Why does Sonic appeal to Chris and others with autism?

I'll admit, as a little sperglet back in elementary school, SA2 Battle dominated my thoughts for quite a long time. I loved everything about it, the gameplay, levels, story, characters, Chao Garden, soundtrack, ect. I spent hours playing that game to no end. I remember laying awake in my bed just thinking about it for a really long time and turning over to my clock and realizing it was midnight and I had to sleep for school.

I really can't explain why. It just... happened for me.

Looking back, it hasn't aged all that well, and while I can still appreciate some of it's ideas, it had quite a few issues that even as a kid acknowledged, like the poor lip syncing and varying quality in voice acting. Among other things. I will admit, I still listen to "Live and Learn" quite a bit on my iPod.

Sonic 06 pretty much killed my interest in Sonic due to how much of a disappointment it was. Sonic Generations was pretty good IMO, but it didn't rekindle my love for the series.

Now a days, the only things I enjoy about Sonic is all the lolcows, the fucked up shit the fanbase spawns, and of course the parodies:

 
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Thinking about it more, I'd say it's not so much that Sonic attracts autistics, but more that it's the autistic people in the fandase that continue to hold onto a once major series that's since fallen from grace. Essentially, all the normal people who liked Sonic have acknowledged that the series has gone to shit and just turned their backs on it, leaving the spergs as the only visible following the it has.
 
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Quite frankly, I never got why. I mean, for one, I was a Nintendo kid growing up.

For two, Sonic is too annoying to be likable.

For 3. Who cares?
 
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The only reason I wanted Sonic the Hedgehog was because I thought the music to "Green Hill Zone" was awesome. I was 6 when I heard it, when my babysitter took me over to her friends house who owned a Genesis.

I never did get my own Sonic the Hedgehog game until 2002 when I got my Gamecube.

Even though I am partly (or maybe not) autistic, I never really cared more about it than Mario. Mario was a lot more awesome back then. Sonic just seemed to keep repeating the cycle until around Sonic Adventure.
 
I think it's pretty colors and simplicity. The original Sonic was a hedgehog that ran fast and jumped, that was about it. No items, no level ups, no new abilities. Sonic stays pretty much the same. A lot of autistics don't like change so this is why you get rage over minor things like eye color and arm color. Imagine if the Zelda community got that upset that Zelda was a brunette in Twilight Princess.
 
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Pssh, yeah. I had a big problem with Toon Zelda.

At first… I was going to just let it be, but then everyone just had the most retarded expressions, brought to you exclusively through the Toons. I played through all of Wind Waker, but haven't touched Toon Zelda since.
 
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Altissimo said:
I legitimately have trouble keeping multiple characters straight in live-action TV shows and movies because I can't distinguish them, and this detracts from my enjoyment of them because I can't just sit and enjoy, I have to ask whoever's with me "who's that guy again?" or whatever and it just results in me getting unnecessarily confused. By comparison, MLP and Sonic are both super-colorful, cartoonish and feature animals instead of people - nobody who was paying attention to a Sonic game or an MLP episode would ever have trouble keeping the characters straight from one another, when the designs are very much intended to differentiate them. Especially given that lighting changes are never an issue in cartoons like that. It's easy to just watch an MLP ep/play a Sonic game without having to worry about trying to keep characters straight, which is how both those things differ from more mature series that depict humans that can be hard to distinguish from one another for an autist.

I also think that animal-based media in general tends to attract more autistics than otherwise. I mean, anyone who knows anything about Temple Grandin knows that her contributions to society took the form of understanding how cows might be thinking and the problems they might be facing when people are herding them around man-made things. I think it's legitimately easier for autistic people to connect to animals - see: Chris caring more about Patti than anyone else, except perhaps when Bob died; see: my best friend who has mild Asperger's really hating interacting with people but having a ton of animals; see: my feeling like my now-deceased cat was my friend. I think autistics find it so hard to relate to people that it's easier to relate to animals, because animals never hide their feelings the way humans do. Social norms are the most obvious thing that autistics fail to grasp because a lot of the time they're counter-intuitive (why the hell do we ask "How are you?" if we don't expect an honest answer?) when autistics tend toward honesty. Animals are honest. And even if they act like humans, I think that autistics still kind of feel the connection to them moreso than humans.
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I've never thought of the whole attraction to Sanic like that. Especially the bits about not being able to relate to other people and finding animals more engaging. That's real interesting. I don't think I've ever heard anyone make that point before.
 
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