New Brenda Ross/Cook interview

Don't let it get to you... "foolish words fall on deaf ears"... keep up the good work, bro... you're loved here on Retro...

 

This was a very nice read ~

 

That was a very pleasant interview to read, it's nice to hear her have an absolute blast talking about her previous work with SEGA, reminiscing over things like the people she worked with. Kudos to the interviewer too who asked and expanded upon all the right questions.

I personally chuckled at the part where she talked about how the Winter Zone and VHS stuff that we helped uncover with Frank came about, because I saw exactly how it went down and came to be haha

 

First, I want to say that I enjoyed the interview. This beats my interview with her decades ago (which will never see the light of day!) by miles. I shared your interview with a few others who don't come here but are equally interested in stuff like this. She's definitely got a personality that comes right through. Probably my favorite bit of information was the Miles Prower thing. She definitely remembers that well, so I have absolutely no doubt that it's the truth.

If I may add something else here -- and this is really a very small thing, so don't let this detract from my words above -- there are things I wish you asked, and a few things I wish you had slowed down to dig deeper on. I don't want to draw them out, because I don't want this to become a "we should go back and ask her" thing. But if you plan on doing any other interviews with folks, some of us ancient researchers might have a few good ideas for things to inquire about. I hope you'll consider reaching out if you haven't already.

Anyway, good job, and nice surprise!

 

I’ve been waiting for this one! I remember this promised last year, but it was totally worth the wait!

That was an excellent interview and the MJ part was an absolute gem!

Thank you!!!!

 

Friend, this interview is absolutely golden! I'm not a journalist (I like to write but I have yet to conduct any interviews) so I don't have much in the way of feedback for the way it was conducted. The only thing I'd do differently is adjust the written format to make it easier to read, like how magazines be doing:

BUT that's just me, though. Otherwise, I love it!

'That being said, I didn't think we'd hear from her again any time soon because of how awkwardly previous attempts went down in the past — in all fairness, that was a little over 20 years ago, so it's not too surprising.

The story about the mock-documentary absolutely took me out! I was in tears, I can picture that kind of thing in my head clearly since that's exactly the kind of office shenanigans that would go down when I worked at Michigan Works (our state's one-stop career center thingy) 16 years ago....maybe or maybe not including the empty liquor bottles. Sometimes I wondered lmao. Anyways, I'd love to see that VHS if she finds it. I love how her charm and humor comes right through even just reading the transcript, my wife has a similar personality by the sounds of it, so the whole thing was just really precious lol.

Lastly, I never would've guessed that she came up with Miles Prower, I had taken the whole story his designer wanting that name instead of 'Tails' and the whole "sneaking the name Miles into artwork" as gospel. It's amazing that we're always still finding out just a little bit more about this stuff, even when we think we've reached a peak.

The "live fish" drink she mentioned in Japan would still be a "no for me, dawg" even if I weren't allergic to seafood. But hey to each their own LOL

ETA: Gave it a second read after getting in from work a while ago; what she had to say about Roger Hector was....wow! Admittedly there's a lot I haven't read about the man or how others really felt, but based what I did know — I never would've guessed that it was like that at all. For some reason after reading other people's accounts of him as well as his own interview(s) in the past, I assumed he was fairly chill and well-liked. I guess like the saying goes, different sides to every story, right? I also didn't realize Tim Skelly passed away. Man...

 

This is different. You are thinking of Frank's (From the VGHF) interview he said was coming soon whenever his Sonic 2 video came out, which hasn't happened yet(?).

 

He may not have originated the name, but it's still true that Yasushi Yamaguchi preferred the name Miles over Tails. On social media he still refers to the character as either Miles "Tails" Prower, Miles (Tails), or just Miles. The team went out of their way to make his default name Miles in the life icon and act clear message in the Japanese version, so there was a preference there.

 

Kind of funny how Tails' name just got progressively longer as development went on.

It went Mile > Miles > Miles Prower > Miles "Tails" Prower.

I can't help but wonder. If Brenda hadn't come up with the pun, would he have been called Miles the Fox, making for a more traditional Sonic name?

 

And at the very start he was just "FOX"! (A placeholder name of course.)

 

What an incredible memory pull! Thank you! I honestly hadn’t even considered that these were unrelated. Although we’re still in waiting, this was a lovely stop gap.

 

Wow! Given how much the Japanese team preferred the name Miles, I was under the impression that Yamaguchi had come up with the name and the reason he was so adamant on keeping it was because he was proud of himself for being able to construct a pun outside of his native language, I guess. This changes that, though, and I do believe her story (though she seems to be misremembering the whole Knuckles thing... don't know what that could be referring to). Now the question is who created the name "Tails"? Also, I see a lot of you citing that Yuji Naka came up with the name "Mile". Where's the source for this?

 

IIRC, the name "Tails" came up in a discussion with some guys from ABC during SatAM's development. I don't remember where that info came from, though.