Games That Gave the Wrong Ideas About Animals – Sonic the Hedgehog

We all know the name, we all recognize his image and we all know that he is the fastest thing alive. What we didn’t know growing up was exactly was a hedgehog was. I wanted to save this game for later on in the series but after looking at the Sonic series there’s enough material in it to warrant this going now. Plus I have to train for EVO so I don’t want to tax my brain.

First let me give you some of the obligatory background of the game, you know what screw it you can check everything out here. If you’re too lazy to click Sonic for the most part was a side scrolling platformer that made you collect rings
while running through levels at blazing (for that time) speed, completing gravity defying loops and twists and beat up some Russian at the end of every 2nd or 3rd act. While you’re doing this you often come across these gems called Chaos Emeralds that didn’t have any effect on the game play until the sequels.

This game came out before Ecco so I figured we could trust the Japanese and the knowledge of animals at the time. What I did know that Sega needed something that could compete with Mario. Anyway just how close Sonic to his actual hedgehog brethren lets take a look.

Fuck Yeah

First off hedgehogs are native to the following regions Asia,Europe,Africa and they are found in New Zealand but they were introduced. Sadly there are no hedgehogs in America or Australia. So they are a spiny mammal(duh box art tells you this) whose defensive manuevers include rolling into a ball and trying to ram it’s foe with it’s spikes(double duh two seconds of gameplay). The Japanese got it right for the most part on the attacking/defensive end. Hedgehogs can run but sadly they top out at about 4.5 miles per hour,so they aren’t the fastest things alive but they can climb walls,trees and fences well. One place where the Japanese lied is telling us that hedgehogs cannot swim, when in fact they can. (Side fact:Sonic was created without the ability to swim because of an assumption by Yuji Naka that all hedgehogs could not do so.)

Come at me Bro!

So the robots in the world of Sonic are based off of animals like crabs, bees,monkeys,etc. while some of Robotnik’s creations have been quite menacing, the good doctor should have looked up hedgehogs. There are a few ways that Robtnik could have handled Sonic, the first he could have just went back in time and killed him then due to the fact that hedgehogs are born blind. Another is just sending snakes after him,even though hedgehogs have a slight resistance to poison a rattle snake bit will kill a hedgehog. The best option is that he could have built a robot based off of this animal. It would have owned Sonic for free.

Someone say hedgehogs?

Sonic as we know him is brave, cool and full of attitude. He’s based off of Bill Clinton(unintentional lulz) and his sneakers are based off of a Micheal Jackson video and Christmas. There’s no way that he can be uncool right? Wrong. First off hedgehogs when they enter a new area they chew or lick the hell out of anything that gives off of a strange scent and rub it all over their spines. It doesn’t sound odd until you are looking at a hedgehog do this.

Where's Amy when you need her

Now imagine that happening every time you started a level. It’d be funny at first but then it’s quickly get boring. Sonic also exposes himself to everyone constantly because a hedgehog’s junk is on his abdomen, every time you saw his belly button you were looking at that hot hedgehog cock. Now that I think about it the Japanese saw into the future on the Bill Clinton thing . Another reason why Sonic isn’t soo cool is because hedgehogs sometimes kill newborn hedgehogs for no good reason.

Ready for some magic?

For some unknown reason hedgehogs like to get their heads stuck in crap. So much so that McDonalds made their McFlurry cups hedgehog friendly. Even when there’s no Mickey D’s present hedgehogs will routinely get their heads stuck in things, even if you provide them a way out they’ll just stay there. Aside from that the Japanese really did a good job with helping my hedgehog knowlege level up a bit as a kid,sort of. I know there’s more animals in the series that bug me but that’s for a later time.

Oh there she is