New Sonic the Hedgehog Retrospective

not so much. maybe later.
but at the end of the day it was a commercial for sonic 3 wasnt it?
it was more infomercial than documentary thats all im saying.

 

Well, Knuckles has been known to follow a few Jamaican traits (such as the dreadlocks) and he was originally going to have a Jamaican accent in the animations if I remember correctly, as well as that in the Sonic Underground episode Flying Fortress, listen to No One is an Island.

Anyway, I watched this yesterday and it was an interesting show. I was a bit disappointed that not a lot was said about any Sonic prototype information such as Hidden Palace Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 though I guess some people wouldn't want to talk about it, even though some people have already said their input about it.
Great show, thanks for making it.

 

It also vindicates the blatant stereotyping I did of him when I wrote BOSS fanfiction. Whew!

All 4 parts were pretty well put together, I would say.

 

I still don't really get how the American art could be appealing... I mean it hasn't exactly aged well.

Sure the seemingly random box art of the Japanese ports probably wouldn't have gone down too well in the west, but the actual drawings of Sonic & Co aren't exactly what I'd call an "improvement". Might have been the style at the time but the actual art of Sonic on the Japanese box doesn't look all that Japanesey in the first place. It's no wonder they freaked over it at first.

But still a nice retrospective, even if they did kinda miss out a good 10 years worth of games towards the end. Also would have been interesting to see what SoJ's views on the 3D rendered boxarts of the early 90s and stuff. Those surely were more hideous.

 

GameTap does offer Sonic 3 (actually most of that new Genesis collection, incidentally) among it's playable games. Perhaps that's why.

 

Well, I think it was good, I love retrospectives, or documentaries about Videogames, the interviews were cool too ^^

The only thing...mmm I suppose it should work on a TV show, I mean, 20 minutes long, with 10 mins for the ads... so nevermind... Im use to GameTrailers Retrospectives xD... The final fantasy one is 14 part long, with aprox 15 minutes each one xD... that's like 5 hours long xD!

 

Oshima and Naka seem to give a different version of how Sonic came about every time they're interviewed. I wish they would get their stories straight :P

 

To be honest, the N64 had nowhere near the impact the PSX had in the US. A lot of people want to pretend the 32-bit era was a close race between nintendo and sony, but truth be told Sony dominated the world over. Nintendo was only significant when they released a big game, and everyone would go and dust off their N64 and take out goldeneye and give the new game a spin before putting all away. Much like the wii, actually, only without the massive massive sales.

 

Oh don't get me wrong. Mario 64 and the N64 sold like MAD the first christmas they were released. I remember seeing mario 64 and n64 bundles selling in the newspapers for $1500. This was in 1996. Insane launch... followed by, what, 6 months of downtime?

Man, Nintendo hasn't handled a console well since the SNES IMO. Sales != handling a console well.

 

If I remember correctly, in an old Gameplayers magazine there was a story on the difference in days it took for Sega, Sony, and Nintendo to sell 1 million units of their respective next-gen consoles: Saturn, PSX, and N64. For Sega it was about 500 days, Sony took 67 days, and Nintendo took only 1 day.

 

Can you guys please stop acting like this guy is some sort of Deep Throat of the Sonic world? He came up with a few shitty American sounding names for characters in a game made nearly twenty years ago, and he saved some of the crap that Sega of America gave him while he was working there. Great. That does nothing to prove that he knows his ass from a hole in the ground, nor does it indicate that he's some sort of authority on these matters.

I find the Michael Jackson boots thing entirely believable. What I found a bit questionable was the fact that they said Bill Clinton was an influence. Sonic the Hedgehog was developed from 1990 to 1991. Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 and inaugurated in 1993. I somehow doubt Ohshima was looking at the governor of Arkansas for inspiration to design his video game character.

 

When you consider that Barack Obama caught the attention of the Democrats and the world when he spoke at the DNC back in 2004, I think the Clinton inspiration is entirely feasible. From what I can remember, Clinton was the phenom back then that Barack is today.

 

<!--quoteo(post=280856:date=Feb 18 2009, 06:25 PM:name=DeanSatan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (DeanSatan @ Feb 18 2009, 06:25 PM)

yeah we all remember those red hi top nike vandals michael jackson used to wear...

this is as my friends across the pond say, "bollocks".

if they were inspired by michael jackson theyd be ladies shoes and smell like perfume.
[/quote]
My input:
Weren't they saying that the JAPANESE sonic shoes were inspired by MJ's? Then they said when they brought it over to SoA, they changed him up, adding a white stripe on the shoes...The art in the video from the jap versions had just a red shoe

 

LO-fucking-L. As someone who followed the last election religiously, I'm calling EXTREME revisionist history about this. Obama made a small splash when he spoke at the DNC, but he was still unknown. It wasn't until Ted Kennedy endorsed him that he caught the public eye. Hell, when Ted Kennedy endorsed him, there was still a "who the fuck is this guy?" vibe from most people.

 

Eh, I'm willing to believe it because when I first heard of him, when he showed up on the Daily Show after winning the senate race, I thought he was one of the few people in the Senate who was actually sane.

 

I'm on mobile ATM so keeping it short.
I know my ass from a hole in the ground and see that going against the company line or fanboy credo is frowned upon.
There is a line between was was created in japan and what was developed in the US, so while something might have been an influence in one side could be embraced or ignored by the other... Until the point they were fused together. Seeing you're in the bay area leads me to believe you're talking out of your ass or you've got some inside knowledge. Which is it?
Plus I stand by my original statement michael Jackson wears ladies boots. ... And if you wanted to make a character cool in the 90s, he wore hi tops most often red and sunglasses=attitude.

 

What? Perhaps he wasn't known to the "normals" (who only know the presidential candidates and their party), but Obama was fairly well known in political circles.