Why didn’t Sega interfere with its own spin off and promotional material? While other Japanese companies like Nintendo and Capcom were starting to tighten their grip on their properties in the mid 90s. Sega continued to allow westerners to run wild with franchises like Sonic. Leading to brand confusion that still exists to this day
>brand confusion
no one is confused about super sonic being evil in england
not everyone is as anally retentive as you
Leave it to the bongs to be slowpokes and have no idea about the DBZ reference
Or maybe they tried to make it more original than just a super saiyan ripoff. We had DBZ over here at the same time mutts did.
SoA and SoJ's communication was pretty bad at the time, they've had to send japanese team to US constantly to check on various aspects. They've probably didn't care enough about the comics and cartoons (for example, Nintendo of Japan was largely unaware of DiC's shows, Aonuma had no idea what Cd-i Zeldas are when was asked about it in the interview).
So they simply didn't care until it was too late. Archie had a real life Robotnik who took over the comics and started writing his own fanfiction of... whatever that was.
As mentioned, Sega of Japan and Sega of America didn't communicate all that much. The changes made to Sonic's lore in the west were also significantly different compared to the Nintendo stuff which was mostly limited to the other media and could be more easily swept under the rug. Capcom's in a bit of a weird place, because some of the changes made to, say, Mega Man were phased out while others seem to still be in place if not more quietly retconned (the Archie comic, for example, went with the "Light & Wily were business partners" angle).
The Archie comics in particular are an interesting case because the reason Penders got away with so much regarding Knuckles is that SoA didn't really give much oversight for him, to the point where, according to Penders, story concepts that got rejected for Sonic would be approved without a word when resubmitted for Knuckles.
Penders REALLY wanted to push his "epic" Star Trek script of Native Americans who survived into the far future and essentially became Krypton, but what really makes me shake my head in amazement is how much everybody in Archie HATED the Sega-mandated redesigned Robotnik and tried to use him as little as possible, usually just in odd filler stories.
Didn't they find some excuse for Robotnik and Eggman to technically be different characters in Archie?
Yes, but it still didn't hide their contempt for how they couldn't use the original SatAM Robotnik they grew up with anymore, and especially after they had already killed off the original Robotnik and were now more invested in their own villains like Ixis Naugus and Mammoth Mogul.
It says a lot that today we just take for granted that there's some IP Czar responsible for overseeing the continuity and canon. That tends to be more the case now that you get certain producers who rose through the ranks and co-opted a franchise, but those kind of anal retentive micromanagers didn't exist back then or if they did they were still no name programmers or designers.
A Japanese guide for Sonic Jam was actually the first piece of media to say that Dr Robonik was his real name and Eggman was just a nickname.
ok real talk, i argue against koopas namechange more than i do robotnik's.
yes, the only reason sega did it was just because they didn't want people to immediately think of the Beatles.
yes, it was born out of fading cold war hostilities.
yes, it's a cool name.
yes, Sonic Adventure got it right.
>the only reason sega did it was just because they didn't want people to immediately think of the Beatles
Is that why his theme song in SA2 repeatedly says "I am the Eggman" in the chorus? That's like saying you want to distance yourself from Michael Jackson while wearing a white suit and constantly grabbing your crotch.
Also, remember that Sonic origin comic that was printed in Disney Adventures which tried to claim that his name was originally Kintobor before he turned evil?
>SA2
SA2 came out in 2001, anon, not 1993. Sega of America had stopped replacing whole soundtracks by then.
>Posts untranslated image with no context
I'd sooner believe that text says Eggman sticks carrots up his ass with no information
>実はエッグマンというのは通称で、”ロボトニック”という本名がある。
>Actually, Eggman is an alias and his real name is "Robotnik"
Use google eye, lazy
Sorry you couldn’t be bothered to learn a second language. It does say what anon claims it does though.
I do wonder if this is because Sonic Jam had manuals and stuff from both regions and they wanted to explain why such a major character has a wildly different name.
Hell, Sonic 3 officially came to Japan months later (because SoJ was planning to combine it with S&K on one cart), and many Japanese kids at the time knew it as a hot US import (probably why the Badnik names are the US ones in the JP manual). They heard more of Robotnik than we did of Eggman. Although I'm pretty sure the "Eggman is his alias" bit first appeared in the West...in Sonic Drift 2.
I love how they confirmed "Robotnik" very early on but it wasn't until recently that they confirmed "Ivo" too. They spent literal years trying to convince us that we don't know Eggman's full name, so they could've gone with "Dr. Gerald Reginald Gaylord Cornelius Robotnik III, esquire" for all we knew.
Wut, I'm fairly certain it mentions Ivo in Sonic Adventure 2 even in Japan. At the very least during the CGI scene of the moon blowing up, it scrolls his name in the background of his announcement video in Japanese and English, and I'm fairly certain "Ivo" is in there.
I find it comical that it was the name chosen because it sounded like "evil", but then all of the English actors were told to pronounce it "eye-vo".
They could barely make up their mind on him not having a completely different look based on region, so not surprised it took years to confirm that.
the concept of these "franchises" that last eternally didn't really exist then. you have to remember star wars was still relatively new then. they just sold off the rights to making comics and cartoons and toys and whatever else for cheap because why wouldn't you? its a stupid flash in the pan trend that will last maybe 5 years if SEGA was lucky... was the thought. i mean lucas himself gave up residuals on the star wars movies in exchange for the licensing rights to star wars and the executives thought he was a fricking moron who they were getting one over, and it made him a billionaire but this was still seen as an insane exception.
even marvel comics did this which is why you had movie rights for spiderman and fantastic four given to sony, movie rights for x-men given to fox, the same company /still/ owns the rights to the ice-cream despite being sold to them like 4 decades ago.
>the concept of these "franchises" that last eternally didn't really exist then. you have to remember star wars was still relatively new then
oh I swear to god, you fricking zoomers. Star Wars was 14 years old when sonic 1 came out and was a giant hit. It was one of the great brand hits. It was as big as the beetles. It was like the beetles, then star wars, then Michael jackson, then heman/transformers then tmnt. Just this gigantic brand hit that almost printed money for the owners. Companies were very aware of how desirable it was to get a big hit and come up with something evergreen. And sonic very much was that for a while. Sonic 1 and 2 pushed a fricking lot of console bundles. Sonic had 2 cartoons, a comic, mcdonalds toys, plushes, candy, a sega center at epcot, vending machines in japanese parks, another sega center in Australia, etc. Sonic was fricking big.
Very good point. That is indeed true.
>Sonic was fricking big.
Nobody expected it to be a big as hit though. And that hit really did only last for at most 5 years until Gen 6 came around and Sonic went dormant until a new generation of kids became interested in with SA2 with the GC. Even then, that popularity of the character peaked with the Genesis era.
Because it's only sort of recently that moronic little millennials can't process the idea that different forms of media are just different takes on the character. Nobody needed to be told the Sonic cartoons were all different. Nobody thought Street Fighter the movie was the real street fighter story. Everyone just took it all as it was until you morons started to get confuses the second you had to use your brains in the absolute slightest capacity.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Poultry in motion.
Mario, Mega Man, Street Fighter, and DarkStalkers literally all had American cartoons. The difference is Sonic's western material (primarily the comics) were actually successful. There are people who literally only know and care about Sonic because of the comics to this day. Maybe spend more time in Ganker or /vg/ and you will see this.
Doesn't help that all of those cartoons massacred the source material. Either because they didn't care or they wanted to make it "acceptable" for kids. DarkStalkers was especially torn to shreds for that very reason.
> the source material.
This is why the Fleetway run of Sonic the Comic in the UK would have characters like Porker Lewis, and Johnny Lightfoot, and invent a backstory for Robotnik being the kindly Dr Kintobor.
i think the Sonic Bible is where Kintobor comes from, is it not? that was written February 1992. it even predates the Sonic manga by two months.
Sega didn't care what Sonic's story was, it was a hedgehog fighting an egg. arcade games weren't exactly big on story and Sega was predominantly an arcade company.
SoA knew it takes more than that to build, sell and sustain a franchise, so they came up with a cast of characters that actually had, y'know, a personality.
That part I wasn't aware of, so that's cool. That bible is even why the characters Porker Lewis and Johnny Lightfoot exist.
Presumably the Fleetway comics are the first depictions of those three characters too, so they may've had to invent their images.
>and invent a backstory for Robotnik being the kindly Dr Kintobor.
That one actually came from Sega of America. There was a general Sonic bible that they made for the western canon but only U.K. stuff like the Sonic The Comic ever actually bothered to use it.
https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_Bible
Darkstalkers was never that successful and the SF cartoon was several years too late to cash in on its popularity. The OG Mario Bros Super Show was really popular in the late 80s btw.
>Leading to brand confusion that still exists to this day
Don't blame the west for brand confusion. The japs have have thrown more stupid ass shit at the wall than archie comics ever did.
Hell, that comic panel isn't even far off the jap material at this point.
The sonic franchise has had identity crisis ever since SA2. It has has no clue what it is, what it's about, or where it's going. All it can do is nod back to its 16 bit glory days while making continual experiments that only half boil, then get forgotten as a the next game tries something new, again and again.
I think this was true at some point but it's hard to say now. It seems like they are trying to stick to some loose formula but it's hard to tell what that really is now.
I mean, there wasn't really much source material to go by in the case of Mario and Sonic. They were still just basic platformers without much of a story when the cartoons came out. DarkStalkers I agree is nothing like the games. Mega Man for what it's worth did a decent job I think albeit being very goofy, but once Mega Man 7 and 8 came you could kind of see that they also carried a sillier tone.
Mario's worst offense was probably giving us King Koopa in place of Bowser. Sonic's imo was having Swatbots and for many it was the inclusion of characters like Princess Sally, but I think this is all part of the basic "westernization" that every series went through during that time period.
>Sonic's imo was having Swatbots and for many it was the inclusion of characters like Princess Sally, but I think this is all part of the basic "westernization" that every series went through during that time period.
I dont really think sally was the issue. The problem with most sonic comics and cartoons looking back is that the people working on them really wanted to make something else. You can look at the design stuff for the old saturday morning Sonic and tell they secretly wanted to make a fantasy show and pretty much agreed to put sonic in it to get funding. The silly sonic show is just a cash in on the popularity of Ren and Stimpy, new adventures of mighty mouse and other nick toons. The comic started out like an old paper comic with light hearted stories and then was turned into Pender's furry fanfic.
That's the only version of the Sonic world that feels like it has some design and logical cohesion to it.
The games just give you a bunch of stuff in a vacuum, that's never really explained or elaborated on, which is fine for a game, I guess.
But we literally still don't know what the distinction between animal people and real animals are in this world. Or like how Eggman fits in with human society at all. Is he a terrorist? Is he the head of a rogue state? What is he?
>But we literally still don't know what the distinction between animal people and real animals are in this world. Or like how Eggman fits in with human society at all. Is he a terrorist? Is he the head of a rogue state? What is he?
its not much deeper than that. Most of what 16 bit sonic is is just a collection of references japanese kids would get.
mega drive sonic is:
Mickey Mouse + Dragon Ball Z + Time Bokan time skulls with a splash of mario + American architecture and Memphis school sprinkled in for level design + extreme sports of the 90s.
Thats all stuff japanese kids would have been aware of in the 91
>But we literally still don't know what the distinction between animal people and real animals are in this world.
The implication is that it's just a Looney Tunes-esque situation: Animal people just kinda co-exist with regular people. Nothing really deeper than that (unless you go by Tailstube which suggests that the animal people live on islands).
