Dr. Mechano
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Everything posted by Dr. Mechano
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Oh, nice. So if those Ivos at different ages are Eggman pulled from different times rather than alternate dimensions, then we can take this is canon Eggman backstory for the games. Even if it's just a small part of the overall show, seeing Eggman's childhood and young adulthood is potentially really exciting.
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If I wrote a story set in an AU where Eggman's the good guy, I wonder what I should call his robots.
"Badniks" doesn't exactly work for a hero, and I feel like "Goodniks" is a little too on the nose.
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KingMario05 reacted to this
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What's their new purpose?
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KingMario05 reacted to this
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Some of them help maintain his (much more environmentally friendly) lab in Scrap Brain Zone, but one of them - Motey the Motobug - will act as Ivo's sidekick and actively travel with him on his adventures, where they'll clash with Sonic and his gang of ruffians.
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KingMario05 reacted to this
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botniks?
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That could work well, actually. Immediately evokes the original name, I like it.
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KingMario05 reacted to this
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I came up with Egg Patrol, Brobots, Broniks, Budniks, Good Eggs, The Super Sacred Society Serve and Secure Squad and Rover EZs (lolwut).
I imagine a good guy Eggman AU kinda looking similar to Mario's: They'd be as clumsy and seldom fit for battle as the Toads are. I also imagine Sonic with a large Bowser-esc figure with a less antromorphic style.
As do his partners in crime, who take on a Kooplings like role
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charmsb and Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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Ooh, Budniks is good.
Sonic's still a little speedy guy, but he's got minions in the form of the small animals. Together, they form a gang of punks terrorizing South Island, who Ivo stands up to.
Sonic will get more ambitious than "low-level punk" over time. Once he discovers what the Chaos Emeralds are capable of doing to him, he gets power-hungry, forms alliances with other bad guys (like the maladjusted child prodigy Miles, so his gang can get some better weapons) and starts aiming for loftier ambitions as the stories go on.
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charmsb and Supah Berry reacted to this
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Tentative story outline for the AU's adaptation of Sonic 1:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ikA0XjlFmw_Frrtdx1307-mT8v5mK9TTGdctQ1tNAcw/edit?usp=sharing
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Supah Berry reacted to this
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Are you sure about that. Pictured: A modern-day American cartoon daring to have the traditional version of Rouge
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Also, arguably, Sonic spinoff media has had an LGBT character already. It's going to sound like I'm memeing here, but I'm being sincere: It's AoStH Robotnik, canon bisexual. This man has expressed unambiguous attraction to multiple women in the series: Lucinda, Omeletta, an unnamed robot wife, etc. But in the episode "Robotnik's Rival," he's at one point forced to kiss the male Dr. Quark by D.U.F.U.S., one of Quark's robots. Quark immediately acts disgusted, so we can surmise he wasn't into it. But Robotnik smiles and blushes, and it's clear that he knowingly kissed a man and he liked it. My man AoStH Ivo is a bi icon.
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Best Jojo, go.
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I'm partial to Joseph and Jotaro, if only because the latter gets a pretty unfair reputation in the fandom for being "boring"
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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Joseph and Josuke, though only 'cause I don't know enough about Stone Ocean to make a judgment on Jolyne.
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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I'm about 20 chapters into Stone Ocean and I like her so far.
She definitely has some of Jotaro's aggressive edge to her, but I feel like she's more expressive and less stoic than he was in Stardust Crusaders. Intuitively, I want to say she's going to rank higher than him on that basis when it's all said and done, but it's still pretty early to say since Stone Ocean has like 150 chapters.
Her stand's pretty cool too. Very utilitarian and has a lot of potential creative uses.
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This sounds less like what anyone actually says and more like a conservative strawman of what a progressive person believes. You're basically arguing against an exaggerated cartoon caricature, not an actual belief anyone holds.
