Sonic the Hedgehog used to be the coolest game character around, competing fiercely with console gaming’s Ole Faithful, Mario. It wasn’t particularly long ago that Sega firmly dominated the console market while enthusiastically and repeatedly violating Nintendo with the Sega Genesis. Sadly, the winds of change can be neither slowed nor halted – and definitely not Sonic Spin Attacked into stasis. Damnit.
The Wonder Years
I owned my first (and only) Genesis with a metric crapton of games when my cousin gave it to me so he could make space for his new PlayStation. Even though it was a hand-me-down, I still loved it. I had loads of games – Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Vectorman, Shinobi, and of course the Sonic series. To this day I still play the old Genesis Sonic titles on my desktop or through my phone, thanks to emulation.
Back then I only had the canon games, but it didn’t matter; I was too busy running through corkscrews and chasing after an obese evil scientist. It used to mean something to be a Sonic fan…that is of course until furries came and ruined it.
Years later, when the Dreamcast came out, I saved up for what felt like half my innocent childhood so that I could purchase one. Once accomplished, I naturally bought Sonic Adventure as well - but something didn’t feel right. I enjoyed the game, but it just wasn’t as fun as Super Mario 64, and I wasn’t used to all the changes and overhauls.
Sonic Adventure 2 came out, and I bought it at my local GameStop on release date. Something still didn’t feel right.
Look at all those Sonic OCs!
Trouble in Paradise
I wasn’t overly thrilled when the Sonic art style started looking more eastern as opposed to the western treatment Sonic had always been given. It was a small complaint, though, and I quickly shrugged it off.
Sonic has always been a Japanese owned, operated, and manufactured franchise, but Sonic himself was an American hero. The plots – plots that seem like they were written by a ten year old, in my Sonic games? What madness was this?! I couldn’t comprehend at the time, as I was still an obnoxious snot-nosed youth.
Be careful, Sonic the Laptophog: the internet is full of pricks.
Time passed. I began to use the internet more. I discovered furries and deviantArt; two terrible realities that make the internet nigh unbearable when mixed. With unnecessary characters and use of an anime art style, it was almost as if Sega wanted to attract more of these fur loving heathens.
In those heady early days, I possess barely an ounce of the animosity I have for furries in the present day. Nothing beautiful lasts, though, and seeing all the “original characters” (which were simply recolors of Sonic characters with stupid extras like a punkrock mohawk or some edgy piercings) and horrific fan fiction began to sour me rapidly.
Disquiet Breeds Dissonance, Dissatisfaction, and Dissing Sonic
Declaring myself as a fan of the franchise became increasingly harder and remorseful. Adding insult to injury, all the Sonic games being churned out at this point lacked one key feature: quality. Almost all of them were reviewed in terms raging from negative to embarrassingly scathing.
Even Sonic 4, a game that was supposedly going to bring Sonic back to its roots, proved to be an exercise in futility. Sonic Generations is looking very promising. Having felt this naive hope many times over the years, I’ll reserve judgment until I play it. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that Sonic’s previously high quality, upstanding fan base has left the building – only to be replaced over the years by, well… embarrassments.
........
Yiff, Yiff and (Get) Away (From Me)
So: here we are, Sonic; I’m upset and lonely and I miss being a proud Sonic fan. Meanwhile, you’re busy rolling around in fursuits that probably cost way too much to dry clean (ew) and overtly sexualizing the last, broken bits of my tender gaming childhood. Furry porn made the unimaginable explicitly imaginable, then dragge it to the table to point and laugh while jerking off at my huddled, crouched and trembling form, prone in puddle of tears and bitter defeat. I could no longer claim to be a fan of Sonic.
The Sonic Team has ruined my hopes for the franchise, and furries have thoroughly decimated and pissed on my (alredy low) hopes for humanity. At least Mario fans weren’t slapped across the face with the most uninspiring “original” characters, or a very spoiled, upsetting fan base.
But my rant is nothing new. Most of the internet already (and rightly) despises furries, and encountering furry horror is par for the course, these days. Everyone knows and hates how they ruin everything with their intolerable fan art and yiffing. I miss the good old days, without the tentacles and 5 sets of genitals and humans who can’t get off unless they pretend they’re an imaginary creature designed solely for the greasy, tarry stink of ‘animal’ intimacy that lasts only as long as the mask stays on, and no one makes eye contact the next morning. Come back to us, Sonic.
