![]() ![]() But at that point, I knew I just wanted to be making music. The 23-year-old Senoue had taught himself to play guitar aged 15, but was also a keen gamer, and sent demo tapes to Namco and Sega, who hired him: “I think every guitarist has dreams of performing in arenas and being a rock star. But back in 1993, it was an unusual move. Nowadays, with streaming services’ diminished returns for musicians compounded at the moment by Covid-19’s destruction of the live scene, any musician would jump at the chance to make music for video games. Senoue, dividing his time between San Francisco and Tokyo, proved a tricky man to track down, but we managed to grill him via email. ![]() Masato Nakamura, drafted in from the J-Pop band Dreams Come True, set the initial tone as music composer for Sonic The Hedgehog 1 and 2 but for the last 28 years, since 1993’s Sonic The Hedgehog 3, the series’ music has been primarily composed by Jun Senoue. Typically either poppy and 80s-influenced or rockish in a commercial manner, it may not fall into stereotypical NME-reader territory, but the music accompanying stages like Green Hill Zone in the first game and Speed Highway in Sonic Adventure, along with the likes of Escape from the City, the theme to Sonic Adventure 2, have the power to induce near-Pavlovian responses in several generations of gamers. But there’s another key factor in his enduring popularity: the music that soundtracks his games. The implausible, jet-heeled blue hedgehog, then, has evolved into a true cultural icon over the last 30 years. Ivo Gerscovich, Chief Sonic Brand Officer at Sega US, picks his highlights of that: “The ones which really left an impression with me over the years have to include the Sonic Spaghetti and the Sonic and Knuckles-themed diapers - and who could forget the Sonic The Hedgehog curry or the Sonic toaster?” Sonic has starred in his own feature film – with a sequel due for an April 2022 release – and made cameos in countless games, including various Olympics-themed ones with one-time arch-rival Mario, Minecraft, Fall Guys and Monster Hunter. ![]() The universally lovable Sonic, meanwhile, caught the public imagination to such an extent that he spawned an outrageous body of merchandising. Yet 1991’s Sonic The Hedgehog was a fine game, using unprecedented speed to take platform-gaming to a whole new area, selling a mind-boggling 24million units in 30 years (with mobile versions taken into account), while the Sonic franchise overall has shifted a staggering 140million units, putting it right up there with the games industry’s biggest money-spinners. At the time, he seemed an unlikely future standard-bearer for the games industry – Sonic The Hedgehog was a lurid shade of blue, didn’t really look anything like a hedgehog and moved about twenty times quicker than any hedgehog that ever existed in real life. Three decades ago this year, a pop-culture phenomenon whirled into life on the Sega Mega Drive. READ MORE: How ‘The Witcher 3’ turned me into a fantasy nerd.We tracked down Jun Senoue, Sonic’s musical guru since 1993. In the course of 30 years, Sonic The Hedgehog has become a cultural icon, and the music from his games has provided soundtracks for several generations of gamers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |