What We Actually Know

Green Knuckles came from this interview with Takashi Yuda, who was Knuckles character designer. (The interview is no longer online, hence the archive.org link).

Regarding Sonic Jam: I purchased a copy of the strategy guide and scanned and posted the relevant bits on the GHZ, which you can find here.
I'd love to scan the wholebook, but I don't have a scanner at the moment.
Although to be honest, the stuff I haven't scanned isn't interesting (It's just level maps).

The same goes for Sonic Mega Collection, you can see the translations here.

The GHZ threads are quite old, so not all the links in them might work.

The old Sonic band animals appeared in a Sonic poster, which you can find here.

 

Actually we found out the name Dreds from Ben Szymkowiak a few years a go. I saw Dreds pop up in a few magazines a few months later, I think. I don't remember Dean Sitton answering any Sonic 3 questions.

 

Welp, I guess I was wrong.

I thought he answered that though. I guess my memory is failing on me. I may go through the thread and see if he answered any questions about Sonic 3.

 

Then we need to archive it here on the wiki.

 

I added the Madonna name thing to the wiki. The scan was already on the wiki but linked on another article.

http://info.sonicretro.org/Game_Development:Sonic_the_Hedgehog_%2816-bit%29#Madonna.2FUnnamed_Enemies

 

Man I swear. Where did a talking blue hedgehog rocking it out on the concert with human female's with fluffy butts with anthropomorthic standing small animals and a bloated, fat eggman in a ship come from?

I swear, these Japs secretly go to a drug-dealer and take alot of shit.

 

Pretty late, but the image on the bottom left got me thinking; so is this suppose to imply that Sonic was going to have the ability to water skip?

 

Interestingly enough, the image just above the bottom-left one, appearing to depict Labyrinth Zone, doesn't appear to be in this area on the wiki. Obviously the copy in the scan above is fairly low-quality, but surely a low-quality scan is better than no scan at all until such time as a higher-resolution version of the image can hopefully be obtained?

 

Either that or the image is showing Sonic jumping out of the water and into that tunnel-pipe.

 

The text says it was a concept for water skipping, but didn't get used until Sonic 3. I notice it also points out the bottom right pic was an early idea for two player. No idea if that was spotted as I haven't gone through this topic yet.

 

Well the concept for water skipping was used in a different way (more closer to the concept picture) in Sonic 2 8-bit, possibly Sonic Chaos and definitely Triple Trouble...... Possibly Blast too...

 

That's true... I'm only quoting what the Japanese says, though =P


It's interesting there's a quote on that page from one of the lead graphics designers, Jina Ishiwatari, where she says she suffered from Alopecia areata after her backgrounds kept getting dropped.

Those poor backgrounds. :v:

 

More questions that need answers:

How do we know this?

And what about the "Mr. Needlemouse" origin?

As far as I remember, it was just a mistranslation made by a TV show in the UK, and nobody at SEGA of Japan was ever seen using the name "Mr. Needlemouse" until Sonic 4.

 

If there's one thing I learned from this thread it's that citing sources is very important. Its really funny how SEGA forgets their past and has to read Retro just to have something to say when people ask them about the development of Sonic. Obviously it's not the same people working there that were there twenty years ago, so you can't ask a SEGA exec who Madonna was and expect him to give you a legit answer that didn't come from here or any other fan site, but it's just funny to me how little the original creators remember. Yuji Naka himself also claimed that Sonic 1 beta hoax was real when he saw it.

 

RE: Madonna/Princess Peach

Naka confirms it at Summer of Sonic 2011 (It's around 18:28 in this video)


RE: Mr Needlemouse

Back in 2003, PACHUKA posted an original Sonic sketch on the GHZ, which was labled Mr Needlemouse.



There's also some information about Needlemouse here. (Please note, I made that page like over 12 years ago, so don't laugh at the design!)

 

...But "Needlemouse" is just a transliteration of harinezumi, literally "hedgehog". He was always called a hedgehog, but prior to his official naming it was written out as the japanese word, harinezumi (?????), whereas the final name opted for the English word hedgehog (??????). But if anyone in any official channel ever called him "Needlemouse" in plain English, then that was a translation error from harinezumi and not an official moniker of any sort.

 

Exactly what I meant.

Also (coincidentially?), that scan comes from the UK, where the TV show with the wrong translation had been aired some years before. They probably just used that info as their source for the small "Did you know" blurb and called it a day.

 

The UK TV show was called Bad Influence and was presented by Violet Berlin

Accompanying the TV show was a magazine and in issue 2, Violet explains that she went to Sega Japan and met Mr Kanari, who was once considered the original creator of Sonic.

According to Violet's account in the magazine, Mr Kanari gave her the image. The article implies that she was told about the "Mr Needlemouse" name during the meeting.
Although the article also claims that Sonic is still called Mr Needlemouse in Japan, which obviously ins't true.

Eitherway, even if it is a mistranslation, it does appear that at some point in the development process, Sonic had the name "Mr Hedgehog".


The magazine can be read here and information about the TV show is here.