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Full disclosure, I haven't seen Rise of the TMNT. But assuming that's accurate, it sounds like her race isn't the issue, so much as the dialogue they gave her. Like, if they used the fill tool and made her white, she'd still be the exact same character that you didn't enjoy. Conversely, leaving her black but writing her differently sounds like it'd solve the entire problem you have with her. Considering April O'Neil was - at the very least - racially ambiguous in the original Mirage comics, I feel like any skin tone would be equally okay for the character. (And it's not like this is the first time the franchise has done this; The black Baxter Stockman of the comics was changed to white in the 80s cartoon, then black again in most subsequent series)
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To its credit, Soleanna was also pretty diverse. The city had people of varying skin tones milling about. I feel like Station Square likely would be if it were made a little later. While everyone had the same skin tone in SA1, in Sonic X - which was just a few years later - the citizens had a lot more racial variety.
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Having actually watched the new She-Ra, I don't see what the big deal is. The art style is just typical western pseudo-anime, a la the original Teen Titans. Yeah, it has a couple of gay pairings. It also has straight couples too. The characters who are gay aren't solely defined by their sexuality. They have conflicts related to being raised by and indoctrinated into the villain's empire, and dealing with having their perspective changed as a war - the central conflict, not their romantic pursuits - rages around them. But it's got plenty of straight characters too, who are portrayed in just as much of a positive light. One of the heroes is a cocky flirtatious straight guy named Seahawk, and he's easily the best character in the show: Seahawk's Shanty | She-Ra and the Princesses of Power - YouTube
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These seem like conscious decisions from the creators, not mandates from some executive. The question was whether these shows were "forced by outsiders" to include diverse characters, not whether they were put in for the sake of representation. Maybe I'm just less cynical, but I feel like it's pretty believable that a creator might - of their own volition without any outside mandates - choose to go in the directions you've described. Don't get me wrong, the live-action Powerpuff Girls looks like hot garbage, but it's certainly not because it has one more black character than the original show did. I also want to emphasize: Every modern media from the west? That makes it sound like any time a black person appears in western media, it must always necessarily be for unscrupulous, cynical, pandering reasons. I just can't understand how you'd come to that conclusion. It feels like you're predisposed to distrust western media that includes nonwhite characters by default, with a statement like this. In the west in particular, we are a fairly diverse society. Our media reflecting that reality makes sense intuitively to me.
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Short haircuts on women are commonplace. I don't think short hair is inherently "manly." And I mean, "short-haired women" aren't exactly a minority or a protected class. There's no discourse about the rights and representation of pixie cuts, so putting them in for the sake of "diversity points" seems incredibly odd. It's just a common style right now, and franchises that span long enough will give characters styles that are popular at the time, like Superman's mullet from the 90s.
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I feel like we need a point of contrast to understand where you're coming from. What are examples of media that were, in your opinion, forced by outsiders to include minority characters?
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"Because they wanted to" is the reason almost any character is created, so I don't really see that as any different from minority characters in western media. Diversity is simply the state of having different types of people. The existence of Nessa, Hop, etc. does result in diversity. That's my point. Yes, I agree, creating a character of [x race/gender/sexuality] just for the sake of them being that thing with no thought to their personality or individual traits is bad writing. But coming up with detailed character concepts and then saying, "You know what? Some of these fleshed-out character ideas I have will be minorities/women/LGBT" is totally fine, even if it is a conscious decision for diversity's sake. As long as the character's good, I don't see any harm in intentionally making some of your cast more diverse as a conscious move. It doesn't take away anything, and can be helpful to have positive examples of sometimes-maligned groups depicted in entertainment media.
