You know how sometimes you end up spending your entire life not knowing about a particular piece of media, but once you find it, your life completely turns around and now there’s nothing else but that piece of media in your mind?
Nathaniel Smith didn’t quite know it yet, but he was about to find out what that sort of experience was like, as he was currently strolling through ERA’s shopping district.
After having spent enough time doing community service and now knowing that he was probably one of the few people in the academy to not own a phone, he decided to go look for one and finally have that dealt with.
He entered one of the electronics based stores and checked around, seeing what sort of things he could find that would also peek his interest and buy them too.
He looked through the multiple phone options until he landed on one that seemed to be good for its price and had a few features that made him interested on it. Good camera, a slightly larger screen than most standard options and it was blue colored.
While he was beginning to head onto the counter and pay for his phone, he got glimpse of something in particular… it was a video game case with the picture of a blue hedgehog posing alongside a black hedgehog with red stripes over some parts of his body with a bunch of characters being on the back, such as what appeared to be an evil scientist with a wide mustache that was facing off against a yellow colored fox with two tails, a red animal with dreadlocks looking at a white bat, with a few floating critters with one of them having an angelic appearance, another one that was light blue colored with yellow accents and last one that had a more demonic, yet still adorable appearance.
The game seemed to be placed in the retro section, seemingly being an old game. The cowboy got it onto his hands and inspected it more thoroughly, noticing that at the top of the game’s cover art, it said: Only for Nintendo Gamecube.
It gave Nathaniel a jog to his memory as he remembered that his dorm mate owned a device that most likely fit the description of the device, that being a cube that can do gaming. He honestly was interested in the game’s art in general but the main thing that attracted his attention the most was the blue hedgehog on the cover.
He… really liked his design, as it screamed: Cool, confident, rebellious. He had things that Nathaniel would often find to be appealing, fun and daring.
He got hold of the video game case and brought it alongside him too, now holding his phone and new video game to the register.
The usual red haired cashier gave him a stern look as she still remembered the things that the man had done in the past.
Before Nathaniel could even try to apologize for his previous wrong doings however, the gal just asked him for his credits, which prompted the cowboy to use his student ID and pay for his things. Then he was met with a “please come again.”
“B-but.”
“Please come again soon.” She insisted, making Nathaniel let out a sigh as he headed out from the store and back to his dorm. Once there, he opened the door to his dorm proper, seeing Hugo currently chilling on his bed while watching something on his phone.
“Howdy pardner. Whatcha watchin’ over there?” The cowboy questioned with a tilt of his head while he walked over to his own bed, placing the bag containing his phone and new game on top of it.
“Oh, hey Nathan.” Hugo waved, eyeing the blue cowboy for a moment before looking back onto his phone. “I’m watching a video of a guy putting a ton of rubber bands on a watermelon to see how many it would take to make it explode. Ya think I could be able to explode a watermelon with my own strings?” The brunette boy asked the frontiersman, who only raised a brow at the question.
“Why would ya wanna make a watermelon explode? Wouldn’t ya wanna just wanna cut it off and eat the insides of it? ‘Cause it sure is one hell of a fruit.” Nathaniel commented, now approaching his roommate and looking at the video alongside him, seeing that the poor fruit was being pushed to its limit with the rubber bands, almost ready to blow.
“I dunno, its just fun to see what’ll happen! Kind of like popping bubble wrap for no reason, pops just right and feels fun to do.” Hugo responded with a slight shrug, still watching the video until the watermelon exploded, making Nathaniel and Hugo jump from the sudden expulsion of watermelon pieces.
The two of them looked at the video, just as perplexed as the man that had been pulling the rubber hands on the aforementioned fruit, not believing their eyes. “Holy shit, it actually blew up!” Nathaniel noted while pointing at the video.
Hugo nodded slowly while being impressed by the event.”Yeah man, that thing exploded like a GRENADE! Bits and pieces of melon everywhere!!”
