I played a lot of games over the holidays and New Years — including some really good ones.I jumped back greatly improved Cyberpunk 2077. I tried the excellent standalone Unchained Echoes. There are a lot of Marvel Snaps. I even played a few games that I can’t talk about yet – you’ll see the review later. And, during our New Years bash, Smash, Rock Band, and Point Blank all exploded. wonderful time.
But the best game I’ve experienced this holiday season isn’t even a game — it’s a TV show.I’m not talking about screening The Last of Us either – I’m talking about sonic prime.
Good time Sonic, hey? Two of the best (if not the absolute best) game movie adaptations of all time.a game actually presentable. And now, a successful and high-quality TV show is just…fun. What year is this year? ! 1993?
To be fair, Sonic has a pretty good history on television. I think the Looney Tunes slapstick-style ’90s cartoon Sonic the Hedgehog is an all-time great performance of a video game character in another medium. A certain type of person really loves Sonic the Hedgehog, aka SatAM, for its dystopian universe and giving Sonic a trashy love interest. Sonic Underground was pretty bad, but then there was a decent anime and more recently Sonic Boom, a raucous and hilarious kids comedy-adventure show, albeit one with a really pathetic video game.
But – and I don’t say this lightly – Sonic Prime is quite possibly the best of the lot? For me, it’s a close run of Adventures, but the point is that it’s really, really good.
In a way, it’s most interesting in the sense that it seems to pull elements from the past few TV shows for these characters, as well as the game world.
Rolling at the speed of sound in this show, Sonic has a frenetic, wild energy that’s usually present in the feel of games but not usually in visual adaptations. It’s a different execution, but it reminds me of the bombastic action in Adventures. The semi-serious way Prime handles its setting is reminiscent of SatAM. Parts of the edgy but kid-friendly character comedy honed in Boom remain here, albeit a more serious story.
As a universe-hopping adventure through a completely different version of the Sonic universe (the word “Prime” in the title refers to the “Prime Universe” the character comes from, which is basically the world of the game), there’s a lot of them playing here. Seeing Sonic return to a dark future controlled by Robotnik feels like both a deliberate SatAM throwback and fertile ground for fun action scenes and an alternate universe version of fun Sonic friends.
But then the show moves on to other places I won’t spoil, each time turning existing characters into twisted new forms, shaped by the circumstances of each universe.It’s a pretty obvious trope — Star Trek has done it a million times — but it nice one
There’s a lot I like about Sonic Prime. I think it’s well written, and I like the way it keeps winking at the game, whether it’s through a smattering of lore or the occasional direct use of classic Sonic sound effects – but really, more than anything, I think I like it the most. characterization.
Voiced by series newcomer Deven Mack, Sonic has the swagger and attitude I like here. That’s partly thanks to Mack’s performance, partly thanks to the writing – but, basically, Sonic is a bit of a goof, even if he has a heart of gold. He screwed things up. He is naive. To his friends, he was the key to them, but also the pain in their backs.
This is a version of the character that I always miss – as it most acutely reminds me of the UK-only Sonic the Comic edition published by Fleetway. STC is completely different from American strip and British strip, STC is a very important thing to me – it has a really unique character to Sonic. But that sense of character still exists in Sonic Prime – that’s what I’m here for.
So, at this point, I can’t wait for more episodes. Sonic Prime’s ongoing narrative ended on a strong cliffhanger — and while Netflix is often insane when it comes to deciding how to greenlight new shows, we know there are 16 more episodes to come later. However, I could see this show running longer.
Sonic finally shines – but it does show that Sonic Prime might actually be my favorite of all the really good Sonic stuff of late. Except, obviously, Sonic Lego. That is unbeatable.
