Dr. Mechano

- Premised around finding their mother

- Never found her

Ok but you can't deny that one and only(?) time someone other than the hedgehogs sang was fire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KggcEdDbjIg

And then every song including the opening is terrible.

Well, the Green Ninja isn't exactly required to be a good vocalist. /j

Infinite. 

Eggman kinda betrayed Infinite though, didn't he? He sucked him back into the Ruby instead of truly working with him.

Still won't change the fact that the monster will disappear without a trace and Eggman will still be the final boss 

(You killed my friend, your going down)

Doesn't have to die.

Defeated semi-depowered recurring ally for Eggman.

I guess Infinite could have been that, but eh.

They would either become a better character than Eggman and deserve better than being his lackey, or they just become another Metal Sonic and become just another lackey. 

Working for Eggman sucks man. Just ask Orbot and Cubot, they fucking hate working for him, and he created them.

You have to be a supremely shitty person to have everything you create, hate your existence. 

Cubot likes Eggman, actually. Both official profiles and his dialogue in Team Sonic Racing attest to this.

One official profile from around the time of Lost World put it best: "Orbot dislikes Eggman but is very loyal to him. Cubot likes Eggman, but isn't very loyal to him."

The vibe I get from that is that Orbot's a hard worker who resents Eggman, while Cubot's the slacker who comes into work late all the time who thinks he's the boss's friend. He likes him but isn't super committed to actually doing a good job.

That doesn't really reflect how they act in the games. They both are pretty upfront about not liking him.

Nah, in TSR we get this exchange.

The more you spend thinking about plot points in this series, the more of a headache you're going to get. 

he's a meat robot

Wait, Shadow TOTALLY needs to sleep!

In Sonic Battle, at one point Rouge says Shadow is in the back of her club taking a nap!

Robots don't "sleep" in the conventional sense; they might need to recharge or something, but they don't take naps. That alone should've totally given away that Eggman was lying, right?

What did Eggman even stand to gain from lying to Shadow in the first place? It's not like Shadow at any point considered joining Eggman's side even with amnesia. Maybe it was just to mess with him, but Eggman strikes me as someone who wouldn't just do something like that to be a dick.

Shadow's too edgy to commit to basic needs like food or going to school or the doctor

Or, instead of saying he's a full-blown robot he could have gone with "clone". Then he could have just said the Shadow Androids were just mass produced at a lower expense because they were easier to make then Shadow clones. Or he wanted androids first and then decided to move onto making a clone.

I dunno doctor. That sounds better than just rolling with Shadow thinking he's an android.

It's even worse when you notice the Shadow androids attack by vomiting missiles...

And people give Knuckles grief for being gullible.

I always thought that the minibus music was just an extension of knuckles' theme.

(Briefly imagines Vanilla in Sonic 3 and shakes his head.)

I like the compromise made in the mods where you can have the S3 midboss play just for fighting Knuckles, to make it stand out more as the climax of he and Sonic's rivaly throughout the two games.

You know, seeing how the SK midboss and the beta/PC music were made by the main composers, and sound more in line with the rest of the game... I gotta wonder: what if Michael Jackson got to compose for the whole soundtrack? They'd have his music would play in western copies of it, while the original soundtrack plays on Japanese copies ala CD. What would that sound like?

I love both of them. The S3 version is delightfully funky, and the SK version is delightfully sinister. Honestly, though, I think I like the SK version a bit more. Fits the typical classic Sonic boss music vibe a lot more.

@AWild No.1 washed up gamer It took me decades to realize that they had the same baseline melody.

I think S&K Mini-Boss music may be better than the Boss theme, actually, except for the fact that Red Eye at the end is the only one that's remotely difficult.

Sonic 3 Complete and Sonic 3 A.I.R give you the ability to revert to that.

My mom sent me a text informing me of it.

That's really good. 

I've been a lot more frightened of the police nowadays, for obvious reasons. I hope I don't end up becoming a statistic because of some unfortunate hand of fate. 

I thought that was a fever dream.

I'm convinced that Infinite was meant to be an experiment like Shadow but Eggman created him for evil unlike Shadow being made for a force of good. 

