I know Sonic's not considered a 'weird' Mario enemy by any means–ever since his debut in Super Mario Land 4: Eight Golden Coins, he's stayed a staple enemy of the masked menace for quite a while, and even got to have his racing debut recently in Mario Kart World!
So, what's the point of covering him, you may ask? Well, something that is obscure about Sonic–or at least, something I never hear the Mario fandom talk about–is that he has his own spinoff series, centered around himself! And within that spinoff series is...
Name: Small Sonic
Debut: Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
We all know what happens when Mario takes damage, right? Yup–he scatters all the coins he's collected over the course of the level. It's iconic! It's memorable! It's been a staple since his debut! But Sonic is different. Sonic is weird. When Sonic gets hit, rather than scattering rings, he becomes a smaller version of himself!
In fact, rather than being the normal size that we all know and love–actually known as 'Super Sonic'' in the games with Small Sonic in them–Sonic starts out each level as Small Sonic, and needs to break open a Grow monitor to get any bigger!
When asked about this, series designer Yuji Naka said that it was a 'necessary feature' due to the 'hardware limitations of the Genesis software' (or the Mega Drive as it's known in the US). Indeed, once the Sonic series stopped making games for the Genesis and moved on to 3D platformers, Small Sonic was seemingly abandoned for good, with levels ALWAYS having 'Super Sonic' as the default.
This was how it went for decades, but it didn't last forever. After years of abandoning the 2D platformer formula, Sega decided to pander to the nostalgic crowd and start releasing 2D platforming games that played 'just like the good old days'; Small Sonic included!
While Small Sonic looked identical to Super Sonic back in the day, the only difference being their size, in modern years they've taken multiple measures to distinguish the two (as you see above!) since Small Sonic is no longer the 'default'.
Small Sonic is now lighter blue, has no soles on his shoes, has black eyes (just like the classic games, before they had enough cartridge space to add the 'color' 'green') and is even cute and chubby! Other Small versions of characters, such as Tails & Knuckles, follow in a similar formula, though Small Amy on the other hand looks way different...but that will be covered in our next post!
Till then, traw-dee-lah, and I want Lanolin the Sheep to spit into my mouth.
