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Happy 25th/Silver Anniversary to the Sonic SatAM!


RaginRonic

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Yep.

It was 25 years ago today, Saturday, Sept. 18, 1993, that the ABC Sonic The Hedgehog SatAM made it's TV debut on the aforementioned network, as well as the CTV Television Network in Canada.

The episode 'Super Sonic' led off the show in Week 1, after getting a 6-minute preview the night before during ABC's 'Hangin' With Mr. Cooper', a special presentation of that show.

The fact that discussion on the show has continued non-stop for 25 years is still pretty crazy to me.

Again, Happy Silver Birthday to the Sonic SatAM!

 

=)

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Kind of sad I guess that, with the death of the Archie comics and IDW starting anew, everything from the show is dead in any official capacity now. The show was never a favourite of mine. I didn't grow up with it, and didn't watch any of it until I was in my 20s. It's wholly not what I associate Sonic with. But it's got a strong fanbase to this day. Can't say that that's not impressive.

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I first saw SatAM when I was 16 or 17 and bought into the idea it was the greatest Sonic cartoon ever. But years of rewatching showed the cracks for me. It's not a bad cartoon kinda average but not bad. It's just not the best Sonic Cartoon IMHO.

But having said that I do love the Freedom Fighters and am sad to see them gone. But whatever as the old saying goes "Don't be sad it's over be happy it happened at all".

Also Power Rangers probably didn't contribute as much to the shows downfall as people think. Power Rangers aired new episodes on Weekdays in  the Afternoon and SatAM was on well Saturday Mornings in a slot that got preempted for sports. Ironically the same fate would befall Power Rangers when the last Disney season RPM (A show about a Resistance fighting to save their Post-Apocalyptic world from the Robot Armies of a Computer Virus) was only aired as part of ABC Kids in a bad slot where it was regularly pre-empted for sports and some markets didn't even get it period from what I hear.

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25 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

I first saw SatAM when I was 16 or 17 and bought into the idea it was the greatest Sonic cartoon ever. But years of rewatching showed the cracks for me. It's not a bad cartoon kinda average but not bad. It's just not the best Sonic Cartoon IMHO.

But having said that I do love the Freedom Fighters and am sad to see them gone. But whatever as the old saying goes "Don't be sad it's over be happy it happened at all".

Also Power Rangers probably didn't contribute as much to the shows downfall as people think. Power Rangers aired new episodes on Weekdays in  the Afternoon and SatAM was on well Saturday Mornings in a slot that got preempted for sports. Ironically the same fate would befall Power Rangers when the last Disney season RPM (A show about a Resistance fighting to save their Post-Apocalyptic world from the Robot Armies of a Computer Virus) was only aired as part of ABC Kids in a bad slot where it was regularly pre-empted for sports and some markets didn't even get it period from what I hear.

Plus the guy in charge of ABC didn't like stretching out animated shows beyond two seasons allegedly, preferring to keep bringing in fresh material, so even if SatAm was a resounding success it was likely still doomed from the beginning.

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SatAM is a weird show in that while I really, really dislike it, I still have a strong sense of nostalgia for it. I remember watching the ABC Saturday Morning Preview Special wayyyyy back in 1993 and totally spazzing out at how awesome the intro to SatAM was.

I have fond memories of waking up early every Saturday morning and watching it with a bowl of Rice Krispies. 

But as time went by and SatAM got canned, I looked to the comics for my SatAM fix.. Hoo boy. Penders work on the comic really soured my view on the SatAM universe as a whole. It was Sonic in name only. The comic really belonged to Sally.

Imo, Sally was an even bigger Mary Sue than Rey in The Force Awakens. The comics kept focusing on ridiculous furry relationships and cringey original characters. My interest waned. Sonic Adventure was soon announced and I became a Japan-Sonic purist from then on.

In SatAM's defense, I appreciated the art style, for TV animation it was quite impressive. Feature film quality. (For the time) I also admired the darker interpretation of Robotnik. (Really wish game universe Eggman would grow a pair)

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2 hours ago, Myst said:

Imo, Sally was an even bigger Mary Sue than Rey in The Force Awakens.

 

Yeah but blame this on Penders,

 

Sally isnt a bad character and really becoming a japan Sonic purist is really not the answer when sega itself has the real mary sues of the sonic universe Shadow and Silver.

 

As for Cringy yeah sega has an issue there too, mainly Charmy and Big

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6 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

 

Yeah but blame this on Penders,

 

Sally isnt a bad character and really becoming a japan Sonic purist is really not the answer when sega itself has the real mary sues of the sonic universe Shadow and Silver.