So was the official comic backstory of Infinite joining Eggman just fabricated memories or what?

Because Sonic Team screwed it up.

Infinite was originally supposed to be a creation of Eggman's specifically designed to make usage of the Phantom Ruby's power. That's why the penultimate level of the game has Sonic say this is where Infinite was created, and why Amy comments on how he must've felt so alone being created in such a bleak place.

Sonic Team later changed the backstory at the eleventh hour to instead have Infinite be a regular jackal who gets humiliated by Shadow, and offers himself up to Eggman as a test subject for the Phantom Ruby. This was so poorly done that it was only explained via the Forces tie-in comics, and the Episode Shadow DLC (which were done near the end of production I'd imagine), while the main game wasn't altered to reflect that, leaving Infinite's backstory a contradictory mess.

As for your question specifically - I don't think Eggman can create infinite copies of Infinite. Infinite was the one using the Phantom Ruby's power, not vice versa. The reason Infinite vanishes is because Eggman tears the Phantom Ruby from him upon another defeat by Sonic and the avatar, deciding to just use the power himself instead of leaving it up to Infinite. The quick and short answer is Infinite needs the Phantom Ruby to live, and Eggman effectively killed him by taking it.

Maybe the tube grown were artificial prototypes that maybe gave better results than the phantom formed Infinites- whose efficiency let him instead have them as fail-safes in the event of the practical vessels' absent. The final "draft" of Infinite being powered by a real "Mobian" jackal proved most satisfactory in harnessing the Ruby's full power, with Eggman having the convenience of hiring Jackal Squad. Upon hearing the team's decimation, he brought in the one survivor to don the Infinite gear Darth Vader style, with the "promise" that it'll help him take revenge on Shadow and CO.

@Ryannumber1gamer was that confirmed?

@Dejimon11

IIRC - not officially, but yes. I believe the leaked original Forces script had more concrete details on Infinite being a Eggman creation.

they way i interpret it, the episode shadow backstory is real, infinite was originally just a normal jackal. but after getting his ass beat, his need for power and control led him to agree to let eggman experiment on him. this involves the flesh-and-blood jackal ceasing to exist and his essence/soul/consciousness/whatever coalescing around the phantom ruby prototypes, creating a new "virtual" body that can better harness the ruby's powers and doesn't have all those mortal weaknesses. the other tube cubes are failures to bond the two properly or just undercooked.

Gotta love the lack of consistency.

But then like every good thing Colors did Sonic Team had to ruin it by copy pasting the boss two more times 

Besides that I think Colors honestly had the best final boss in the series (gameplay wise anyway), so much so sonic team held onto it and went on to reuse its template for every single game to come afterward totally overstaying its welcome and becoming super stale.

Seriously it's like the one boss fight they got right and couldn't manage to come up with something in the same vein without a complete copy paste of what the egg nega wisp was.

Ninja'd by Espio av

Right, I agree.

I'm definitely cool with Eggman being the big bad of Lost World and Forces. I just wish he'd had an all-new original mech for each of those battles.

i can tell from the timing of your posts that you watch raocow and i just think that's kinda funny (and cool)

also yes to your observation, it's pretty transparent what they were going for

Oh man! Yeah, seeing him play through all the Sonics has been a fun time so far.

I always thought it was supposed to be because of the fireworks that go off right by his plane. It's not animated well so it was always just a speculation.

I want to go back and play through all the Sonics again too.

Just finished SA1 myself and moving onto SA3, I guess everyone is going through sonic withdrawal lol

best part was when classic Sonic appeared in the Project 2017 trailer

I mean, at the time I thought that was a good sign.

"Whoah, is this Generations 2? Generations 1 was good, so how could this go wrong?"

Ha ha... haaaaa...

Hey speaking of which - anyone have any idea where the 30th anniversary parties will be?

If only this was how Bethesda E3 2019 conference went

This status was brought to you by Totinos.

