Rather than praise, I’ve actually only seen people criticize both of those things. lol Sonic for it debatably being a deus ex machima and Tails’ because of the sudden off screen escalation from a dude that fixes planes to being able to create something that can mimic the power and abilities of what’s probably the most powerful macguffins in universe. I personally am indifferent to both, not really caring. But I do think I probably slightly lean more to this view. I can at least see the reasoning behind it.
samples yeah, back then they even came out in huge packs on CDs*. Fun fact, there's one used in Quartz Quadrant JP that managed to show up in Metropolis in one of the Ratchet and Clank games too. It's always fun coming across the same samples being used in different places, or even the same songs or speeches being sampled (I actually did manage to come across a tune sampling the same Malcom X sample that Wrapped in Black used on beatport at one point!) * nowadays, you see them on services like Splice...where Sega is still using them even!
I want to approach the people that decided to pick The Fastest Thing Alive over this and have a good long talk. FWIW it may have not fit the show's whole vibe too well, but that's the show's fault for being so far off from what the games were like. Put this over a show that actually better resembled Sonic and this would've gone crazy. Man.
The kind of show that would fit this is a sitcom from the '80s in which Sonic is a dumb but well meaning family man who works for an incredibly mean and domineering Dr. Robotnik in an office job I can basically see Sally as his crafty wife and Tails as his naive but even craftier kid just by listening to this
^^^ What? No. That’s a good song. Never heard it before. Not right for SatAm but definitely fits the character.
IIRC the only family sitcom with a theme like that was Goof Troop. Which was an outlier. Goof Troop didn't have to do all of that lol
I don't have anything to say about the quality of the song, but it does immediately take me back to the sitcoms that would air on Brazilian broadcast in the 90s, which had aired in the US in the 80s. Full House is the first that comes to mind. It's this specific kind of rock music. On that note, Goof Troop OP sounds nothing like this to me because I can hear a lot more influence from R&B there.
The song is nice but doesn't have the punchy momentum that makes the storytelling in SATAM's intro flow so perfectly. I think even in its time it would've sounded 'too 80s' to the average viewer.
Sounds like a rejected Genesis (the band, not the console) B-side to me. But if we're on the topic of the SatAM theme, the original S1 broadcast version of Fastest Thing Alive runs circles around the S2 version by Noisy Neighbors which has been used in all the rereleases and reruns. Something about the vocals' roughness just scratches my brain the right way. I also hate how most of the intro's sound effects were omitted from the S2 version.
I don't think any less on what I posted as "too 80s" since I wouldn't call Fastest Thing Alive any more contemporary. Children's shows (or children's media in general) tend to be several years behind the trends. It's the result of a direction lasting long enough to become palatable for a corporation to want to use in stuff for kids. Hence a lot of early 90s kids show openings having that smoky drivin' 80s rock/metal flavor. There was one demo that did it way worse (leaned into Def Leppard pastiche) but it's still of the same vein. I guess this just leads to my (unpopular?) stance that FTA isn't that great. Just not my cuppa at all.
Are we sure that any of these unused tracks were meant for the opening at all, though? Like, it was very common for other DiC productions of that time to play original songs with vocals during action sequences, so maybe the same was originally considered for SatAM before the decision was made to settle on a purely orchestral score? (For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's an example from Super Mario World) Besides, why would they compose and record six or seven completely different demos just for the opening? That doesn't make any sense to me.
Considering the Sonic show started as one thing before being split into two (both with extremely different tones) I'm willing to guess they didn't know what they were going for until the final stretch. There's a chance they might've wanted to do like Super Show does in your example, though. But it probably would've only fit for the show if it stayed like it was during the "Heads or Tails" pilot. Probably why it got scrapped.
I'm not exactly sure if this is unpopular, but I find the European Sonic X intro really bad. Even letting aside my absolute love for "Gotta Go Fast", it's pretty damn repetitive with the singer just saying nothing but Sonic X over and over again. That's about as lazy as you can get with an intro song.
The only good one is the French version - they literally just translated Sonic Drive, which is what everyone else should have done.
From what I recall, "everyone else" was 4kids, and the French version was only so faithful because they snagged the rights before 4kids could, also grabbed the music rights, and probably didn't care all too much beyond just dubbing the thing and putting it out there. I've come to accept 4kids' take at least on the "gotta go fast" front. A direct translation of Sonic Drive would be weird and I don't really know where you'd start writing new lyrics for it (or why you'd do it at that point) so something that kind of keeps that spirit but uses it in a different way was probably warranted. Still annoying they made lesser score music and didn't even add much more variation in it to make up for that.
