When I was 7 I thought the Sonic CD intro was the most beautiful thing humans could create

gift 1

@skullybats

Back on my old account @michaellvibourne and @thefrcrimsonfcker you were honestly so sweet and i dont think people realise how much i love when people are active on my accounts,

likes dont mean anything to me tbh, people interacting with ny account wether asks or comments means so much to me

so i attempted to draw her

Now mind you

I drawn a sonic character or even in the style since playing Sonic CD on my XBOX 360 in my old apartment, when i had my own sonic character

I know the drawing is bland a nd bad a nd im really sorry, but my art program is the free version

I only get two layers 😭😭😭😭😭😭

I didnt know what color shoes she had if any at all, so i just went with black as its generic and hey, maybe she got new boots instead

the coloring on the drawing I used as referance was actualky really good, so color sampling was easy!!

All in all its an ok drawing I think

Now, whos your fav sonic character?

knuckles and silver for life

ranking every sonic/NiGHTS/r&c game ive played and/or watched based on music (prev: gameplay, next: writing, comedy)

sonic! 🎉

sonic cd

sadx

sonic R

sonic 1

sonic 2

sonic all stars racing transformed

sonic & sega all stars racing

sonic the fighters

sonic & knuckles

sonic drift 2

i dont remember if the 2008 olympics game even has an ost

NiGHTS! 🎉

NiGHTS into dreams...

NiGHTS journey of dreams

sega superstars tennis (most of the soundtrack isnt original so i wont count it)

ratchet & clank! 🎉

r&c1

r&c2

quest for booty (yarrrrrgh)

r&c3

nexus

the reboot ost (it isnt that bad its just so disappointing that they didnt get david bergeaud or even try to imitate his musical style)

big on introspective, ambient downtempo? come with me...

"History" from Sonic Mega Collection (& Plus)

... FUCK. FUUUUUCKING HELL.

i don't remember the exact year i got introduced to Sonic Mega Collection Plus (the PS2 version, since that's the console that only dominated my kid years) but it was a constant force of good in my early years. being able to play that many sonic games just freely (on top of other games that werent sonic games but were by the same devs) was so fucking nice. but the menu shit was just. something else to me-they put so much care and effort into the presentation of games!!! like the journey TO playing was even a nice comfy ride! so CASH. i miss THIS sega so much. what an era. damn.

many a memory playing this shit or watching it get played either in my shared bedroom w/ my older brother or in the upstairs living room w/ mom and/or grandma watching (this sonic shit ran in the family pmuch LOL my parents n grandma got into em before we did). one of my fondest memories regarding it was my i think, longest-running active friend lyko/khaliq seeing my i think oldest sibling playing S3&K (one of the greatest. games of all time by the way) and beating it. bro saw the ending cutscene and was Flabbergasted w how cool it was, already riding off the high (that i was also riding off of) watching Doomsday Zone get played. SUPER, FUCKING HYPE. LOL. amazing shit. the collection is worth it for it having That Alone but also THERES SO MUCH COOL SHIT ON IT!

YEAH!!! ... i'm glad i can listen to this normally again.

this was one of many songs i just couldn't put on and sit through after the 2013 event happened and my life got fucked into a hole. it was exhausting and would just leave me really depressed. things are at least different now, over 10 years later, i can enjoy this n sorta feel like a kid again healthily, i guess. its nice.

reminds me of something

.

so one thing abt the PS2s we did have (there were two, two slim models), shit was just Faulty after long enough. one basically picked and choosed games it wanted to run (that or the CDs were fucked up or...idk) and the other you had to like. induce pressure on the disk drive part to get games to run properly?... it was weird.

WELL, SOMEHOW, through basic i guess DIY shit or whatever, at one point (post-2013 event) i got the fucking console working! AND I GOT SONIC MEGA COLLECTION PLUS WORKING TOO! blast from the ...actually not at all distant PAST! it was cool being in the menu again hearing the music and goin around and looking at all the extras and stuff. seeing sonic n his friends just always makes me happy.

I BOOTED UP S3&K FOR OLD TIMES SAKE CAUSE OF COURSE I DID! HYDROCITY ZONE!!! ONE OF MY FAV VIDEO GAME SONGS EVER i was having SO Much.... fun...

slow, burn. realization. i was alone.

reliving hella cool shit but it was just me. older brother was off doing whatever the hell (not like i wanted to summon him anyway he was kind of fucking just...idk), and oldest sibling was just kind of, across the fucking country so i couldnt hit them up either. the finite nature of what i considered the most joyous period of my life i wasnt prepared to interface with and it just fucking, stabbed me so gradually i didnt even notice the pain onset somehow until it was too late. fuck. regardless of me doing what i did, that part of my life was still over. trying to recapture the magic just made me ever more aware that i had lost it, i guess. it was tough.

i, shut the game off, silently, go downstairs to my moms room and just, talk to her a little about how i. got it working. i just, lay on her bed next to her and i just. i start crying. for a while. not loud sobbing just. idk. quiet weeping. idk.

