[W.I.P. editorships welcome]

About

The X Cycle is a viral concept that satirizes the experience of a fanboy's emotional rollercoaster with the release of a new game or console. They are often used to poke fun at other fandoms and video games as a whole. The most popular is the Sonic Cycle, for the quality of the latest Sonic games.

Origin

The X cycle originated from the Sonic Cycle, which is thought to have found it's origins on the NeoGAF Forums.On April 7th, 2008, NeoGAF Forum user Baiano19 posted one of the earliest instances of The Sonic Cycle images, in Post #2269 in the thread (First?) Shots of Sonic Unleashed.

The same day, the image was reblogged onto PlayAsia.com

On January 18th, 2009, a Digg thread entitled Sonic and the Black Knight is TOTALLY the rebirth of Sonic made it to the Digg front page.

Due to the enthusiastic tone of the title, a user named goldenhearted posted what was now exact copypasta.

This is the typical sonic cycle these days

1. New info release of new Sonic game, people say it's gonna be Sonic's comeback.
2. More or less, hype is generated as info, screens, vids, etc. releases.
3. Game comes out, it ends up like mediocre-shit. People say nothing can save Sonic.
4. Go back to #1

Spread

[w.i.p.]

Google Insights

Searches for "Sonic Cycle" began showing up in April of 2008. The idea of "The Sonic Cycle" remained steady for much of 2008, peaking once in September of 2009, and again in February of 2010.