Facing a dimly-lit sea of diehard gamers, two men press "play" on a Macbook. The speakers pulse to Sonic music with a bassy drum beat tacked onto it, but it's not the classic Green Hill or Industrial Zone tracks I know, it's generic sugar pop that I can only guess comes from the more recent Sonic games or at the very least sounds like it does. Sometimes there's no sound at all, as the audio keeps cutting into silence or forces itself to only the left or right channel, but the one thing that doesn't go away is a dull, droning buzz which serves as a bedrock to all the other sound. This was the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Party and it was more of a shitshow than we ever could have hoped for; a digital conveyor belt ferrying technical snafus, surreal detours, and uncomfortable presentation.

I want to emphasise that the audio faults weren't a momentary lapse in the show, they continued through at least a third of it and accompanying the drawn-out opening act was a stoic Sonic mascot that throughout the evening was slowly led on-stage and off-stage by his hand like he was gravely ill. Our special blue boy was only capable of that stiff, unvaried dancing that people in mascot costumes are limited to and at a couple of points he did the macarena to the Sonic music. Eventually, the incurably upbeat twinklepop stopped and a disembodied Dr. Robotnik voice introduced a Sonic PR guy probably best known for helping run the associated Twitter account. I almost didn't catch any of this because the audio hum was louder than Robotnik and eventually rose to an ear-destroying volume before the sound was muted entirely.

Both Robotnik and the Twitter Man mentioned memes and early on in this segment the Twitter Man talked about Totino's Stuffed Nachos, hinting at the possibility of an upcoming video based around Totino's Stuffed Nachos on the Sonic YouTube channel. Here is a tweet where Sonic is enjoying Totino's Stuffed Nachos backstage. Twitter Man also boasted about the show's Honda Civic, painted up with Sonic colours and artwork. Not a Ferrari or a Subaru, a Honda Civic. He then proceeded to list off the contents of the attendees' goodie bags while the screen behind him displayed the words "Collector's Swag". After this, the Chief Brand Officer of Sonic was welcomed into the ceremony in preparation for what we'd all been waiting for, the reveal of a whole new Sonic game.

The trailer they played introduced Sonic Mania, a title which mildly remixes the levels of the original Sonic games and comes with some new zones in a graphical style similar to Sonic 3. During the trailer, the spiny attitude rodent acted as a ball in a giant lottery machine and got into a shady-looking van. This part of the night probably sounds like it didn't go drastically wrong in any way, but over the reveal trailer we heard the Twitter Man trying to placate the crowd, promising them that they'd be shown new content any second now. The end of the video resembled the Yoshi's Island title screen for some reason and then the stream went black before the trailer was played over from about 10 seconds in.

After two good runs of the video, a couple of Sonic Team devs were brought up, including Takashi Iizuka, current head of the studio. When Twitter Man asked Iizuka where the premise for the new game came from Iizuka started rattling off a generic back-of-the-box description of the title. Fortunately, the edge was taken off by the audio issues starting to clear up and someone in the crowd yelling that Big the Cat should be in the game. There is a kind of comedy logic to the concept of Sonic Mania: Gamers complained time after time that the recent Sonic games were too distant from the original experiences and so Sega decided "Fuck it, we'll just do some moderate alterations to original Sonic and release that as a new game".

Most events would have ended after getting a new game out in the open, but not the Sonic 25th Anniversary Party, as we continued onto more musical guests. This time, Jun Senoue and Johnny Gioeli of Crush 40. The back of Gioeli's jacket had a tattered American flag sewn into it, that classic Sonic iconography. Another interesting fashion choice came from a starry-eyed audience member with a Sonic hat that looked like he'd ripped off Sonic's lower jaw and placed the rest of Sonic's head atop his own like a macabre hunting trophy.

As for the music, the mini-concert included the Sonic Free Riders Theme and a track from Shadow the Hedgehog before skirting into some Crush tracks not specifically written for games. At one point Gioeli tried to reference the lyrics to the Sonic Heroes Theme but got them a bit wrong, at another point, a Crush 40 track dipped into the slightly racy so you had a man yelling "Like a junkie! Like a tease!" into a mic as the guy next to him shredded away on a guitar with a Sonic decal across it. The headstock on the guitar was Sonic's foot which was mildly disturbing in a sort of body horror way. This half of Crush 40 (Crush 20?) tried to play an encore but the video for Live and Learn wouldn't immediately start and Gioeli was forced to stall for time. Stalling included laying down on the floor and thanking God.

