New Brenda Ross/Cook interview

This is awesome, Brenda sounds like a wonderful person who would have been a lot of fun to work with!

 

I was wondering why @cartridgeculture hadn't done it yet... I read it yesterday and it caught my attention... until now we only knew that an employee had created that name and now we know who did it ... he's doing an excellent job with these interviews...

 

I’m kinda curious as to how Brenda knew the name “Knuckles”, but overall this is a very interesting insight into not only Sonic 2 development, but - and in my opinion, far more importantly - the dynamics and friendships developed in STI. It sounds like the crew became really close, which is just so sweet…

 

This is absolutely lovely. She sounds so excited when talking about the office shenanigans! I'd love to hear more about that. Fantastic interview.

 

That's a great read! I remember there has been a bit of a narrative going like - Brenda Ross didn't have a good time at STI because her work got scrapped and then she quit. Of course the truth is her time at STI has always been more complex than just Sonic 2, but this interview especially paints her as a colorful and energetic character, and it seems like she got along well with the team and that, at least until Roger Hector came along, there was a lot of positivity. More of this kind of oral history, please!

 

A new interview? Oh this will be awesome to read

 

Brenda claims she made the name Miles Prower for Tails. Is she just making stuff up now? Did she actually name him? That would be pretty big.

 

If she did come up with the name "Miles Prower" then that's an interesting wrinkle to the story behind the name "Tails". We always assumed that "Miles Prower" came from the Japanese team and STI came up with "Tails". Wasn't there a story where they had to convince the Japanese staff to use Tails, and then they compromised?

 

It would make sense for an American to come up with "Miles Prower" simply because it's a play on words in English. I can imagine her coming up with it off the cuff, not giving it much thought anyway¹, but then the Japanese team insisting on using it afterwards.

¹ Which she also doesn't in the interview, not even knowing beforehand that they actually use it, even today²
² And that makes it hard for me to imagine her simply making it up. To what end? To gain brownie points? With whom?

 

Assuming it is true, it's kinda ironic that her major contributions to Sonic 2 got cut, while something she deemed as a minor contribution at the time has had a major impact 30 years later.

 

It could be unintentional and she's misremembering. Like, maybe she came up with a different name (Miles Monotail?), and got it mixed up with Miles Prower due to faulty memory? After all, she doesn't even remember whether or not they used that name.

However, unless there is evidence against her claim, I'm going to assume she's right.

 

oh gosh, hello everyone!

thanks, I'm a bit shy about this stuff, ironically

You're right. Brenda's remembering correctly, 100%. There was absolutely no doubt in her voice.

I thought about that, and the possibility that a proto-Knuckles/the name Knuckles was somehow created by Yamaguchi created alongside Tails, but from speaking to her directly, she probably just saw the name Knuckles afterwards and it stuck in her head. She left STI in 94, so I'd imagine the word was floating around the office.

aw jeez you're all so sweet. Thanks for the support everyone

 

That was a great interview! I really enjoyed the anecdotes she shared. Jobs sometimes have that honeymoon phase where everything clicks with your coworkers—until something disrupts it.

I hope this doesn’t come across as criticism, but something I’ve learned as a journalist is to ask interviewees if they can put a date to their experiences. It helps build a clearer timeline and can also jog their memory. That Michael Jackson tidbit, for example, could’ve benefited from a timeframe. Even if they don’t remember exact dates, they can often provide more context.

As for the Miles Prower discussion, that definitely adds an interesting wrinkle since it’s always been framed as a SoJ vs. SoA thing. Maybe she came up with it, and Yamaguchi and the team liked it enough to push for it?

We have cleared up many misconceptions so maybe this is one of then?

Lately, he’s been pretty candid in interviews and on social media, so it stands out that he hasn’t mentioned her when discussing the origin of the name.

Someone could ask him about it on Twitter.

For anyone who has read it, does he mention the name’s origin in the Beep21 interview? It’s behind a paywall, so I haven’t been able to check.

 

This totally sounds the most correct. Added to the wiki.

I looked into the source of Nilsen's Monotail story. It's Console Wars, pg. 244. Here's a web copy. The web version doesn't show it, but the physical book reveals The Renaming of Miles Monotail to be like, an actual document provided to Harris for the writing of the book (its printed in the same "quote font" as other interviewee-provided material). As a result, it looks like we likely have 100% of his original pitch preserved. This also means Nilsen's been holding onto this piece of paper for like 30+ years, that's rad.

I'll get around to adding a page for the Monotail pitch soon.

EDIT: The Renaming of Miles Monotail

 

Ah yeah, in the thread Yamaguchi does go over that info as well. Also with the bully backstory.

Though, maybe I'm being a stickler, but while I do think David's post makes a lot of sense parts of it are still up in the air and we're doing a little bit of speculation about it.

I think there's a way of writing about it and putting it in a wiki but not guarantee the events went exactly like that since we don't know.

 

If we only documented things we were 100% sure on, the wiki would be a lot emptier. @Black Squirrel will explain this ideology better, but documenting something is better than documenting nothing, regardless of voracity. Part of that ideology means we also don't need to append the word "reportedly" to the front of every paragraph to document it on the wiki, if that makes sense. There are tons of places on the wiki where we say "According to X."

i dont want to argue with anyone and now this public attention is frightening me, i'm leaving this thread, im sorry

 

I'm sorry, I did not meant that we shouldn't document it. Just write it in a way that's no so concrete or point out it's speculation.

I think by not doing that is how many other misconceptions have grown that were also in the Retro wiki.

(Things like Needlemouse, Nails the Bat, the SA2 branching thing etc etc)