The younger fandom, and how they learned from exactly none of our mistakes.

Blue Spikeball · Feb 28, 2020

Dek Rollins said:

I'm honestly surprised by the amount of hate towards SatAM on here. Elitist SatAM fanboys should get a life, but I must've missed the part where not being a 1:1 adaptation of the game makes it a bad show. I think people get way too picky about liberties being taken in adaptations. When SatAM was developed there were only two Sonic games out (not counting 8-bit), and it honestly does a good job of capturing many things from the games and placing them into an original story. I don't like the weird fantasy elements they emphasized at times, but on the whole, the show presents Sonic and friends fighting against the evil Dr. Robotnik, who enslaves animals in metal shells, in a story that speaks an environmental message. So, pretty much what the games were. They added an extended cast of characters, because making a show with only three characters probably wasn't easy to give a real story. The show even used elements from the games, like rings.

I also think it's worth mentioning that none of the American cartoons were actually "good" adaptations of the games. In comparison, AoSTH is even less like the games than SatAM was. I grew up watching AoSTH all the time, so I personally connect it with the classic games, and I always took notice of things from the games showing up (like badnik designs), but I can still plainly see that it's not connected to the games at all. The only thing about AoSTH that actually does better than SatAM is the relationship between Sonic and Tails, and Tails being a character with more presence obviously. But I don't fault the portrayal of Tails in SatAM, because it makes sense to make him a younger, inexperienced character. I appreciate how they treated him in both shows.

All that said, I think the SatAM pilot is better than most of the rest of the series, and I wish they had stayed closer to that. But nothing holds a candle to the Doomsday Machine finale. I don't know why people talk about Archie Sonic as if it's the same thing as SatAM. The Archie comics were initially based on the same basic characters and designs, but they have nothing to do with each other. I've only ever read some Sonic Archives volumes, so I don't have a strong attachment to Archie Sonic.

Out of all the western Sonic media, the Fleetway comics were probably the most faithful to the source material, and even that series had some major deviations. I've always wanted a true adaptation of the classic games, but I don't consider what we've got to be bad just because they aren't that true adaptation.
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I don't hate SatAM in particular. Which is to say, I find all DiC Sonic cartoons to be about equally bad, both as adaptations and on their own, and I say that as someone who was introduced to Sonic through them. I put them on the same level as other game-based DiC cartoons like Captain N or Zelda, which from my experience aren't held in high regard by most Nintendo fans. To me, they're "those crappy cartoons that you watched as a kid but are an absolute cringe if you rewatch them now".

But if you're curious as to what I dislike about SatAM in particular, well... Among other things, the fact I could never bring myself to care about its characters. Sally was a Mary Sue who seemed to exist only to prove Sonic wrong all the time, especially by the second season. Rotor had little personality beyond being the non-action technician. Dulcy's only personality trait was that she was a complete ditz. Antoine was a politically incorrect caricature. Tails was the little brat who was always left behind. But worst of all had to be Sonic, who was turned into a ridiculous "totally radical" parody. He came off less as a cool character and more as an irritating tryhard manchild.

I do agree that the pilot was better, though. Everything looked more colorful, and the tone was more lighthearted, making it come off more charming than the rest of the show to me.

Xilla · Feb 28, 2020

I remember the general online mood towards SatAM changing somewhat after it got rereleased on DVD.

Gotta admit, getting online in the late 90s, looking up Sonic stuff and seeing constant mention of Freedom Fighters, Knothole, Archie etc everywhere and general shouting down at fans of the games, AoStH, StC was very alien to me. Growing up I always knew SatAM as "The one that wasnt as funny!"

Overlord · Feb 28, 2020

Will preface this by saying I'm not one of the younger ones of the OG online fans - I would have been a tween when we first got internet in 1996...

How is AoStH less games faithful? Tails isn't sidelined like he frequently is in SatAM (he's all but useless in that show), AoStH uses Zone names - which SatAM doesn't - and had a several-episode arc entirely around Chaos Emeralds (alright, with some liberties changed).

SatAM on the other hand: take out Sonic and Tails, replacing them for different character designs (I'm not sure you'd even notice Tails being gone), name Robotnik something else, and boom - what's left that's actually Sonic? Rings, but that's a bit of a stretch?

