Remember your first time with Sonic

You never forget your first time, right.

Since it is the 20th anniversary and all and some of us are old enough to remember when the first Sonic came out, it's time to listen to us old people reminscece about the good old days while you youngsters nod and roll your eyes hoping we'll tire out and fall asleep. lol

Ah yes, 1991. I was 10 years old. We didn't have any internet to show us new games years in advance. The movie The Wizard showing off the first footage of SMB3 was the closest thing to an E3 show. A lot of my most beloved series I played their firsts as my first. Mario (if we're counting SMB not arcade DK as his first), Zelda, Starfox, and yes Sonic.

Like so many Gen Yers I grew up with an NES and played the hell out of Mario, Zelda and Bubble Bobble (please tell me I'm not the only one who remembers that game). And I was a Mario fanatic. My dad wouldn't let me get a new Mario game until the previous one was beaten. Had to beat SMB3 before I could get Dr. Mario the spinoff puzzle game. Had Mario toys, posters, books, watched that crappy cartoon. You name it. Remember thinking how SMB3 was hard as hell and having to buy the strategy guide to find all the stuff in all 8 worlds. I knew Mario and I had a beautiful and wonderful friendship.

And then one day I saw this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an8OHLDNHRg

Not so much the dig at Mario though I was like WTF but the whole running upside down through a loop thing and I remember going to a department store and watching a video and playing a demo (getting all the way to Marble Zone before my mom drug me away) and wanting to play it so bad and hating that I didn't own a Genesis (or SNES).

And then I made friends with a boy in my neighborhood named Matt. We didn't go to the same school because he was sent to the private Catholic school but he did have a Genesis with Sonic and I would go over there and play for hours. Back in those days when you died, if you had no continues or turned off the game, you had to go back to start. None of this fancy pants auto save crap. You kids are all too soft. Though I found it funny in the retrospective the devs talked about not having the ability to save progress in games at the time (Legend of Zelda on the NES says "hi") For some reason Sonic didn't pick up on this until #3.

I remember though being able to breeze through the first 3 zone like nothing. Sonic is great but the game wasn't exactly hard. I struggled more with SMB3 but then I hit this....

Yeah after breezing through 3 fun stages I get tossed into water, can't swim and suddenly that awful countdown music sending me into a panic. I was stuck on this level for a long time, grinding up lives in the first three worlds so I could finish this area. This is probably why Starlight Zone is so loved. It feels like a cake walk after slogging through the Labyrinth and it's music is so lovely.

Then you get to Scrapbrain and it gets tough again but then it's the last world, it needs to be. You can't blast through Scrap brain the first time through. Too much stuff is out to get you.

And then just when gamers thought they saw the end of the horrid Labyrinth zone, Sega threw this in. Scrap Brain act 3. Now with slower bubbles.

Noooooo!! Not more water and drowning. Gotta find bubbles. Gotta find bubbles!! Aaaaaaaahhhh!!!! But somehow I reached the final fight with Robotnick.

...and I was on my last life and no more continues. But that was when I learned about the nice little cheat you do at the beginning to get the stage select. At the title screen, press: Up down down down left right . You should hear a Ring chime. Now hold down A and press START.

So I went back to the final battle and then realized how easy Eggman's first battle is because you can stand on the far right and be just fine as long as you know when to dodge the electric balls. Sonic 2 did have the more epic fight. But it would be a long time before I got all the Chaos Emeralds.

Ok I think I went into enough detail there for one day, anyone want to share their earliest Sonic memory.?

I still remember the first time I played Sonic The Hedgehog, it was in the fall of 1991, and I had just gotten my SNES, and thought Super Mario World was the best game out there, and I went over to a friend's house who had a Genesis and asked me to pick up and play Sonic since he got tired of me talking trash out this supposed Sega mascot.

The moment I started playing Sonic, my life was forever changed, I actually started getting addicted to Sonic, and it was only a manner of weeks before I finally mastered Sonic 1, and beat it, much to my friend's surprise, it was then that I changed my tune about this hedgehog, he was so much more unique compared to Mario, he could travel faster than Mario, and he had an attitude that Mario would never ever have.

I knew from that day on, it would always be a war between Mario and Sonic as to who is my favorite character, and even to this today, I'm still deciding on which mascot is better, although I sightly favor Sonic over Mario because of his awesomeness and the fast and fun game play although at first it was hard, but once I got better, it was the best game besides Super Mario World that I played that year.

Yeah. I worked for months to earn enough money to buy a Megadrive. 

Sonic was the game that came with it.  

I was 7 years old. My parents had taken me over to my uncle's house. He had a SEGA Genesis. They turned it on and let me pick out a game to play. I picked Sonic. I got to play all the way into the middle of Marble zone before I was told it was time to go. I didn't want to go. All I had back at the house to play was an Atari 2600.

Later on that year my school had this thing called student of the month. All the winners from every class were put into a drawing to win a top prize while everyone else that won just got free pizza coupons or something. This was in the 2nd grade. My name was picked for the grade prize and it was a copy of Zelda 2. I was happy I won but I didn't have a Nintendo. My mom knew this and talked to the school afterwards about trading that in for something else and they actually accommodated her. They gave her the value of the game in cash and my parents put a bit more with it and got me a SEGA Genesis.

