Went on a whole nostalgia trip about old Sonic fansites with a few friends, and during our conversation I was delighted to see there was still a fairly active forum in here, so why the heck not?
Actually, how I came to know about the forum was through first finding Sonic HQ, which I found when looking up this old Brazilian Sonic fancomic site I used to frequent a lot when little of the same name ("HQ" being short of "histórias em quadrinhos" in Portuguese, which is just our term for comic books)... I think that site no longer exists and it's contents are just lost media now, so... damn. No more Brazilian sprite comics.
ANYWAYS, this is the bit where I talk about myself so...
Hello! My name's Tominique, or just Tomi for short. (but is it pronounced "Tommy" or "toe-me"?). I've known Sonic basically all my life and loved the franchise to death throughout. I have way too many experiences I could talk about but I absolutely can't cram them all in here in the first impressions post, but I'll leave this:
I was with my shiny new Playstation 2 and already having fun with the games I had, good stuff like God of War 2, Dragon Ball Budokai Tenkaichi 3, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, just classics. But I still had that Sonic itch that these games weren't cutting and lo and behold my parents got me Sonic Unleashed. Or... "that game where Sonic gets all furry and cool" as I liked to call it.
So there I was, controller in hand and watching the screen with a big grin on my face, barely sitting still because the intro cinematic got me so pumped. Like I was
yelling as if talking to Sonic himself throughout the whole thing and I kept getting more and more hyped until Sonic got dropped all the way down to Earth and met Chip and I finally shut my trap.
And then I realized the game was all in English.
And I was a dumb Brazilian kid.
Even though I had buttons on screen TELLING me what to do, I just... couldn't get past the tutorial for some ungodly reason.
So instead of keeping on playing despite the language barrier like a normal person, little me decided it'd be best to turn off the game and immediately go to the living room TV where I could watch subbed episodes of the Simpsons inbetween watching English-speaking Youtubers like Markiplier. And I just kept doing that for a few years.
... And it somehow worked..
So via a combination of Sonic Unleashed, The Simpsons and Markiplier, I managed to both read AND speak English through sheer exposure which is wild even to myself to this day. But at least I could finally play my Sonic Unleashed...
My Sonic Unleashed disc had scratched or something when I tried playing it again. Damn thing just wouldn't read.
And that was my tragic backstory of how I didn't get to play my copy of Sonic Unleashed for the Playstation 2.