I dunno, it was Ben Hurst that really penned the whole 'Sally is careful and smart, Sonic is reckless and dumb' formula when he took over the show in Season One. Beforehand they at least TRIED to give the other Freedom Fighters importance and moments in the limelight and made Sally more of a pompous equal to Sonic that was over assured of her methodical approaches. I will admit that that both the show and the comics seemed REALLY over engrossed in her and Sonic's banter from the start however.

I know some stuff like Rotor being demoted (thus likely why Sally took over all the smart guy duties) and Dulcy being introduced were the result of other mandates however.

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Yeah but again it makes sense in context of the universe.

Sonic being reckless is a good character flaw and have Sally is more his conscience.

There is nothing wrong with Sally, its peoples perception of her.

People see her as bossy, a mary sue and a symbol of "girl power"

The only reason why people hate Sally is that she is not Amy.

 

Good, Amy as a character sucks in the official segasonic universe.

She is bratty and a stalker, and yet people like her?

Oh yes lets love the crazy stalker girl and hate the chipmunk who has every right to be harsh in context of her universe.

And may i remind you how crap Amy was in heroes?

Ian its no wonder why I prefer boom or Fleetway Amy

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13 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

Yeah but again it makes sense in context of the universe.

Sonic being reckless is a good character flaw and have Sally is more his conscience.

There is nothing wrong with Sally, its peoples perception of her.

People see her as bossy, a mary sue and a symbol of "girl power"

The only reason why people hate Sally is that she is not Amy.

 

Good, Amy as a character sucks in the official segasonic universe.

She is bratty and a stalker, and yet people like her?

Oh yes lets love the crazy stalker girl and hate the chipmunk who has every right to be harsh in context of her universe.

And may i remind you how crap Amy was in heroes?

Ian its no wonder why I prefer boom or Fleetway Amy

To be fair, you can blame flanderization and poor writing for that. Amy at her best was a decent character who often contributed to more major character development than Sonic himself during the pre-Unleashed Era:

https://board.sonicstadium.org/profile/2255-seneddtor-missile/?status=931325&type=status

When you think about it, Amy in the pre-Unleashed era was honestly one of the more influential characters, even if her role wasn't always combat orientated. Sonic and the more combat oriented people might be the big faces of the band so to speak, but in many ways she was the one who often times noticed or helped out in the small but important ways that others overlooked.

 

Take Gamma for instance: A machine who blindly followed orders no matter what, proving himself to be the best of Eggman's robotic soldiers at the time, but harboring doubts when he saw Eggman's callousness towards his fellow machines who had failed.

She managed to influence Gamma to start doubting Eggman and was brave enough to stand against Sonic despite him wanted to destroy Gamma, thus allowing for Gamma to not only turn against Eggman despite his limited programming, but also drive him to destroy several of Eggman's strongest soldiers at the time and free his trapped Flicky family.

 

Shadow was a grief-stricken revenge minded person, driven only by distorted memories of his past and friend, and a desire to punish humanity for destroying his life.

She managed to get through Shadow's memory block in Sonic Adventure 2 where no one else was able to and convince him of the error of his actions and the true intentions of his dead friend, not only allowing for the world to be saved from Gerald's revenge beyond the grave, but also in the long term ensured a permanent new ally in the fight against evil.

 

Silver was a well-intended, but sadly gullible pawn who was so desperate for the salvation of his future, that he was mislead by evil into nearly ensuring a far worse future for everyone.  Yet deep down he harbored doubts of his mission, but did not see any reason to change since he believed it was what needed to be done, even if unpleasant.

She was able to plant the seeds of doubt in Silver's mind in the erased 06 continuity by defending Sonic from him despite the drastic power difference, and made him start questioning his actions working for Mephiles, thus ensuring that in the long term he would be able to help put an end to the threat of Solaris.

 

She's not the best fighter, and her bratty moments and obsession with Sonic does get in her way at times, but when the chips were down, she often times ended up being a more important catalyst for change for several of the most prominent characters in the franchise than any amount of the flashy kickassery of her larger than life friends, and did so primarily through her smaller actions of being an honest and kind soul.

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I think it's that after a while you get sick of Sonic being flanderized into an egotist who keeps causing as many dangers as he solves (seriously I think over half the episodes in Season Two, the Freedom Fighters were nearly killed because of Sonic), especially since it's often to ram down his head to listen to this one same voice of reason. It made one character too one-note perfect and the other too unlikeable from his arrogance and failure to learn from his mistakes, and everyone else......just there.

Boom Sonic for example is reckless and cocksure, but compared to the Freedom Fighters, the Boom heroes all have their own foibles to balance it out. Tails is the more careful smart guy for example, but he's also TOO methodical and obsessed with using his gadgets for every situation, leading to his own flawed moments which Sonic sometimes gets lucid displays towards. Basically the detail that being strategic isn't always the 'careful' way, just like being on-the-fly and spontaneous isn't always just being reckless and foolish. Same for Boom Amy who is more lucid than Sonic, but also controlling and sometimes one track in straightening her oh-so-misguided friends out (Closed Door Policy for example). Basically they all even each other out rather than one always being the screw up, one always being right, and a few background characters.

