Sonic The Hedgehog: A Legacy Of Brilliance From A Failed System - #VideoGame #Blog

Sonic maybe running around in different video game consoles, but that wasn't always the case...

These days, 'Sonic The Hedgehog' is known for the video games that have been done for such systems as, 'Playstation', or, 'Nintendo Wii', but before Sonic became mostly a secondary character on various cross-platform systems,  Sonic brought to prominence the, 'Sega Genesis', in the same way that, 'Mario' brought to prominence the, 'Nintendo'!

And speaking of that... 

Ok, so not only did Sonic help bring the, 'Sega Genesis' to prominence, but one of the other things that it did was to make Sega dominate the video game market from the early 1990s, really up to when Sony released the, 'Playstation', and Microsoft brought to the world, the, 'X-Box'! 

The Sega Genesis was so popular in the 1990s, that it gave, 'Nintendo' a run for it's money!

And yet another thing that Sonic really did kind of help do very well, was to do with merchandising and cartoons for the 90s, what Mario did for the 1980s! 

Now to speak about the series... Ok, so the fact is, is I have connected Sonic and Mario very close together, and the truth is, is that, 'Yes' they have some connection, but the truth is, is they are two very different video games and let me explain what I mean by this: 

1. Sonic is an animal in a world that has mostly animals in it. Mario is a human that was transported to a world with his brother that is sort of a mix of both humans and various animals. 

2. In the Mario games, the big bad is a dinosaur, while in Sonic The Hedgehog, the big bad is a human. 

3. In most of the Mario games, Mario and Luigi are trying to save a, 'Princess' and Sonic and Tails are trying to save the Animal populace of his world. 

Sonic & Mario have their similarities and differences, but in the end, one of the main things that they both did is to bring to prominence their respective video game systems they started off with, and the companies they came from!

Now as far as the franchise itself goes, Sonic The Hedgehog... The best things about this franchise, is that in no matter what platform the current, 'Sonic' game is under, the characters are always kid friendly, and the games are always fun for all ages... And the truth... Sega may have failed in it's video game system design, but the truth is, is Sonic will always translate to the next generation! 

Donkey Kong (1981) - Video Game Review

[caption id="attachment_385" align="alignright" width="300"] Official Score = 2 Devils[/caption]

When I was a kid there was a couple of small, 'mini-mart' style stores over by where a friend of mine used to live, and in these stores were a couple of coin-op arcade games... Also there was an arcade close by as well, so one of the things that we used to like to do is to grab as much money from our mom's that we could and then circulate between the stores and play at the arcades... And you know what? If you haven't tried an arcade game, then you don't know what you are missing!

As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say that a fair amount of video games that I would eventually play on a home console system in the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, I started off playing on an arcade system system some where! Including, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., and heck even, Street Fighter 2!

And another one is, Donkey Kong (1981)!

Now Donkey Kong was created by Shigeru Miyamoto who was tasked by Nintendo to convert an older game called, 'Radar Scope' which had done poorly, but Nintendo was interested in converting it with the intention of creating a game that Americans would really enjoy... And you know what? It ended up being one of the more popular Nintendo Arcade games of it's time!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="299"] Jumpman (Mario) as he is trying to rescue his girl friend, 'The Lady' (Pauline) from Donkey Kong![/caption]

The game itself is one of the earliest known video games to have a story and tells of how Donkey Kong (A large Gorilla) has kidnapped Jumpman's (A character that would later be re-named, 'Mario' and would become the lead character in one of Nintendo's most famous video game series,) girlfriend, 'The Lady' (later known as, 'Pauline'.) And since you play as Jumpman you have to go from level to level jumping over and avoiding stuff that is being rained down on you from Donkey Kong!

I have played this game on both the Arcade game setup as well as on the NES, and in all truth, on both Video Game setups, the game play was extremely easy, the music was so-so, but in all truth, considering the age of the game, the graphics was actually quite good!

This game would later be put on such gaming consoles as, the Game & Watch multiscreen, the Amiga 500, Apple II, Atari 7800, Intellivision, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, Famicom Disk System, IBM PC booter, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Atari 8-bit family and Mini-Arcade versions, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). the GameCube and as an item for purchase on the Wii's Virtual Console. The original arcade version of the game appears in the Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64. Nintendo released the NES version on the e-Reader and for the Game Boy Advance Classic NES series in 2002 and 2004,

Also in 1994, a remake of the original game was released for the Game Boy, adding 96 new levels.

The truth is, is that this game was a lot of fun at the arcade, you know when you were a kid and you were waiting for your Pizza to arrive and your mom gave you a couple of dollars, to play some games...Well playing this game in that type of set up in all truth was an awful lot of fun! But I can't say for all systems, but in all truth, something was definitely lost in translation between the arcade game and the version on the NES!

http://youtu.be/EhFV5-qbbIw