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Favorite Sonic Writer?


FireBird75

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Since Sonic's introduction has had many a plotline of varying degrees of quality throughout the series' run.  But who do you think is best writer (or writers) we've had so far?  You can answer any way you want to.  Whether it being who wrote your favorite story, who do you think has had to most success, and/or who's impressed you the most.

 

My favorite would be Shiro Maekawa since he wrote SA2's story, my personal favorite in the series.

Shiro maekawa.jpg

I also give a special mention to none other than Takeshi Iizuka.  Yeah, there was Shadow the Hedgehog (the game) but I think Sonic Rivals 1&2 makes up for that (mostly).  I really dig how he wrote Silver (making him competent and teaming him up with Espio was just great), he gave Eggman Nega his real backstory and showed just how much of a real psycho Nega is, and he helped me like Shadow again.

Sonic Rivals.jpgSonic Rivals 2 Coverart.png

Have fun with this one. :)

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Ian Flynn all the way. I haven't read much of the old Archie comics, but I'm trying to catch up with the post-SGW stuff and man does it rock. And whoever wrote the OVA. That was hilarious.

Edited by juliejo2001
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Ian Flynn if the Archie series count as an alternative media. He makes a very large amount of characters more interesting while developing large stories that actually feel like an adventure. Eggman can be both threatening and humorous, Big can be both simple and utterly badass. I also enjoy the various call back he did in some of his stories.

 

If game writers we're talking about, then  it's a tie between Akinori Nishiyama (SA1 writer) and Shiro Maekawa (SA2 writer).

 

Akinori seems to go out and focus a bit more on character than Shiro. Shiro on the other hand seems to focus on the general story. Both are fine, to me.

 

Edit: Looking at Verte's post about shiro, he wrote the Secret Rings story. I'll admit, I did like Sonic's personality in that one. So for games I may go with Shiro even over Akinori.

Edited by WittyUsername
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Can I get a list of all sonic writers and what games/comics/shows they worked on? This is something I NEVER thought to look up until this topic came into existence!

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Can I get a list of all sonic writers and what games/comics/shows they worked on? This is something I NEVER thought to look up until this topic came into existence!

For games, Wikipedia is a place to go. The info-box will display the writers.

Comics... they're a lot, LOT harder to track down the writers for. Because each issue will have an individual writer. For Archie Sonic, alone, there's well over 273 or 4 issues and that's NOT including the miniseries, universes, Knuckles, X, or Boom comics. This doesn't figure in Fleetway either.

So there's not, the only thing you can do is find the issue and find the credits.

It'd be nice, though, but it'd be a lot of work to plow through and mark a chart to find each individual writer. If someone ever wants to, it''d be cool, though. Mark a chart and list the issue, writer, artist and all that.

I'm a total idiot and forgot the Mobius Encyclopedia lists the artist and writers in the info box for individual issues.

http://archiesonic.wikia.com/wiki/The_Archie_Sonic_Wiki

StC as well.

http://stc.wikia.com/

Shows, looks like you may have to find those individually.

Still think a table would be cool, so we could filter it by writers and see, more quickly, who wrote what, what project they were on, etc.

Edited by WittyUsername
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Is Shiro Maekawa still working at SEGA?

Me personally I think he's talented, but he needs a co-writer to bounce ideas off of and to help with the lack of detail his writing had in SA1 and SA2.

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Count me in as someone who really likes Shiro Maekawa! I think he's the reason why SA2's story works so well in comparison to Sonic 06. Despite the dark content found in SA2, there are lighthearted moments between the characters and Sonic very much still acts his cocky and goofy self despite the serious situation he's in. And even though it has awful gameplay the Storybook games have brilliant story and character, particularly Black Knight. It's a shame Maekawa hasn't done anything for Sonic since then.

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Toss up for me between Ian Flynn and (Unpopular choice though they may be) Ken Pontac & Warren Graff.

I feel all three get Sonic's personality perfectly and only under these three has he ever felt like a "Mascot with attitude" he was supposed to be.

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Ian Flynn wrote some real classics, like the El Gran Gordo saga, Scrambled, and the fantastic Sonic/Megaman crossover. While the Archie universe isn't my favorite depiction of the series, his writing style is exactly what I'd like to see out of the games.