I remember the trip to Toys R' Us to get it. It was the most exciting thing I had ever experienced. I couldn't wait to get it and play Sonic. Turns out they didn't have any Sonic bundles or loose copies of the game so my uncle let me borrow his copy until they got more copies in stock. I played it and played it. I borrowed that game for a year or something. Now the year is 1993. My parents told me if I could beat the game that they would get me a special surprise for Easter. Well I kept fighting with it and eventually toppled it. I had beaten the game. Easter came and I found my Easter basket hidden in the house (my mom loved to hide them and make me look for it and tell me if I was cold or hot about how close I was to finding it) and in it was a load of candy and a copy of Sonic 2.

Joy.

Oh man, nostalgia.

Well, I was about 7, like Whoozwah. My mom ended up getting both my sister and I a new system. I got the SNES, and my sister got the Genesis. With the Genesis, she got Sonic CIassics, which has Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Mean Bean Machine on it. I first began playing Sonic 1 through that. I remember on random days, usually 2-3 days a week, I'd go in my sister's room and play Sonic 1, sometimes she'd play music like Shania Twain while I was playing.

Can you imagine the idea of playing through Marble Zone to "I Feel Like A Woman"? :P Fun times.

Ahh....Nostalgia. The bad kind. :P

--First saw a walkthrough once of Sonic 06 (maybe in the year early 07?) , was drawn in by the nice graphics (Remember, all I played at that point was my NES SNES and PS1) but had no way to get that much money and settled for a PS2 (better than the PS3!:P) and got Sonic Heroes , and it is the only PS2 game I have played for over 100 hours.

On a sour note, 6 months ago I finally got Sonic 06 and it sucked ass. It felt like a betrayal , because it was the main Sonic game I wanted all along.

I started with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Genesis. I use to watch my Uncle play it and sometimes play as Tails.

I didn't play the original until later.

i dont remember how old i was, or the games title, but i do remember my first sonic experience. it was on my cousins Genesis. the game was set in multiple, differently colored cilinder shaped roads. the point was to get to the end of the cilinder... thing, without falling through the holes or getting hit by the spike balls.

of course you had to collect as many rings as possible. the only two playable characters were sonic and tails. it was a super simple game ofwhich i dont remember much. but from then on i was a Sonic fan all the way.

My first time? Mine was actually a bit of a process...

Before I got my N64, which would be my first console, I often went over to my friends house to play on his genesis, and thus Sonic 3 could quite possibly be the first console game I have ever played. I remember just running back and forth on the first stage, not really interested in beating the game but rather studying it or just having fun. I preferred watching though since I could never beat Hydrocity Zone.... :roll:

However, my friend also showed me his (broken) Mega CD and showed me the CD of Sonic CD, I remember feeling giddy because it came out the year I was born, and how revoultionary a gaming CD was (though to this day I still stand up for cartridges).

Years later my brother and I rented and later purchased Sonic Adventure 2 as the first game to play on the Gamecube. We then later played Sonic Adventure DX.... it sucked.

And then finally saw Sonic Mega Collection and bought it instantly, soon becoming one of my most played games ever. I remember being blown away from the Sonic CD animation and right then was when I truly started respecting the blue blur.

It would be my last full price purchase of a Sonic game for almost 8 years...

The fellas at Brainscratch just recetly did a 2hr retrospective. Not much to watch, just them talking for 2 hrs about the series but nice if you like the Brainscratch guys work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXMybHhbrxk

As I said I played the Genesis games at my friend's house though I owned a Game Gear because like a moron I was thought having bright colorful graphics meant it was better than the Game Boy. The first and last time I even bought a console because of graphics. I had nearly every Sonic GG game hence why nearly all GG games in the archive are from me. Watched the cartoons and drew plenty of Mario vs. Sonic pictures.

Then after the SNES era I stopped playing games for a couple years, sort of missed out on the N64/PS1 era though as we've seen I didn't miss a lot of killer Sonic titles during that time. And most of the killer N64 games I played at my cousin's house because he had pretty much every AAA N64 title: Both Banjos, Mario 64, Both Zeldas, Goldeneye, Starfox 64, basically every N64 game one SHOULD own, they had.

In the later half of my college years I finally bought a Gamecube, mainly for Super Smash Bros. Melee which is why a lot of people bought a Gamecube. And as we all know the Gamecube's must have lineup is much like the N64, huge gaps between AAA releases but when it's all said and done, there's a nice collection to be had. Wanting to find something other than first party Nintendo titles to play, I started looking towards Sonic but this was after he sort of fell off the radar in gaming world. This was the era of Master Cheif and GTA and all the cuddly platformer mascots had disappeared. Dark times. But seeing reviews of Sonic's GC games, I hestiated. Eventually I did pick up Sonic Heroes because it got decent reviews and it's ok, not amazing, but solid and I did play the superior GC version. Then in 2006 when there was nothing new coming out, I sort of went into a marathon of playing various Sonic titles, basically catching up. My cousin had the Mega Collection so I played a few of the lesser titles like Bean Machine, 3D Blast, picked up Gems Collection which let me play Sonic CD anda bunch of forgettable crap. So as one of the earlier Wii adopters who played Twilight Princess on the GC then got a Wii, Sonic and the Secret Rings was like the 3rd or 4th game I got for it and played most of the games that followed.