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I find this to be a vexing example. You're saying Japanese media doesn't really care much for diversity (and truthfully, Japanese media is less diverse overall, as is Japanese society), then cite Nessa - an example of how the Pokemon series has gotten more racially diverse than it used to be. The original Red and Blue version had a cast of light-skinned characters (who were likely intended to be Asian, as the game takes place in the Kanto region) with little else. Whereas today it's really not uncommon to see black characters like Nessa or tan characters like Hop and so on in the series. I don't really understand what you mean. If anything, western cartoons have entered an era of extreme cutesiness in the past decade - with softer, rounder, brighter designs than the more angular styles of the 00s or the more stiff, realistically-proportioned look of many 80s action series. A lot of western cartoons are emulating anime specifically, as well, so there's a lot of overlap now. I think that all Sonic characters - regardless of gender - are usually written with fairly one-note personalities in most of the games. But those notes are still pretty varied. I'd argue that Amy's problem isn't that she merely likes Sonic, but that - in some older games - her character largely revolved around those feelings, and she wasn't given many other interests outside of that. Rouge is arguably "sexualized," but I don't think that's the same thing as being objectified. Rouge is a character with agency who lives life on her own terms. I think it's arguable that she (and Omega) have been kinda consolidated into being Shadow's cheerleaders more than independent actors in their own right in recent times, but that's not really due to her being a woman in my opinion. Other than that, I dunno. You have Blaze, a leader. You have Wave, the brains behind the Babylon Rogues. You have Cream, who despite her cutesy demeanor is actually absurdly tenacious and strong. I think the Sonic series drops the ball with characterization at the best of times, but at the very least, it has lots of different kinds of women rather than pigeonholing them into a single stereotype. Women, minorities, and LGBT people exist. Depicting them in our media makes sense, and even Japanese media has been gradually following suit. Plenty of Japanese video games and anime today have characters of other races, gay characters, trans characters, etc. The Japanese-produced Sonic X - created all the way back in 2003 - still had fairly diverse humans. The world's got lots of different kinds of people. In a lot of ways, it's just more interesting to reflect that in our fiction. In Sonic's case, it's really no different - with the minor hangup that humans other than Eggman have been AWOL for a while, so the question of humans of other racial backgrounds may be kind of a moot point aside from spinoff media like the live-action movie. But it'd be totally feasible to reflect diversity in other ways, be it in the games, the IDW comics, the upcoming Sonic Prime series, etc. And I don't really feel uneasy or threatened by that. I think it's fine? Uh... Little late to the party on black and Asian people in Sonic. They've been here. And why would having a lesbian or trans character necessarily be a bad fit for the series?
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In the Sonic X continuity, how did Eggman remember looking up to Professor Gerald if he was totally unfamiliar with the human world when he arrived there?
X implies that Eggman has lived on Sonic's world for as long as he can remember, as he knows almost nothing about Earth initially. Yet he vividly remembers his grandfather.
I don't think the show ever explained this. The only thing that'd really make sense is if Eggman was born on Earth and arrived on Sonic's planet during his early childhood, but this aspect of the story is left entirely in mystery.
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Yeah, I remember kids at school saying similar things about Mario; "Bowser is King Koopa's son."
The cartoon version of King Koopa did outright call himself Bowser in a couple of episodes of AoSMB3, but most kids probably missed that and just saw two very different-looking characters, so they weren't sure if they were supposed to be the same.
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I think, in Sonic X continuity, the second capsule contained Emerl - might be wrong on that though.
Also I'm reminded of Episode 49 (or somewhere around there) where Chris confronts Eggman in his final little makeshift base before they leave Earth. Before official fansubs were available and amateurs were taking cracks at translating key scenes by ear, everyone got really excited because someone thought that Chris said "I am Eggman" during that scene and it began wild discussion about Eggman being from the future and Chris being his younger self.
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In the Sonic X comics, which are of course of debatable canonicity to the TV show, Eggman says that Gerald "sent [him] away from Earth."
No clue if this was Archie writer Joe Edkin's own idea or if he got this from some Sonic X writer's guide or something, but as far as the comic goes, Gerald himself sent Eggman to Sonic's world through some means.
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Mephiles is like if Nintendo created a "Wawario."
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Monkey Destruction Switch reacted to this
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that would be fucking hilarious though
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Supah Berry reacted to this
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If that's the case, what would their Infinite equivalent be...?
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Supah Berry reacted to this
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Masked "similar rival" type who hides his true face and is obsessed with defeating you?
Clearly it's Il Piantissimo
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Supah Berry reacted to this
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Metal Sonic's betrayal feels a little "softer" than Omega's.
Metal could have attacked Eggman directly at any time, but he consciously locked him up unharmed instead. So it's clear that - unlike Omega - he doesn't want Eggman dead.
I have to wonder what he would've done if he had defeated Sonic. Would he have let Eggman out to actually rule the world afterward? Like, if the Heroes betrayal was mainly about settling his grudge with Sonic and just getting Eggman out of the way for a time, that could be feasible.