>Or like how Eggman fits in with human society at all. Is he a terrorist? Is he the head of a rogue state? What is he?
He's a megalomaniac super villain ala Silver Age Lex Luthor and the like who wants to conquer the world (or, by the time of Sonic Adventure, create his own empire). I guess realistically he'd be classified as a terrorist unless the doctor has some off-screen public company that we neither see nor hear of.
We know more about Lex Luthor though. We know what he actually does. That he's the head of a corporation and stuff. That gives you the necessary context for how he slots in with the rest of that setting.
In the cartoon Robotnik was this alien conqueror who had come to Roboticise the planet. Eggman in the games is just "the bad guy". There's really very little there. Is he an American? Do Americans consider him an enemy of the state? I don't know.
>In the cartoon Robotnik was this alien conqueror who had come to Roboticise the planet. Eggman in the games is just "the bad guy". There's really very little there. Is he an American? Do Americans consider him an enemy of the state? I don't know.
why do you need to know? Dr Robotnik is an old style villain. Like Dick Dastardly, Yosemite sam, Team rocket.
Well, the first two exist in total cartoon worlds with no world building (which is fine), and Team Rocket are grunts of Geovani, who is pretty much the Al Capone of the Pokemon world, so we actually do have more context on them than Eggman.
I think the weird thing about the Sonic games is they kind of want to have lore and worldbuilding up to a point, and then they run the other way.
On two sides of the extreme you'd have Mario, which is a complete cartoon where everything is up in the air and no plot details are nailed down, and Megaman which does take place in an actual world where things make sense within their own context.
Sonic kind of wants to be both of those at the same time. You have elaborate lore on something like "Dark Gaia", but then the games can't even explain where Sonic's powers come from.
>Team Rocket are grunts of Geovani, who is pretty much the Al Capone of the Pokemon world, so we actually do have more context on them than Eggman.
How many episodes did team rocket exist before we discovered who team rocket works for?
It's in the game, which was out before the show.
I think it was about twelve or so, not sure, but the S.S. Anne three-parter was the first time Team Rocket's grunts and Giovanni (at the time hidden from direct view ala Blofeld or Dr. Claw) were introduced in the anime
Well back in the day, the lore (at least, on the Japanese side) was primarily centered around the ancient civilizations that used the Chaos Emeralds. Eggman didn't really need too much context aside from "Wants the Chaos Emeralds to conquer the world" and "is willing to tear up islands to get them". If you want to go the full extreme, the story of the first game is based on an in-universe children's book, which also explains the lack of elaboration. It's generally implied that Sonic 1 isn't even the first time Sonic has fought Eggman.
As for stuff like where Sonic's speed comes from and Eggman's backstory, it's never really relevant so it rarely comes up. Eggman doesn't really need much more context than someone after the Chaos Emeralds, because he's moreso meant to represent the darker aspects of man and technology and how those can threaten nature.
SA2 implies he turned to evil because of what happened to his grandpa Gerald, that trying to take over the world is part megalomania, part retribution for humanity repaying the man who did so much for them by having him unjustly arrested and executed, and part knowing that the "proper" government is willing to enact and cover-up mass murder of innocent civilians.
In the Riders games all the hoverboards are produced by Robotnik Corp, even the ones used by the good guys, so that's at least one legitimate method of income. In those games he's also behind a company called Meteotech, which sells security robots, and in Zero Gravity his technology provides power to a futuristic city. The Lex Luthor comparison is apt; those games made me think of it as a similar situation, where everyone knows he's bad, but they have little choice but to do business with him because he's just so ubiquitous.
It's true that there's basically no backstory for him in the Genesis games, but there's not much context for a villain like Gruntilda, either; you have to take it at face value that sometimes the antagonist is just an butthole. The nature vs. technology theme was a strong influence in the early days of the franchise, I suppose in the context of those games you could interpret him as a legitimate industrialist that just snapped one day and decided that he wanted more. He owns countless factories and refineries, and he's probably got a couple patents for stuff like the animal capsules and power-up monitors, so he has the funds to do whatever the hell he feels like. He treats the whole thing as a game between him and Sonic, and he acts like a manchild.