@Dr. Mechano I find it so interesting that you thought that "Generations 2" was a good thing. Like, Generations 2 would have been much better than what we actually got. But still, my immediate reaction upon seeing Classic Sonic was basically "oh fuck off". I've never been so disappointed that I didn't record my reaction for something! Pretty sure I let out a very loud, totally disdainful "what" at the sight of him being the "help" instead of a wealth of other characters. Generations always felt like one-time deal, a special treat that wouldn't feel right to do again. Forces ended up being kinda like a Generations 2, except worse in every conceivable way. Such a mess...

Anyway, the best part of that whole came when Mania launched, and we learned that they put the infamous buzzing into the ending of Studiopolis. The stream was a hardcore nightmare (and m wasn't without one or two big technical goofs for the live audience either) but the Easter Egg was brilliant.

@Blue Blood

I mean, you can see the logic, yeah?

If "[Game]" was good, then "[Game 2]" will probably be good too. Obviously bad sequels exist, but my train of thought was basically "I like this thing, so I'd therefore like more of this thing."

@Dr. Mechano Sure, I see the logic on a surface level. But the whole concept of Sonic and Classic Sonic teaming up, potentially to revisit past locations, was a very meta premise and one that was obviously done as a means to celebrate the series' history. Doing that again so soon after Generations was always going to be a terrible idea.

"I like this thing and it was a nice idea, but it's got no legs and its novel premise needs to rest a while before its brought back up in a meaningful way." Not everything needs a sequel. Sometimes a sequel is a bad idea, especially if that sequel fails to understand why the original managed to succeed and instead feels like a cynical cash grab. Generations 2 as a premise is like all the direct-to-video Disney sequels of the 2000s (Mania 2 made made up of old levels and no new characters would fall into the same category).

Eh, I'm looking at it more as a game first. Game 1 was fun, Game 2 could also be fun. Obviously when thinking about artistic merit we can get out into the weeds about whether something "needed" to be made but just as a fun experience I wouldn't have minded a Generations 2 if it played well.

Don't get me wrong, I want a Mania 2 with all new stages. But a Mania 2 with reused stage themes (the levels themselves would still be new, strictly speaking) would still be fun, so I'd probably still like it.

Whilst gameplay will always be the most important factor, a huge part of the appeal is the artistic merit. A game might still be fun, but I can't divorce the two concepts. That's partly why Mario games stagnated so much during 3DS and Wii U era (and the Wii era to an extent), and why Sonic games are stagnating right now. 

"This will be a brand new experience!"

Yeah, but I don't even think Sonic games are particularly good in the gameplay department either. Sonic games are stagnating because they're bad games.

Mania being the obvious outlier. Though I'd argue even on an aesthetic standpoint, the game is really charming and has a lot of personality despite its relatively simple story presentation.

Oh sure. Sonic is stagnating because the games suck and there's only so much mileage you can get out of "hey guys remember the good old days?!" which is 90% of Sonic's output in the past ten years if you discount the laughing stock that was Boom.

Eh, I mean, they've tried plenty of new things.

Wisps and the Avatar from a gameplay stance, Deadly Six and Infinite story-wise... These new things just generally weren't well-received. But they definitely weren't resting on 90s nostalgia either. They're fresh, new bad ideas.

Ah, but don't you see? The neutral path is a fine line of potential consequence and whatnot.

I also like that the "neutral" ending is Shadow murdering a guy and then declaring that he and a bunch of androids are going to take over the world. 

Very normal neutral thing to do. 

I guess cause it's neither for humans or the Black Arms.....eh? Eh?

I mean, depending on where you live, that's technically not wrong...

He also refers to Team Rose as boys, so he may have difficulty with the concept.

To be fair Big could count as two people so with half the team being boys in sheer body mass Eggman isn't incorrect 

Scratch that. I totally overlooked the fact that it was actually Metal Sonic and not Eggman who made that mistake.

Anything about Zelda beyond what's explicitly confirmed in the games is just up to interpretation at this point.

I'm pretty sure hyrule historia legitimately floats the idea that termina isn't actually real and was a projection of Skull Kid's loneliness.

The most non-sensical thing about the "Link is dead" theory is that anyone would find it to be the more interesting theory over taking the narrative at face value.

Let's take one of the most intricate, unique and melancholic Zelda narratives and forcibly re-interpret it into the most cliché non-literal interpretation in the book.

