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So, who really created Sonic ?

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Magelan, Dec 26, 2019.

  1. Magelan

    Magelan

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    In this episode of True Detective...

    Sorry again for the wall of text but it was the most simple thing to do (still a few hours for a damn 30 years old game with a blue hedgehog) to try and organize the many many sources, while also working on my project. I did not post all the quotes relating to what I'm saying, but it would take a week to do so.

    So we have three big video documentaries, one produced by sega, the other by gametap (they seem to share the same interview at some point), and the other being a GDC post mortem




    We also have some books like the Genesis Collected Works, and the 25th anniversary artbook.

    -- The main characters --

    Japanese Branch :

    Hayao Nakayama. CEO of Sega.

    Kotaro Hayashida. Prolific game designer at Sega during the Master System. Was asked at the time to create a competitor to Mario, so he created Alex Kidd. Worked on Phantasy Star 1 (directed the project and wrote the story) with Naka & Ohshima, and on Alex Kidd Genesis with Yasuhara. He may or may not have been one of the heads of Sega R&D2 at that time, being only "Special thanked" in Games after Phantasy Star, and (executive) producer not being always credited at the time. According to him, the whole Sonic project was made to directly answer Mario 3, like Alex Kidd before, and he's actually the one who created the "concept" of Sonic, and at some point tasked Yasuhara to actually make the game according to his recommendation.
    - The only easily accessible interview of him is here : http://shmuplations.com/alexkidd/
    He talks about his work on Sonic in the Genesis Collected Works, the exact quotes are here :

    he also appears briefly in other interview about Phantasy Star or Alex Kidd, but nothing interesting

    Yuji Naka : Genius programmer. Worked mainly on the first two Phantasy Star games, and ported Ghouls'n Ghosts for the Genesis. Huge fan of racing cars, wanted to make a racing game, instead was tasked to make an action game similar to Mario. He used the experience acquired working on Ghouls n Ghosts to make a fast scrolling game engine. Quits Sega Japan in 91, partly because he wanted more money, partly because Sonic 1's development went for longer that it was supposed to (fourteen months vs ten). Just for reference, I think they did Phantasy Star 2 in two/three months. Sega may or may not have bought him a Ferrari to convince him to stay at Sega... America.
    - Lots of material with him over 30 years : http://shmuplations.com/sonic/
    http://www.sega-mag.com/forum/sujet...s+de+Sonic+vu+par+ses+createurs-1915-67-1.htm
    http://shmuplations.com/nights/
    http://shmuplations.com/sonicteam


    Naoto Ohshima : Graphic artist. Worked on Phantasy Star 1 & 2 with Naka. Was tasked by his management to work on some competitor for Mario, directly aimed at the US market. His first concept was Twinkle Star, a game starring twins that go back in time. At some point, Naka joins the project, and the whole thing is rebooted to fit around his game engine. After creating the look of Sonic, Eggman, and the evil robots, he basically handled character's animations (for the first time in his career)
    - Like Naka, lots of interview over 30 years.

    Hirokazu Yasuhara : Planner (which is Japanese thing for Game Designer). Was supposed to join Mark Cerny at Sega STI, but was stuck in Japan because of visa problems. Joins the Naka-Ohshima team to help with actual level making. At this time game designer also worked on the graphics, so he probably directly worked on the actual levels, not just documents. He's frequently "forgotten" by Sega management, Naka or even Ohshima when talking about Sonic creation.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20190603095939/http://globalleadertoday.com/creating-sonic.html
    http://info.sonicretro.org/Hirokazu...y_Gamasutra_(August_25,_2008)#Sonic_Questions
    There is some Game Informer interview from 2004 but i can't find the scans.

    Jina Ishiwatari : Graphic artist. She worked on the levels. Famous for her work on Panzer Dragoon Saga (designing the cities).

    Rieko Kodama : Legendary graphic artist. She also worked on the levels, apparently she was called because the team was late. I have a lot of interview from here, she doesn't really seem to care about Sonic.

    Fujio Minegishi : Some kind of producer at Sega who had connexions in the music industry. He's the one who contacted Masato Nakamura from Dreams come true.

