Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie ADV 60 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 09/07/1999

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I guess I wasn't really too into Sonic, as a video game, not as much as I was crap like Gradius and R-Type. The only chance I would ever have to play it was generally at friend's houses, as I didn't own a Genesis until I was well over eighteen years old. Then again, I didn't really own any consoles post-Nintendo (which was quickly taken away forever in a fit of rage by my not-so-understanding parents) until I was about sixteen. I do remember playing it quite often at the house of our mutual friend, Amdy S. Myart though. Between bouts of the enjoyable bird rescuing simulator, Flicky, and your standard tetris rip-off, Columns, there was always time to squeeze in a little Sonic. I don't suggest that I'm any kind of a Sonic expert, but I probably put nearly as many hours into the first and second game as Andrew did and he LIVED at his house. Now my experience with the game can be quantified as significantly less, though. Sega released a pretty interesting pack of Sonic stuff for Gamecube that I've wanted to pick up, but I really can justify pay $40 for a bunch of old games I could probably get for about $5 total at a yardsale as much as I can paying $40 each for Resident Evil 2 and 3, which I've already owned on two other consoles.

Of course... I bought Resident Evil 3 on Gamecube last year, so I guess you're not too far away either, Sonic. I do remember, around fourth or fifth grade I think. There were two Sonic TV shows floating around. In the lesser one the eponymous character was voiced by Jaleel White, "Urkel" as we the kids of my inner city ghetto grade school would call him. I don't remember much else about it except that all the backgrounds were black and the animation was absolutely terrible. The other one, which aired on Saturday mornings, had crisp animation and a robot bunny chick who spoke with a Southern accent. I would imagine it was anime, but it's probably been about ten years since I last saw it, so I'd be hard pressed to remember too much about it. However, I will note that Southern accents are freaking HOT. Anthropomorphic cartoon robot bunnies aren't so much so, but I guess you've gotta take your lumps sometimes.

 

That being said, I don't think this Sonic movie fits into the schema that either of these two programs followed. It had an animation quality somewhere between the two, and no robot bunnies or Jaleel White. As such, I'm forced to refer to this show as "Sonic #3" or "Sonic 1.5", depending on your tastes. It does have Knuckles, if that's your sort of thing. I never played a lot of the later Sonics, except at the behest of a kid I was babysitting (who quickly told me how much I sucked, and should stop playing right then and there), so I don't really know what Knuckles is. He's a chincilla, right? Or an echidna? Or... I think Echidna is actually somebody's name and not an animal at all. Maybe he's a ferret, or a stoat. Zoological inquiries aside, Sonic is found to be pretty unremarkable. That bastard Robotnik (Or Eggman, depending on your lingual preference) is causing trouble again and it's up to Sonic and crew to stop him. There's a giant metal Robotnik and a normal sized metal Sonic thrown into the mix. One of them doesn't really do anything, the other does a whole lot more... but it still doesn't really end up being anything important. I guess he saves a planet from being blown up.

Me not being a little kid, all I could think of when watching this she was 'Oh Robotnik, you're so rascally!' And he is! But that's not exactly something that one bases an entire show on, not a show for me anyway. As a little kid's movie, I think Sonic truly excels though. It's not very violent and it's got the kind of humor that little kids would probably like. There's a half-blind owl hanging around that's always getting himself into trouble. He's sort of like this generation's Mr. Magoo! If I had children, god forbid, I would probably let them watch this. But only after they've seen the classic masterpiece that is Panda Go Panda enough times to be able to recite the entire themesong from memory, with perfect pitch and timing. After that, I guess it'd be okay to let them watch something else for awhile. That kind of parenting is probably why I don't have kids, and me not having kids is probably why I don't have Sonic anymore. With all certainty, I'm sure that I don't have the attention span to devote to a game like Sonic. Or, maybe, what I mean to say is that I have too much attention span to devote to it. But once in awhile, I guess indulging yourself is okay.