If I recall as well, all the stages of grief in this theory referenced use the whole overarching plot of each region as an example of the stage, except for bargaining which shoehorns itself in by saying "that one (10 second long) bit where Darmarni asks Link if he can use his magic to revive him".

the hero's shade is also depicted as a wolf. a ghost can be whatever he wants.

not that i take the "link is dead" theory seriously in any way, though.

The "Skull Kid imagined everything" thing wasn't from Hyrule Historia either. It was from Dark Horse's Zelda Encyclopedia, which - while it is an officially licensed product - contradicts other statements from Nintendo themselves, who have - in manuals and official guides - over and over called Termina a parallel dimension to Hyrule.

Oh yeah this was back in October. I lost it when I saw it live even Ian Flynn acknowledged it 

If it's an arc - not really

That's more likely to cause contradictions if they over step a continuing comic

I mean, I guess if you view the anime as its own entity, then filler is "canon" to the anime... but the best anime are straight-up faithful adaptations of the manga, in my opinion at least, and differing or contradicting the source (actually canon) material is a no-go, in my book.

I think the Tsuyu filler episode from MHA is an example of "good" filler, as it's actually based on a throwaway line from the manga where she says she fought pirates during her internship.

The anime going, "Hey, why not actually show how those events played out?" is a way to add anime-exclusive content that's still more-or-less in line with the manga.

To be honest if you cut the filler out then most characters act like nothing ever happened. Its like the anime wanted to brush it under a rug too.

An adaptation doesn't have to be 1-1 faithful that defeats the point of it being an "adaptation"

It's also just not feasible anyway but if an anime adaptation in gonna try to make original material they should wait til it's finished or diverge early

   One of my favorite pieces of filler is during the end of the Cell fight in DBZ. Gohan has attained SSJ2 and as he is tearing apart Cell, it goes to Goku and Piccolo as Goku flashes back to his and Gohans time in the Time Chamber. They've been training non-stop for 20 hours, Goku's ready to call it a day but the completely exhausted Gohan stands up raring for more, and just briefly touches upon SSJ2 before fizzleing out. It turns the context behind Goku's "plan" from "Oh he's gotten angry and went wild in the past, let's make him do it to Cell." to "I know he has the power in him, I've seen it. He just has to find it for himself.". Of course either way he's still throwing Gohan into the fire but with the context he knows for sure Gohan can win.

It kind of starts becoming an issue when the filler material starts to contradict the source material.

DBZ's DMV episode is canon and I will fight everyone who says otherwise.

It is -- he's shown driving later

It was put in Kakarot, as it should be. 

Yeah, but Toei cut it out of Kai like cowards.

You really watch Nostalgia Critic?

That's always good. But the real fun part of it is when they think they can put these skits in the middle of videos, often as crossovers with other channels because they think it's hilarious if one acts awkward, but you just click off the video because you're tired of that shit.

Anyone who does skits just goes on my ignore list now. If you were a good actor/comedian you'd be doing that and not reviewing games

Yea, that got extremely obnoxious a long time ago. Its funny fuz SomeCallMeJohnny kind of moved away from that, the older he got. He probably throws a joke or two in there still, but he plays his reviews straight for the most part. 

.....God, there was a time when I probably found all of  that stuff funny. To be young...er

YouTube won't stop recommending Nathaniel Bandy to me... Dude's unbearable.

The Joys of Hypocrisy: When critics spend a video trashing a media for been unfunny and unbearable to watch, yet partake in unfunny and unbearable acts of their own at the same time.

I'm someone who's a little more forgiving of skits, if short and done well (Caddicarus has a good few opening ones), but when they're bad, christ do I fucking h a t e them. Nostalgia Critic has been awful from the beginning when he came back following Demo Reel.

The ones I have a real pet peeve for is the sponsored skits. Where not only do they have the balls to interrupt a video in the middle, but they do a long tedious unfunny skit about something for two minutes trying to sell you something. Caddicarus got really fucking bad with last year.

Crossover reviews definitely are the worst because it's never entertaining or funny like I dont get the appeal. I clicked on the review to watch this person not some random Joe schmo I don't care about who seems to always lack any charisma when making a guest appearance