    Masato Nakamura / Hiroshi Kubota / Yukifumi Makino : The sound team. Nakamura recorded music on tape and Kubota/Makino interpreted it for the Genesis hardware (similar to what happened to MJ on Sonic 3)
    American Branch :

    Michael Katz : Former Sega America CEO between October 89 and October 90. He worked directly with Toyoda and reported to Nakayama once a month. He believed in licensing deals (celebrities, sports figure, disney) and he created the first american development studio at sega. Fired probably because Japan was disappointed by the Genesis results in the US (compared to the cost of the licensing deals) and because of internal politics (he was hired directly by David Rosen, and not Nakayama). He worked at Mattel with Kalinske before.
    https://segaretro.org/Interview:_Michael_Katz_(2006-04-28)_by_Sega-16

    Shinobu Toyoda. In 1989 he became COO of Sega America under Katz. He was supposed to smooth the communication with Japan and America.
    Seen in the two video documentary from Sega and Gametap

    Al Nilsen : Head of Marketing at Sega US from 89 to 93. Worked at Mattel before.
    https://www.usgamer.net/articles/fo...ctor-al-nilsen-reveals-how-tails-became-tails


    Madeline Schroeder : Product manager at Sega US from 89 to 92. Went to create Crystal Dynamics after that (and left after the first Gex I believe). Believed to be "the Mother of Sonic" because of the changes she made to the character design.
    Seen in the two video documentary from Sega and Gametap

    Tom Kalinske. Became CEO of Sega America around October 1990. He came from Mattel and had experience with the Master of Universe toyline. Nakayama gave him carte blanche to do whatever he thought was supposed to be done to make Genesis successful in the US.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73abjrBD3NU


    Mark Cerny. Genius programer, hired by Sega around 1984/85. Worked in Japan, until 89, when he was asked by management to go back to the US to establish STI, a high-tech studio supposed to make game for the US market. Japanese developers were supposed to come and train young american developers, but the start of the Gulf War slowed down USA visa requests.
    https://segaretro.org/Interview:_Mark_Cerny_(2006-12-05)_by_Sega-16
    https://web.archive.org/web/2016080...7/06/developers-den-sega-technical-institute/

    --- What we know of the actual timeline

    Sonic 1 is released in June 1991.

    Mark Cerny tells us the development lasted for 14 months, so we can say it started around March/April 1990 (I also guess it means active development, not the concept done by Ohshima before Naka started). It was also supposed to have a 10 month deadline, meaning the original release date would be around January/February of 91 (if not Christmas)

    In June 90, the first public demo is playable at the Toy Show. At that time, the game concept is unfinished, Sonic cannot transform into a ball, Eggman not invented, Madonna is still present

    By December 90 some American commercial illustration is finished, including the Sonic complete "redesign" and the first (?) appearance of Eggman.

    January 91, second demo at Winter CES. Eggman is apparently in the game at this point

    June 91, third demo at Summer CES

    --- The Big Questions

    When did Yasuhara join the project and did he have anything to do with the final design of Sonic, or did he just make the level design?

    - Yasuhara says himself that he worked on the game because he was stuck in Japan - because of the invasion of Koweit, so around August. He also says that turning the rabbit into a "round shape" happened after he joined the team, but we know it already happened by June. Lastly, Hayashida said the "concept of the game" (whatever that means) was given to Yasuhara to direct.

    Hirokazu Yasuhara: Well, in the very beginning, the project staff consisted entirely of Naka and Ohshima, back before I joined them. The main thing Naka had thought up at that time was a game engine that scrolled really, really fast -- the problem after that was to figure out what kind of game we could make with that.

    We didn't have any game at that time, so we had to think about that first. I thought it'd be enough to have a game where you ran really fast, but we couldn't get anything to work. Naka was really adamant about the idea that the game should be playable with one button, since Mario needed two -- jump, and run or attack.

    My response to that was that if you have only one button, then all you can do is jump, so we need to find some way the player can attack at the same time. So our character needed some way to deal damage just by jumping, and from there, we came up with the idea that he should roll himself up into a ball while in the air. I think that was how we first started off.

    ---

    At the time, I was supposed to go to the United States to establish a new R&D team [at Sega of America] with Mark Cerny...But then the [first] Gulf War Started, and my move to the US was postponed for three months. Work was progressing on the [new mascot] game, but Naka and Ohshima needed a full-time game designer on the project. They saw that I was free, and looked to me for help designing the game until my departure. So I officially joined the project as a game designer, planning to work on it only until I went to the US. But I ended up staying in Japan for a year until we finished the project.

    My guess : He says he stayed for an entire year, so that means it was supposed to go around June 90, and not in August. Given the fact that by June 90 the first prototype had been made (even if incomplete), it means he started very soon after Naka was assigned to the project, was supposed to (ghost ?) direct until his departure (and maybe then Hayashida would have directed the actual game ?). There is also some early game design documents made by Yasuhara with an actual hedgehog and not the "Sonic" final form. Maybe he was just joking around, or maybe they decided on a stylisation of a hedgehog before even completing the actual design (and it may also explain why we never saw the famous armadillo, because it was never actually designed, just considered as an "animal basis"). It's kinda alluded to by this Ohshima interview about creating the character :

    Early in the development, we had the gameplay idea down, but we didn’t have a character yet who fit it. Yamaguchi created a hedgehog character, though it was completely different from the Sonic we know today. I combined a character idea I had with Yamaguchi’s hedgehog, and it seemed like it could work. We had also decided at the beginning that it would be an animal character. There was already a famous rabbit character though, and a cat wouldn’t be able to compete with Hello Kitty. “How about a hedgehog, then?”—no one could think of a famous hedgehog, so we went with that!