>identifies with a goofy supervillain name
>rearranges and sculpts the environments into obstacle courses
>litters them with all sorts of hazards, like spikes and pitfalls, but also helpful objects, the monitors and checkpoints and such
Maybe it's all just his way of dealing with his midlife crisis.
thats not what cool is. A kid could have all that and still be a nerd or a spaz.
>The Lex Luthor comparison is apt; those games made me think of it as a similar situation, where everyone knows he's bad, but they have little choice but to do business with him because he's just so ubiquitous.
Even the movie touched on that. The US government did not want to get Robotnik involved, but knew he was a super-genius who had tech far far beyond anything they could dream of and felt they had no choice.
>He's a megalomaniac super villain ala Silver Age Lex Luthor and the like who wants to conquer the world (or, by the time of Sonic Adventure, create his own empire). I guess realistically he'd be classified as a terrorist unless the doctor has some off-screen public company that we neither see nor hear of.
Eh, he is specifically a cross between a time bokan villain and mario. I can probably find links but it has mostly been proven.
Thats why he wears that skin tight outfit. thats why he has those lanky long legs and big feet. Thats why he has a new robot to beat sonic at the end of each collection of zones. Thats also why he wants gems to power his super weapons. Its probably also why sonic is blue and red. Its all from time bokan. Sonic CD even has the time travel of time bokan and a badnik that looks like mechabuton.
They even name the thing mecha bu
Time bokan also has talking animals that are never explained.
Fair enough. I just used that comparison mostly because it was what came to mind to me.
>That he's the head of a corporation and stuff.
That's why I specifically mentioned Silver Age Luthor, who was more of a mad scientist or classical supervillain rather than a corporate bigwig. At best, Luthor had a few legitimate means of making money, but later games imply that Eggman sets up shell companies and whatnot in a similar fashion.
>In the cartoon Robotnik was this alien conqueror who had come to Roboticise the planet.
I don't really recall any of the cartoons explaining Robotnik's presence (SATAM I believe intended to make him and Snively part of a space trip and the earth changed while they were gone).
As for stuff like nationality, the games tend to be vague on how much the world matches our own, with the Sonic Adventure era onwards going for an "inspired but not actually" take. I suppose if you want to go by his name, that make him vaguely-Polish or Russia so whatever the equivalent of those regions are.
>that make him vaguely-Polish or Russia so whatever the equivalent of those regions are.
its a play on nogoodnik, which could both be russian or yiddish.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nogoodnik
lol at the idea of Robotnik being a secret russian israelite.
>The implication is that it's just a Looney Tunes-esque situation: Animal people just kinda co-exist with regular people. Nothing really deeper than that (unless you go by Tailstube which suggests that the animal people live on islands).
I would take the TailsTube explanation since it's the only one that makes sense in the game universe (even though, I SWEAR, this bit of lore comes from that infamous fan-film with Jaleel White and Doug Walker). But I wouldn't say it's like they're wholly segregated - obviously, some of the animal-people like Rouge and Amy live among humans. I like to think that's the source of their sense of fashion: the animals in general have a more primitive sense of clothing, so many contact was made semi-recently (like MAYBE during Gerald's time). And with Amy, you know, she picks up human hobbies like cards and boxercise that are still kind of foreign to her own native island people. Just some extrapolation though.
I don't remember that but I'm pretty sure it said "Ivo" on the walker in the Dreamcast version.
They slipped in "Koopa" on occasion, especially if you looked at old guides.
>King Koopa in place of Bowser
Koopa IS his name tho.
was, anyway, back then.
Koopa is Bowser's name in Japan.
In the west, he was pretty much called Bowser from day one, but that didn't really show up in-game until Super Mario World (He signs his letter in SMB3 as "King of the Koopas" and All Stars translates the World 8 title as "Castle of Koopa" whereas Advance 4 goes with "Bowser's Castle").