It looked like Sally was supposed to be this early on, but as time passed they seemed to avert from making Sally too flawed or too much of a butt monkey, even in later comics where they TRIED to make Sally look like a fallible character who could make mistakes again, they couldn't really grasp a proper foible for her.

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5 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Kind of sad I guess that, with the death of the Archie comics and IDW starting anew, everything from the show is dead in any official capacity now. The show was never a favourite of mine. I didn't grow up with it, and didn't watch any of it until I was in my 20s. It's wholly not what I associate Sonic with. But it's got a strong fanbase to this day. Can't say that that's not impressive.

That is sort of sad to think about. I'll be honest and say I wasn't a big fan of the TV series for various reasons, so I never got into it. As a little kid, I loved the comics and read them all the time. Though it's kind of hilarious to look back on the Ken Penders era of the comic (which I read the most) and realize how awful a lot of it was. But still, despite all the flaws, I still really liked it, and today as an adult I think that it being different and separate from the games (even though during the Penders era it deviated way too much in my opinion) contributed to it having its own distinct and strong fanbase.

There's a fan continuation of the comics online though, and I think that's a testament to how passionate some people still are about the characters and their stories.

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1 hour ago, E-122-Psi said:

I dunno, it was Ben Hurst that really penned the whole 'Sally is careful and smart, Sonic is reckless and dumb' formula when he took over the show in Season One. 

I always hated how brain dead Hurst's Sonic was. It carried over into Underground too. He write him as a complete moron and it always makes me think he actually resented the games. 

I mean that's baseless I admit but the man really didn't seem all that interested in the game elements.

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49 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

I always hated how brain dead Hurst's Sonic was. It carried over into Underground too. He write him as a complete moron and it always makes me think he actually resented the games. 

I mean that's baseless I admit but the man really didn't seem all that interested in the game elements.

I guess what helped Underground was that most of the other heroes were on the same level, Sonia was more what earlier Sally was, a straight man but still prone to her own hubris and errors at times, while Manic was more roguish but could be competent. It also played on a more weak willed universe that was conflicted over fighting Robotnik or selling out to preserve themselves, which Satam did do but only for the odd episode.

Everyone in SatAm, when not a damsel in distress due to circumstance, was more well behaved and lacked as many blatant fatal foibles as Sonic at face value, so he seemed more glaringly flawed and immature. Even Dulcy knew to keep out of trouble besides when she was clumsy, which is more a physical flaw than a personality one. The one exception was Antoine, who I'm almost certain they made more glaringly stupid and loser-ish just so Sonic looked less incompetent by comparison (and even then it was in such a cringe-y 'look how cool I am compared to that nerd' sort of way that it only made Sonic look more snide and unlikeable).

I mean if you put Boom or AoSth Sonic in a more realistic setting where everyone was more mature and serious acting they'd probably look like a moron relatively too, but they're in a more whimsical format where everyone's sort of like minded. I feel like SatAm just sort of took what AoSth was doing with Sonic characterisation wise and imported it, likely why after a while he became exaggeratedly smug and one-liner-ish and pretty much a cartoonish child for the more realistic Sally to babysit (though they added the odd poignant depth here and there, eg. Uncle Chuck).

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still though when the series was good it was still better than most Sonic TV shows and media, yes it has flaws but there are times where the writing was top notch.

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Happy 25th SatAM Sonic.  This show has made so much of an impact on my life and career its almost surreal to say.  That a little cartoon show based on a fast hedgehog would steer me in a path that would shape who I am today.  In fact, I dropped so much art this month alone to commentate this occasion.  Even filmed video skits.  Im just too passionate I guess =P

I admit that the skits are doofy and dumb but whatever.  I was having fun.

 

Next up, is a SatAM25 poster I worked on in the last month.

SatAM25.jpg

@E-122-Psi Id love to know your thoughts since early this summer you gave me permission to reference your Sally sprite which I re-illustrated in high resThe rest was referenced from Damien of spriters-resource.com

https://www.deviantart.com/catchuptheduck/art/SatAM-Sonic-25th-Anniversary-Tribute-762309857

 

And last, a listing of the reasons why I love this show: 

SatAMfan.jpg

Getting overly sentimental, but man, I cant believe its been that long.  Ok, I got that out of my system.  Its been a very productive month as you can see 😃

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"developed a deeper connection with animals" ?

Anyway, happy 25th, SatAM ! I shall rewatch the series on DVD this week then :) (I'm happy we got the French boxset a couple years ago !)

