The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

Well, Berlusconi has always been an entrepreneur first and foremost, he only became a politician at a later time. Even nowadays, his son manages the Mediaset group, which is a quite important network in Italy (and, to some extent, in Europe).

Fine print: I don't want to break the "no politics" rule; on the contrary, I actually explained how politics are probably unrelated to this, since things related to televisions and broadcasts have always been one of the strong suits of Berlusconi's family.

 

Sonic is referred to as a "freedom fighter". Something that bled from SatAM onto AOSTH?
Reminds me of that early SatAM preview in Sonic the Poster Mag, which also had a small blurb about AOSTH and gave its premise as Robotnik having taking over the world, and Sonic and Tails being freedom fighters.

All those listed episodes have "Sonic" in the title, and they're the first 3 produced ones. I wonder if they were going for the SatAM season 1 naming convention there, but they dropped it after Lovesick Sonic?

Why does Robotnik seem to have the wrecking ball right in front of him, and how can he access the Eggmobile's controls with that thing there?

 

It's in the series bible: http://ledastudios.rubberslug.com/gallery/master_query.asp?SeriesID=33783

 

The recurring problem with Sonic Retro: pages I think are "good" or "done" turn out to be neither.

AoStH's initial home releases in the UK don't make much sense. They didn't come close to putting out a full set on VHS, and sometimes there are more cartoons on the tape than initially claimed, which is super weird. Given we recently had trouble pin-pointing exactly when the show aired over here, I'm voting that we (as in Sonic Retro, the wider internet seems to have a better idea... sometimes) don't know enough about AoStH.


To see if this was a running theme, I jumped ahead to Sonic Underground and yep... that page has problems too. Namely, it forgot to point out that Sonic Underground was a co-production between one of DiC's French studios, and French channel TF1. It aired in France first (January 1999), then the UK (May), then much later in the US (August), in a non-descript syndication block. This noise about it hyping up Dreamcast and/or Sonic Adventure sales seems pretty farfetched - both France and the UK had stopped airing it before the console's launch, and in France's case, possibly before the console even had its release date set in stone.

The animation lip-syncing looks like it was meant for an English voice track, but if AoStH and/or SatAM didn't get a good hearing in France, it might explain why Underground exists.



The wiki is claiming that TF1 aired AoStH and SatAM at around the same time (1995-1996), which while not impossible, is a little odd. This AoStH VHS is claiming 1994... so before TV? Is it the same dub?

 

According to these old documents from writer Phil Harnage, the show was in development as early as 1997. (It also originally focused on Sonia as the main character.)

 

I watched those back in the day. They aired as part of a kids show centered around Spip, Spirou's pet squirrel. First was AoStH, and then one day they suddenly started airing SatAM instead.

For some reason, next to recording them on tape, I maintained a text file with episode names and air dates. It's sitting on the HDD of our old AT 286 PC, so I wonder if it can be salvaged.

 

Which VHS tapes have more episodes than advertised? Are there full rips of them anywhere?

It was extremely rare that a series would get a full release on VHS back then, especially children's shows with 65 episodes, so that part isn't unusual.

We know exactly when AoSTH first aired in the UK (and that they were broadcast in production order), we just don't know when ABC's Sonic the Hedgehog first aired on Channel 4, since that batch of episodes was mixed in. We definitely need more info on how these shows were aired across the world, but most of that would have to come from decades old TV recordings.

 

There's at least a couple:

https://info.sonicretro.org/File:AoStH_UK_VHS_Vol-3.jpg
Three episodes!

https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Aosth_vol3_inner-sleeve.jpg
oh but there's a secret extra one!

 

If you could ask Ian Flynn any questions, what would they be?

EDIT: I'm not a huge Sonic fan, please provide lots of context for what I should be asking

 

What do you think is it that made Maekawa-san's stories so compelling and interesting to many fans?

 

Rewriting this comment to be clear and concise.

What is your process for conveying particularly challenging subject matters or concepts to varying demographics? Do you think material for certain audiences should have a limiting factor on how it's conveyed? (Example: Children's fantasy is usually the primary vehicle to explore more surface level, introductory topics. What is stopping it from going further?)

 

Isn't Ian doing an AMA on Reddit (DC Comics subreddit) this month?

 

Does Sonic like pancakes or waffles better?

 

I'm wondering if this should have a thread of its own. There's a number of interesting tidbits in these documents and I'd hate to see this buried here.
Scratch and Grounder were literally the original Sleet and Dingo. AoStH was once going to have an overall arc ala SatAM season 2. Think of that "Quest for the Chaos Emeralds" four-parter combined with the space exploration of Dragon Ball GT. Weird, cringey, and fascinating all at once.

 

I'm surprised that the video that those files were released with wasn't uploaded to the SatAM archive thread.


This reminds me. That AoStH bible that ledastudios uploaded needs to go up on the wiki. I managed to make a pdf of it. It's laying somewhere on a flash drive.

 

An "uncovering the mystery of Sonic Underground" thread would be cool. We need more documentation on that so people can understand and appreciate it better.

I guess I never really thought the Sonia documents were referring to a seperate idea for a show altogether rather than just a quick write up of her character, but I guess it is a next logical step from the "Sonic's twin cousins who he sometimes visits I guess". Might also explain why they ended up making all those background characters in Underground so alien-like, but I also can't imagine how the designs would get so far if the cousins idea was only briefly in the picture.

 

Scanned some SA2 birthday packs/Burning Rangers flyers.

Spoiler

I remember being disappointed that we didn't get the birthday pack in the US back in the day. Though supposedly some places did get limited supplies?

Though if they were just the JP version or a version for the west idk because no one has posted one that they bought here.

I always assumed people were getting it through EB games' import system and the press/people online got confused Sega was actually selling it here.

 

A Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing sound samples search story (Plus some notable music tracks crediting information.) in 2 parts.

 

Said Reddit AMA is happening right now!

https://sh.reddit.com/r/DCcomics/co...=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

 

So. Some of you may have recently seen the news of screenshots found from the cancelled Mario Smash game for Virtual Boy while diving through old Discmaster archives.

The author of the post (rabidrodent) also shows off other little tidbits including some interesting Sonic curios and old articles on things like Sega Channel and E3 '95.

The Sonic parts are most likely already archived on the wiki and suchforth but included (Sonic-wise) are old wallpapers for Windows 3.1, a brief look at Jim Ludtke including that bizarre cover he did for Wired Magazine with Sonic very business like with the suit and cigar, a possible advert for S&K Collection, Sonic Heroes Puzzle flash game and some Sonic with a smoking gun (?)

It's probably nothing new but for those interested, I'll leave the link below

https://bsky.app/profile/rabidrodent.bsky.social/post/3lk52wi6i6k22