Considering that DiC's resources were questionable at best, it's entirely possible that they didn't know he was named "Bowser" until later, hence the occasional moment he's called "Bowser".
>he was pretty much called Bowser from day one
oh yeah, almost forgot
Now show me the NES manual where he's called "Koopa".
Hence the part where I said
>Considering that DiC's resources were questionable at best, it's entirely possible that they didn't know he was named "Bowser" until later, hence the occasional moment he's called "Bowser".
>DiC's resources
DiC didn't write the comics, Koopa's Kartoons, or the movie.
yes, i am very aware what the English manual says. i'm saying it's weird we kept calling him Koopa anyway.
The comics are an even weirder case, because even in the first story, he's called "King Bowser Koopa" and there's a later story titled "Bowser Knows Best".
In that case, they knew his english game name is Bowser, but kept calling him Koopa. It gets even weirder since the Koopalings kept their game names (and appearances) when they eventually showed up.
interesting. i never had the first issue when i was a kid, but i had the others.
they had dropped Bowser by issue 3 at least.
That's the thing though: "Bowser Knows Best" was a later story (yet still refers to him as Koopa) and even the issue I got that panel from still generally refers to him as "King Koopa".
Sometimes, on /vr/ I see theories that there was this one NOA employee who was pushing for the name "Bowser", but considering the cartoons, the comics, and the movie (yet, not the Adventure Books, which I know for a fact call him "Bowser"), it feels more like the opposite. Either that or they felt that Koopa being referred to by last name primarily made him more, I dunno, intimidating?
all i know is
i was alive back then and in the target demographic. i rarely ever heard him called Bowser until around SMRPG. the branding on everything was Koopa, Koopa, Koopa. even the Mario World cartoon still called him Koopa, though that was DiC.
what's the rationale of getting rid of his yellow/tan snout?
dude, even back then, i would see some wild looking Koopas. everyone played it loose, no one actually had a plan.
Back in the NES days having a consistent color palette for characters in official material was a pipe dream thanks to graphical limitations and poor communication.
Mario's own iconic look wasn't nailed down for years and years, the color of his overalls, hat, etc were all over the goddamn place and Luigi was even worse.
At least when Nintendo did that Super Mario Bros Game & Watch a couple years ago, they were cool about Mario's outfit being a different color for that game and went with it for new official art.
Nintendo has even been acknowledging this lately with stuff that celebrates retro Mario. Like the 8 bit Amiibo having both the classic and modern colors, and having sprites for both in Mario Maker.
The weird part to me is that they used Mario 64 to unify things globally and retire Toadstool for Peach, but at the same time bizarrely doubled down on Bowser instead of Koopa.
I think that's because they already called the turtles "Koopas", so it's either try to remarket them as "Troopas" (which would have a knock-on effect on other enemies with the phrase "Koopa" in the name) or stick with Bowser.
Peach was kind of the opposite situation where they could imply that Peach was her first name and get rid of the name that was more associated with her subjects (Toadstool).
Kind of? Sometimes it's just echidna politics and meandering, but other times it gets wild. The craziest is probably the arc where Knuckles' people vanish, he turns green and unlocks his godlike powers due to his dad blasting him with Chaos Emerald energy. Then you have stuff like Rotor being anti-guns despite firing a massize bazooki at Robotnik back during endgame, or the hints at a larger story that get told in the strangest of issues (Sonic Live, the Image crossover).
But you have to remember that a lot of crazy shit happens in Archie, so it's not like Penders is the only one. Case in point, this:
was not Penders' doing. A better example would when Tails is suddenly, inexplicably replaced by a doppelganger during the Green Knuckles arc and this goes unresolved for several issues until "Benny Lee" just ends it.
Once upon a time, Sonic the Hedgehog was known for his incredible speed and bravery. He would collect gold rings and take on Dr Eggman with ease, always eager to protect his friends and save the world from destruction.