It was first shown in September 1995 on TF1, a French TV channel, just after they ran out of AoStH episodes. Let's just say it was very surprising to have a new Sonic cartoon, popping out of nowhere, with a new direction and a new cast (it didn't help that the theme song was the same as AoStH), but these new characters grew up on me, especially Antoine, who's maybe my favorite character from any Sonic spin-off.

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1 hour ago, a knothole resident said:

 

SatAM25.jpg

@E-122-Psi Id love to know your thoughts since early this summer you gave me permission to reference your Sally sprite which I re-illustrated in high resThe rest was referenced from Damien of spriters-resource.com

https://www.deviantart.com/catchuptheduck/art/SatAM-Sonic-25th-Anniversary-Tribute-762309857

It looks pretty cool, thanx for using my stuff. Only nitpick I can think of is that the Sally and Tails sprites look differently rendered from the other three, though I don't know if that was just a design choice or not.

34 minutes ago, Adamis said:

"developed a deeper connection with animals" ?

Anyway, happy 25th, SatAM ! I shall rewatch the series on DVD this week then :) (I'm happy we got the French boxset a couple years ago !)

It was first shown in September 1995 on TF1, a French TV channel, just after they ran out of AoStH episodes. Let's just say it was very surprising to have a new Sonic cartoon, popping out of nowhere, with a new direction and a new cast (it didn't help that the theme song was the same as AoStH), but these new characters grew up on me, especially Antoine, who's maybe my favorite character from any Sonic spin-off.

I'm guessing he means the whole 'nature vs human industry' theme.

It's funny you say that, I remember Channel 4 doing a similar thing in the UK. They had a large run of AoSth episodes, and randomly aired SatAm in the middle before going back to the rest of AoSth. I remember being rather confused by it at first, I thought they'd given AoSth a drastic reboot and then changed their mind.

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The intro will always be a classic. Back during a time where people did not take cartoons for granted. Re watching the show you can see how cheesy a lot of the show is but ovearll it was still a good run. The ending was a bit rushed but enjoyed the ride it. Along with bumps from bump in the night

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5 minutes ago, E-122-Psi said:

It looks pretty cool, thanx for using my stuff. Only nitpick I can think of is that the Sally and Tails sprites look differently rendered from the other three, though I don't know if that was just a design choice or not.

Appreciate the compliment and again thanks for giving me permission.  The layout of the sprites were a design choice cause if you zoom into the high res version, each character is composed of different geometry.  Squares, Triangles, Circles, Dots, Lines and X's.  Its hard to distinguish from the naked eye. 

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15 minutes ago, a knothole resident said:

Appreciate the compliment and again thanks for giving me permission.  The layout of the sprites were a design choice cause if you zoom into the high res version, each character is composed of different geometry.  Squares, Triangles, Circles, Dotes, Lines and X's.  Its hard to distinguish from the naked eye. 

Ah I see, never mind then. Actually the geometry collage theme kinda makes a cool nod to the old Japanese covers.

1 hour ago, MadmanRB said:

still though when the series was good it was still better than most Sonic TV shows and media, yes it has flaws but there are times where the writing was top notch.

I think the writing was cool in setting up a premise and atmosphere, but kinda lacked in character development/agency. In other words you could get the overall emotion and ambience the show was going for and it was to some degree genuine, but the bare way the characters played into it ruined some of the believability and attachment.

Sonic Boom for example started off well showing the stakes, with Cat's sacrifice giving a sense of real danger (and him having some amount of character making him a bit more than just a red shirt), and yet the cast don't seem to care about him at all, they treat it like any other Saturday Morning cartoon adventure with wise cracks and goofing around and make no rush to save him while still have time or even feel remotely bad that they fail. And of course, bare continuity means he's never mentioned or remembered again. Darker heavier premise working against basic cartoon execution.

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Yikes. Got my daily dosage of "I feel old" for the day. 😅

 

SatAM is still one of my favorite branches of the franchise, so I don't need an excuse like an anniversary to go back and appreciate it. I still find myself binge watching 6 or 7 episodes from time to time.

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For all the critique of Sonic and Sally. I always liked that (at their best) it always read to me like they were 'meant' to challenge eachother as two characters on equal footing. They were both capable of giving eachother a hard time, I don't think it was all Sally ragging Sonic with the idiot-ball. To me it's a refreshing dynamic since it's rare that Sonic's paired with people that don't have to look up him to some degree. Not that I don't also enjoy that aspect about him, (that Sonic can be more of an ideal than a character at times), and that's not to say SatAM's Sonic couldn't be as inspiring as Game!Sonic either. To give some positive points to him: when Rotor feels like a sub par member of the team Sonic's there to talk him up in Sub Sonic, or how about in Warp Sonic where he altruistically splints the power stone in two for Griff. That a move right out of modern Sonic's playbook.

Happy birthday SatAM.

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