So this was posted today to advertise that High Score, a docuseries about the golden age of video games is going to come out on August 19. The small clip is an interview with Naoto Ohshima about the process of Sonic's creation. In it we have the usual story that we've heard before; Sega needed a mascot, a rabbit was considered, Ohshima goes to New York and a hedgehog was chosen. But the beginning of the clip mentions they were playing with the idea of using a panda, but they thought it would be too cute and weird to see one roll and attack. Is that part new? I don't think I've read anything about a panda being in the list of candidates before they chose going with a hedgehog. I posted this in the Supreme Knowledge thread, but I thought it deserved it's own one since the show might have information we don't know about. Like I said in that thread, not sure if there's going to be a full episode just focusing on Sonic or just segment. Anyways, anyone know about the panda info?
I for one never heard of that. Also, all sources I read (such as this one) claimed that the characters Ohshima showed to Central Park passersby were a hedgehog, a mustachioed man and a dog. That video implies the third character was the proposed rabbit design instead. Although Ohshima calls it just "another animal character" there. I'm guessing he forgot the specifics, so he drew the rabbit as the third character?
I've definitely heard the panda mentioned before, but I've not been able to find anything on Google, so it might be in a book or video. I did find this old interview where Naka mentions his love of pandas though: https://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/6279/segas-naka-n-nagoshi-get-personal N.D: What's your favorite animal? Y.N: The panda. Whenever anyone asks me about new character for a game, I answer "a panda". I'm a big fan of the Japanese anime 'Panda Kopanda' by Hayao Miyazaki. After watching it, I came to love pandas. Everyone should see this cartoon. EDIT: From Sega Mega Drive / Genesis: Collected Works' Naoto Ohshima interview: I'm sure there's another interview out there where a panda is mentioned specifically though... SECOND EDIT: It's mentioned in this interview, that desperately needs to be translated properly: https://www.famitsu.com/news/201606/24107383.html 大島 まだキャリア3年目くらいのペーペーな自分でしたが、ナンバーワンプログラマーと呼ばれていた中さんと仕事をしたいと、いっしょになってキャラクターを作り始めたんです。完成形がどういうゲームになるかのイメージが浮かばないなかで、前述のウサギをデザインしたところ中さんは「俺はもっと、ボールみたいになって転がっていくのが作りたい」といったんです。 飯塚 （ボソリと）『パンダコパンダ』ですよね。 大島 そうそう。イメージソースは『パンダコパンダ』（1972年公開の劇場用アニメ。監督は高畑勲氏、脚本は宮崎駿氏で、『となりのトトロ』の原型とも評される）だって。 中 ゲームの企画を考えるたびにパンダを主人公にしたくて、『パンダコパンダ』の話をしていたんですよ。僕も大島も宮崎駿さんの作品が大好きなんでね。 大島 で、それまで考えていたキャラクターがボールになることを想定していなかったので、「さて、どうしよう」とまた悩んで、最終的にたどり着いたのが、ハリネズミとアルマジロなんです。 中 でんぐり返しで転がって敵を倒すというのは僕が高校生のときから温めていた秘蔵のアイデアで、本音では使いたくなかったんです。でも、ウサギが物を投げるゲームだと、物を投げるたびにいちいちストップするのがイヤだよね、という壁にぶち当たったときにしぶしぶと披露をして。 （一同笑） 中 でも、大島は理屈っぽいから「丸まって敵を倒すとかおかしいじゃないですか！」って反対してね（笑）。だったらハリネズミやアルマジロといった、背中の硬い動物にしようとなって企画が転がっていったんです。デザインの中には後のドクターエッグマンとなるキャラクターもいたんですけど、それも主人公候補のひとりでしたから。 Google Translated: Oshima: I was still in my third year of career, but I wanted to work with Naka-san, who was called the number one programmer, and I started to make characters together. With no idea of what the finished game would look like, the place where the rabbit was designed was Mr. Naka, "I would like to make it roll more like a ball." Iizuka (with Bosori) It's "panda panda". Oshima: That's right. The image source is "Panda Copanda" (a theater animation released in 1972. The director is Isao Takahata, the script is Hayao Miyazaki, which is also known as the prototype of "My Neighbor Totoro"). Naka: Every time I thought about planning a game, I wanted to make Panda the main character, so I was talking about "Panda Copanda". Both I and Oshima love Hayao Miyazaki's work. Oshima: I didn't anticipate that the character I had been thinking about would become a ball, so I was worried about what to do again, and finally I arrived at Hedgehog and Armadillo. Naka: Rolling back and defeating the enemy was a secret idea that I had been warming up since I was in high school, and I didn't really want to use it. But in the game of rabbit throwing things, I don't want to stop every time I throw something, so I showed off reluctantly when I hit the wall. (All laughs) Naka: But Oshima is logical, so I oppose that "it's funny to curl up and defeat the enemy!" (laughs). Then, I was trying to make animals with hard back, such as hedgehogs and armadillos, and the plan rolled. There was a character in the design who would later become Doctor Eggman, but that was also one of the hero candidates.
