Wake up Retro Today on "undocumented Sonic the Hedgehog things" German Sonic the Hedgehog audiobooks, published by Karussell on CD and cassette in 1992/1993. eins, zwei, drei. Apparently nobody knew about these, except the person who uploaded the first episode on YouTube 11 years ago. And Discogs. And a bunch of others. I'm not sure the third episode exists online. I ran into this accidentally. It might be the first time Sonic ever spoke German, the first time Dr. Robotnik had a speaking role at all, and because the recordings (probably) pre-date Tails, new original characters Hanni the rabbit(?) and Bobbi Bär.
"Auf der Insel der Robotertiere". I'm no German expert but I will assume this means "About the incel, Robotnik", which would explain a lot.
"Auf der Insel der Robotertiere" (On the Island of Robotic Animals) https://segaretro.org/Sponsorships/Music#Rock_in_Wien_1993_.28Vienna.2C_Austria.29 "Rock auf der Insel" (Rock on the Island; Insel=Island)
Cute little bedtime story for kids who weren't allowed to watch TV as much, let alone play video games, I would say. Nothing really to write home about. Nevertheless, kinda funny with what they came up with. That ain't a half bad idea for a Classic Eggman / Dr. Robotnik in my book. Lol I wonder how this was made. Like, did they have to record the music, sound effects, etc. themselves or did Sega supply them with source material? I kinda wanna know.
As a guy from the mid-80s and 90s (I was born in 1981) I can tell you that audiobooks were quite common back then... I remember the Teddy Ruxpin "fever" (every kid wanted one)...
All the Sonic 1 music is playing at the PAL tempo. I don't know if any branch of Sega ever used that version of the soundtrack - I think(?) it was seen as a bug(??) - it's not how the music was intended to sound, anyway, so it would be odd to provide it in that form. The PAL manual also doesn't bother with a much of a backstory aside from SONIC GOOD ROBOTNIK BAD.
Yep, I can totally see cassette audiobooks being a 80s thing (despite being born in 1991). Personally, I prefer real books, though. Pick a book, enjoy the serif font, and let your fantasy do the rest. Then Karussell was probably sent a Mega Drive with Sonic 1 and had to work from there.
Wait, these weren't on the wiki? The third one is right here. You can also download the first and second ones, all hosted on the UK fan site The Emerald Star Post. I think that might be where I first learned about them, but it might have also been the place I stumbled across when looking them up after finding one of the uploads on YouTube. I think transcripts also exist somewhere? It's one of my favorite pieces of Sonic trivia, that these exist. I'd also call them radio dramas, not audio books. They have a full cast, these were never books. It's like the audio drama of Star Wars, except much shorter and they were never on public radio. If they aren't on the wiki, they should be. But if I had a dollar for everything that should be on the Sonic Retro wiki that isn't, I'd be a rich man. Or at least I'd be getting a lot more Taco Bell.
