[This post is part of a collaborative Sonic retrospective based around the games on Sonic Mega Collection Plus. To read more, please head over to the central post!
This one is written by Matt Gardner, editor of GameTripper, who previously wrote for Super Chart Island about WWF Smackdown! 2: Know Your Role and TimeSplitters 2]
Over four years ago, in my early 30s, my life changed forever. I created a website called GameTripper to tell stories about the games I loved – and hopefully give others the chance to do the same. In the months and years after I set it up, it helped me make dozens of friends, get a writing role with Forbes and, most recently, secure a weirdly satisfying Twitter blue tick.
In reality, I only set up GameTripper to write about Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Mega Drive. However, it’d take me exactly three years to finally tell the story of why it was so important to me; during that time, putting pen to paper about Sonic 2 went from celebratory to an existential burden.
Looking back, the delay in talking about the game was down to the same reasons I set up the website in the first place. In 2017, I was in a dark place. On the surface, everything was great: a lovely girlfriend, amazing friends, decent digs. Despite this, undiagnosed anxiety and depression, which were yet to be acknowledged or addressed, were profoundly affecting my life.
Escapism was my coping mechanism, and GameTripper was the newest of several life-evading tactics. At my lowest, I’d always go back to my roots: the fourth generation of gaming, specifically the Mega Drive: a throwback to better times, when life was simple.
Of everything, I loved playing Sonic 2 the most. I knew every level back-to-front, but it’d still provide a challenge. The incredible level design, stunning colour scheme, faultless controls, and utterly beautiful soundtrack gave me everything I wanted.
Playing it in 2017, it hit me: this game had been there for me my entire life.
I grew up in the late 80s and early 90s in north-east England. I was lucky to have a phenomenally hard-working dad; a loving, tireless, stay-at-home mum; and two older brothers. My brothers were the most influential figures, introducing me to music, TV, and comedy. They played in the garden with me. They gave me amazing presents. Most importantly, they got me into gaming.
It was slow at first, both figuratively and literally: in 1992, when I was six, my house only had a ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64: pseudo-second-generation “consoles” bought ten years prior. The Speccy was dead, but thankfully, the dusty C64 still worked.
In the summer of 1993, my brother returned from St Andrews with a pristine Sega Mega Drive II, along with Sonic 2 and FIFA International Soccer. His friend had signed up to a £300 student loan – £600 in 2021 money – and blew it all in a couple of hours on the Mega Drive package, a Mickey Mouse beach towel, and a bubblegum dispenser.
There was no way my brother’s friend could return to Northern Ireland for the summer with his new console: his mum, I was told, would go mental. To avoid death by matriarch, he gave it to my brother to share with me during the holiday. Imagine my delight: a console that could simply plug into a TV, starting a game instantly at the push of a button.
Across the next few Saturdays, we’d have the same ritual. Starting mid-morning, we’d work our way through from Emerald Hill to Hill Top, stopping for lunch before spending the most part of the afternoon working towards Wing Fortress before taking on the horrific Death Egg: two bosses, no rings, but with dozens of accrued lives. But man, did we chew through those lives.
My brother and I never beat the Death Egg Robot. Not once. It was exhausting, too. By this stage, we’d taken six hours or so to get that far – mad, considering I can reach Death Egg Zone in under an hour. The game remained undefeated.
Over the years, I regularly dipped back into Sonic 2. Even after getting a PS1, PS2, Wii, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, I’d regularly boot it up. In 2004, the summer before I started university, I played the GameCube version of Sonic Mega Collection – something still unreleased on my PS2. I leaped at the chance to play Sonic 2 one last time before heading off to uni.
Just 90 minutes later, I finally completed it. I teared up. The emotional reaction was complicated: I was leaving home, as was my best friend, to make our new lives; life was about to get a whole more self-dependent; my brother wasn’t there to see me complete it. It was a bittersweet victory.
A couple of years later, I fractured my back playing American football. I could barely walk. I became obese, I was in pain, and was most definitely depressed. Back to the games I went, specifically holing up in my student room with Sonic 2, trying to perfect my run.
In 2008, I moved away from home, got a writing job, lost weight, and by 2010, I moved to the US to work as a sports journalist. My underpowered laptop could only emulate pre-PS1 games, so I downloaded the entire Sega catalogue. Sonic 2 got me through more bouts of homesickness than I can count.
I moved back home when my dad became ill. In 2011, he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Not long into his treatment, he was diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies. I couldn’t process it. No-one was around in my shared house in Leeds to speak to, so ahead of going home the following day to help out at home, I booted up my Xbox 360 and played Sonic 2. It was as bright, beautiful, simple, and tuneful as ever – just what I needed to turn my brain off.
My dad passed away the first weekend of the 2012 Olympics. By that time, I’d come to terms with the inevitable. Two days after the funeral, I got the train home to Leeds. I played Sonic 2 the entire way home on my phone. Unsurprisingly, I couldn’t defeat Death Egg Robot by the time the train pulled into Leeds. Old habits.
And so, we come full circle: in 2017, I launched GameTripper. Here I was, piecing together what Sonic 2 had been to me for 25 years: a game that supported me through thick and thin. Soon, the game and others like it put me in contact with so many wonderful, like-minded people who shared my passions.
As GT grew, a lot of contributors opened up about mental health issues. Over time, it sunk in, and along with the support of my loved ones in real life, I finally spoke to my doctor. Soon, I was having one-to-one therapy, coming to terms with my own problems. Sonic 2 was mentioned by name as one of the constants in my life.
In 2020, I replayed it before writing about it. Talk about ironic: not only did I strike out in Casino Night Zone, but I wasn’t enjoying it. It was then I realised that I didn’t know when I last played Sonic 2 to enjoy it, as opposed to distracting myself.
And yet, after switching the console off, I sat back and looked around my TV, surrounded by hundreds of games and trinkets. Among them were three Sonic controller holders; a statue of Sonic on a Mega Drive; Hama-bead versions of Sonic, Tails, and Robotnik; a Sonic light; mini Totakus of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles; PAL and Japanese copies of Sonic 2; and a print of every level from the game.
Sonic 2 really is who I am. Looking at each one takes me back to so many periods in my life, both good and bad. I’ve changed a ridiculous amount over the years, both positively and negatively. Sonic 2 never did. It’s one of the few constants.Sometimes, things in your life are just… there. Sonic 2 always was for me, and always will be.