way that Barnum fooled all those people years and years ago. Nothing has changed. What Sega had, though, was a template for destruction far more sinister than any 1800s con man could ever dream of. The men of Sega were masters at their craft, and their brand of simplistic but memorable characters could not be beat by any competitor. Their characters were edgy and attention-grabbing, and they always seemed to have a new one up their sleeves. Sonic, Knuckles, Metal Sonic, hell, even Shadow: all of them are pawns of the same device. Who could resist?

Not the children of America. Have you ever tried Googling your own name, followed by "the hedgehog"? You'll find at least five or ten Deviantart links for anything you type in. Now, this is the psychological effect this stuff has on children, and as a matter of fact, this is very drastic: Sega's bright, simplistic characters entice these children so much that they are overcome with the uncontrollable urge to create their own. If this was the company's goal when they set out to create a competitor for Super Mario, well, that's up to debate... but the fact that these kids are under Sega's control can't be twisted.