Everything you know about Sonic is wrong.

[SBR2]

This video dives into the true Biblical purity of Sonic and dispels the Blasphemy of every game. 

(For real though this video is both hilarious and makes a great point about fandoms)

[dbzfan7]

Is it sad I'd honestly find this story better than anything they could come up with now a days?

[Nicky Nicardo]

I had NO idea about all of that before seeing that video... that's one hell of a backstory xDD I love it.

Going forward, when I hear people talking about how they don't like any new or different iteration of Sonic and how he should always stay his 'original' self or something... I'm gonna think about this and think to myself "Yeeeaaahhhh... the 'original' ain't really how it was supposed to be EITHER, technically." xDD

[Sonic Fan J]

2 hours ago, Bucket said:

I had NO idea about all of that before seeing that video... that's one hell of a backstory xDD I love it.

Going forward, when I hear people talking about how they don't like any new or different iteration of Sonic and how he should always stay his 'original' self or something... I'm gonna think about this and think to myself "Yeeeaaahhhh... the 'original' ain't really how it was supposed to be EITHER, technically." xDD

Didn't watch the video myself but knowing some of the early concepts that they floated around, there is a reason I typically talk about how I interpret Sonic and what I think best fits him as a result. Even for as much as Naka understood the character there were decisions that he made that were every bit as questionable as any number of other things that were tried out with Sonic over the years.

 

EDIT: And now having watched the video I can say yeah, I'll just keep sticking to my interpretation that starts from how the world is presented to me and the Japanese manuals. I'm rather glad that most of those ideas were never adapted in any form as I'm pretty positive it wouldn't have worked out at all.

[MadmanRB]

14 hours ago, Sonic Fan J said:

Didn't watch the video myself but knowing some of the early concepts that they floated around, there is a reason I typically talk about how I interpret Sonic and what I think best fits him as a result. Even for as much as Naka understood the character there were decisions that he made that were every bit as questionable as any number of other things that were tried out with Sonic over the years.

 

EDIT: And now having watched the video I can say yeah, I'll just keep sticking to my interpretation that starts from how the world is presented to me and the Japanese manuals. I'm rather glad that most of those ideas were never adapted in any form as I'm pretty positive it wouldn't have worked out at all.

Thing is Japanese Sonic didnt start off well either, this video does bring up the fact they wanted Sonic to have a human girlfriend.

Face it West and East Sonic have their good elements and bad elements, no one really got it right if you really want to be technical.

Now as for my opinion there are elements here that i do mostly like, the idea that Sonic.... GASP has a family!

And GASP! has a mother and father!

And GASP! Is not the only child!

Granted this sadly open the door to having a shitty fan character like Zoom, Sonics older and much faster brother who is cyan and sparkles like a Twilight vampire but meh.

And i like the idea of Robotnik (Not Eggman) being Sonics former mentor, this was played with in the Fleetway comics a bit but never given the deep storytelling it rightfully deserves.

[Sonic Fan J]

2 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

Thing is Japanese Sonic didnt start off well either, this video does bring up the fact they wanted Sonic to have a human girlfriend.

Face it West and East Sonic have their good elements and bad elements, no one really got it right if you really want to be technical.

Not arguing that for a second and it is why I made sure to bring up what aspects shape my interpretation of the character. Funny thing is though since one of the possible backgrounds also includes Sonic being a storybook character based on a WWII fighter pilot there are a lot of unused ideas that existed outside of this silly bible that went unused. Not really surprising honestly either since the final Sonic we got was a result of SoJ and SoA working together on some level outside of their petty rivalry. It's why Sonic doesn't have fangs or a human girlfriend and part of the reason I wonder why after finalizing his design SoA still decided to throw it all out and go with the SatAM/Archie Comics stuff while changing Sonic's quills to a mohawk not too mention changing Eggman in everything but the SoJ games. There is so much of a mess around Sonic's creation it's honestly amazing he took off in the first place and perhaps part of the reason why SEGA can't figure what makes him work.

[Kellodrawsalot]

.....regardless of the whole USA VS Japan, im glad they threw away most of the stuff into the trash can. Only thing I liked was Sonic and Eggman being friends/son/father figure.

 

Is there a Sonic Japanese bible somewhwere? All I can find is that he was supposed to be in a music band, human girlfriend and that he was born on Christmas island ? (which silly as it sound still sounded a lot better then what the West first thought of)

[MadmanRB]

2 hours ago, Kellodrawsalot said:

 human girlfriend

Let me stop you right there

 

 

[StaticMania]

20 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

Let me stop you right there

 

 

How about you just not do that, is that alright?