    Honestly, it took us forever to figure that piece out, but once we did, the rest of the development went swimmingly. (laughs) That was the real make-or-break moment, and from there it was just down to putting in the work.

    Yamaguchi: Yeah, I remember that. Whittling it down to that choice in the first part of the development was a real slog.

    (the weird thing about this interview is that it seems Yamaguchi was involved in Sonic 1 development in some form...)

    I guess the Koweit thing just delayed things further.

    What was the internal competition about and when did it happened ?

    This one is getting complicated. So the official story is, Sega organized an internal competition for a "mascot". Many, many characters were shown by different artists in the company, and Sonic won in the end. It is implied that this competition is what launched Sonic 1's production.

    Well...

    Yasuhara take :

    Gamasutra: Ahh, that's great. So...this may be a question you answered long ago, but when Sonic was created, Sega, as I understand, wanted a mascot. So how were the three of you chosen, or were you just coming up with this yourselves? Like, Ohshima, Naka and yourself.

    Hirokazu Yasuhara: Like, how we wound up choosing between an armadillo and a hedgehog?


    Gamasutra: Did they tell you three to do it, or did they say "OK, everybody at Sega, come up with an idea"?

    Hirokazu Yasuhara: No, it was just us three, and the mission statement was just "You guys have to make a mascot for Sega."


    Ohshima take :

    —Oshima, you were the one who came up with the original plan for Sega’s hit of hits, Sonic the Hedgehog, right?
    Oshima: Yes. I had been with Sega for exactly three years, when the President announced a company-wide petition for new ideas for “a product that will be a big hit in America!” I brought him my plans for Sonic and they were accepted. Persistence is key, as they say, and I had always thought that after three years of training at Sega, I would like to try designing my own game.

    —So you worked up the presentation for the Sonic project all on your own, then.
    Oshima: Yeah. I had previously worked in promotions/advertising, so I prepared a variety of different documents to present. I also asked Yuji Naka to prepare a working game sample to show, and I even had our toy guy create some plushies and stationary sample goods. I bombarded them with all that in my presentation: “with this game, Sega can take over the world!” (laughs) I had worked with Naka on the Phantasy Star planning, and we continued to work closely together after that.

    —Did you already have the idea for a hedgehog character at that point in the planning stage?
    Oshima: No, when I first imagined the plans for this game, the character wasn’t yet decided. The idea for Sonic came out in the course of various discussions with Naka.

    Naka take (in french) :

    --Il y a donc eu ce genre d’échanges (rire). A l'occasion j'en parlerai à Takezaki. Et à ce propos, pouvez-vous nous donner des détails sur la naissance de Sonic en tant que mascotte de SE...

    Yuji Naka : (Il m’interrompt), tout d'abord, Sonic n’a jamais été reconnu comme tel.

    --Euhhh, vraiment!?

    Yuji Naka : Il y a eu méprise ; lorsqu’en interne on collectait les idées de mascottes, Sonic a été mis dans le lot alors que son développement avait commencé depuis 1990. Au même moment, SEGA passait en première section boursière, et dans cette même idée de développement de la société on a aussi fait une chanson d'entreprise (NdT : il n'est pas rare qu'au Japon, les entreprises ; et pas forcément des grandes ; possèdent leur propre chanson).
    C'est dans ce contexte que l’idée de créer une mascotte est venue.
    Environ 200 personnages furent réunis, Sonic était dans les 8 finalistes ! J’étais aux anges, mais les choses en sont restées là sans qu’aucune décision finale ne soit prise...

    Naoto Ōshima : C'est moi qui ai fait la présentation devant le président. N'ayant pas de collègue de ma génération pour m'assister, j'ai demandé au département du jouet et à d'autres de me faire des peluches et divers goodies, et j’ai même fait une présentation du jeu en mouvement.

    Yuji Naka : Je m'en souviens. Je pense qu'il n'y a jamais eu d'annonce officielle. Bien que je me souvienne qu'une fois, lorsque monsieur Isao Ōkawa était président, il avait fait faire des cartes de visite avec Sonic dessus.

    Basically, Naka is saying the "mascot contest" happened in 1991, and it happened because of some financial / stock market evolution. They even did a "corporate song" for this occasion. Sonic was already being in development, Ohshima did do the presentation with some plushies. Naka adds that 200 characters were shown, and Sonic was one of the 8 finalists. It never went past that.

    Hayashida take is in video above, but he just says Sega wanted a competitor for Mario 3.

    Also I can't really summarize the GDC talk by Ohshima and Yasuhara but basically they said there was indeed a competition, and that Sonic was thought to have a worldwide appeal. So we can think the two things are connected, but...