XAndrew said:

Overlord said:

SatAM was always the poorer show, I dunno where you're getting the idea it was vastly preferred by everyone. Don't think most of my schoolyard felt that it was better than AoStH.
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Interesting. What did you think of Sonic OVA at the time of it's release in the west? If you don't mind me asking.
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Enjoyed it when it came out. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik and Metal Sonic are all major characters with everyone else largely on the periphery - as it should be.

BlackFive · Feb 28, 2020

I was just about to ask the exact same question regarding SatAM supposedly being closer to the games than AoSTH- the most bizarre thing is that this isn't even the first time I've heard this argument. Maybe it's just a mixture of me not being American and not playing the games until ~15 years after they came out (meaning I had no experience with the western manuals and other supplementary media that may have overemphasised the environmental theme from the games), but I can think of plenty of things from the games that were retained for AoSTH (Sonic and Tails being the main characters, Robotnik being goofy, Badnik designs from the games, stages being namedropped, etc.) whereas SatAM had rings, a take on the nature vs. technology theme and that was about it.

Blue Spikeball · Feb 29, 2020

Overlord said:

Will preface this by saying I'm not one of the younger ones of the OG online fans - I would have been a tween when we first got internet in 1996...

How is AoStH less games faithful? Tails isn't sidelined like he frequently is in SatAM (he's all but useless in that show), AoStH uses Zone names - which SatAM doesn't - and had a several-episode arc entirely around Chaos Emeralds (alright, with some liberties changed).

SatAM on the other hand: take out Sonic and Tails, replacing them for different character designs (I'm not sure you'd even notice Tails being gone), name Robotnik something else, and boom - what's left that's actually Sonic? Rings, but that's a bit of a stretch?
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Have to agree. While I wouldn't call AoStH a faithful adaptation either, I've always viewed SatAM as basically an original cartoon with a few Sonic characters thrown in -- just like Sonic Underground. I recall SatAM fans hating SU for "not being Sonic", which I always found awfully ironic.

Dek Rollins · Feb 29, 2020

Overlord said:

Will preface this by saying I'm not one of the younger ones of the OG online fans - I would have been a tween when we first got internet in 1996...

How is AoStH less games faithful? Tails isn't sidelined like he frequently is in SatAM (he's all but useless in that show), AoStH uses Zone names - which SatAM doesn't - and had a several-episode arc entirely around Chaos Emeralds (alright, with some liberties changed).

SatAM on the other hand: take out Sonic and Tails, replacing them for different character designs (I'm not sure you'd even notice Tails being gone), name Robotnik something else, and boom - what's left that's actually Sonic? Rings, but that's a bit of a stretch?
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You're talking about mostly superficial aspects. I even mentioned that Tails not being sidelined was something it did better, but I don't think namedropping some zones occasionally or badnik designs are any more than surface level similarities. AoSTH doesn't contain the spirit of the games very much IMO. The abstract, cartoony, ugly locales of many AoSTH episodes are nothing like the art direction present in the games, and at the very least the realistic look of SatAM is closer. The overly childish silliness of the series is a far cry from the tone of the games. Robotnik, while a slightly goofy villain in the games, was always a decently formidable foe and was an evil mastermind. In AoSTH he's too much of a silly buffoon, and his character design doesn't help. And I don't consider the Chaos emerald arc to be an argument in your favor, since they don't have anything to do with the emeralds from the games.

The nature vs. technology theme is probably one of the most important aspects of the games' stories. It gives simple games that are already low on story a lot more depth. When you take all the dramatic depth the games had at all out of an adaptation, it seems counter intuitive to adapting to a dramatic medium.

And I don't think SatAM is actually accurate to the games either. I just think it treats the material with more respect than the daily after school cartoon for five-year-olds. I like things about both shows and I dislike things about both shows. Dulcy is the worst thing in SatAM. :p

EDIT: And Jim Cummings as Robotnik is perfect, regardless of accuracy.

Pengi · Feb 29, 2020

None of DiC's cartoons concerned themselves with capturing the spirit of the games. But they all deviated in different ways.

