DEEP DIVE ZONE: A Sonic video series (Updated 4/21)

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Hello everyone! This thread is for posting and discussing episodes of my new Sonic replay/rewatch/reread podcast, Deep Dive Zone!

Youtube

Twitter

Old (outdated) concepts/ideas post:

Spoiler

With the prospect of Sonic Frontiers and Sonic Origins shaping up to be two potentially very-interesting entries into the Sonic series, I've been looking to broaden my horizons in expressing myself. One thing that the four years since high school have taught me is that what I'm really good at is having opinions about Sonic the hedgehog.

This has inspired me and left a strong urge since January 2020 to make some more personalized way of getting those opinions out, and what I've settled on is some sort of podcast that I can just plaster all over forums, youtube, and twitter. Sure, there are a lot of those, but they can never be my podcast.

The issue is: I like to be thorough as a Sonic fan, so if I'm talking about the series, I want to cover almost every base I reasonably can. Comics, TV shows, the works. My favorite media podcast to date is The Shrieking Shack*, and they just covered everything from start to finish. Even as I've tried to draw out a diagram for how I hope to cover stuff, I find it mostly resembles the average layout of one of their podcasts.

* neither I nor the hosts of The Shrieking Shack ignore or condone the behavior of JK Rowling, nor what harmful content there is in her books.

The idea of a complete, linear journey from one end of the Sonic Franchise to the other really sticks out to me as a fun idea and challenge to take on.

Here's where I need you guys' help, though: I don't know what order I want to tackle the series.

I could go by medium, doing all the games, then all the comics, then all the shows. But obviously, once I got to the end of one medium, it would be a pretty radical shift to the next.

I could alternatively tackle things by era, doing the classic games, then the classic comics, et cetera. Let me know which of these appeals more to you all.

My order is finalized. I'm going games -> shows -> comics -> writing, by era. IE classic games then classic shows, comics, writing, then adventure games, shows, comics, etc. My co-hosts disagreeed, and now we have a totally different order. Don't worry, it'll be fun.

I'm still struggling to find a good name. A couple of people here at SSMB suggested some here, but I'm honestly still unsure of what to go with or how good each of them are. I think what's getting to me about it is that I want something recognizable without being too on-the-nose. Once again, other people's takes would be appreciated.

Finally, that thing in the top-left is my heretofore-unknown collaborator for this project. I do not strictly need a co-host, but it feels like a lot of the best shows work when they have more than one person discussing things. This presents a difficult problem however, as I have no personal relationships with anyone dedicated enough to Sonic to play, read and watch everything and talk about it for an hour or two a week. If someone here is just...absolutely in love with the idea of talking to a random stranger about Sonic games every week for the next who-knows-how-long, then obviously you're free to join me, but somehow I don't think that's a huge demographic. The main idea I had was to just open up requests and let whoever here wants to be on the podcast come on week-by-week, though in both cases I'd need you to be over the age of 18 and not a raging psychopath.

I now have two co-hosts! I think we'll have a nice dynamic.

Don't feel too obligated here, by the way. The last thing I want is for this to turn into a "do my work for me" thread. I still plan on trying to figure most of this out on my own, I am only looking to gauge community opinion here.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm still in the planning phases here, but I want to get as much input as possible from the community as to what kind of content and engagement works best for you. I'm probably going to make posts like this on other Sonic sites, but I wanted to start with the community I've been part of the longest.

My current list of Sonic material to cover is here. If I've missed anything, please let me know (I am currently unsure whether I will tackle Sonic crossovers in other media).

Edited Sunday at 01:20 PM by Shaddy Zaphod

[Wraith]

As a shrieking shack enjoyer my suggestion is to go purely in chronological order, with every game, show comic etc as they were released. This would result in a lot of jumping around but you'd also be able to review each piece of Sonic media with the context of when it was released as backing IE AOSTH compared to the games that were out around the same time. Sonic 2 was all the context they had to work with, so how does it hold up as an adaptation keeping that in mind?

The only problem is comics. They ran the entire time and I'm sure you don't want to have to review a year + worth of comics between games and sporadic tv shows.