    Al Nilsen says that he first saw Sonic AFTER an internal competition for a product to appeal to the US. They shown Sonic and proto-Eggman. He chose Sonic even if he thought it was stupid.

    My guess : It seems to me that people seems to conflate two events : 1) a big brainstorming to make a Mario competitor with US appeal and 2) an internal competition to choose a mascot for sega
    The first one (If Hayashida is saying the truth, and also taking Yasuhara account) only concerned Naka, Ohshima and Yasuhara. The end result was 1) Punk Sonic 2) Proto Eggman 3) in some version of the story, a third character was considered, the Bart thing or the dog.
    The second one happened the next year and didn't actually do anything. Ohshima is not some crazy confident guy who made plushies just to get his project greenlighted.
    The reason for this confusion, I think, is that it's actually quite common to call platformer of this era "mascot game". So yeah Sega asked them to make a "mascot game" aimed at the US, but the actual contest for an official mascot came way later.

    What actually was SOA influence in Sonic design, and when did it happen ?

    Wooo this one.

    So Nilsen was at Sega since 89. I think Schroeder too, but I'm not sure. Katz was butting heads with Japanese management and believed more about his licensing deals that SOJ attempt at a Mario clone. When he received the first drawings of Sonic (probably the ones Nilsen is talking about, so with proto Eggman and all) he wanted nothing to do with it, wrote a 10 points memo of what to make / not to make when targeting the US market, and just wanted to get started on actual made in USA games.

    The old interviews of SOA employees (well, Nilsen) only said that they 86'd Madonna, or at least they asked SOJ to get rid of her.
    Come the 2010's and a lot of documentaries are made about the franchise, or the era in general. Kalinske, Nilsen and Schroeder talk a lot (Kalinske and Nilsen especially after the console wars book, Schroeder never said anything beyond her participation in the two video documentaries, as far as I know), now she is considered as the "mother of sonic", Kalinske made Sonic boots red, and, the weirdest thing of all, Sonic had fangs. Actual, real fangs. Things that never, never appeared in any concept art (even when Sonic was a ball with arms drawn on a tissue) except in a tie-in manga released in June of 91. SOA also said they 86'd the rock band. We know it's actually a like more complicated than that, some things are just not true (the red shoes) and the whole thing sounds like a coordinated promotion for the book.

    Kalinske take :
    “Sonic was originally much more aggressive looking,” Kalinske said. “[Sonic] had fangs, the spikes were extremely sharp, he was much more angular, he had this busty girlfriend named Madonna—we couldn’t have gotten away with that I don’t think—and he had a rock band. So we asked [SOJ] to get rid of the rock band and Madonna and to obviously make him not have huge fangs … to make him cooler.”

    He added, “Basically what I said was we want him to be the smartass almost-teenager that everybody really loves even though he gets away with murder half of the time.”

    Kalinske explained that his counterparts at Sega of Japan were completely against his suggestions, but they were ultimately overruled by then-President Hayao Nakayama.

    “After Nakayama heard both sides of the discussion – how the SOJ guys didn’t want to change the character, and they wanted to keep Madonna, and they wanted to keep the band – Nakayama put his fist down and said, ‘No, we’re going to do what Sega of America wants to do, what Tom wants to do.”

    Naka take :
    Madonna was cut when prototyping the game because it was too similar to Mario.
    The rockband was supposed to be rescued by Sonic level by level (after each miniboss), this idea never went nowhere I guess, but they were also supposed to appear in the sound test. It was not cut because of SOA, it was cut 4 days before the game went gold, to make some place on the cartdridge for the sega scream.

    Naka: The “Sonic Band” was supposed to actually be used in a sound test screen we had planned. The sprites had been created and everything. You’d chose a song, and the band would perform it while Sonic breakdanced. Oshima had drawn up a lot of different poses, and the graphics were all done, but… at the very last minute we ran out of time to include it.

    But that left us with about 500kb free space on the ROM (1/8 of our 4Mbit cart), and to use that we came up with the idea to have that “Se~ga~” voice clip play, like a commercial. I think it was the first console video game in Japan to have the company name spoken like that. I mean, the very idea of using 1/8 of your precious memory just for a single vocal sample was kind of crazy. (laughs) Normally you’d have to allocate all that memory beforehand, you see. I made the decision to go through with it a mere 3-4 days before the deadline, but now I’m sure glad we did it!

    Schroeder take :

    Well this one you can hear above. She said she took Madonna out, the fangs, the rockband etc. In Japan nobody was happy so the flew here to explain those decision. At some point the japanese team suggested to have two version of Sonic for each market.

    Toyoda take :

    Toyoda says SOA redrew Sonic, made him "edgier" and more "comical", but, like Schroeder also says, "softened him". He also says Ohshima is the one who was actually unhappy with the changes.