STH took the lore of the games and twisted it. (Animals turned into robots, but differently. Robotnik not trying to conquer the world, he already has. Sonic 1 animals as Sonic's friends, but greatly altered.)

AOSTH mostly avoided the lore of the games in favour of self-contained hi-jinks with the characters.

SU avoided the lore of the games and put a new lore in its place, turning Sonic into a very different character in the process.

Bandana Dee · Feb 29, 2020

None of the DIC Cartoons succeeded at adapting the games perfectly, but IMO, SaTAM was the best of them (and of the sonic shows in general), because it didn't go too lighthearted.
Adventures is one of my least favorite adaptations because it just isn't like the games... at all. It's just a dumb cartoon that's the most nonsensical thing ever. And Underground is a tragedy to mankind.
X... only has Season 3 going for it honestly.
Boom I never want to talk about again.
Honestly the only adaptation of Sonic that I really enjoyed, wasn't even SaTAM.
It was the Fleetway comics.
That's honestly the best adaptation of Sonic's world into a media that isn't gaming IMO.

Xilla · Feb 29, 2020

There was an episode of AoStH that involved a race through Mobius, with Sonic and Tails entering a special stage at one point via a starpost and collecting rings. Possibly the closest it ever got to replicating something from the games!

XAndrew · Feb 29, 2020

XAndrew said:

Overlord said:

SatAM was always the poorer show, I dunno where you're getting the idea it was vastly preferred by everyone. Don't think most of my schoolyard felt that it was better than AoStH.
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Interesting. What did you think of Sonic OVA at the time of it's release in the west? If you don't mind me asking.
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Enjoyed it when it came out. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik and Metal Sonic are all major characters with everyone else largely on the periphery - as it should be.[/QUOTE]

I also think the same. It's the best story for Sonic in my opinion, and the action was so hype for me. Especially the last fight between Sonic and Metal, at the Land Of The Sky. It's the best watchable media for Sonic IMO. With the Sonic 2020 movie coming second place.

Blue Spikeball said:

Dek Rollins said:

I'm honestly surprised by the amount of hate towards SatAM on here. Elitist SatAM fanboys should get a life, but I must've missed the part where not being a 1:1 adaptation of the game makes it a bad show. I think people get way too picky about liberties being taken in adaptations. When SatAM was developed there were only two Sonic games out (not counting 8-bit), and it honestly does a good job of capturing many things from the games and placing them into an original story. I don't like the weird fantasy elements they emphasized at times, but on the whole, the show presents Sonic and friends fighting against the evil Dr. Robotnik, who enslaves animals in metal shells, in a story that speaks an environmental message. So, pretty much what the games were. They added an extended cast of characters, because making a show with only three characters probably wasn't easy to give a real story. The show even used elements from the games, like rings.

I also think it's worth mentioning that none of the American cartoons were actually "good" adaptations of the games. In comparison, AoSTH is even less like the games than SatAM was. I grew up watching AoSTH all the time, so I personally connect it with the classic games, and I always took notice of things from the games showing up (like badnik designs), but I can still plainly see that it's not connected to the games at all. The only thing about AoSTH that actually does better than SatAM is the relationship between Sonic and Tails, and Tails being a character with more presence obviously. But I don't fault the portrayal of Tails in SatAM, because it makes sense to make him a younger, inexperienced character. I appreciate how they treated him in both shows.

All that said, I think the SatAM pilot is better than most of the rest of the series, and I wish they had stayed closer to that. But nothing holds a candle to the Doomsday Machine finale. I don't know why people talk about Archie Sonic as if it's the same thing as SatAM. The Archie comics were initially based on the same basic characters and designs, but they have nothing to do with each other. I've only ever read some Sonic Archives volumes, so I don't have a strong attachment to Archie Sonic.

Out of all the western Sonic media, the Fleetway comics were probably the most faithful to the source material, and even that series had some major deviations. I've always wanted a true adaptation of the classic games, but I don't consider what we've got to be bad just because they aren't that true adaptation.
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I don't hate SatAM in particular. Which is to say, I find all DiC Sonic cartoons to be about equally bad, both as adaptations and on their own, and I say that as someone who was introduced to Sonic through them. I put them on the same level as other game-based DiC cartoons like Captain N or Zelda, which from my experience aren't held in high regard by most Nintendo fans. To me, they're "those crappy cartoons that you watched as a kid but are an absolute cringe if you rewatch them now".

