Sonic the Hedgehog in the Fourth Dimension

by Martin Adams

Sonic the Hedgehog, featured in the Sega Mega-Drive games, goes back in time in this book to find Dr Ivo Robotnik who has invented a time machine and is sending his robots back through time to manipulate the past and change the present.

178 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1993

Reviews

[David Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a kid's book about Sonic the Hedgehog that is full of embarrassing early '90s cliches about things being radical and awesome, this is one of the best time travel stories I've ever read. I don't understand how, but this held up to what I remember it being. The bad guys have a motive. The stakes are real. And the time travel is relatively internally consistent. It's a book for kids and it makes you give a shit when the ultimate solution to the problem ends up being to destroy everything they've achieved.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this after hearing it was a surprisingly well-thought-out time travel story given that it's a video game tie-in for children, and indeed it was! It was written at some point after Sonic 2 came out, and full of lore-in-the-making, some of the ideas in it were strangely reminiscent of future entries in the Sonic series (eg (minor spoilers) an Echidna character, and the notion of Robotnik travelling to the past to alter the present) — did the author have a time machine himself?

The dialogue had 90s cool embedded in it, and the book was surprisingly self-aware too, and happy to make fun of itself. Lots of early Sonic references sprinkled around. Sonic and Tails' voices were a little difficult to pin down, but the awkward attempts at American slang mixed with Britishisms just endeared me to the narrative more.

[Sammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this series when I was young and this was the one book out of four I couldn't find. Thankfully a friend gifted it to me and I finally completed the series.

It's so wonderfully 90s with its super cheesy dated dialogue and it was so nostalgic revisiting the UK lore of Sonic back before he had a unified story.

Reading this as an adult it definitely lacks substance and in this book Eggman/ Robotnik plays a much smaller role, but the stakes were incredibly silly (Sonic has to run fast enough to turn back time to the Big Bang?) and it was a great palate cleanser.

If you're nostalgic for 90s Sonic this will really hit the spot!