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Was the 90's Sonic fandom in the west really dominated by the cartoons and comics?

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Frostav, Sep 27, 2021.

  1. Wildcat

    Wildcat

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    I thought Underground was pretty good. Kind of on par with SatAm. I agree the storyline about searching for their mother, Robotnik not having complete control and such were all interesting. The singing portions can be corny but a few songs were actually good too. Like I mentioned I lost track of the comics so I don’t know how it ended up but I thought it was a solid cartoon.

    So are we saying the 90s/West WAS dominated by the cartoons? I always thought it mostly the games and the cartoons and comics were made due to his popularity. Like how a lot characters or movies got their own cartoons series. At least for me all my friends and kids at school knew Sonic from the games first. They knew of the cartoons but I don’t think they overshadowed the games.

    It’s funny when Sonic Prime was announced I heard a podcast or chat on YouTube and someone made a joke that nobody in Japan (SoJ) would know who Scratch and Grounder are. I kind of think they might. They were based on 2 badniks in the games. Sega must be aware of these cartoons to some extent. They used Sally for Sega World.
     
  2. NiktheGreek

    NiktheGreek

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    Born 86, Sonic fan from day dot, UK-based.

    I've always thought of Sonic as primarily being a video game character, because when I first became aware of Sonic there were no cartoons or comics. I loved my Master System games, I loved played the games on other people's Mega Drives. As a result, my interest in Sonic has tended to be pretty closely tied to the games first and foremost.

    That's not to say I didn't appreciate the tie-in media - I watched AoStH when it aired on Channel 4, and treasured the one video release I had, but it came and went fairly quickly. I probably would have watched SatAM if I could have reliably done so. By the time Sonic Underground rolled around, I realised that it was garbage and didn't give it the time of day. But none of the TV shows made as much of an impact on me as Sonic The Comic, which really prevented me from falling off of Sonic in the mid-90s. At a time when the Saturn sold for an obscene amount of money and didn't offer a lot of Sonic action anyway, STC was a way to keep up with my favourite character that was much more consistent and affordable than anything Sega was directly offering. The comic bridged me through those lean years until the Dreamcast hit and Sonic Adventure really revived the gaming aspect of Sonic, and I think you might find that was the case for quite a few of us in the UK.

    The fact that there were adaptational differences between the games and the tie-in media was clear to me quite early on, but it didn't really bother me - after all, if you stuck exclusively to the settings and stories of the games, you wouldn't have much to work with. Apart from with Mean Bean Machine (I skipped Spinball), I didn't see the tie-in stuff backfeeding into the games proper, so I always thought of them as being fairly distinct from one another. Like, I was never expecting Tekno or Shortfuse to show up in Sonic Adventure.

    I wouldn't say that the tie-in media ever dominated my perception of Sonic, but for a while there STC was definitely near equal to the games in its personal importance to me as a fan. It's pretty telling that when I first got online, my main fandom haunts were the SSRG and the Sonic The Comic Yahoo Group. My interest in the spin-off media eventually declined after the death of STC - I watched the first few episodes of Sonic X but fell off quickly, and never got into Archie or even bothered with IDW. The Sonic Boom cartoon wasn't a bad kids show though, and I thought the movie was okay.
     
  3. The Claw

    The Claw

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    Not like there was a choice. Hardly any Japanese story material existed, and it was disregarded in the west until Sega of Japan changed the guidelines following Adventure.
    The OVA is the most substantial thing that did make the trip unscathed.

    My tastes are unusual. I liked Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and the Archie comics - in particular Knuckles stories. Yet didn't care much for SatAM.
     
  4. Yash

    Yash

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    The OVA never even made it over here until two days before the Dreamcast released, likely to try and cash in on the rejuvenated brand.

    I will say the decision to go all-in on Sega of America's vision for the character/universe with Sonic Underground right before Adventure released is still a baffling one to me. I mean, I guess Sonic X came into existence to fill that niche anyway, but it was bizarre at the time that there'd even be magazine articles and such promoting Underground and Adventure in the same sentence as if they had any connection at all beyond simply featuring Sonic.