A strange little side quest
There is a neat bit of history hiding behind the kind of play you find in Sonic the Hedgehog HTML5. Sonic the Hedgehog launched in 1991 and turned speed itself into a defining platform-game mechanic. The broader history adds one more wrinkle. Street Fighter II, released in 1991, turned head-to-head arcade fighting into a worldwide phenomenon and helped define the modern fighting-game genre. That long chain of experiments is part of why platform games still feels fresh when a game finds the right twist.