[Osmium]

I've been familiar with this story for many years now so it's quite hilarious to see a video finally focus on it so much. Brilliant. 

[Kellodrawsalot]

1 hour ago, MadmanRB said:

Let me stop you right there

 

 

as bad as that is, can you imagine how the franchise would have looked like if they continued with Maddona ?

 

Tho the reboot archie comic books gave her a pretty cool new look and new character

[StaticMania]

That might as well be a different character altogether.

[MetalSkulkBane]

14 hours ago, StaticMania said:

That might as well be a different character altogether.

Correction: That might as well be a Topaz from Sonic X.

Then again, what can we say about a character who existed for 2-3 page?

[StaticMania]

Oh, well if that's the case, then it definitely may as well be a different character.

Shark.

[Scritch the Cat]

A lot of the ideas in that Sega of America Sonic "Bible" are just humorously absurd in their presumptions of where they even need to go.  It's so bizarre that they assumed people would just accept that there was a family of hedgehogs in Nebraska, living mostly like ordinary hedgehogs but with extra size and intelligence, dreaming of being olympic sprinters and getting internships at science labs, but how one of them is blue, that needs to be explained, even if the explanation they wanted, that he ran super-fast on a treadmill, makes no sense in itself.  The second draft, which just has Sonic living alongside his animal friends, I like much better, with the exception of the absurd bit about a hedgehog needing another animal to teach him how to roll into a ball; one that doesn't actually roll into a ball to boot.

However, the Kintobor bits were literally hate at first sight to me, and it's sad that those are what Sega retained, right up until Sonic Adventure if I'm not mistaken.  It certainly didn't help that while I was present as of the first ever Sonic game and knew basically who the main characters were, but at the time I first learned of that old backstory, Sonic Adventure 2: Battle was my favorite game, and I liked its Robotnik backstory better.  Still, I think the SoA backstory is just dumb on almost every level.  First the obvious: Nobody needs an explanation why someone who makes robots is called "Robotnik".  Often people give themselves surnames based on their trades, such as "Farmer, Baker, Cook"; compare the absurdity of an ambitious genius thinking "So thanks to a lab accident, my new name has the word 'Robot' in it; I guess I'm just fated to built robots from here on."  Also, I think complaining about how in modern epic plots, everything and everyone is unnecessarily connected, might have become more of a cliche than that epic plot trope ever actually was, but the criticism is valid here: Nobody needs Sonic to have known Robotnik or whatever he was called back then to establish why they're fighting.  Sonic is an anthropomorphic cartoon character but he is still an animal, other animals are encased in robots, and the guy who made those robots is also wrecking the environment; Sonic is going up against him because that offends his hedgehog sensibilities.  That was enough; without even using any words it makes more sense than what SoA conceived with a bunch of them.

Beyond that, though, where that backstory goes from merely dumb and redundant right to repulsive is in its concept of what good and evil are; declaring that they're simply oppositely charged sorts of energies that can be channeled manipulated, as opposed to the result of urges whose moral worth is determined by what and whom they affect, but which are innate parts of being complex beings.  The idea that this scientist was making a machine to mind-wipe everyone when he was a good guy, and the reason he is now an evil dictator is because his act of totalitarian mind-control went wrong; as opposed to it being seen as at all problematic by default...yuck!  That is so, so disturbing an implication!

Ultimately I think Sega of America made the mistake of thinking that bigger is automatically better.  For all the unpleasant implications of Madonna's existence, she didn't end up existing, and if she she had, the whole plot of the Sonic series would have likely been rather different.  Quite possibly, it would have been far worse-received; a big part of the intent with Sonic was to be an answer to Mario while also being quite different from Mario, and having the umpteenth distressed damsel plot would not have helped him do that.  The plot they actually arrived at with the games in themselves worked just fine for an explanation of what was happening in them.  Sure; not every backstory Sonic, Robotnik or anyone else gets is doomed to be terrible, but given how badly they can be botched, compared to how smoothly the plots can run without them, I can't imagine why Sega of America decided to write a backstory, except because they assumed we'd willingly consume just about anything they slapped on...and a lot of us did, but go-figure, almost nothing major that Sonic was slapped onto actually used that backstory.