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Crackpot theory incoming, but maybe the reason Eggman was so adamant about making a robot version of Sonic to begin with was because they used to be "friends" before the events of Sonic 1? Obviously it wouldn't be a healthy friendship, but imagine Eggman fostering Sonic who helps him with his experiments and such until he realizes that he's responsible for the disappearing animals on South Island; thus Sonic rebels and sets the events of the series into motion. Eggman liked having a lackey with super speed (and latent Chaos Emerald fueled powers), and maybe even liked Sonic himself a bit, so he built and programmed a superior robotic version who wouldn't rebel..... and maybe also fill the void. Metal Sonic is literally programmed to do two things: defeat Sonic and be a good son.
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AWild No.1 washed up gamer reacted to this
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The Japanese Sonic 1 manual says the opposite: Sonic and Eggman were already enemies prior to Sonic 1, but Eggman was more of a low-level nuisance at that point. Sonic only began to take him seriously once he started using animals as power-sources for his Badniks and began trying to harness the Chaos Emeralds.
https://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(16-bit)/Manuals
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by metal's own words, he intended to become a robot overlord ruling a robot kingdom. i could see him keeping eggman alive, whether out of respect or simply because he'd be useful, but he wasn't doing the IDW thing of taking over on eggman's behalf.
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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The Japanese Sonic 1 manual says the opposite: Sonic and Eggman were already enemies prior to Sonic 1, but Eggman was more of a low-level nuisance at that point. Sonic only began to take him seriously once he started using animals as power-sources for his Badniks and began trying to harness the Chaos Emeralds.
I'm always in a headspace of rewriting or rebooting the series somehow, so I should probably put that as a disclaimer next time!
That said, never thought much of this official detail. It's serviceable, but I personally would like to see them go deeper into Sonic and Eggman's history together.
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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It became clear at that point Metal gone crazy and assumed he was the real sonic so he probably didn't think much about the "after" on what to do with Eggman after he killed Sonic
Real question is why didn't Omega kill Metal Sonic when he was in his hands and deactivated considering destroying Eggman robots is his life goal
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Supah Berry reacted to this
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Yeah, your idea is neat in its own way. It kinda harkens back to the old "Kintobor" concept used in SoA's story and Fleetway - but with Eggman's rise to villainy being a conscious choice instead of the result of an accident.
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Indigo Rush reacted to this
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... actually.
When was Metal Sonic in a main series entry with a story beat after Heroes? Unless you count Team Sonic Racing or Sonic Free Riders, he hasn't, I don't think?
Metal Sonic didn't appear in Shadow, '06, Unleashed, Colors (Generations just has his younger iteration), or Lost World. Timeline wise, Sonic 4 and Sonic Mania are before Heroes. In Forces, he was just an illusion like Zavok and Chaos. Everything else is a spin-off where the canon is questionable or he's an unlockable character.
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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Maybe he locked him up "for his own good". Metal only wanted to make his creator proud by conquering the world and destroying all his enemies all at once, and knew he'd instantly shoot down the thought if he simply went up and told him "What if I ran the empire".
In his efforts to succeed in what Eggman never could, Metal felt 100% certain he'll fully understand his motives once he makes it clear to him. In his overconfidence and madness, he was wrong.
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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Spinoffs are still canon as far as I'm concerned.
But even by that metric, it's clear that Eggman has scaled back relying on him. Something spooked Eggman about the Heroes incident, so now Metal plays more of an assistant role and hasn't been sent to fight Sonic 1-on-1, lest those repressed memories flare up again.
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@Dr. Mechanothats actually REALLY good for an explanation. Maybe the guy had some respect for a fellow traitor
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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though i mean, now he's going to be in the Colors remake so there goes that idea
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AWild No.1 washed up gamer and Supah Berry reacted to this
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On the plus side, we might get actual rolling physics in a 3D game finally.
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Twitter Takeover Shadow is the best the character has ever been, and I'm not saying that ironically or for the memes.
It's pretty much the only time we've seen Shadow relax and just hang out with people like an actual person.
He's still his grumbly standoffish self, but something about him just casually chatting about dumb everyday life topics makes him feel way more "human" than he does most of the time. Even though Team Dark are supposedly his closest friends, we only ever see him talk to them about the mission they're currently on, not engaging in much actual friendly banter in the games.