...

things are different now, is what matters. lot i've recovered from, but i do still miss playing it with my siblings. shrug. life goes on i guess.

~ E.K.S.G.

forgot to mention that on the night of june 23 i started playing 3d sonic the hedgehog and i finished it after midnight and didnt even realize it was his birthday until later

this version of the game had a couple cheats available, and although i used the max rings one just to be safe i actually didn’t really need it since the save state function (which i didn’t even know about beforehand) helped me enough. the cheat did have the funny side effect of giving me 2 lives every time i got hit and picked up a ring though, so for the last few zones i had over 100 lives (which is displayed with a glitch character in the tens place since it doesn’t know how to handle more than 99 apparently)

don’t really have much to say about the game itself, overall i guess it was pretty decent? the music is great

i also played sonic 2 and cd after that, but i think i might as well make separate posts about them

alright its time for me to post about sonic now. nobody asked for this.

personally. i think that the decline of sonic games is. well. nonlinear of course but its a combination of a lot of things that have been present for a while. i started thinking about this because i had knight of the wind stuck in my head while i showered and i thought “yknow i dont think the storybook games were that bad” and it evolved from there. readmore’d cuz its a longass post

first off. one of the things that was present in the games people consider “bad” is eggman NOT being the primary antagonist. i mean. fundamentally this makes sense. eggman has always been the primary antagonist in the games since the beginning, so suddenly introducing these throwaway villains is kind of a shot in the foot. what comes to mind is sonic lost world and the zeti because its like. sega wants us so badly to care about zavok and the rest of them but its just kind of difficult when theyre from yknow. sonic lost world and, fundamentally, throwaway villains. now i thought about this because. sonic lost world ISNT objectively a bad game i dont think. it has bad parts and i think those bad parts are mostly linked to the zeti being the primary antagonists. now this isnt saying that any game with eggman as the primary antagonist is good (ill get to forces later) but it plays a part.

now i couldnt entirely tell you when “eggman ISNT the primary antagonist” first turned up. i would assume sonic adventure because of chaos? which funnily enough links into my next point. the introduction of a secondary antagonist who either a) becomes a primary antagonist in the same game or a later game they’re part of or b) is meant to be some kind of counter to sonic. you could say it started in sonic 3. since knuckles acts as a secondary antagonist for most of the game. funnily enough though hes actually one of the only that stops being an antagonist in the same damn game. hes like “wait a second ive been fucking tricked” and turns to sonic’s side after seeing eggman doing his bastardly actions. so i’d say it actually started in sonic cd with metal sonic. he’s a reoccurring antagonist (the good kind) and was made with the sole purpose of Beating Sonic. in sonic heroes he becomes a primary antagonist in the true ending and whatever. in sonic adventure there’s chaos who becomes the primary antagonist in the true ending as well. now again. none of these games are BAD because of this aspect. sonic 3 is good, as is cd, heroes, and i think sonic adventure has its moments. but again this is just another piece to the puzzle.

the next thing i think thats sort of added to the decline is the fact that. well. corporations. yknow how it is with game design. as a game design student i know that theres fucked up shit going on in a lot of places and sega wanted to make sonic like mario. nintendo knows they have brand loyalty, just like disney does. nintendo slaps mario or pikachu onto something and it’ll sell and they KNOW that. sonic, less so, because hes yknow. got Controversy. sparks arguments about good and bad games. im particularly thinking about sonic boom here because that game had such potential that was stripped away not only by corporate greed (it being forced to be published onto the wii u, which, ill be real with you, i forgot existed) and hardware limitations, but by a lack of commuication within the actual company about WHERE the game was being published to. also dont get me started on how sega shafted the storyline. thats for another day.

overarching plot in sonic games is kind of fun in my opinion. i like a story i can get invested in. one that makes sense and like. you know. adds to the game. and this is the part where i talk about sonic forces.

