[Mercury]

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)

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)*

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)*

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

ICEknight, on 11 February 2013 - 07:42 PM, said:

And what about the "Mr. Needlemouse" origin?

Quote

Mr. Needlemouse was a name given to several prototypes of the character Sonic the Hedgehog on an early concept art sheet by his designer Naoto Ohshima.

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

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?

This post has been edited by Mercury: 11 February 2013 - 09:21 PM

[TheKazeblade]

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.

[Mercury]

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.)

TheKazeblade, on 31 January 2013 - 12:52 AM, said:

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.

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.

[TheKazeblade]

Mercury, on 31 January 2013 - 03:01 AM, said:

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.

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.

This post has been edited by TheKazeblade: 31 January 2013 - 03:26 AM

[ICEknight]

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:

Quote

■ Sonic at premiere

Footage of "Sonic" was the first published in the 1990 toy show.
Are in the upper left of the heroine "Madonna" of the phantom.


■ Sonic Band

Image was scheduled to go into Sound Test "Sonic 1" initially.
Vector of the keyboard appeared in the "Chaotix" of SUPER32X later.

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:

Quote

1991
Hedgehog vs. Plumber

After irs launch in the U.S., Genesis sales were good but not great. Nintendo remained the leader, and they were preparing to launch their own 16-bit system, the Super NES. And Nintendo had something that Sega did not—Mario! So Sega enlisted their employees in Japan and held a competition to see who could come up with the best character. One of the women had been reading a book about animals and thought hedgehogs were cool. Hers was one of two winners. The other was a very young pre-school-type animal done in pastels. Al Nilsen remembers going into a conference room with Shinobu Toyoda, one of Sega's longtime top executives, and seeing the two winning drawings. "Here, pick one," he was told.
"Here was this image of Sonic the Hedgehog in a rock band with his blonde, human girlfriend, Madonna. There was no game design or story. Just this image, but it was the less objectionable of the two. So I said, 'Do Sonic but get rid of Madonna,' and we sent it back to Japan."

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 31 January 2013 - 05:01 AM

[Mercury]

TheKazeblade, on 31 January 2013 - 03:25 AM, said:

Where they got those names, I have no idea, unless it was in the Japanese manga, because I know the band exists in those.

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:





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

ICEknight, on 31 January 2013 - 04:58 AM, said:

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:

Quote

1991
Hedgehog vs. Plumber

After irs launch in the U.S., Genesis sales were good but not great. Nintendo remained the leader, and they were preparing to launch their own 16-bit system, the Super NES. And Nintendo had something that Sega did not—Mario! So Sega enlisted their employees in Japan and held a competition to see who could come up with the best character. One of the women had been reading a book about animals and thought hedgehogs were cool. Hers was one of two winners. The other was a very young pre-school-type animal done in pastels. Al Nilsen remembers going into a conference room with Shinobu Toyoda, one of Sega's longtime top executives, and seeing the two winning drawings. "Here, pick one," he was told.
"Here was this image of Sonic the Hedgehog in a rock band with his blonde, human girlfriend, Madonna. There was no game design or story. Just this image, but it was the less objectionable of the two. So I said, 'Do Sonic but get rid of Madonna,' and we sent it back to Japan."

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.

[TheKazeblade]

ICEknight, on 31 January 2013 - 04:58 AM, said:

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:

Quote

■ Sonic at premiere

Footage of "Sonic" was the first published in the 1990 toy show.
Are in the upper left of the heroine "Madonna" of the phantom.


■ Sonic Band

Image was scheduled to go into Sound Test "Sonic 1" initially.
Vector of the keyboard appeared in the "Chaotix" of SUPER32X later.

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:

Quote

1991
Hedgehog vs. Plumber

After irs launch in the U.S., Genesis sales were good but not great. Nintendo remained the leader, and they were preparing to launch their own 16-bit system, the Super NES. And Nintendo had something that Sega did not—Mario! So Sega enlisted their employees in Japan and held a competition to see who could come up with the best character. One of the women had been reading a book about animals and thought hedgehogs were cool. Hers was one of two winners. The other was a very young pre-school-type animal done in pastels. Al Nilsen remembers going into a conference room with Shinobu Toyoda, one of Sega's longtime top executives, and seeing the two winning drawings. "Here, pick one," he was told.
"Here was this image of Sonic the Hedgehog in a rock band with his blonde, human girlfriend, Madonna. There was no game design or story. Just this image, but it was the less objectionable of the two. So I said, 'Do Sonic but get rid of Madonna,' and we sent it back to Japan."

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.

[The KKM]

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?

[Black Squirrel]

Mercury, on 31 January 2013 - 12:43 AM, said:

Many things are just asserted, just begging for a [citation needed].

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.

[ICEknight]

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.

[Black Squirrel]

"What does Sonic Retro need to reference"

Category:Printed media
Category:Interviews
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

[dsrb]

ICEknight, on 31 January 2013 - 11:26 AM, said:

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.

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.

[qwertysonic]

The KKM, on 31 January 2013 - 06:08 AM, said:

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?

I have never heard that said before.

[Greg the Cat]

TheKazeblade, on 31 January 2013 - 06:06 AM, said:

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.

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.

[ICEknight]

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.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 31 January 2013 - 06:11 PM