Do Not Play Track 01

Chapter One

My name is Michael and I am 30 years old. I love Sonic The Hedgehog, back in 1994 at the age of 7 I owned a SEGA Saturn console and I loved playing Sonic The Hedgehog 3 on it. I would play it every time I came home from school and every time I finished my homework. I also loved watching The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog TV series. We had almost every episode recorded on loads of VHS tapes.

I was so excited when the SEGA Dreamcast was announced and in 1999, I bought my first ever Dreamcast console. It came with a copy of Sonic Adventure, which I was desperate to play. At the age of 12 I was constantly playing my Dreamcast console, even when I had to be in bed!

Sometimes, my friends would come over, but I was too distracted by my games console to talk to them, they occasionally got bored and went home.

Fast forward to August 2000, I was now 13 and a high-school student. I had completed every single story on the Sonic characters.

I had been listening to the official Sonic Adventure soundtrack loads of times and I really wanted to get a CD copy of it. There was none available at the time, so I thought it would be a great idea to put my Sonic Adventure disc into my CD player to see if the songs would play, but I was welcomed with an unsettling message...

"This is a Dreamcast disc, and is for use only on a Dreamcast unit. Playing this disc on a Hi-Fi or other audio equipment can cause serious damage to its speakers, please stop this disc now."

My heart came up through my body to my mouth. I felt paralysed... I felt like my entire soul had been forcibly removed from my body. I quickly took the disc out and just stared at it. I stared at it until I felt my eyes close, and my head fall back and hit the ground...