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I thought they meant a different dimension from the normal human inventor lady in the prologue, not that Donkey Kong and Mario occupy separate dimensions.
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While that's fair, Miyamoto isn't the only one in charge of making Mario games anymore. Miyamoto's preferred "zero continuity" outlook on Mario isn't always what other directors stick to. Koizumi tends to put a lot more story and direct callbacks to other games, such as Pauline in Odyssey directly referencing the events of Donkey Kong and All this is to say, Mario has continuity sometimes. It depends a lot on who's in charge of the game and how much they care about Miyamoto's preferred ideal for the series.
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Which definitely comes off as a retcon, considering: Since "you" were in Super Mario Bros. Not since "your alternate non-paper counterpart" was in Super Mario Bros. At the time the old Paper Mario games were made, "Mario" and "Paper Mario" were considered the same entity - simply presented in a different style. Paper Jam's premise has the same problems as Sonic's "two worlds" - both contradict previously established things about the series and both ultimately make less sense than just having a single unified world.
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Sonic Games World Tour #2: Westside Island Zones
Dr. Mechano replied to Sonictrainer's topic in Green Grove Zone
I guess if you're using Chronicles - as your list did - you can also claim Westside Island is in SA1 through extrapolation. In Chronicles, Metropolis and Station Square exist on the same landmass. Ergo, Station Square must be on Westside Island. (While likewise, Central City is on the same landmass as Green Hill Zone and must be on South Island) -
To be fair, later games like Adventure and Advance 2 also do this. Advance 2 is even eerily similar to Triple Trouble in that Eggman gives Knuckles a mech to pilot. So I'm not sure if Triple Trouble's depiction of Knuckles is that hard to believe, given he's trusted Eggman in games Sonic Team had closer involvement in since. I think the six Chaos Emeralds in most of the Game Gear titles are simple enough to explain; Only six Emeralds were used in those games, even though seven exist in total, same as in Sonic 1. The 8th Emerald in Fighters could be chalked up to Eggman's duplication ray (used to create a clone of the player character for the mirror match) also copying one of the Emeralds? Though yeah, it's fine if we set Chronicles and some of the 8-bit titles aside for the purpose of this discussion. We both acknowledge there's enough issues in Sonic Team games that demonstrate some inconsistency with the two-worlds concept, which is fine.
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Weirdly, though I hate the "two worlds" lore for Sonic, I actually like it for Mario.
"Normal plumber from Brooklyn who accidentally becomes the hero of another world" has more intrigue to me than "Dude's been a hero since he was literally a baby."-
I did, too.
It made Mario's heroics seem that much more special and noble. Just a regular dude who got sucked into another world with his brother and the first thing they do is rescue a princess who was in danger.
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Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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Same tbh. It's one of those things that weirdly works for Mario, even if I can't really explain why.
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charmsb and Dr. Mechano reacted to this
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Was on the same page before, then they went ahead and somehow made New York itself exist in the Mushroom World.
Now I sticked to the head canon that his birth home resides in a quiet section of the region that makes up Metro Kingdom, a place of no intrest to the Koopa and/or had stayed free of hostility from them, until the Bros had grown up. They had since moved to the New Donk to become construction employees, before settling as plumbers, with Mario Bros kicking off the heroics when they thwarted the Koopa from invading the city just through the sewers.
But to each their own, on where Mario really lived in
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Dr. Mechano and AWild No.1 washed up gamer reacted to this
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This is what I'm going with too.
After the events of Partners in Time or one of the Yoshi's Island sequels, the Bros.' parents shuffled them off to the Metro Kingdom so they could grow up away from the constant conflicts of the Mushroom Kingdom.
There, Mario met and started dating Pauline for a while, though it ultimately didn't work out. Eventually, Mario and Luigi would go back to their birth country, the Mushroom Kingdom - and find their childhood rival Bowser all grown up and bent on conquest - volunteering to save the kingdom and their childhood friend Peach from his invasion.
Considering the Odyssey artbook included a Mario Bros. plumbing shop in New Donk, I think it's fair to say that the idea that Mario and Luigi used to live there at least crossed the devs' minds.
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The (pre-Sticker Star) RPGs are pretty good.
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