After all the 40 had been well and truly crushed, the Twitter Man returned and talked about Totino's again. A heartfelt moment in the night finally came when they played a video of character designer Naoto Oshima talking about Sonic as a son-like figure for himself but this was ruined almost immediately by a hot mic kicking on and people sound-checking over Oshima's emotional reflection. The night surged onwards to a backstage tour which began with a counter of Totino's products. Throughout the tour, the Totino's logo and the hashtag "#StuffedNachos" were imposed over the screen. Whether or not Totino's products are extant within the Sonic canon remains unclear.

The next section of the show focused on mobile game Sonic Dash which celebrated the milestone of 20 million downloads. I can't help thinking that even with it being a free app, that level of engagement would seem to make it much more popular than most full Sonic games released these days. Twitter Man asked the Dash presenter if he had a video to show and he replied "Yeah, hopefully", maybe lacking confidence that it would play after the rest of the presentations. As part of the clip, it was triumphantly announced that Green Hill Zone would be added to Sonic Dash, although it's a mystery to me how that location wasn't in there from the start. The crowd was then prompted to yell out the classic Sonic character that the zone necessitated. From somewhere in the audience came a shout of "Sanic" but this was apparently the wrong answer. My spellchecker is now trying to correct "Sanic" to "Satanic", showing we have clearly only scratched the surface of these mysteries.

There was a Q&A with the developers, and fair play to them, one question was about whether there could ever be a Metal Big the Cat and a dev responded with the statement that he'd be too powerful. In line with this behind-the-scenes flavour, they also brought out the Sonic voice actors, even if there were more actors than mics. The V/O for Amy Rose mentioned bipolar disorder and used the word "sodomy" twice while she was up there. She was eventually interrupted by the Robotnik voice actor making a long, abrasive whine into one of the microphones but it was the actor for Q-Bot (I don't know either) with the most interesting takes:

"The thing I liked about Q-Bot in the game is he did have the multiple personality disorder [...] I've always loved Laurel and Hardy [...] I really do think [the Q-Bot personalities] are the Laurel and Hardy of our generation".

I'm still not sure how sincere that was meant to be. At this point, my frontal lobe began to succumb to lethal quantities of the Going Fast game and the order of events gets a bit foggy for me. I do remember the Twitter Man talking about the fun activities for the audience in the venue and then just as he was about to discuss the treats for the viewers at home the sound cut out again. The Sonic Mania trailer then played for the third time. I may or may not have seen a woman near the back dressed as Ariel from The Little Mermaid.

I can reliably tell you that Sonic is going to be in the latest Lego Dimensions game. Like a tragic DeviantArt page, the trailer showed a Lego version of our feisty hogboy hanging out with Doctor Who and riding a Portal Turret through Aperture. In another cross-over twist, there will be a collaboration between Hello Kitty and Sonic, with the Hello Kitty representative identifying that fans must feel a "brand synergy" with these characters. The Super Sonic Hello Kitty doll will cost $60. The final reveal was none other than a secret new 3D Sonic game which was pretty forgettable, although was summed up well by the final screen of the trailer which featured wispy embers and large, metallic text reading "JOIN THE RESISTANCE", because the next logical step for Sonic is to make it more like a post-apocalyptic rebellion story, right?

Obviously, a lot of effort must have been put into this anniversary event. I don't wish anything bad on the people involved and it takes some bravery to get up on stage and put on a show like that, but every time I tried to push myself to view the event in a positive light my mind wandered back to this one moment near the start of the party. It was one of those instances where the sound was glitching out and as nothing but that monotonous buzz came over the audio, a dead-eyed plastic and fabric recreation of Sonic shuffled about woozily in front of the crowd like he was on strong pain medication. 25 years on from the release of the classic Mega Drive game this anniversary celebration was, unfortunately for everyone involved, a perfect reflection of where Sonic is at as a franchise. Thanks for reading.