    Cerny take :

    At one point when I visited Sega headquarters, Naoto Ohshima – the Sonic Team character artist – showed me some sketches of potential player characters for the game. He asked me what I, as an American, thought of the characters. There were a number of them, including an early Sonic, Robotnik, and a character with a heavy Simpsons influence. I believe that he was really trying to get my opinion of Sonic, and that the other characters were decoys.

    My feeling was “well, I’m just a random American, let’s ask the Sega of America marketing people,” as I was under the impression that they should have a much better feeling of what would or would not appeal to the U.S. market than I would. So I made some color copies, attached a note saying that this was the work of the Tokyo headquarters’ “top team,” and could they please give some feedback.

    A month or two had passed, and no feedback had arrived from Sega of America’s marketing group, so I asked if they had any comments for the team. I heard, I kid you not, that the characters were “unsalvageable,” that this was a “disaster,” and that “procedures would be put in place to make sure that this sort of thing would never happen again.” These “procedures” included a proposed “top ten list of dos and don’ts” to follow when making products for the American market. Additionally, I was told that the marketing group would be contacting a known character designer (I won’t reveal the name, but it made me cringe at the time) to make a character that showed exactly what the American market needed. Needless to say, this character designer would have been totally inappropriate for the Japanese market. Not that great for the American market either, I suspect.

    Nilsen take :

    Well, it's the one that is really interesting.

    I found this article that predates the console wars stuff by 10 years

    [​IMG]

    Could we have a little "internal competition" confusion ?

    My guess :

    Around April, Ohshima sends his three characters to SOA for advice, because the game is supposed to be made for US audience.
    Al Nilsen saw this, and said "ok" to Sonic, and suggested to cut Madonna. Still think it's the most ridiculous thing he has seen.
    But Katz, who is trying to turn the Genesis into a success with his licensing deals, doesn't believe in this new IP, and wants nothing to do with it.
    The "one, two month with no answer" that Cerny talks about could be referencing the monthly communication between Katz and Nakayama, not an actual answer from US marketing team. And that would lead us to June, and the Toy expo. Nilsen says that SOA involvement changed after they saw the gameplay for the first time (they probably saw it before the toy expo but whatever)

    So there is the first presentation of Sonic, let's say at the beginning of 1990, to the US branch. Katz wants nothing to do with it. Nilsen (and Schroeder ?) says ok to sonic, but suggest to axe Madonna. At this point there is 0 game, so yeah, the japanese team 86'd her, hearing the recommendation of SOA. SOA doesn't hear about the project for months, and they have other things to do.

    When they're first shown the gameplay (around June), Nilsen is blown away and thinks there is something to do with this. But at this point, there is still "no game". No Eggman. Rockband still here, or supposed to be at some point.

    Katz is on his way out. Kalinske comes in. He is much more "diplomatic", let's say, and doesn't want to say to SOJ (two weeks in being the CEO) that their character will not work in the US. And maybe he also believes in the game. Who knows !

    Now the other thing Cerny said that might be the key: the game was supposed to come out much sooner than it did.

    So, we're near the supposed launch of the game (let's say October/November 1990), the supposed final story of the game is done, Eggman is in, the story about dead pilots and leather jackets is also in here as lore. Maybe the Japanese branch commission a manga to visualize the universe, which birth the infamous Fanged Sonic (and will also be used for commercial purpose). Maybe this passed the infamous internal competition, so the japanese branche is sure to have a hit. Then they share with SOA.

    Seeing this, Kalinske asks Nilsen and Schroeder to think about some changes to the look and feel of Sonic to make him more US compatible, knowing that Nakayma will have his back. He asks Greg Martin (or the other Greg, I don't know) to redesign the character, to make him more teen-oriented. At this point they suggest cutting the rockband, which is too corny, and they want SOJ to stop the tie-in comic with Fanged Sonic because they don't like it and want to build Sonic like a Mattel toyline with a comic/cartoon of their own and not being polluted by other versions of the character.

    SOJ is not pleased by SOA "requests". Naka doesn't care and keep the rockband in until it doesn't make sense to do so (or maybe it is indeed axed from gameplay at this point, considered only for the sound test). Ohshima is not happy because they changed his "Mickey Mouse Sonic" to "Angsty Teen Sonic". At the same time, Nakayma hired Kalinske because he thought he was the right man for the job to make Genesis a success, so...

    At some point someone suggests that there should be 2 Sonic : one in japan, and one in us/europe. Even if in interviews SOA says it didn't happen, it kinda did. SOJ kept the Mickey Mouse Sonic, the manga, etc. SOA just put their foot in the door and managed the whole merchandising thing in the US and Europe, and kept having more and more decision power each year.

