I am the same age as the Sega Genesis, so I basically popped out of the womb loving Sonic. The video games were my first exposure. I watched my parents play until I could play on my own. We would share cheats with the older kids a couple of houses down. I don't even remember how cheats got around before the Internet! One of my earliest memories is buying Sonic & Knuckles from Toys'R'Us.
Then, fully obsessed, I moved on to the cartoons and Archie comic books. I ate Sonic SpaghettiOs. When I got my own computer, I was on the first Sonic forums. There were several years during the mid 2000s onward where I dared not tell anyone I love the franchise. I stopped needing to buy every game...because they started to suck. I put my comic books and merchandise collection in the attic. Well before the Sonic movie success, I'd always secretly hoped for a Sonic Adventure movie adaptation each time I went to the movies and watched the opening trailers.
But since around 2020, I don't really care anymore. The movie changed a lot. Sonic became acceptable again. The self-aware memes have just gotten better and better. And I'm actually an autistic stereotype, what. I proudly tell coworkers what video games I play when they share theirs. My Spotify Wrapped has a ton of Sonic? Eh, share it anyway. I saw Sonic 3 in theatres twice, once by myself. In the past year, I am finally getting back into the comics because I did not believe the IDW reboot would be successful, so I have a decade's-worth of comics to read.
Plus, I have a daughter who gravitated toward Sonic without us formally introducing her. It just happened because she was born during the current franchise rebirth—she can't escape it like I couldn't in the early 90s. Sonic is everywhere again! So now I get to greedily buy all the cool modern merch for children and rewatch all the old shows. It's secretly for my inner child.
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