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What We Actually Know

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Mercury, Jan 31, 2013.

  1. Mercury

    Mercury

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    One of the many things I've been doing on-and-off between AeStHete work is researching stuff pertaining to the origins of Sonic, out of my own personal interests (and also because it's relevant to my Sonic Freedom project).

    Along the way I've discovered that the wiki here is not as thoroughly sourced as it could be. Many things are just asserted, just begging for a [citation needed].

    I'm making this topic in the hopes that others with the relevant knowledge might help out. I'll probably expand it with more subjects as I go, but for now there are two things I'd like to resolve.

    Madonna (name) (resolved) :thumbsup:

    So we all know about Sonic's girlfriend. There are pictures of her in concept art that can be unlocked on Gems Collection, and she's talked about by Ohshima in the Gametap Sonic retrospective. (These things are on the wiki already.)

    The question is: How do we know her name is Madonna? I can't find any official source for this.

    Answer: Madeline Schroeder uses the name in this interview.

    Sonic's Band (names, image) (resolved)* :thumbsup:

    Ah, yeah. The removed Sound Test picture. They (well, most of them) also appear in the old Japanese Story Comic (scandalously absent from the Retro Wiki...).

    But again, like with Sonic's girlfriend, I can't find an official source for their names. They are given names here on the wiki, but as far as I can tell these were pulled out of someone's ass.

    Their names (Vector, Mach, Max, and Sharps) as well as the famous image can be found in the Sonic Jam Official Guide, printed in 1997.

    *This is basically enough for me, but it might still be worth tracking down the issue(s) of Beep! Megadrive that the Official Guide makes reference to.

    Sonic 1 Zone Concept Art (artist)

    Who drew these? Ohshima or Yasuhara, or someone else even?

    Discussion starts here.

    Knuckles' early design (resolved)* :thumbsup:

    It's been claimed Knuckles, back when he was still a WIP, he was green at some point, and also called Dreds. I can't find sources for either of these claims.

    Sources for these are here and here.

    Mr Needlemouse

    Needlemouse sounds like a stupid mistranslation of harinezumi to me, but the questions remains - was the moniker invented by Sega of America in the early days of Sonic, or by a fan later on?

    ----------

    If these sources exist, they should be on the wiki. If they don't, then the community needs to know these names are speculative fanon only (like wechnia). Can anyone shed light on this?
     
  2. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

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    The names Madonna and the names for the band members are all name dropped in the Gamertap retrospective, but I have no knowledge of any other mention.

    I vaguely remember a book in my city's library that went into the creation of Sonic, and I think that in that they credited Madeline Schroeder as Sonic's creator; if I recall, there may be a mention of Madonna in there. I'll see if I can track it down, but my memory's rusty, so chances are I'm completely wrong.
     
  3. Mercury

    Mercury

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    Geez. I am a huge dummy. Madeline Schroeder does indeed call her "Madonna" in that interview. I have no reason to believe she'd be influenced enough by the community to use a fanon name (even by mistake or misremembering) so I consider this one resolved. OP edited.

    (I do still wonder if this was a name come up with the Japanese team or by the Americans; I'd lean toward the former, since it seems they'd be more likely to be "clueless" enough to name her that, whereas Americans would be nervous about drawing connections between the character and the singer Madonna. Probably never find out, though.)

    Not quite. The bandmates are not mentioned by name, they are only referred to as "party animals". Unless I'm missing something again like a blaring doinkus.
     
  4. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

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    Oops, yeah you're right, it's not mentioned in the Gametap documentary. I was confusing it for the Sonic Did You Know Gaming episode, where they do name off the characters. Where they got those names, I have no idea, unless it was in the Japanese manga, because I know the band exists in those. The part about the band begins at 2:26.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei_Zn5lmweM
     
  5. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    I have some answers...


    A while ago, I came across a Japanese site called SGGG Maniax, which included the original Madonna and Sonic Band pics as well as the name "Madonna". I remember posting them when nobody knew about their existance yet, at some old forums (probably Sonic Cult or Area51).


    Here's Google's translation of the original source:

    This would be the first mention of both Madonna and the Sonic band in the internet... However!

    Digging into my archives I've found out that the first known mention of Madonna was in the book High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games (Rusel DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson, 2002), quoting Al Nilsen:

     
  6. Mercury

    Mercury

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    Did You Know Gaming? is a tertiary source, probably copying straight out of the Retro wiki.

    And they aren't given names in the manga, either. Here are the relevant pages:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    They're barely in it at all, certainly no opportunity to name them. They are promptly forgotten about after Robotnik attacks.

    Now this is fascinating. I've never heard that take on things at all. Could it be that it wasn't Yasuhara, Naka, or Ohshima that came up with the original idea at all?

    However, I would take it with a grain of salt. The part in bold is not a direct quote, so it could be an error on the author's part. Which is hardly unlikely, considering the magnitude of errors in similar works.

    For example, this book claims Sonic originated in the arcades, and gives multiple dates for his creation (all wrong), one of which is in the '80s.
     
  7. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

    "Our Life is More than a Side-Effect" Member

    DUDE!! That's the book I was talking about earlier!! It had been so long since I had seen it, I thought that I had somehow imagined that story.
     
  8. The KKM

    The KKM

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    It should be noted that while there's a chance the names for the band are fanon, they ended up being used on official materials, namely the Archie Comic; and therefore should it become apparent their original names were actually never revealed, the fanon ones should be considered retroactively official. I think. Dunno.