    I think we're making progress with this thing, but maybe it's just dementia kicking in.
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2019
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  2. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    Question, why does this community seem to throw a fit whenever Naka gets called Sonic's creator? From everything reported, it sounds like Naka's engine and ideas had a large influence on the character, and he and Ohshima came up with Sonic together after the latter did the basic design. I would say it's pretty fair to call him Sonic's co-creator, second only to Ohshima.

    For what's worth, Naka views it like that too, as there was an interview in which he was asked if he created Sonic as a character and he responded "Ohshima did 65% of the creating, and I did the rest" (forgot the actual percentage mentioned). And there's the fact that Ohshima has always praised Naka in interviews, even after leaving Sonic Team, making it obvious that he has no resentment toward him. So he clearly doesn't feel Naka's unfairly taking credit away from him.
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2020
  3. Magelan

    Magelan

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    I can only speak for myself but it's a combination of his galactic level-ego, his pretty poor skills as a director-producer-manager (basically anything past programming), general dickness about anybody not doing what he wants, and him actively trying to gain control over the franchise by pushing other (including the other co-creators) away.

    Didn't he remove Ohshima from Sonic Adventure DX's credits after he left Sega ? He also said that Yasuhara was actually useless.

    Interviewer: What do you think of the way the Sonic games have evolved; was it a problem when one of your team members left to work with Sony?

    Yuji Naka: Yeah, one of the guys from our team went to work on Jak and Daxter! As for the original titles, I was involved from the beginning, the creation of the game. The character was born in a kind of stream of creating, so I'm involved from the very beginning of the character. I gave the game direction, and I was the main programmer also. So I was involved with every aspect of the original Sonics. Some of the details, like making a map, quite straight-forward stuff, was done by the guy who's working on Jak and Daxter right now. He was involved until Sonic 3, and after that for eight years he didn't do anything in Sega, so he was quite useless in Sega. We really didn't need him. He was really doing nothing with Sonic.

    He was a good programmer and was essential to the creation of Sonic, sure, but after years and years of constantly trying to paint himself as THE legendary father of Sonic while shitting on the others' legacy, it's no wonder why some people are a bit fed up with the guy.
     
  4. Gestalt

    Gestalt

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    Something is telling me that it’s just him being clumsy with words.

    Funny you mention him (god bless his soul). Seems like there’s been a lot of compromising between SOJ and SOA, thinking strengths & weaknesses. It’s always fun trying to make sense out of a complex situation like this.

    Internal competition? What is that supposed to mean anyway? A method of motivating employees, or just something that’s supposed put them in the right mindset, maybe? Did Ohshima receive a prize or anything? 1989, according to the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Art Book, 1990 Ohshima submitted the rabbit character and was invited to partner with a developer within the company. Sorry I can’t be of more help.

    “Sega played a chess game, …” I think it’s safe to say that they were not only playing a chess game but were also actively utilizing press and other media to give a certain impression. How they presented themselves is key, I guess. Once again sorry for not being of much help to you.
     
  5. Linkabel

    Linkabel

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    Like Gryson said, the three volume manga was most likely not an issue for SoA.

    By that time the Japanese and American versions of Sonic had been established for some time, and both branches were already full steam ahead on promoting Sonic in their own way.

    So it would be kind of weird for Schroeder to throw a fit at that point because of the manga when SoA had their own Sonic and their own lore. The timeline just doesn't click for that to happen.

    (And I'm almost 100% sure she never heard or seen those particular issues.)

    But like I said in my previous post, I do feel like Schroeder did see some concept art where Sonic is a little more wild and he has fangs. And they never been released to the public because either they don't think they're important, they lost them, or they are saving them for the 50th anniversary or something.

    I do feel it's more likely that they showed some of that unseen concept art (along with other stuff like band, the old pilot story and the old zone names) to the manga artist somewhere in late 1990/early 1991. And that some stuff couldn't be changed because of last minute changes, deadlines or because they felt it was unnecessary to change them.
     
  6. Magelan

    Magelan

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    Well maybe he would have, if the contest went anywhere. It's not uncommon to make "regular employees" participate to motivate them.

    And you're right, it does say that in the artbook, I completely forgot about it.

    SEGA's internal design competition for a new mascot yielded some 200 new characters, from across all departments within SEGA Japan and SEGA of America. After a lengthy process of elimination, one stood out from the rest: a rabbit with a bow tie and long ears, drawn by Naoto Ohshima, a 26-year-old game artist who had worked on a couple of SEGA titles in Japan.

    Ohshima was invited to partner with a developer within the company, and to start thinking about a game that would support the new character. He approached programmer Yuji Naka, 25 at the time, to work with him. Naka, a big lover of racing games and one of the most talented coders of his generation, proposed a side-scrolling title all about ultra-speedy movement, in which the player experienced something like what a jet fighter pilot might feel after breaking the sonic barrier.