sonic forces is kind of the culmination of a lot of these things. its a pander to the audience who loves classic sonic (as in, putting classic there for no reason as a nudge towards sonic generations), it features a secondary antagonist who attempts to become a primary antagonist (infinite needs work) and like. objectively id say that the phantom ruby is a bigger antagonist than eggman is. all the things that he does is down to the phantom ruby, and i dont entirely know how the phantom ruby even like. started existing. but we’ll just skip over that for now.

so eggman has infinite who he powers up with the phantom ruby and he becomes the metal sonic-esque character of the game. he’s meant to be sonic’s direct counter which is shown with infinite beating sonic at the start. but infinite just kind of. exists. as a throwaway villain. and the thing with throwaway villains is that infinite creates clones of some other villains (zavok, shadow (????) chaos and metal sonic) and that kinda confused me like. okay so you create fake versions of all these villains who turned against you for various reasons and also metal sonic??? who you could just create again??? but im going on a tangent.

the one thing i listed that forces didnt really feature was eggman not being the primary antagonist. i liked that he was the primary antagonist in forces. i just wish the story was better. and now i get to talk about story problems in sonic games. and as a writer, youre not getting spared.

ive talked abt sonic forces and story. i havent talked about other games and their story. sonic 06′s story was weak because it was trying too hard. the storybook games were good because the story was THERE. sonic gets put into this position of being a character from myths and characters we already know are filling the other positions. it was fun. sonic lost world, i dont really know cuz i never played it but from what i understood, eggman took the zeti’s planet and controlled them with a magic conch, and then the conch gets broken and the zeti fight back?? i dont know why the zeti hate sonic or why they roboticized tails but whatever.

fundamentally. sonic games are go fast. stop eggman. platform. of course eggman can be substituted for other antagonists like in adventure’s case where it becomes stop chaos. everything else in it is adding to the story (or in a lot of cases where its trying too hard, it detracts from everything) and like. adding different things is kind of fun sometimes. people didnt like the clunky controls of the werehog but i thought it was fun having the differences between daytime and nighttime levels. i think werehog had potential.

its less related but i also kinda wish they did what they did in sonic x and had sonic exist in a world with a lot of anthro animal characters instead of humans. i think forces did that okay. a lot of games have human characters like 06 and adventure, and it kind of blurs things. it doesnt make it a bad game if theres human characters but its still kind of. weird.

but anyway this wasnt clear or concise at all i just had some thoughts. i thought some of the marketing for sonic forces was funny like the welcome to the eggman empire video so you dont have to take anything from me.

i didnt take much notice of it at the time bc i was Playing A Sonic Game but the plot of Lost World is so stupid... like the idea of eggman trying to absorb the life energy of the whole planet is pretty consistent with the whacky shit that eggman’s tried to do in the past but... why did he have to go to a whole OTHER planetoid... just to sap the life force from the planet he was already ON...

‘he needed his base to be in a remote location’ doesn’t make any sense bc in unleashed he’d built a whole city on an island the shape of a small continent just off the coast of space!arabia and an insignificant boat trip away from space!europe. the fact is that if the plot of the game revolved around the destruction of not!earth, like unleashed, it should have taken place on not!earth

but what do we know about the lost hex planetoid. it floats, so it obviously has some sort of special properties of its own, and its inhabitants have the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields.

we also know he didn’t even have a real reason to be manipulating the zeti at all. ever creature he’s enslaved in the past has served a real purpose for him. the small animals and wisps power his robots. chaos, shadow and dark gaia were all weapons of mass destruction, and shadow actually had precedent as a counter to sonic’s unpredictable nature because he was basically engineered to be an anti-sonic.

the zeti were kind of just... there... and eggman noticed they were there so he enslaved them using a flimsy means of control knowing that if they broke free they would instantly be able to take control of everything he owned. he even supplied them with robots to help them fight off sonic. like, why not just use robots in the first place? stupid as hell.

now what would have made SENSE is if doctor eggman specifically needed the zeti for something, and was using lost hex as a sort of energy siphon maybe. like maybe if he used the zeti all together he could sap away the earth’s electromagnetic field, and maybe the electromagnetic fields of the living creatures there too....

not only would it follow the theme of the past arc of modern sonic games  - ”eggman captures a powerful demon in order to enact widespread chaos on the planet” - but it would also sort of tie the plot back into the plots of the older sonic games, sonic CD in particular; “eggman gathers 6 or 7 rainbow artifacts with a specific magic power (in this case the artifacts are living creatures, the zeti) from a mystical new world and uses them to power his latest scheme”.

not ONLY that, but it would have been the PERFECT plot lead-in to sonic forces’ infinite plot; the earth’s magnetic field is the only thing protecting it from the harsh energy background of the sun. obviously lost world would have to end with sonic foiling eggman’s plan, but the whole idea of sonic forces is that it takes place after a bad end, so it’d be really easy to make it work.