Nice, I was actually going to post that I just saw it in the Collected Works book but didn't see your edit. That interview looks interesting and yeah it needs some translating. Can't wait for the docuseries to drop to see if there's some new info for the series.
Not sure if anyone already caught this. But during this episode, they're talking about Sonic 1 While talking about Sonic's movement, etc. they show Green Hill , then show this level (attached pic -- obv not Sonic 1) , then show some more Green Hill. Anyone know what game this is from? It seems like a fan game but I don't really recognize this level. They video is kinda zoomed in while they're showing it and it's only a short clip.
Yes it is !! I kept watching (made my last post while still watching lol) and they actually show the title screen (attached pic). Also, note, at this point in the episode, it's someone talking about playing Sonic at Rock The Block. If I'm not mistaken, that was a contest for Sonic 3 right? So, not only did they show this for Sonic 1. But they also showed it when talking about something concerning what I guess would have been S3&K... Edit: in this clip they actually show 25 seconds of continuous footage of someone playing this game
Why, I feel ever so flattered now~ I wonder why they actually used footage from my hack though, as in, was it simply they were clueless and obtained the wrong ROM randomly thinking it was legitimate, or was it intentional to escalate the hacking scene awareness in a subtle way?
Man, this site is weird, because I dupeposted, edited the dupepost, and then the normal post disappeared. :P Anyway, what I’d said was that I’m guessing that the editors didn’t know much about Sonic and, when compiling footage for the documentary, therefore mistook the hack for an official game. I’d imagine that the “Next Level” also confused them since that’s a well-known slogan Sega used in the early ‘90s.
Well your game definitely looked cool! During the Rock The Block winner's talking segment they were showing off a lot of the level. In fact, your ROM hack probably had more actual footage shown throughout this episode than Sonic 1 did lol. Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it for a second!
Just watched Episode 4 and saw Sonic the Next Level was featured, researchers or editors clearly never played the official games. MarkeyJester Now every sonic fan who watches this will know and want to play your hack. well done sir!
Wouldn't be the first time someone covered Sonic and used fan made assets to promote it. I remember some news outlet using footage from Hez's fan game Sonic Classic. Ironically enough I was listening to some music from Sonic the Next Level at work today too! I guess I should give this documentary a watch soon.
Nostalgia Critic's review of the DiC Sonic cartoons also used footage from a ROM hack, which he later admitted was unintentional and he just grabbed random footage. I really have to wonder how stuff like that happens, as I feel like if you just did a search for "sonic gameplay" on YouTube or something it would bring up the official games first long before any fan-made stuff. It just seems like it'd have to be deliberate on someone's part.
I need to look this up properly. But based on the narrator and the presentation. Pretty sure this show is done by the same team who did 'The Toys/Movies That made us.' Admittedly they're really quite amazing shows and I did wonder if they would do a gaming one. But that said they're not flawless there are a few mistakes in them so I wouldn't be surprised at all that they got the wrong footage. A lot of these docs just use various image and video media libraries. Unfortunately not a lot of them are well labelled and many have some howlers in them. Like when I'm doing a badnik mechanic history vid. Sometimes when I search for sonic in Ghetty images. Pokemon, Mario and even random characters I've never heard of pop up.
I find most people don't use their eyes. Though arguably you don't have to when making a video, because the people watching it won't use their eyes either. Retro used to force people to use their eyes once upon a time. You couldn't have posted in this topic unless you had. There's weird stuff in Google's image search - the firm tracks you around the net and tailors its results to what it thinks you want. So you'll often get entirely unrelated imagery because you looked for something else a few days ago. It's both a blessing and a curse - often I end up finding myself.
Sorry but I'm really not sure what point you're tying to make with this. Someone making a doc like this will often have to use media assets which have been approved. That doesn't mean they're an expert on the subject they're researching. If they need footage for Sonic at a specific quality that fits the mood of that particular part of the documentary. If they find something that's in the approved assets which works, unless you really know the subject matter it's a very easy mistake to make. Even if you do know the subject you can still make it. Even in my YouTube docs, whilst I try to get things as accurate as possible I still get people commenting on my Alton towers video that I got the name of a ride wrong which isn't even the main focus of the video. But I chose that name because I was under the assumption that's what the ride was called, the video file even gave it that name and this wasn't the only source that said that. Now when it comes to looking for game footage. If someone working on the edit isn't that familiar with all the games they're being expected to work with, if they find a media asset which ticks all the boxes, how are they to know or believe it's not official when it's in the approved assets?
That's the problem. When you make and access stuff like this it's all in a media library and not a lot of it is labelled very well. At the most something like that footage used in this doc would be labelled something like 'Sonic the Hedgehog' and if you're lucky maybe also "Videogame footage". I doubt whoever originally uploaded it to the library labelled it as Rom Hack. Even if they did, you need to have a bit more than average knowledge to know what Rom Hack means.