    The new pairing of Ohshima and Naka proposed their ideas to SEGA board members. They impressed them by having prepared a set of marketing materials at their presentation—the rabbit character had been made into a plush toy. Yet their true trump card was their vision of a game all about speed: a supersonic game that would work miracles in advertising the processing power of the Mega Drive to consumers. Naka's ideas were supported by a game prototype of a fast-moving character rolling like a ball through a long tube. It used a technologically advanced algorithm that allowed the character sprite to smoothly follow a curved trajectory, setting the demo apart from other games in which sprites moved about with considerably less elegance.
    I think it's another case or "how they presented themselves" and conflating the two events. It's the only publication telling the story this way, not having direct quote to support it, and if there was really an internal competition between 200 characters, the winner would have gotten a game, dumb idea or not. I really don't believe after "winning", Ohshima went back to the board 1 week later and said "you know, about that rabbit you liked... we thought about it for more than 5 seconds and the whole concept is kinda dumb. So we're going to change the WHOLE design, making something that has nothing to do with it. But i'm the winner, so it's okay, it's okay !"

    What I'm suggesting is that the manga actually was made before June, that it was presented to SOA (either for visualizing the characters or even to publish in the states) and SOA did not like it. The timeline of Schroeder, after October 1990, looking at an artwork of Sonic with fangs, while having a 100 other artworks without them, asking to remove them, SOJ actually being mad about it and her taking the credit for saving Sonic doesn't make sense either. The timeline before June 90 doesn't work either.

    The manga features a lighter blue Sonic in vol1 (he was actually lighter at the beginning, Cerny said they changed his color after some time, because of the sea behind sonic blending with him, and you can see it with the "wild sonic" being a little lighter) and zone names from ohshima's very early designs that never went into production. It has fangs because it was a 90's thing in manga to make Sonic looks cute. And it's actually a piece of media that SOA had every right to comment : it was merchandising. Who cares if there is some Ohshima concept art with fangs when it never appeared ingame ?

    But let's say it does, and there is a "neanderthal sonic" lost in time. There is 0 thing pointing to that. We have his drawings from his wild days to his felix transformation, I really don't think that Ohshima got drunk, drew 1 picture of him, the only one with fangs mind you, all this at a time where they wanted to "clean" the design to help translate it into pixel art, sent it to America, got rejected, and never appeared in anything else. It's an even wilder theory that SOA being mad at a cartoon.
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2019
  7. big smile

    big smile

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    Here's something interesting: Back in 1992, UK TV show Bad Influence had a TV special and a magazine that listed "Mr Kunari" as the creator of Sonic. (It's probably a misspelling of Minoru Kanari).
    Present Violet Berlin even held up a sketch created by Mr Kunari which she described as "the first ever rough sketch of Sonic." (The mag scans and TV show seem to be offline, but there's a thread that discusses them here). Around the same time, French Magazine Mega Force also listed Mr Kanari as the creator of Sonic too (although they also clarified that he was the director of the game).

    I doubt Kanari was the designer in the same way that Ohshima was (the TV show probably got its wires crossed) but it's interesting how he went from being the one the first people to be linked with Sonic to being more-or-less forgotten.
     
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  8. Sir_mihael

    Sir_mihael

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    Ohoho, thankfully I can say with a smile that Bad Influence is very much on Youtube, as that show was my religion back in the day and I'm glad someone archived it! (learned the S2 Super Sonic cheat from 'Nam Rood'. Of course he just said "Now you can turn sonic Yellow!" or something naff like that)

    Anyway, just found the bit in question. The sketch of "Mr. Hedgehog"
    [​IMG]

    And the full episode is here for anyone who wants to check out that little segment! (and please PLEASE listen to the little review that comes just after it. I take back everything bad I've said about every youtuber now...)
     
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  9. Gryson

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    You're trying too hard to force the vague information we have to fit a preconceived narrative. Again, the comic is a red herring.

    The most striking point in regards to the cursed comic to me is this: SOA pretty much never used promotional materials that were made in Japan, including cover art, for any games. They always developed their own promotional materials and game-related art. Why? Well, it could be said that they didn't like the Japanese art style, but I think on a more practical level, it's because they wanted to utilize their own employees and freelancers. Therefore, there's no reason why SOA should give two shits about that comic. It was meaningless to them. Japan could (and did) come up with all the convoluted marketing that they wanted to and it had no bearing on the US market.

    The only point of relevance to SOA was what was included in the actual game: the look of the characters, the in-game story (although that was often changed for localization as well), the difficulty level, etc. Everything outside of the game they had complete control over and could change as they desired.

    The only real window of opportunity for SOA to have some say in the character design was at the start of 1990, before the toy show demo. At that point, the in-game character design was basically finalized. The toy show was also the last appearance of Madonna, IIRC. She didn't appear in the SPEC issue or the Japanese mags a few months later.