I used to do this thing on this blog called like sonic moment or something, i dont even remember its been so long, anyway, heres a new one. this song popped into mind and i realized its really underrated. I had this CD when i was in 8th grade, and it was huge. im disturbed that my older kid is almost 2 grades ahead of that now. anyway, i had this CD and remember how CD’s used to come in those long boxes? I cut out all the pieces on the front of this CD box and hung them on my wall haha, they were still there in my early 20′s until my parents redid my room. anyway, i didnt put a lot of thought into this song but holy crap it might be the best song on this album. i challenge you to play this in your car open windows (yes let that pollen in baby!) and at high volume and try not to dance and sing it. 

Anyway, the moment is at 1:02 in this clip, so cool. the transition from the piano only (im learning this for sure) and the drum starts a new full band piece of the song.  

Oh and honorable mention to the guitar riff after “to keep me alive” early in the song, we need more rifs like that in music today

Two lyrics jump out at me so much:

I need perfection, some twisted selection, that tangles me, to keep me alive. (love this, getting the right person, is mindblowing when it happens, and the twisted selection thing about the right person just having some slightly weird characteristics or flaws or something, i dont know I just love that twisted line and find it to be so true, when its right you come to love those slightly twisted parts in the perfect person i dont know if i would call them flaws or just what makes them so special - just the notion of loving the whole person not the superficial parts, not the parts everybody else sees all day, and when you have all that from that person tangled around you both mentally and physically - better believe you feel alive)   

And then this.... In all that exists None have your beauty I see your face & I will survive 

Broader Context

Top Five (for 2018):

Caterina Barbieri—Patterns of Consciousness,

Anouar Brahem—Blue Maqams,

Terry Riley—Persian Surgery Dervish,

Lojii—Lofeye,

Loren Connors—Airs.

(These are the albums I listened to most in 2018, not albums released in 2018.)

Backstory:

I never was a rock ’n’ roll animal. More like a werewolf, prone to sudden fits of rockism. I spent my teen years listening to Joy Division, New Order and early Cure albums. Favourite song? “All Cats Are Grey” (from Faith) or New Order’s “In A Lonely Place”. Slo-o-ow. Most bands played >75% fast. I craved >75% slow. Really, I craved atmosphere. By age 17 I was sick to death of distorted guitars. (I learnt to love ’em later, of course, but not to the exclusion of all else.) I thought music was serious business—“art”. And I thought art was “sophisticated”. So I took a stand, adopted a niche, and, to a large extent, that niche was anti-rock.

Of course, to a large extent, that stance was a pose. My first ever album purchase was Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet! I dug “Back in Black”, the Cult’s Electric, ZZ Top. But Joy Division’s Closer changed all that. The synths, the starkness, the spaciousness, the sense that anything could happen. The journey from anger through grief, resentment, resignation, desperation, and awestruck sad wonder. It’s unique, haunting, deathly serious. And though maybe what I should have done (what would have educated me more) was to hunt down Joy Division’s influences, instead I did what was easier and followed those they’d influenced. But in the back of my head was always this sense that music could do more. Of course I realise now that actually some of the straightest rock tracks are mini miracles of energy and precision, but maybe my respect for that form is heightened by the fact that, deep down, it isn’t mine. My music is (mostly) introspective, reflective, delicate. And slowly, as once-obscure albums have become more widely available, I’ve discovered other music like mine, like the music I’ve always heard in my head.

What brings me to this juncture, then—to the point of blogging about rock—is my background as a rock-fan who wanted more. Not more volume, more aggression, or more of any of the things that are normally associated with rock, but more infiltration into rock by other musics, other sounds—sounds which, in many cases, I couldn’t even identify myself, I just knew I wanted them. Keep in mind, I’d never had much money for music. I never was a collector—far from it, Never even owned a turntable. In fact, I always pirated music, first on tape, then on CD, then via download. Nowadays, I stream. So from taping friends’ albums, to burning CDs I’d taken on approval from the record store where I worked (not for long; I’m more of a bookseller), to taking whatever I could get on the Pirate Bay, to the minor miracle of Spotify and YouTube, the scope of my listening has steadily expanded.