But as time passed, Sonic started to feel burnt out. The constant battles and pressure had taken their toll on him, leaving him feeling empty and hopeless. He no longer saw the point in collecting rings or fighting Eggman, and instead he turned to an unhealthy habit.
Sonic began to spend his days outside schools, lurking around with a pair of binoculars. His once bright blue eyes were now dull and lifeless, as he watched the children playing and laughing from afar. He would lick his lips and murmur to himself, lost in a sick fantasy that only he could understand.
Tails, Sonic's faithful sidekick, tried to reach out to him. He begged Sonic to come back to the Green Hill Zone, to rediscover his purpose and find joy in saving the world once again. But Sonic ignored him, too consumed by his obsession with watching the children.
Eventually, news of Sonic's behavior reached the ears of Eggman himself. The evil genius saw an opportunity to strike, knowing that Sonic was no longer the hero he once was. He launched a devastating attack on the Green Hill Zone, catching everyone off guard.
Tails fought bravely, but he knew that he couldn't do it alone. He needed Sonic's help, more than ever before. And yet Sonic remained silent, his binoculars trained on the schoolyard as chaos reigned around him.
In the end, the Green Hill Zone fell. Eggman emerged victorious, and Tails was forced to flee for his life. Sonic remained behind, watching the children through his binoculars as the world burned around him.
And so, the tragic tale of Sonic the Hedgehog came to a close. A hero who had once been loved and respected by all, reduced to nothing more than a shell of his former self. His legacy tarnished, his spirit broken, and his fate forever sealed.
>brand confusion that still exists to this day
If anything, the Adventure era was alienating and responsible for a fanbase split, with the character redesigns done out of a misguided effort to keep them hip and cool for the kids, and the SA2 director saying that he never liked how Sonic was portrayed to begin with and wanted to supplant it with his own concept of what's cool.
I know this site is full of weebs who slurp on SoJ's wiener and write it all off as irrelevant, but the fact of the matter is that the western supplementary material deserves representation, it's what made Sonic successful and kept him alive. He's always been more popular in the west than in his home territory, and aside from just having more people, it's because kids would watch the cartoons or read the comics and then go and buy the games, they were phenomenal advertising. When there was a drought of games in the Saturn era, or when the games started sucking shit in the latter half of the '00s, there were still comics to buy. It was successful enough to keep going continuously for 20+ years, and after it died it was immediately replaced by another.
>If anything, the Adventure era was alienating and responsible for a fanbase split, with the character redesigns done out of a misguided effort to keep them hip and cool for the kids, and the SA2 director saying that he never liked how Sonic was portrayed to begin with and wanted to supplant it with his own concept of what's cool.
Eh, the split happened with sonic adventure first came out. The writing was a huge step backward for anything sonic fans had seen up to that point. ugh, it was just childish, like something made for 8 year olds.
Think about it. Someone that was 10 when 1 came out in 91 would be 17 when adventure came out in 98. What 17 year old would like the horrible simple dialog in adventure? And they would be 20 when Adventure 2 came out.
I'm not saying it needed to be deep, but holy shit is the plot and dialog of 1 and 2 so stunted and dry.
Funny thing is Sonic was never that popular in Japan. It boomed in America and regardless of what people think, the SOA team had justification
>Why didn’t Sega interfere with its own spin off and promotional material?
for whatever reason it has been a tradition to just let comic companies do what they want wtih little oversight.
Just go look at the branded stuff marvel put out in the 80s and 90s. They did whatever they wanted with shogun warriors, transformers, godzilla and a dozen others.
Even something like scrooge mcduck and donald, I don't think anyone at Disney really looked over what was going on with their characters in comic form.
SEGA was a joint japanese american venture from its start thus the american branch had more influence, nintendo of america, capcom of america are wholly subservient.
sega was founded by a group of american israelites, they still control the company to this day
I wonder if people that wonder about sonic lore also wonder why elmer fudd hunts bugs bunny and how bugs got the power to talk. Or how Mickey mouse has a pet dog and is friends with a dog.