    It's certainly possible that there is an undiscovered piece of concept art that SOA took particular issue with. However, I think it's highly likely that SOA just took issue with the way that Sonic was presented in the early concept art that we have. The design didn't represent what they thought a successful American cartoon character (e.g., Mickey Mouse) should look like. Whether the fangs were literal or not isn't really relevant.

    As I see it, the facts are that Schroeder took issue with the character design, and the only window in which to effect change was at the start of 1990. After that, SOA would have been working on constructing their own version of the backstory and developing their own promotional materials.

    Why does any of this matter?

    Ultimately, this is about giving credit where it is due. Schroeder and Kalinske have claimed a lot of credit for "fixing" the design of Sonic. Kalinske's claims are almost certainly bogus. Schroeder likely had some input in refining Sonic's design, but the concept art that we have suggests that this may be less than it is sometimes made out to be. Nevertheless, I don't think we can dismiss Schroeder's input as being limited to a Japan-only promotional comic from June 1991.
     
  10. Gryson

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    I had never seen this artwork in such high quality... Does that hedgehog on the top right have fangs?!? There certainly seems to be something protruding from the side of its snout. Easier to see if you go enlarge the video and see it in motion.
     
  11. Powpuck

    Powpuck

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  12. Gryson

    Gryson

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    Here is what I was looking at:

    [​IMG]

    That illustration is a bit weird because the hedgehog has more of a snout. He looks very rough and aggressive. There is something in the corner of the mouth which could be a protruding tooth or could be an open mouth. It's probably not clear enough to say one way or another. It's not difficult to imagine someone getting that in a fax titled "our new mascot" and cringing, though.
     
  13. Powpuck

    Powpuck

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    I dunno, cute little fangs is such a ubiquitous trope in anime/manga--several cited that predate Sonic--that I have a hard time doubting that Sonic ever did have them in his inchoate state.

    Anyways, back to the Armadillo concept:
    [​IMG]
    It did get as far as a character design, if the images that fly by in this video are genuine. Said video also contains a kangaroo and alternative rabbit concept art too--the latter not very Sonic-like.
     
  14. DreamsComeBlue

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    Wait, why? This is the first I hear of this.

    Edit: nvm, my question was answered later in the thread
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2019
  15. Magelan

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    Amazing find about Kanari ! It makes sense that he was involved in some capacity with the first one, being a producer on Sonic CD. I found the original interview in Megaforce, the translation is a bit janky but he does talk about Sonic's girlfriend. So it seems that Hayashida and him were supervising the project, while Yasuhara was handling the day to day stuff. I guess.

    If that's really how I come off, I apologize because it's really not my attention. I'm really just trying to connect every bit of information (the result being more of a theory than anything, but...) while not dismissing anybody alleged role in the production.

    I'm not trying to dismiss Schroeder's role (or even Kalinske, or Katz, or anybody) to being only limited to the manga or the comic, just trying to understand what really happened and if it fits in the actual timeline that we know about. I have no problem if her input came at the beginning, on some early version of the character, but it contradicts some other declarations by the japanese team, and Mark Cerny.

    I admit that maybe my opinion is perhaps a bit colored by the fact that I worked in a ad agency for a couple of years, and I dealt with conflict within some company (between the international team and the national team for instance) about really, really minor things. When you say that SOA wouldn't care and just hire their own freelances, I really don't believe that, even more if Kalinske applied his experience at Mattel, where you had to create a single story, and a single visual identity to build a toyline, and where the comics & cartoon were really the basis for your actual brand. The Sonic Bible is the incarnation of that. You can also see Schroeder's corrections on the first draft of the american comic. When trying to build an international icon (at least for the west) and that failure in not an option, you really don't want the "message" to be confusing about who your character is.

    Being also involved in video production, I kinda know how you write a script for your documentary, and then cut some interviews in editing to fit your script, or even ask directly the person to say "oh yeah I really love this" when their first answer is a 15 minutes explanation while you only need a 10 seconds clip. So when I see the clip about being "the mother of sonic", and the actual story, I'm tempted to think that it's just like the internal competition thing. A simplified story of a year and a half process, with a nice narrative hook to be easier to understand. But when you really listen to Schroeder, Toyoda, and Naka (and read other interviews), it seems they're not really talking about the same thing.

    I don't know if I'm right about the "real" changes being only about the merchandise stuff near the end, but just to prove my point, when Naka and SOJ retook control of the franchise (after Sonic Xtreme) the first thing they did was to kill the "american sonic" and imposing the "modern sonic" as the international version. So exactly what Kalinske was trying to do.

    [​IMG]

    SA 1 cutscenes also had Sonic grow back cute little fangs that never appeared anywhere in the actual artwork, probably to make it more anime like.

    [​IMG]

    But I admit I may very well be making stories in my head.