Jump to content
Awoo.

The Fandom Divide on "Classic" Sonic


Dr. Mechano

Recommended Posts

I think the continuities really change how we view "retro" and "modern."

To the Japanese fans, the modern games made their once happy-go-lucky cutesy series a lot darker and edgier.

To American/European fans, the modern games softened up their once dark-and-edgy series with comparatively "kiddy" plots.

But then of course, the actual games were exactly the same in Japan and the West, and i think those were what first and foremost formed peoples view of Sonic in both areas, while the game manuals, artwork and merchandise was always secondary. So most people probably viewed Sonic as a relatively lighthearted series in the west as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...And the gameplay, right?

Gameplay's kind of important too.

If the story and soundtrack are spot-on (and like I said, with Sonic it always is), I can enjoy the gameplay in order to experience the soundtrack and see the story through. There would have to be many gaping flaws in gameplay to to stand in the way of that, but Sonic has never gone that far. That is probably why I love Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog so much.

For example, while SoA Robotnik was a hole-eyed heartless madman who literally turned animals into robots according to the manuals, there's no reason to believe he had any identity before "Ivo Robotnik," so he's distinct from SatAM's Julian despite being a very similar character. He's not the lovable glasses-wearing version of classic Eggman, but he's not the glowy red-eyes cartoon version either. ...or the funny red-eyes cartoon version, while we're at it.

And by the way, has anyone tried applying the name "Eggman" to any of the Ivo Robotniks? I was one of the many Americans who only knew "Robotnik" in the 90s, but since Sonic Adventure, "Robotnik" seems like a mouthful compared "Eggman" being a formidable villainous nickname. But I might be a fluke in that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And by the way, has anyone tried applying the name "Eggman" to any of the Ivo Robotniks? I was one of the many Americans who only knew "Robotnik" in the 90s, but since Sonic Adventure, "Robotnik" seems like a mouthful compared "Eggman" being a formidable villainous nickname. But I might be a fluke in that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've brought this up many, many times before, but I really, really can't for the life of me understand how Sega of Japan let Sega of America take such creative liberty with the Sonic series back in the classic days, Eggman in particular. I mean, 'butt-face' Sonic is already, in my opinion, a hideous Americanised caricature of his former self, created for the sole purpose of making it look like Sonic was an American creation. Given America's then-typical 'hardcore Kirby' approach to games and cartoon characters in general, I find it odd that the Westernised classic Sonic looks a lot less edgy and 'cool' than his Japanese counterpart.

But yes, Eggman. For a start, they completely misinterpreted his design in the US, giving him ungodly black eyeballs, and even then, whilst the boxart 'Robotnik' still largely resembled the in-game Eggman sprite, the AoStH and SatAM versions bore little resemblance to Eggman himself other than the moustache and the shared colour scheme. Again, I'm actually shocked that SoJ even green-lit not only such drastic redesigns for the character, but two entirely different ones, neither of which really resembled the original character all that much (although of course, AoStH Robotnik is awesome in his own way :lol: ).

But yeah. I was introduced to Sonic via AoStH and grew up with Sonic the Comic. Yet first and foremost, I always considered the games as the 'main' thing. I guess even as a kid, even when I was reading STC much more often than new games were releasing, I still sort of figured that the media versions were secondary. So yeah, whilst I certainly have a biased nostalgic soft spot for STC and the old cartoons, I was very much in the camp where I decided to disregard most of Western Sonic as 'not canon' and 'jump ship' to what I considered the 'proper' Japanese continuity once the Adventure era rolled around.

As much as I grew up with Western Classic Sonic, I couldn't help but feel like I'd been lied to as a kid. I mean, Sega did screw around with the Sonic series quite a bit in the West. Classic Western Sonic is certainly a pretty big deviation from the source material.

I blame hardcore Kirby. D:

  • Thumbs Up 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've brought this up many, many times before, but I really, really can't for the life of me understand how Sega of Japan let Sega of America take such creative liberty with the Sonic series back in the classic days,

They did that because they realized that Sonic needed to hit it big time in the west, and that westerners are generally better than Japanese at understanding what a western audience wants.

So the sheer fact that Sega of Japan let Sega of America screw around with their creation is nothing odd. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that some of the specific changes made might be a bit hard to undertand the reasoning behind. The whole "making Eggman look more evil" thing though is understandable. Sonic was first and foremost intended to appeal to kids, and contemporary kid's entertainment in the west back in those days usually featured villains that were rotten through-and-through and also looked evil. So that's why Sega of America changed Eggman so much, including giving him a more evil-sounding name (of course, they couldn't use "Eggman" due to copyright reasons anyway, but let's just say it's no coincidence that they gave him an "obvious bad guy" name like "Robotnik" over something closer to the original name).

Edited by batson
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What gets me, though, is that they only changed the boxart. The in-game sprites were obviously wearing glasses, so it shouldn't have been that hard to tell that something was amiss. But I can sorta understand people not noticing that and thinking SoA Robotnik was in the games, since sometimes his sprite had black glasses instead of blue ones.

...What I cannot understand are the people who will look at classic Eggman's goofy 16-bit sprite and claim with complete seriousness that SatAM Julian was running around in the classic games. The sort of people that go "Modern Eggman sucks, bring back Julian!" despite the fact that Julian was never in the games to begin with, which should be obvious by a cursory examination of his in-game sprites. It's true that some later boxart used the AoStH Robotnik design instead of merely plucking out classic Eggman's eyes, but that should have been even more obviously off-mode. Kids aren't that stupid; You'd think a quick glance between the box and the actual in-game images would register a difference in most of their heads.

EDIT: Apparently the closest they got to sprite-changing was in the rom data for the arcade game SegaSonic the Hedgehog, where they were planning to change Eggman to SatAM Robotnik for the western release. I'm very glad they didn't, as this would've opened up all sorts of canon-ambiguity problems for the west to argue over.

Edited by Dr. Mechano
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just bought an authentic strategy guide produced by SEGA in 1993 written by Jason Rich titled: An Official Player's Guide to Sonic the Hedgehog. Going through it, along with interviews and quotes from the development team, the most interesting aspect of it all is seeing that the whole book is influenced by the iron fist of the infamous Sonic Bible SOA used back then.

Sonic lived on Mobius, Robotnik did not put animals into robots but instead he "turned" them into Badniks (also his name is misspelled as Robotnic at a couple of points in the book - quality standards for the win) the crappiness of Tails getting into your way is explained "because he is young and eager" not because of programming and finally we have the concept that Robotnik pollutes everything (While exaggerated, this is now fact due to the origins of the theme being environmentalism.)

There was no mention of the word "Eggman" in the game at all, not even as a piece of trivia. The Sonic Bible practically ruled how much we as the Western audience grew up and knew about Sonic's world in contrast to the Japanese.

Edited by Kintobor
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

You must read and accept our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy to continue using this website. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.