>killing enemies is actually saving them and completely guiltless
what other games besides sonic do this?
I mean you're still murdering the possibly self-aware robot, that was the whole tragic component to Gamma's story in SA1.
frick you ken penders you fricking blithering spergtard
Why was it ok for Japs to do radically different takes on Sonic, but not the Americans?
xenophobia.
you try being run by the yakuza and maintain a healthy outlook on foreign collaboration
>spin off material
>literally sonic spinning off the comic frame
There's no lore, it's just whatever the person making it feels like at the time. And that's a good thing! Most stories throughout all of time were done with this method.
>>>Ganker is that way
Because they probably thought sonic was a fad that would run it's course and eventually they'd just stop having comics with him, just like how Nintendo stuff had comics for a temporary period and just stopped.
For whatever ungodly reason, Sonic team stopped making mainline Sonic games for a while and Archie just continued making comics, leading to penders shit happening, and Sega was just sort of hands off as penders went absolutely fricking insane.
Are the Penders issues really as off the wall as people say? I know he had some fixation on giving Knuckles a whole Scrooge McDuck style family tree, and Sega got butthurt when they saw a comic cover that had Sonic crying on it because Princess Sally was marrying another man. What else was there?
It'd be too long to fully explain, but the general gist is:
>Echidnas are THE most advanced species on the planet and were already hitting their space age by the time the other species mastered stone construction
>Two echidna brothers got into a fight over Chaos Emeralds and their respective descendants have since sought to wipe each other out
>Knuckles' dad is part of a super-secret cabal who train their sons to protect the island by dumping them in the middle of nowhere and telling them nothing (not unlike Ken's own dad leaving him)
>Said dad has a nightmare of a giant robot destroying everything and he responds by microwaving his unhatched egg of a son with superpowers so that Knux will be able to prevent it
>Knux is supposed to be okay with all of this when he finally finds out
>Likewise, Sally's own dad is very prejudiced against Sonic and demands that she obey his orders without question (again, Ken's own dad issues)
Basically, it's part Ken wanting to shill his not-Krypton fanfiction, part him venting over his dad, and part him disliking how the only place he can do both is in a silly book about furry animals fighting a dopey mad scientist.
Some more classic moments from Ken's highlight reel:
>One of Charmy's bee friends dies from eating a hot dog laced with "Lemon Sunshine Dandelion". Literal LSD.
>The evil echidnas try to Manchurian Candidate their way into ruling the island and it essentially comes off as a Nazi rally; Ken even paraphrases a poem about the Holocaust at one point
>The echidna cabal consider Robotnik (both old and new versions) too minor and insignificant to be a threat and won't do anything against him, but will personally throw a bully gorilla off the island just for stealing Knux's favorite yo-yo as a kid
>On the Sonic side of things, Sonic under Ken's pen is treated as an unpredictable screw-up that King Acorn won't tolerate, so the king relies more on Ken's own OC Geoffery (a skunk who's pretty much a big 007 pastiche) to do his dirty work and be the main rival to Sonic's feelings for Sally; Ken jokes that Sonic "wasn"t fast where it mattered" when asked which of the two scored with Sally first
This isn't even just "Ken". It's unique to Sonic. You homosexuals 'voted' for this.
>Are the Penders issues really as off the wall as people say?
Two words:
Titan Tails
Because Sega was an absolute mess with exception to the arcade industry. Meanwhile their console business had communication errors and bickering. The only reason why Sega got big in the US with the Genesis is because Tom Kalinske was a fricking genius.
There is no such thing as a normal Sonic fan. You are THE open joke among all fandoms. "At least I'm not a Sonic fan," says the Undertale fan. At least I haven't raped my own mother.
And this was made by glowBlack folk, to be sure. CWC was a distraction from israelites raping children in underground tunnels.
>major meme AI is named Tay after Taylor Swift
WOW I LOVE israeli PSYOPS