I’d like to share how I discovered Sonic and my personal take on SEGA as a gamer from China.

In China, Sonic was once a much bigger name. But today, many younger players may not even recognize him. Twenty years ago, most of us couldn’t afford original SEGA hardware. Instead, we played MD/Genesis games through a VCD player called “Xin Tian Li.” Here’s the interesting part: the machine actually had a legitimate license from SEGA—but it was licensed as a VCD player, not a game console. The company behind it then flooded the market with pirated MD game discs, and quietly turned a blind eye to users running them on the machine. Most players at the time had no idea about any of this—they just knew they could play Sonic on this weird VCD player, and that was enough.

That’s how an entire generation of Chinese gamers got their first taste of Sonic—through a gray-area loophole that we didn’t even know was a loophole.

Pirated or not, those memories are precious to me. Sonic felt completely different from anything else—high-speed side-scrolling action was mind-blowing at the time. Later, when I grew up and learned about the development stories behind those classics, I gained even more respect for the creativity and craft of the original teams. To this day, I’ve purchased over a dozen officially licensed Sonic games.

So why isn’t Sonic as big in China? I think one major reason is that SEGA deliberately positioned Sonic as Mario’s edgy rival—“Mario is for kids, Sonic is for older players.” That marketing worked in some regions, but in China, the post-MD era left a gap. Most players never got hands-on with later Sonic titles, and over time, they gravitated toward other franchises. For example, Persona 5 Royal has a huge meme status here—“P5R is the greatest JRPG ever” is practically gospel among fans.

That said, I’m still grateful to Sonic. He gave me a new perspective on gaming: face your fears, keep running forward, and never look back.

A friend of mine once put it this way: “SEGA always starts with a brilliant, sky-high concept, but the execution often falls just short of greatness. It’s not that the games are bad—they’re always missing that little extra something.”

One small regret: I ordered a limited-edition artist-collaboration plush toy—the “SEGA Sonic × Kosuke Kawamura” collectible. But it hasn’t arrived yet. Seeing the promo images just makes me want it even more!

Happy 35th, Sonic. Keep running.