Whoever gathered the footage for the documentary should have paid attention to the source they got it from. This should have told them it wasn't an official game, so they would have known to skip it and find more fitting footage. Not knowing what "ROM hack" means is hardly an excuse when it takes less than 5 minutes to learn with google. And even if the video's uploader didn't specifically call it a hack, googling "sonic next level" should have told them whether it was official or not. Alternatively, they could have checked something like Wikipedia or GameFAQs to see if it was listed. Really, the fact they didn't even do minimal research to verify the content before using it is their fault alone. It's not the 90's anymore, this kind of info is readily available for everyone with internet access. You don't need to be an "expert on the subject".
Let me just give you an example of how these are populated... Someone is tasked with populating the library and is given some assets. Sometimes these are already listed or might be bulk listed with some descriptors. They have to then label them as most appropriate on the library. But if you have a bunch of assets which are called 'Sonic the Hedgehog', most people will just use that as the descriptor. This means that potentially and this is quite an extreme example. You could have assets of shadow gameplay listed as Sonic the Hegehog. Then years later someone needs a clip of 'Sonic the Hegehog' for a t.v. show or something. They then go to the media library and search 'Sonic the Hegehog' potentially they could use that clip of shadow. It's not done maliciously nor is it a case of "They should have paid more attention". If an editor doesn't really know but has an approved media library that says "that's sonic" they'll use it. Now maybe we can have some expectations for real people... but a 30 year old game? And that's if the assets are labelled right or appropriate. For example I did a video about the Sonic 2 Toys R Us launch party a few months back. And I was curious about something. Why is It, that from what little footage exists you see 30 journalists... but barely any photos existed? Well it turns out they do exist and they are on Ghetty and shutterstock. But almost none of them have Sonic or Sonic 2 or even Sega has a tag.
You're kidding me. They didn't even mention the guy who started the whole dang thing? I'm inclined to agree with those saying they should've known better about the hack. It takes minimal research to find the actual levels in any given Sonic game, and to use the appropriate footage after doing that research. This isn't exactly obscure information. This sort of thing shows a lack of effort IMO. Reminds me of when I see someone talking about the groundbreaking special effects in Star Wars, but show CGI footage from the special edition as the visual example.
I just watched the entire series and Sonic 1 The Next Level was also briefly shown during a evolution montage of games in the last episode.
Everyone's been contacting me the past two weeks about it, actually, it's been somewhat annoying. I ended up making a wiki-page for the hack so I could document the whole Netflix thing. After watching it, it seems there are a few other contradictions involving the story behind it all, specifically involving Tom Kalinske. In the following two documentaries on YouTube, the story goes that Tom Kalinske along with Shinobu Toyoda, had pitched an idea to CEO Hayao Nakayama around bundling Sonic 1 with the hardware, and lowering the price from $189 to $149. In this video at 11:56 - 12:48: Shinobu Toyoda - "He said to us 'Are you crazy? We make money from software, and you give that very best title away?' He stood up, he kicked a chair, he started to walk to the conference door, then, he turned around to Tom Kalinske and said to Tom 'If you believe this is the way to beat Nintendo, do it!' We gave Sonic away eventually to 15 million house holds with our hardware system." Again, at 18:44 - 20:50 in this video: Tom Kalinske - "The thing we had to do first and foremost was sell a lot of hardware, 'cause otherwise, how are you gonna sell a lot of software? If you don't get a lot of hardware out to the homes, you really had no chance of creating a market place with follow on software." Shinobu Toyoda - "Tom and I went to Japan, and sat down in the big 'SEGA of Japan' board room with oval table, with perhaps 30 board members and other executives and explained our strategy, that is; we lower our price from $189 to $149 when Nintendo was offering the Super Nintendo for $199, and on top of that we wanted to bundle our software 'Sonic 1' and create a bundle pack for that $149 price point, and as Tom started to explain, I saw Nakayama san's face sort of turning white and getting angry, and he stood up and said 'We make money from software (because we don't make money really from hardware), so why we give away the best software away.', and he kicked a chair, and literally ran to the door." Tom Kalinske - "...then I thought 'well that's the end of my career', and he turned at the door and he said 'well I hired you to build the company and take market share from Nintendo, and if this is what you think you have to do, go ahead and do it', so he supported our plan 100% and to his credit I think, to his great credit (cause he could've easily said no), and because of his allowing us to do that, we then went on to really dramatically take share of market away from Nintendo in the next year." Though according to Tom Kalinske's interview in the Netflix docuseries, at approximately 4:39 - 5:45: Tom Kalinske - "So I developed a plan and went back to Japan. We went into what's called the 'Decision Room' and of course most of the people that I'm talking to do not speak English, and I had to sell the battle plan to the board of directors of SEGA" 'The Battle Plan' as written on a chalk board in the docuseries by Tom Kalinske: Lower the price. Defeat Mario. More sports. Cool for teens. Make fun of Nintendo. Tom Kalinske -"So I present my strategy to the board of directors, but it wasn't going well and Nakayama gets up, and he kicks over a chair, and he says 'They don't agree with anything you said.' and he starts to leave the room, I thought 'well this is shortest career anybody ever had, I'm done for, he's leaving the room, leaving me with all these people who don't agree with me', and he turned at the door and he said 'Well when I hired you, I said you were going to be able to make all the decisions for the American market, and so, go ahead and do your things that you've planned', so now it had to work obviously or I was finished." This was mostly in relation to lowering the price of the hardware, but there's no mention of the bundling itself. I think it's amazing how easy stories shift ever so slightly, so I think there are aspects which are confused by the people involved, I mean, as they get older, of course their memory is going to fail them. In my opinion, much of the inaccuracy is coming from the people involved just as much as the production team. Not to defend them of course, but it seems the more they remember the events and have to explain them, the more the details start to change.
I'm not surprised some details were glossed over as this wasn't exactly a Ken Burns-style comprehensive 50-hour oral history. It seemed like it was designed to be an overview aimed particularly at younger gamers who may not know a whole lot about the early days of their medium, and each episode has a very specific focus. Episode 1 - The early arcade boom and the rise and fall of Atari Episode 2 - The ascendance of Nintendo and their impact on pop culture as a whole in the 80s Episode 3 - The birth of computer adventure and role-playing games Episode 4 - The 90s console war (which I imagine would be of the most interest to this forum) Episode 5 - The rise of fighting games and creation of the ESRB Episode 6 - The early days of 3D gaming I thought it was overall a lot of fun, though. We all probably know the Sonic stuff, and have seen the early sketches and concept art and such, but it was really cool seeing Tomohiro Nishikado's hand-drawn designs for the Space Invaders aliens, or watching Roberta Williams chart out a theoretical adventure game on a giant sheet of paper.
I have watched it all now and my view is it was indeed designed to give an overview to the layman who is probably under 25 and might not even have heard of things like Atari. For a Netflix original I enjoyed it. It wasn't too taxing to watch and it was accessible. Those who want to know more detail will likely move on and find stuff on YouTube like Gaming Historian and the rest of it.
The narrator for that was "Donald Ian Black" The narrator for this is "Charles Martinet" aka the voice of Mario.
