Rendering Distance is a feature where we look at the influence of video games on other forms of media, whether it’s a straight adaptation like Wild ARMs TV or general inspiration like the Free Guy movie.

When I was a kid, I thought Sonic the Hedgehog was better than Super Mario, which was thanks to Sega’s ingenious marketing working exactly as intended. Since the beginning, Sega has cared only about plastering Sonic everywhere on everything, relying on brand recognition over quality, and that business strategy has ultimately worked, to the point that most Sonic fans nowadays don’t seem to realize that Sonic was originally designed to be a mascot above all else, as if his sole purpose in life was to sell breakfast cereal. Sonic’s carefully, almost cynically constructed character design is one of two major reasons the franchise is still relevant today. He took inspiration from classic cartoon characters like Felix the Cat and his famous attitude streak was mostly a marketing gimmick, perhaps even a red herring for rivals like Bubsy the Bobcat to latch onto and take too far, thus guaranteeing their deaths. That made it easy to change Sonic from a rebellious punk to a free spirit with a heart of gold when he was reinvented on the Dreamcast, and since then his persona has crystallized into one of the most warmhearted things on Earth. Make no mistake, Sonic as a character, a mascot, and an avatar is a major reason why he still lives.

It’s a good thing too because my history with Sonic has been passionately memorizing the entirety of Sonic 3 & Knuckles down to a science, then watching his gaming career repeatedly self-destruct like the Hindenburg. That’s largely because the history of Sega reads like the tale of a company that would rather make no money instead of American money, with Sega of America winning the battle against Sega of Japan to rename Miles to Tails but losing the battle to keep Sonic out of Sonic 3D Blast. Since then, Sonic has had quite a few fantastic 3D games, but none of them have been published by Sega. They’ve all been fan works, like Sonic Utopia, Sonic Robo Blast 2, or Spark the Electric Jester 2. Cooler heads within Sega have been fighting to let the fans do whatever they want like that, because, as is typical for multi-billion dollar corporations, Sega secretly would like nothing more than to shut down most fans and their Sonic Amateur Games Expo for good, to make sure their precious hedgehog is solely under their control regardless of how terrible they are at controlling him.

As far as video games go, Sega has worked hard to turn Sonic into an international embarrassment, but that gets into the second reason why he’s still relevant. He hasn’t tried to cultivate, salvage, or polish his pedigree because he can’t, really; he’s blown his chance at that many times over. Instead, Sonic embraces all his mistakes and embarrassments and revels in them, to the point that he can congratulate Mighty No. 9 for having a launch that’s “better than nothing” and not at all look like a fool or a hypocrite in the process. By this point, his flaws make him look human and relatable. They play into the sassy yet earnest heart of gold he’s developed and further increase his brand power.

After 30 years, Sonic the Hedgehog is the greatest successful failure to exist, drawing equally deserved admiration and admonishment. Once in a while, someone who actually cares about the little blue guy comes along, navigates the waves and crags of Sega’s blathering insanity, and does something respectful with him, and those someones have done a lot to turn Sonic into a television and comic book star who also gets stereotypically awful licensed games made about him. The Sonic Twitter account that single-handedly salvaged the brand was also the work of a fan, one Aaron Webber, and fans are also what saved the Sonic the Hedgehog movie in 2020 from becoming a beautiful disaster that, for a brief moment, brought about world peace as everyone stood united, hand-in-hand, to mock it.