During the early 1990s, video game
companies were struggling to compete with the Nintendo’s flagship Mario series.
Drawing from Nintendo’s success with a game that revolves around a plumber
trying to rescue a princess from a turtle-like monster, Sega released the Sonic
the Hedgehog series, in which the protagonist is an anthropomorphic blue
hedgehog with super speed and fox for a sidekick. As a kid, the Sonic games
never seemed to have any sort of message, but one of my roommates recently
busted out his Sega Genesis and we started to play and actually look into the
plot of these games. What makes Sonic different from many protagonists is his
mission. He is not trying to save the damsel in distress, acquire riches, or
merely survive. Rather he is trying to stop the oppressive and corrupt mad scientist,
Dr. Eggman, aka Dr. Robotnik. Dr. Eggman is described as a genius with an IQ of
300. He uses his incredible gift for evil, however, and tries to steal the
nebulous Chaos Emeralds to gain even more power. In order to do so, he enslaves
animals (friends of Sonic) by trapping them in robots.
During the late 1980s and early
1990s, the Cold War was starting to fade, seen by the fall of many socialist
and communist regimes and the reunification of Germany. That being said, there
were still fears surrounding capitalism. Economically, the United States was
starting falter and by early 1990, the country entered a recession. President
George H.W. Bush famously declared there would be no new taxes, even when most
agreed that they were necessary. Dr. Eggman is a not so subtle embodiment of
the fears and qualms regarding capitalism during the late 80s and early 90s. His
imprisonment of the animals and forcing them to work as robot slaves could be
easily interpreted as an allusion to fears of working in corporate America.
Furthermore, Dr. Eggman is portrayed as greedy; he is already powerful, smart,
and a talented engineer, but he craves more power from the Chaos Emeralds. The
extremes of capitalism often depict people who are motivated solely by competition,
unnecessary wealth, and a desire to have more than they will ever need.
Under the capitalism of the 1990s,
environmental concerns were ignored. If someone could develop land to make a
profit, there was no reason to stop them. The Sonic franchise addresses many
environmental concerns. Sonic, his sidekick, Tails, and all of the victims are
some variety of woodland creatures that are illustrated in a way to make them
seem cute, friendly, etc. Their homes are destroyed by Dr. Eggman and his robot
army. These robots are also depicted as releasing lots of darkly colored
exhaust and other pollutants as Dr. Eggman destroys the environment of whatever
level you are playing. Dr. Eggman even drops bombs on certain areas to set the area
on fire. The imagery of environmental damage helps reinforce the idea of
consequences from capitalism if it is left unchecked.
I have to actually agree with your stance on Dr. Eggman. He is most certainly an embodiment of capitalism if you were to consider the small details that are in the video games of Sonic the Hedgehog. If you want to extend it to a game later in the Sonic series, we have Knuckles the Echidna that enters the fray. Dr. Eggman deceives Knuckles into believing that Sonic and crew were trying to steal the Master Emerald that Knuckles was determined to protect according to tradition. You continue in the story and find out that it is all a ploy to distract Knuckles and Dr. Eggman steals it for himself. You can see that if you were to look at this in the view of Dr. Eggman -> capitalism, we see that capitalism does what it wants and will even resort to lying/fudging the truth in order to progress.
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