Game-wise, I like Pontac and Graff's approach a lot too. C'mon, all those Eggman one-liners from Colors were great. 

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It's rather sad that I'm just now finding out who wrote the stories for SA1 and 2. If they haven't been writing the other plots of Heroes, ShTH, or Sonic 06, then it's no fucking wonder why the writing went to shit.

That said, I'm gonna go with Ian Flynn as my favorite writer as far as those who are still writing for Sonic. I give him props because this is the man who took over writing of characters in the comics who've been around for years, yet some of them I flat out didn't care about them until he wrote them better. Hell, even elements from the games that I'm not fond of being around (like Black Arms as aliens) had something to captivate my interest more than the games have when he made use of them.

And then when we were about to go through a reboot and trash almost 20 years of the comics history due to a nasty lawsuit, Ian still found a way to at least make the reboot something worth sticking around for. Don't get me wrong, he's had some fumblings if the House of Cards arc is one indicator, but this man writes what I've been missing from the games since SA2 and even Unleashed. He knows how and, more importantly, when to use certain characters, he uses characters as individuals first and groups second, and he mixes the character interactions so that everyone of them gets a chance to partner up with someone they're not often with (seriously, Shadow and Blaze? Rouge and Blaze? Shadow vs Knuckles? Big and Tails? Rouge, Sonic, and Shadow? Omega and Cream, come on guys!), and he alternates between characters so that each one has a chance to shine on their own. And don't get me started on the conflict, and how he makes it as intense as what I would expect from a Sonic game, if not more so! Fuck this guy made the Deadly Six the incredibly dangerous villains as their name implies. His writing is the most interesting to me in the entire franchise, not just in how it uses the video games, but how it blends the cartoons of SatAM and AoSTH into the mix to allow the comics their own separate identity.

This guy and the many people working alongside him are the ones I look up to for this franchise. Now if only they could work on this stuff for the games...

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I consider Ian Flynn an idol of mine. While he's written some stinkers...who hasn't? Besides, he can usually make engaging stories with the characters, and even his worse works are ones I'd take over some others.

Of course, Michael Gallagher is the best writer the Sonic comics ever had. His stories are freakin' hilarious. But as much of a shame as it is that he isn't involved, I hope he's doing well with whatever he's doing.

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Ever since BreechLoader has stopped writing Sonic fanfiction and repositioned herself to writing fanfiction for Transformers and other franchises, my passion towards the Sonic fanfiction has been diminishing/declining over the passing years until now it has practically reached 0 enthusiasm.

I don't know if it's because of my old age, but something is just not the same. Please don't interpret this the wrong way, though... I still have my hard-drives and USBs loaded with tons of fan-made content which I have downloaded and accumulated from various sources over the years. My existing collections are very precious to me, and I intend on preserving them for life. It's only the new stuff that I am not feeling any passion towards. I'm just clinging to old things and not willing to absorb new stuff.

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I'll give Flynn and Maekawa credit, they make some good stories, if a tad erratic in tone. Whenever they're made to compromise moods properly it often makes decent to great writing (eg. many of the post-reboot comics, the Storybook games). That said they're still a tad flawed, a lot of their characters are kinda bland and I still think they lean a bit too much into making Sonic cringingly 'mature' at times (I never took to Flynn's continuation of the Penders/Bollers material). There's no doubting they have some great interpretations at times though, eg. Big and Omega for Flynn, Sonic for Mawkawa.

I'll give credit to some of the current writers, Pontac and Griff and Boom's current team, they're the opposite way, they're not the best at story and depth and litter the whole thing with tons of cringworthy jokes, but they have some great character moments. Boom has a version of Tails I actually find interesting and Lost World was a great analysis of Sonic's flaws without overplaying him into a complete jackass like some other writers do. It was seemingly also Pontac and Griff that established Orbot and Cubot's current personalities with Boom having some great expansion on them.

Truthfully I think a perfect story could perhaps be made out of merging these two different styles and having one from either setup as co writer for the other.

Edited by E-122-Psi
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My favorite Sonic Writer?

Ian Flynn. SUE. ME.

Edited by Kiah
Please explain your reasons behind your choices as not doing so does not contribute to actual discussion.
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