Every time my wife and I go to the cinema, the same thing happens. We’re sitting there with our popcorn and Ben Schwartz’s charmingly irritating voice floods our ears as the Blue Blur pops up on the screen, then my wife turns to me with a look that says “I’ll go see that for you if you come see Top Gun for me.” Folks, I don’t even like Sonic the Hedgehog that much, but my wife knows I’m a jolly good gamer who lives to ingest IP, so who am I kidding, I’ll be there on the opening weekend. It’ll be a pretty average movie that offers a decent amount of fun, and for most people, that will be enough. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Uncharted, so I’m not too much of a snob to like a good ol’ video game movie, but there is a small part of me that misses the chaos of the original teeth design. A part of me that misses the days of Elise.

If you don't know who Elise is, she was a character in Sonic '06, the first high-definition outing for Sonic. Elise was a rarity for a Sonic game in that she was human, and a fairly regular looking human woman rather than someone with the cartoonish proportions of, say, Robotnik. If you remember what human characters looked like in video games in 2006, you'd also understand that she looked like a plastic figurine someone had dipped in Vaseline, or worse. While her look was controversial - it seemed more fitting for Final Fantasy than for Sonic the Hedgehog - that's not why Elise is infamous in the Sonic fandom. It's because Elise was an actual human woman, and also Sonic's girlfriend.

Related: Make Sonic Painfully Uncool Again

It's not the first time Sonic has dated a woman. That honour goes to Madonna - not that one, though I wouldn't put it past her - in the comics. Elise, however, was far more notorious. Madonna had a less realistic look and was a minor character in a spin-off comic. Elise was a central character in a game that was supposed to launch Sonic into the new generation with a cutting edge title. For that reason, even though Madonna was technically the first actual human he kissed, when people think of Sonic kissing humans - and believe me, they do - they imagine Elise.

It's not just the kiss itself. Again, this was a 3D game in 2006, back when cutscenes were... let's be kind and say 'inelegant'. Sometimes though, they could be downright horrendous, especially when it came to intimate interactions. Sonic and Elise isn't quite as bad as some of the love scenes in Heavy Rain, but it's not much better, either. See for yourself above - just as a heads up I could only find the full version in this 8K remaster, as all of the original versions on YouTube are meme edits which include Peter Griffin vomiting extensively after the kiss, Sonic dying instantly after being kissed, and a clip from the Sonic cartoon where Tails calls 911. People really do not like this scene.

That's why the chaotic part of me wants it brought back. You won't find Elise in any Sonic games these days, or any Sonic material, but she has earned her place in Sonic history and in a weird way, I'd love to see her reinvent herself. The movies seem reluctant to add in Amy, which considering her appeal to the demographic of young girls, feels like a strange decision on a cynical level, not to mention how important Amy has been to the more recent Sonic games. If you're not going to add Amy, then I'm gonna go buckwild and ask for Elise.

Next: Dragon Age 4's New Game Director Is Trans And That's Rad