But if you're curious as to what I dislike about SatAM in particular, well... Among other things, the fact I could never bring myself to care about its characters. Sally was a Mary Sue who seemed to exist only to prove Sonic wrong all the time, especially by the second season. Rotor had little personality beyond being the non-action technician. Dulcy's only personality trait was that she was a complete ditz. Antoine was a politically incorrect caricature. Tails was the little brat who was always left behind. But worst of all had to be Sonic, who was turned into a ridiculous "totally radical" parody. He came off less as a cool character and more as an irritating tryhard manchild.

I do agree that the pilot was better, though. Everything looked more colorful, and the tone was more lighthearted, making it come off more charming than the rest of the show to me.
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This. All of this. Everything you said lines up perfectly for why I also dislike SatAM. Especially in terms of characters. They just never stuck with me. They were all forgettable, and lacking in personalities to me. I still don't see why people love Sally. I respect other's opinions, but I just need for someone here to tell me what her appeal was. I never saw her appeal at all.

Josh · Feb 29, 2020

Frostav said:

Speaking as one of the millions who started with Adventure 2 Battle and wasted many months on deviantart making bad OC's and Sonic fanfic I can say in those circles (we're talking a little before 06 came and pretty ruined Sonic's reputation forever) that SatAM wasn't really a thing anyone hated so much as...didn't care about. The Adventure duology and its accompanying mobile games were all anyone cared about there. SatAM and AoSTH were The Ancient Times, a mythical thing we were aware about (I certainly remember coming across Sally and the other SatAM/comic characters not infrequently), but didn't really pay any heed. AoSTH had it worse--NO ONE cared about it, and I for one was unaware it even existed until the memes about it propagated in early youtube poops, and Underground was completely foreign to pretty much all of us besides the vague notion that some weird ass cartoon where Sonic had two siblings once existed. It was all Adventure, all the time, baby. Even back then classic Sonic was considered its own canon with nothing to do with the then-modern Sonic, and classic fans were viewed as basically an entirely separate fandom with effectively zero overlap.
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While I don't remember "classic Sonic" being thought of as particularly separate until roughly Sonic 4, I find it fascinating that in _your_ DeviantArt/Fanfic communities, you younger guys already _did_. "An entirely separate fandom," we never were, but I do remember it _feeling_ more like that at the time.

Before social media, Sonic fans could much more effectively sequester themselves into communities built around the aspects of the series that THEY SPECIFICALLY LIKED. Sonic Retro, SSRG, SFGHQ, The Moogle Cavern... basically all of my favorite places, skewed older and thus logically leaned toward the older games, with a focus on the technical/gameplay aspects, fangames, and hacking.

We were of course AWARE that there was a mostly-younger contingent of fans who were more character-driven and story-focused, creating OCs and obsessing over Shadow the Hedgehog of all characters. But there was very little CROSSOVER between us. They were free to draw their horrifying fan art and debate about who Amy should date on THEIR corner of the internet, and we were free to try not to think about how that might effect people's perception of us and dig into ever-more-granular detail about our childhood games on OUR corner of the internet.

Personal anecdote, but I remember meeting someone over a decade ago, and finding out we BOTH considered ourselves HYOOOGE fans of Sonic the Hedgehog. This was when I was already at an age where meeting another IRL Sonic fan was a bit unusual, so it was exciting! When I challenged her by claiming that I was a bigger fan than she was, she responded by asking me to prove it by matching her knowledge of trivia. Her first question? HOW TALL IS SONIC? I had no idea, just like she had no idea what the "debug mode" was. We were both fans of Sonic, but we were fans of completely different things ABOUT Sonic.

