If you were a 90’s kid like me, you may remember when the blue spin-ball came into our lives and inspired a whole generation of speeding tickets. Sonic ensured that the Sega Genesis would be a must have console in the early 90’s, giving that one Italian plumber guy a run for the money (you know the one). The original game was followed by immensely popular sequels introducing Tails and Knuckles, and a variety of games came along for later consoles. The Sonic madness included four cartoon shows, three of which had Sonic voiced by Steve Urkel himself, Jaleel White (a topic for another time) and a series of comics published by Archie Comics.
Did you spot the NOT FOR RESALE stamp across Sonic’s face?
What many don’t know is that there was an anime film in Japan 1996, translated for US audiences in 1999. The film flew under the radar because it was an OVA (original video animation, a Japanese term referring to a film released straight to video without being released in theaters).
The day that Sonic forgot this was a kid’s movie.
Once gaming reached the third-person perspective with Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast and Playstation 1, Sonic appeared to have a promising future with Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, but most of the later games have had varying degrees of success. Many of Sonic’s more recent games have flopped, and with a few exceptions the franchise seems to be struggling lately. The franchise made a sort of comeback with a rebranded spinoff titled Sonic Boom in 2014, which includes a slightly redesigned appearance for the characters, mainly Knuckles. The series has been met with positive reviews, but the related games were mainly panned by players and critics alike. But the real come back has been announced for 2018.
Words to live by.
The Sonic the Hedgehog film was announced in 2014 via partnership between Sony Pictures and the Sega animation wing, Marza Animation Planet, but Sega Sammy Holdings Inc CEO Hajime Satomi recently interviewed with the WorldFolio and mentioned that the film is still in progress for a 2018 release:
“Sega Sammy Group is currently planning with Sony Pictures to create a live-action and animation hybrid ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ movie scheduled for release in 2018. Like with this CG animation production, we would like to expand our business into other entertainment areas beyond what we are currently involved.”
There are two things going against this movie right off the bat. The first is what seems to be the curse of the video game based movie, where so few movies based on video games have been box office hits, starting with the one about that Italian plumber dude mentioned earlier (thought I had forgotten about him, didn’t you?). The second issue is that when we hear about live-action/animation hybrids, we tend to think of this:
and:
Naturally, the news has been met with resistance. There may still be good news in the making however, as writer Van Robichaux has been answering fan’s questions on this subject. Tssznews reports that Robichaux has been a lifelong fan of Sonic the Hedgehog, and has recently reacquired the classic Genesis games for some studying. He was asked about this directly:
Via tssnews.com
So, there is a good chance that Robichaux will do well by Sonic. Whether the video game curse will be broken by this film or not remains to be seen. In the meantime, we’ll have to dust off our old Sega Genesis while we wait until 2018 to find out for sure.