Notes
Sonic the Hedgehog is a platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Mega Drive/Genesis system. It is the inaugural game in Sega's flagship Sonic the Hedgehog video game series, and was the first title developed by Sonic Team. It was first released on June 23, 1991 in North America, and the next day in Europe. The Japanese Mega Drive version was released on July 26, 1991.
This game propelled the Genesis into mass popularity in North America. After it was released, it eventually replaced Altered Beast as the game bundled with the console, and was later replaced with its first sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2. The game featured many novel elements which contributed to its popularity and helped to promote the uptake of 16-bit consoles.
Sonic the Hedgehog added the element of speed to the standard platform formula and introduced other unique elements as well, such as the loops, springboards, high-speed devices, and the rings now permanently associated with the game series.
The game was a critical and commercial success, selling 4 million as of November 19, 2007 making it the 2nd best selling Genesis game. However, it's 1992 sequel, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 had more critical and commercial success, selling 6 million is the best selling Genesis game.
Entertainment
The entertainment industry has grown and evolved over the years with music and cinema taking a new form through the ages and so have the technologies that fuel it. Gone are the days of eight songs on a cassette and VCR players with merely two hours of entertainment recorded on a single video cassette. With the advent of computers came digital data storage and hence the birth of DVD/CDs.
Quiet a step back in matters of physical form as these new generation audio/video storage devices hold an uncanny resemblance to the records that preceded the cassette generation. DVDs and CDs today are an everyday household entertainment storage device which has come a long way since the first records and cassettes were distributed commercially.
Notable advantages of DVD/CDs have to begin with the amount of storage space available. These days its possible to burn multiple movies on a single DVD and as far as audio goes if its in a highly compressed format such as .mp3 a single CD can accommodate multiple music albums. These discs are easy to handle, light and portable with no moving devices unlike the tape generation however they are delicate and a scratch on the DVD/CD surface could cause a disruption in the information being read by the player.
DVD/CDs were initially invented to provide high quality audio/video data to a user with the ability to regulate its production however this soon fizzled away with daily household computers gaining the ability to burn data in such formats. The race to curb piracy through such means has not hit a roadblock and DVD/CDs keep evolving with newer encryption technologies in a bid to curb unchecked replication of data spawning newer technologies like Blu-ray discs which seems to be yet another milestone on an unending road of innovation.