 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I don't necessarily have a problem with that. The bigger deal to me is whether that'd be good for listeners, and whether the work of deciphering which order 3 cartoons, 2 ongoing comics, 1 movie and a scattered collection of manga updated in what order would be a pain in the ass. Is there a good resource for lining up which issues and episodes came out when to coordinate?

"A year+ worth of comics" is not that much, since they're each less than thirty pages long and only release one a month. Your average shonen jump output is way crazier than that. Review channels and podcasts like their routine, and if I were to do them in chunks between more significant games, that'd be easier to settle into and less jarring for the audience, especially since for a period of time it's just gonna be stuff like Sonic Chaos that you can beat in half an hour.

After all, the Shrieking Shack didn't go entirely in chronological order. They did each movie after the book it adapts, and the second movie came out only a few months before the release of the fifth book.

 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Work has progressed steadily on this project over the past month, but I was sick with covid for quite a while during that time and I am still recovering (read: healthy but coughing like crazy), which has set me back a bit.

I've decided that I am still going by era, but I'm going to organize it at games -> TV shows -> comics -> other stuff (books, short stories, etc).

My current list of things to cover is here, though as you can see it is disorganized. I'll sort that out later.

Two close friends of mine have offered to co-host, so we are discussion scheduling.

Currently I am being held up by a few things:

1. We still lack a name for the show.

2. I've discovered that discord would be a terrible program to try to record a podcast from, as it butchers the audio quality of whoever is using it. I don't know what better chat software exists, or if I should simply have my co-hosts record themselves separately and splice the audio together myself. Can anyone help me out with this?

[Shaddy Zaphod]

The first episode is out! This one covers Sonic 1 and Sonic 1 8-bit!

Let me know any opinions, questions or comments you all have. I think this turned out alright for a first episode but I know plenty of places where we can improve (mostly in terms of our audio).

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Episode 2 is here! Tonight, we talk about Sonic 2 and Sonic 2 8-bit.

I noticed my audio was peaking a lot last week, so I hope this episode sounds better. As always, feedback is appreciated. I think we had a better rapport this week.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

We're at episode 3! It's about Sonic CD, and murder!

[Shaddy Zaphod]

We missed a week due to dental health and crack cocaine! But episode 4 is here, finally.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

We made it a whole five episodes! To celebrate, we torture ourselves with five game gear games.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

 

Sonic Deep Dive Episode 6 is out! This (short) one is about Doctor Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine!

[Shaddy Zaphod]

No episode this week, Bruce says his allergies are too bad for him to even speak properly.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Episode 7 is here! We talk about Spinball, and watch Sonic punch himself in the chest.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

We did a bonus episode about Sonic Origins! And I accidentally misspoke and said Tails games are next. Knuckles Chaotix is this sunday, Tails games are next week. Whoops.

 

 

 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Episode 8 of Deep Dive Zone is here! This one is about Knuckles Chaotix.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Episode 9 is out! We covered all three games to Tails's name, and one of them was even good!

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Happy, uh, mother's day episode? I'm not gonna lie, this has nothing to do with current times, but we had a great time with Sonic the Fighters, and even SegaSonic gave us some charm.

 

I'm also experimenting with using more game footage in these from now on. We'll see how that pans out.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Episode 11 covers all three Sega Saturn Sonic sames!

...uh, I mean games.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

 

For our final Classic Sonic games episode, we talked about all the worst ones!

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Our coverage of the Sonic cartoons begins with Adventures of Sonic part 1!

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Episode 2 of our Adventures of Sonic coverage, featuring possibly the worst thumbnail I've made yet!

[Shaddy Zaphod]

New episode is out! Sadly, this week we have to talk about Robotnik's ass.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Gasp! A new episode!? On today, of all days?

Yeah bro. It's a Sunday.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

We're here again, this time with the Chaos Emerald arc of Adventures of Sonic! This was easily the highlight of the whole show for us.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

We finally finish off Adventures of Sonic, including that one really weird Christmas special with Sally in it.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Yeah you got it, we're starting SatAM now! The first few episodes are pretty decent, but we know it'll only get better from here.

Sally's cute, Antoine is annoying, Bunnie is underutilized, and Rotor is overshadowed, but it's still far and away the best Sonic show of the 90s.