• Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing mini cars
    Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing mini cars
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Sonic and the Beatles

Photo credit: Berzerker

Tags: Cameo

Cover Blurb:
"Sonic the Hedgehog and The Beatles: A Comparative Analysis of the Games and the Music offers fresh takes on both the video-game series and the legendary band. With comparisons between the games and albums themselves, as well as examination of the relationship between the Sonic series’ classic titles and maligned modern entries and how it mirrors the perceptions of The Beatles as a band and as less-celebrated solo artists, this book takes a detailed look at a previously unexplored and unconsidered area of either entity’s lore. Want to know why Sonic 3D Blast is the video-game equivalent of Let It Be? Do you wonder what Sonic Heroes has in common with John Lennon’s Some Time in New York City? Sonic the Hedgehog and The Beatles will answer these questions and many, many more." This is a UK book and it can be bought for the Kindle at Amazon. 

What does the music analyzing book author have to say about the actual Sonic content of the book?
(Sonic & the Beatles seem very unlike eachother/very dis-similar topics, so this explanation can help you know more about the theory behind the book & why it was made, with this quote)

"The idea of the book is that the overarching theme being that each entity (Sonic and The Beatles) share similar legacies. That isn't to say that I'm comparing and contrasting the quality of the Sonic games vs. Beatles albums, but rather how earlier works compare with later ones. Just as The Beatles' solo works haven't lived up to the legacy of their output as a band, Sonic games always seemed to be judged against their 16-bit brethren.

Obviously, I think nostalgia has a lot to do with it. Not that we've collectively overrated The Beatles and Genesis/MD Sonics, but that subsequent output for each is seemingly dismissed out of hand. In some instances, it's fair, but in others it creates scenarios in which certain games/albums are vastly underrated because they're being pitted against masterful material coupled with a sort of aggressive nostalgia.
The book is small, it's rather short, clocking in around 105 pages if printed on 5X9" sheets; also, it could become a Kindle Single. It is trying to illustrate which games/albums deserved the dismissive reception and which were underrated, I noticed numeorus, more interesting parallels.

The 16-bit-era games each essentially align with a noteworthy Beatles entry, and they do so in chronological fashion.
Sonic 1 is a fresh take on an old formula - a la Please Please Me.
Sonic 2 is more colorful and varied, and is considered by many to be the quintessential Sonic game - Sgt. Pepper.
Sonic CD: odd, dark, familiar and yet unlike anything else in the Sonic canon - The White Album (also, the two soundtracks for the game would make an official Sonic CD soundtrack be a double album, also like the White Album)
Sonic 3 & Knuckles: A more chic 'best Sonic game ever' pick, but still a relatively mainstream choice. The lock-on technology allows two games to "flow" into one another - Abbey Road, probably the second-most cited 'best Beatles album,' features a medley to close the album where the songs flow into one another.
Sonic 3D Blast: A pretty good game that doesn't live up to its predecessors but accords itself well in its own right - Let It Be.

It gets weirder, as the parallels grow stronger after delving into the solo works, with John Lennon's first two albums Plastic Ono Band and Imagine, representing the Sonic Adventures, both in how they were considered stellar upon release, still hold up well and are remembered relatively fondly when specifically brought up, but have become less memorable than their initial 16-bit Sonic/Beatles output and seemingly get lumped in with "crappy" 3D Sonics/Beatles solo material. Sonic Heroes, OK, but shakier than either adventure and features the team dynamic - Lennon's third album Some Time in New York City was more uneven and less acclaimed than the previous two albums and features its own team dynamic, as he splits tracks with Yoko Ono for the first time.

These uncannily continue (and all Beatles, save Ringo, are represented in their solo work) and there's a Beatles-related counterpoint for every major Sonic release through Sonic 4 episode 1 and Sonic Generations."

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