Nathaniel looked at awe for a few seconds more before he was able to snap out of it. He didn’t want to keep wasting more time as there was a particular thing he wanted to try out.
“Okay, before I forget. I need to ask ya som’ Hugo.”
“Hmm? What is it Nathan? Did ya need more mustache wax? Cuz if you do then I could go ahead and buy it for ya real quick.” The brunette offered while signaling eyeing the door, changing his position from laying on his bed to sitting at the edge of it.
“N-no! It’s not ‘bout that dangnabit. It’s that… I ended up buyin’ a game and I think it was for your… cube thing? Gamecube or som’ like that…?”
“Wait, you got yourself a video game? I thought you went out to get yourself a phone.” The string boy commented while folding his arms, raising a brow as he took a glance at the cowboy’s bag.
Nathaniel noticed the brunette’s stare at his bag, prompting him to go towards him and open it up, taking out the phone case and the aforementioned video game.
“Holy shit, is that Sonic Adventure 2!?” Hugo yelled out while pointing at the video game from his bed, a beam showing up on his lips as he stood up to take a closer look.
“Dude, this game’s awesome! It’s like one of the best Sonic games ever!”
“Hold on, there’s more?” Nathaniel said in surprise while looking at his roommate, who stopped himself from his excitement. He stared at the cowboy oddly.
“Uh… yeah? It’s called Sonic Adventure 2 for a reason, Nathaniel.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. There’s more games where this blue fuck comes from, that’s good news to me, ‘cause… I was interested in playin’ this one and… I wanted to ask for your thingamajig to play it.”
“Oh dude, absolutely! I can try to set it up for ya and let ya play it, heck, I would be down to see ya play through the game and help ya out if you get stuck or something.” Hugo proposed, nodding his head with glee and excitement.
Nathaniel honestly hadn’t done too many activities together with his roommate, even though they themselves had developed a somewhat good relationship, with the bandit even being able to call the string boy as his friend. No remorse, shame or anything alike while doing so either, he was just his friend and he didn’t have to put much thought into saying it nowadays.
So… perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the two of them to bond with the video game. “Okay, that sounds good pardner. Although I do warn ya… I’ve never touched a video game in my entire life, so… I won’t know how to do shit and it might take me a while to beat it.”
“That’s okay! I think you’ll be able to get the hang of it pretty easy, but even if you can’t I’ll be here to make sure you have a good time.” The brunette reassured once more, getting hold of the frontiersman shoulder and guiding him towards his setup and letting him sit down in the relatively small couch that could fit into the dorm.
After a few minutes of setup with the console and placing the disk on the device, Hugo booted up the game proper, making some logos appear on the screen.
The first one was of a company named SEGA, which appeared to be the main company behind the production of Sonic The Hedgehog, then another logo that had the blue hedgehog’s face, with that logo being the symbol for Sonic Team, the video game developers.
Then… when Nathaniel saw the first image of the intro appear, he knew he was in for something special, as the black hedgehog appeared to be at the top of a big structure, a bridge to be precise. Immediately after however was the titular blue hedgehog, running along the path with his usual cool attitude, striking a pose as his full name was displayed on screen.
The music was exhilarating and exciting with a mix of guitars and electronical noises, with more characters coming up on screen as the black and blue hedgehogs kept approaching each other while still being separated.
Sonic did somersaults and tricks as he ran through the streets, while the black hedgehog who was named Shadow was sliding through some kind of metal pipe that came out of the bridge.
The music kept building up with the instrumentals until Sonic and Shadow took a leap into the sky, with some voices singing “Live and Learn!” As the two crossed each other, with the shine of the moon reflecting upon them and giving them an extremely cool pose to end the intro with, now showing the title of the game.
The game boot the duo into the menu, with now Hugo giving Nathaniel the controller. He told him that to go up and down he needed to pull the left stick on that direction, as well as selecting an option that he wanted to see with the big green button that had an A label on it.