    Something else I've been wondering that is quite similar... There is an episode of Sonic X that shows how Sonic met Tails, with Tails being bullied by three other mobians. I always heard those three mobians were supposedly scrapped characters thought for Heroes (replaced with Chaotix). Anyone know if there's any truth for this, or if it's just speculation?
     
  9. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    Neither wikis are equipped with Wikipedia's array of referencing tools. We don't have any {{reflist}} or <references/> tags to use but... I'm not entirely sure if we actually need them.

    Wikipedia spends its days pointing to off-site references, but theoretically any references from magazines or videos or interviews or whatever related to Sonic/Sega could be hosted on Sonic/Sega Retro. We don't need big long lists of external references because there shouldn't be any external references - everything asserted on the site should be backed up by evidence... hosted on the site. Granted that's more difficult to do with Sega Retro because the scope is much bigger, but with Sonic Retro, Wikipedia-style citations shouldn't be needed. In theory.


    For the record, I think I read that recent versions of MediaWiki (we're about two or three versions behind IIRC) come equipped with the {{cite}} tag. So inevitably these things will be brought through.




    A lot of these so-called-facts do need questioning though. There are a lot of lies floating around the net.
     
  10. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Without citing any sources, anybody can present anything as truth, or question the veracity of anything that's not common knowledge.

    I'd say the more citations, the better.
     
  11. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    "What does Sonic Retro need to reference"

    Category:Printed media
    Category:Interviews
    ideo Files" target="_blank" style="background: url(https://retrocdn.net/images/3/35/Sonicretro-round.svg) right no-repeat; background-size: 16px 16px; padding-right: 20px; border-bottom: 1px dotted #3366BB; color: #3366BB; cursor:pointer; text-decoration:none;" class="wiki">Category:Video Files
    ?

    there's info on YouTube but really we should be pushing for Sonic Retro to host more videos itself, rather than implement systems which will let us easily make lists of YouTube links. We shouldn't need to look elsewhere - all Sonic knowledge should be together in one place - that's the point of the wiki. Wikipedia doesn't have those benefits because the scope is enormously huge
     
  12. dsrb

    dsrb

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    No one said citations should be discouraged. Black Squirrel said that WP-style external citations are not supported and that, ideally, this would be a non-issue as material cited would be hosted internally anyway. In the meantime, there's still the good old [http://my.url.here/ text link tag] and [http://numbered.only/] links.
     
  13. qwertysonic

    qwertysonic

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    creating the biggest sonic collection
    I have never heard that said before.
     
  14. Greg the Cat

    Greg the Cat

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    Uh. Really? That's interesting.

    I remember seeing that in a Barnes & Nobles. How valid is their work beyond the character contest? It's interesting to hear information that implies that Oshima didn't really have the original idea of the character.
     
  15. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Guys, Ohshima could have been one of the people who decided the winners.

    He might have seen the hedgehog, thought it was cool and voted for it, then started to work from that idea once it was greenlit. The original hedgehog might have looked nothing like Sonic until he was assigned that job.
     
  16. David The Lurker

    David The Lurker

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    How soon we all forget.

    The way we originally got the names to Sonic's bandmates was from a little-known Japanese website called Sonic Dimensions. It doesn't exist anymore, but at the time it was one of the very few Sonic websites made by a fan from Japan. Heck, it probably still is, even though it hasn't been online in ages. Sharps, Mach and Max come from the site's list of characters in the series.

    If you go to any of their profiles, there isn't much in there aside from explaining that they were meant to be in the sound test. Now, I know the question that would immediately be asked is how do we know these names are real and not just made up by the guy who wrote the site. Ignoring the fact that the rest of the site doesn't seem to be one to use fan conjecture, each profile for these three characters (through the use of Google Translate) mentioned "Beep! Megadrive" as the magazine he learned of their existence. Yes, the same publication where we not that long ago found screenshots of the earliest playable build of Sonic the Hedgehog. Not the same issue, of course, but still. So what it looks is that, at some point, the magazine used the name of those characters, assumingly in coverage of the development of the game, unless their review happened to speak of a sound test that was no longer part of the final product.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20030228112309/http://www.tastescity.net/sonicdimension/top/sonic-museum/chara-prof/sharps.html - link to Sharp's profile, for those curious.

    There, that should settle that one.

    As for Madeline...I mean, Yuji Naka has already gone on record with stories that completely contradict her concerning Madonna and Sonic's Band and why they weren't in the game. I sincerely doubt some random American woman was the one who came up with the idea for Sonic, especially since Sega of America was so against the idea of a game staring a hedgehog in the first place.
     
  17. JaredAFX

    JaredAFX

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    We know that the design for Sonic was chosen as the winner in a mini contest within Sega of Japan, right? Sonic was also redesigned by the American PR team to make him look more appealing to American audiences, correct? Then why is there so much confusion on the subject?
     
  18. Greg the Cat

    Greg the Cat

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    Entertaining the notion, dear David. It's just kind of an interesting "what if".
     
  19. Mercury

    Mercury

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    Well, it's a step closer, anyway. Thanks for the info.

    I guess it boils down to needing to track down Beep! Megadrive issues, as usual.
     
  20. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Wait wait, the quote mentions the contest was held within the workers at Sega of Japan, not in America.