Sonic Leaps Through a Sea of Flames

About this drawing

Sonic leaping over fire is a nod to one of the series' oldest settings. Even the first game in 1991 featured a stage packed with marble columns, broken temples and pools of lava that Sonic had to cross carefully.

Those levels were slower than the rest. Players pushed blocks onto lava, waited for crushing pillars to rise and timed jumps over flames. For a character built around speed, it was a surprising test of patience.

Fire keeps coming back across the series in volcanoes, burning factories and blazing cities. In several games Sonic can pick up a flame shield that protects him from fire and lets him burst forward with a quick dash in mid-air.

Temples with tall columns like the one in this scene borrow from the architecture of ancient Greece, where builders used stone and marble for their most important buildings. Game designers love these ruins because they hint at a lost civilization and make a level feel old and mysterious. That sense of age turns a simple platform level into a place that feels worth exploring, with secrets hidden behind every broken wall and crumbling staircase.

• sonic
• fire
• ruins
• temple
• video games