With social media, the internet has become a whole lot less discerning. Everyone is on the same platforms, and everyone has an equal voice. In the case of something like the Sonic fandom, where different people are fans of the series for at least 134,217,728 different reasons, this is a bit of a problem, especially now that the old-school Sega kids, the new-school Adventure kids, the NEWER-school "Dark Age" kids, and even a few of the "whatever the heck post-2010 is called" kids have reached adulthood. I can't praise the gameplay of Generations without someone else bemoaning the lack of story, and someone else wishing it was more like the classics, and someone else wishing it had more characters like Adventure, and someone else screaming about how much they hate Classic Sonic, which causes someone else to scream at THEM, and so on and so forth. While nuanced takes on those perspectives are appreciated, toxicity from SOME is inevitable, and in either case, it makes us as fans (or at least me, as a fan with a Twitter following) more aware of the split than we used to be.

XAndrew · Feb 29, 2020

Josh said:

Frostav said:

Speaking as one of the millions who started with Adventure 2 Battle and wasted many months on deviantart making bad OC's and Sonic fanfic I can say in those circles (we're talking a little before 06 came and pretty ruined Sonic's reputation forever) that SatAM wasn't really a thing anyone hated so much as...didn't care about. The Adventure duology and its accompanying mobile games were all anyone cared about there. SatAM and AoSTH were The Ancient Times, a mythical thing we were aware about (I certainly remember coming across Sally and the other SatAM/comic characters not infrequently), but didn't really pay any heed. AoSTH had it worse--NO ONE cared about it, and I for one was unaware it even existed until the memes about it propagated in early youtube poops, and Underground was completely foreign to pretty much all of us besides the vague notion that some weird ass cartoon where Sonic had two siblings once existed. It was all Adventure, all the time, baby. Even back then classic Sonic was considered its own canon with nothing to do with the then-modern Sonic, and classic fans were viewed as basically an entirely separate fandom with effectively zero overlap.
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While I don't remember "classic Sonic" being thought of as particularly separate until roughly Sonic 4, I find it fascinating that in _your_ DeviantArt/Fanfic communities, you younger guys already _did_. "An entirely separate fandom," we never were, but I do remember it _feeling_ more like that at the time.

Before social media, Sonic fans could much more effectively sequester themselves into communities built around the aspects of the series that THEY SPECIFICALLY LIKED. Sonic Retro, SSRG, SFGHQ, The Moogle Cavern... basically all of my favorite places, skewed older and thus logically leaned toward the older games, with a focus on the technical/gameplay aspects, fangames, and hacking.

We were of course AWARE that there was a mostly-younger contingent of fans who were more character-driven and story-focused, creating OCs and obsessing over Shadow the Hedgehog of all characters. But there was very little CROSSOVER between us. They were free to draw their horrifying fan art and debate about who Amy should date on THEIR corner of the internet, and we were free to try not to think about how that might effect people's perception of us and dig into ever-more-granular detail about our childhood games on OUR corner of the internet.

Personal anecdote, but I remember meeting someone over a decade ago, and finding out we BOTH considered ourselves HYOOOGE fans of Sonic the Hedgehog. This was when I was already at an age where meeting another IRL Sonic fan was a bit unusual, so it was exciting! When I challenged her by claiming that I was a bigger fan than she was, she responded by asking me to prove it by matching her knowledge of trivia. Her first question? HOW TALL IS SONIC? I had no idea, just like she had no idea what the "debug mode" was. We were both fans of Sonic, but we were fans of completely different things ABOUT Sonic.

With social media, the internet has become a whole lot less discerning. Everyone is on the same platforms, and everyone has an equal voice. In the case of something like the Sonic fandom, where different people are fans of the series for at least 134,217,728 different reasons, this is a bit of a problem, especially now that the old-school Sega kids, the new-school Adventure kids, the NEWER-school "Dark Age" kids, and even a few of the "whatever the heck post-2010 is called" kids have reached adulthood. I can't praise the gameplay of Generations without someone else bemoaning the lack of story, and someone else wishing it was more like the classics, and someone else wishing it had more characters like Adventure, and someone else screaming about how much they hate Classic Sonic, which causes someone else to scream at THEM, and so on and so forth. While nuanced takes on those perspectives are appreciated, toxicity from SOME is inevitable, and in either case, it makes us as fans (or at least me, as a fan with a Twitter following) more aware of the split than we used to be.
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Funny enough, as someone who grew up with early 3D Sonic (Sonic Adventure 1 Was my first ever Sonic game, back n 2002 when I was only 4 years old) I legit prefer the classic games the most. With Sonic 3 And Knuckles being my favorite Sonic game, pre Sonic Mania. I also don't have a dislike for all of the meta era Sonic games, (I believe that's what this current era of Sonic is called) as I do love Sonic Generations, gameplay wise even if I dislike the story. I just don't like how Sega is handling Sonic these days. It's their mindset for what Sonic should be today that get's me.

