Blaze the Cat

At the time of release of Sonic Rush, the only thing that bothered me was that Blaze was basically Sonic + Knuckles in a compact cat wrapping. Sega began to repeat themselves in general and continued to kill gameplay in their games, bringing in such a “wonderful” innovation as “sonic boost”, and since then the games about Sonic play themselves. Of course, you can argue that the boost was a necessary mechanic in Sonic Rush itself, but if something gets into this series – it never leaves. In other words, the number of characters is steadily growing, no one dies, and the gameplay is getting more and more simplified. So the four-year-olds don’t get lost.

I’d like some other pattern on her shoes. For now it’s just a white strip, like what Sonic has… But it looks like bringing something new to the world is too expensive for Sega. Otherwise, the idea of making a super cat is not that bad. The obsession with particular qualities of the characters is infuriating – if it’s a guardian, then necessarily of some emeralds. Why wouldn’t she be a space cat controlling a magical goo? 🤣

Jokes aside, Blaze’s arrival upset my then-friend Kojichan, and together we assumed that Sega’s character idea had been stolen from her, even though it wasn’t (and what are we even talking about, when the fan characters already exist in an ecosystem established by someone else…). I even drew a picture on this topic, but that’s a… temporary insanity and teenage superstition. Not to say that companies never steal anything from their fanbase, but this is definitely not the case.