I remember hearing Philip Glass and Steve Reich aged 20: I’d never heard anything like that before, and I never would have heard it then if not for a friend’s parent’s CD collection. I first heard Rhys Chatham and Glen Branca aged 35; even though I’d been listening to Sonic Youth since my early 20s, it took a guy ten years younger and internet-savvy—a workmate at a bookshop—to turn me onto their influences. (He turned me onto Bitches’ Brew too.) I was a late uptaker, technology-wise. I never thought music was about technology. I guess I thought I was Neil Young or something: just plug in and play and some loyal engineer would take care of recording, just as some Alan McGee or Ivo Watts-Russell would distribute the result. It didn’t happen. In 2009 I bought my first halfway-decent computer. Nowadays, almost everything I listen to is something I researched and sourced via the internet. Sometimes, an algorithm spits out something worthwhile. Maybe owing to my age and the fact I have a family, and that much of my listening is done via headphones while working on something else—that music, for the most part is background rather than foreground for me—90% of the music I listen to is ambient, predominantly textural, and distinctly lacking in melody. “In your face” it is not. But then again, maybe for that reason there’s nothing I like better than a sudden burst of rock.

One last point: maybe owing to a traumatic childhood and a lifetime’s Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, I’ve always favoured music that subdues me rather than music that exhilarates me. Gangsta rap was good for this purpose (maybe incongruously, it reminded me of the Cure’s early days, synth-driven and minimalist and steeped in a sense of doom). The doom was crucial. I never could stomach a lot of cheese, or any false sense of reassurance. My ideal mood was a cushioned sense of doom—as if danger were all around, but I was, for the moment, safe. But maybe I’m over-simplifying. Exhilaration is fine, but usually for me it’s slow-building. The realisation of just how moving and well-constructed something is, for eg—that’s exhilarating. And then, sure, 10% of the time I like to blast myself with loud guitars and driving beats.

Other influences: Autechre, Tricky, J Dilla—Donuts, Miles Davis—Bitches’ Brew, Coltrane—Crescent, Floating Points, Visible Cloaks, Oneohtrix Point Never, Howard Shore—Crash, Stephan Bodzin, Plastikman, Flying Lotus, John Lee Hooker, Fats Domino, James Carr, Leonard Cohen.

Observations:

Ultimately, I can fist-punch and air-guitar with the best of ’em, but only on full moons. Which is to say, I love rock ’n’ roll, but not as a lifestyle, not as a religion. I like light and shade, always have. I’ve got my own take on rock, and to some extent it’s an outsider’s. I like bands whose aims are different from the average—who try for reactions other than fist-pumping.

More importantly for me personally, the fact of my slow education in music other than rock means I came to that music through rock. My skills as a musician and a critic (if I have any skills as a critic) are rock-centric. I want more than the average rock band offers, but it needn’t be more musicianship (though that’d be nice). I believe in a minimum of means. I believe in punk. I believe “There’s more to the picture than meets the eye”. But I also wanna see rock grow up.

ROCK THEORY, then? It’s about what I want rock to be, based on what I’ve loved in rock and outside of it in the past. The best rock has a magic to it. And it’s that magic I’m hunting here, trying to pin it down, to examine it. Why? In the name of science, I guess.

winter rants about sonic games

Sonic 1: its.... ok

Sonic 2: better than 1, special stages are a pain in the ass tho

Sonic 3 & Knuckles: played it a lot, really good but im awful at it

Sonic CD: its awesome thats all you need to know

Knuckles’ Chaotix: its nice but theres not much to it if you play as charmy

Sonic R: only game other than heroes that actually gives me nostalgia. pretty good once you get used to the cheesy soundtrack and bad controls

Sonic 3D Flickies' Island: its p good but im awful at it and cant get past the 2nd act of green grove

Sonic Adventure: all kinds of late 90s fuckery but decent overall

Sonic Adventure 2: one of my favourite games, also chao garden

Sonic Heroes: great game, really fun and neo metal sonic is bae

Sonic Riders series: really good and really enjoyable!

Sonic Rush + Adventure: amazing games! 10/10! ok not THAT good but-

Shadow the Hedgehog: it's ok.

Sonic 06: the only good thing that came out of it is mephiles and he didnt even come out (in both senses haha i ship mephadow)

Sonic Colours: i only played the ds version but its 100% completed and for a good reason (i wish the console version wasnt just sonic tails and eggman)

Sonic Unleashed: i actually like the night stages more than the day stages bc my reaction time is nonexistent (also its just sonic tails and eggman again. how depressing)

Sonic Generations: very good. kinda nostalgia fueled but hey its an anniversary game. also mods

Sonic Lost World: its ok i guess?

Sonic Mania: more nostalgia. kinda overrated. fuck the spider boss

Sonic Forces: me to like a game that nobody else does