Bandana Dee · Feb 29, 2020

Honestly, I also grew up with the Adventure games, but I never thought of Classic and Adventure as separate, they were just... Sonic.
The other continuities, yeah, they were separate, but the games were all just that. Sonic games first and foremost.
I honestly believe separating Classic and Modern, including underused Classic characters like Mighty, Ray, Bean, Bark, and Fang not being allowed to be used in the modern era or any human characters besides Eggman existing right now are really bad decisions. It makes a divide between Sonic fans that shouldn't even exist even bigger, because Sega acknowleged it.
Maybe if Sonic 4 had actually tried to be like the Genesis games then none of this Classic and Modern separation would've happened.

Josh · Feb 29, 2020

Bandana Dee said:

Maybe if Sonic 4 had actually tried to be like the Genesis games then none of this Classic and Modern separation would've happened.
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That sounds like an oversimplification, but I really think you're right. I mean, don't get me wrong, even before that there was a fault line running through the early-mid 2000s games, and you'd STILL have a harsh split between different generations of fans. But I don't think it would've been something acknowledged by Sega, and that could've radically changed the past 10 years of the series.

I personally saw Adventure as a separate continuity from the classics from the first time I saw the redesigned characters, and it was something that became impossible for me to reconcile when Adventure 2 REALLY re-invented the series. But I _never_ saw the idea that "old-school Sonic" was a separate THING from post-Adventure Sonic actually catch on with anybody until we all just rightly assumed that Sonic 4 would be a modern throwback in the same way that Mega Man 9 was, and then had our hopes utterly CRUSHED by what it actually was. Without that, I don't think Generations would've BEEN what it was.

I love Sonic Generations so much, and am still so happy we got the old design back, I wouldn't change a thing. But I do agree, it's AWFULLY bad for the brand how much Sega leans into that sometimes. I remember when Mania was announced, they just KEPT having Aaron Webber say, "AND DON'T WORRY MODERN FANS, WE HAVE SOMETHING FOR YOU TOO," as if they were worried that a majority of kids who grew up with SA2 _wouldn't_, or even _shouldn't_ be hyped for Mania. Which is just BIZARRE to me. For one thing, plenty of them had Mega Collection or emulators, and they grew up with and love the classics, too!

But more pointedly, it's one thing to divide the series into a classic and modern canon, it's quite another to officially divide YOUR OWN FANS into (at least) two separate entities and market to them as if they have little-to-no crossover.

Bandana Dee · Feb 29, 2020

Why do there need to be separate continuities?
did Sega forget the Advance games existed? They can make 2D platformers in the style of the Genesis games, but they don't HAVE to be in a separate continuity.
Actually, Pocket Adventure's probably a better example.

Also, who let Sonic 4 come out in the condition it released in?

JaxTH · Feb 29, 2020

Bandana Dee said:

Also, who let Sonic 4 come out in the condition it released in?
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Did you forget that Episode 1 was delayed?

Bandana Dee · Feb 29, 2020

It did?
It had 4 Zones, some of the worst physics in 2D platformer history, and a dumb final boss that took 32 hits, and it was DELAYED?

MykonosFan · Feb 29, 2020

Oh yeah. That shit got delayed for a long time.

Bandana Dee · Feb 29, 2020

...
I'm more disappointed in Sonic 4 then ever.

Mana · Feb 29, 2020

Bandana Dee said:

...
I'm more disappointed in Sonic 4 then ever.
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IIRC the reason it was delayed was because an early version leaked that used Motion Controls for two levels and everyone hated it so they had to design to new ones to make up for those.

They kept the motion levels on the mobile versions though.

The younger fandom, and how they learned from exactly none of our mistakes.

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