Sonic, the character, is Americana through a very Japanese lens. You'd struggle to find any US cartoon characters created in 1989-1991 that resemble Sonic, because they were drawing influences from very different places. The surrounding elements didn't lean into Americana as much. The title borrows from Dr. Slump, with a little bit of air force Americana. The blue skies and palm trees aesthetic owes as much to Hiroshi Nagai's interpretation of Americana as anything else. Eggman is an entirely anime influenced character, you can find several Eggman style characters in 70s/80s anime. Eggman's robots all have a very Japanese design sensibility. They hired a hugely popular J-pop composer to make the soundtrack. The combination of elements and sensibilities we see in Sonic 1 are ones that could only have come from creatives who grew up in Japan and were deeply immersed in Japanese pop culture, while viewing American pop culture as exotic.
It probably doesn't hurt that a team of American developers helped to work on Sonic 2 either. They brought a lot of stylistic choices that were more "American" in general.
To an extent. Yamaguchi was leading everything artistically, and made corrections to other artists' graphics where needed. He's also said that Tails was designed to appeal specifically to the Japanese audience. Then there are the homages to Votoms, Godzilla, Gamera and Dragon Ball. Yamaguchi's approach to machinery in general had a very detail oriented mecha anime sensibility to it. Compare Sonic 2 to Sonic Spinball and the difference is night and day.
I don't think that this is the case, really. Obviously the enemies, bosses, Bonus Stages and Sonic himself are clearly distinct from Yamaguchi's style, but the four main levels themselves very much resemble Sonic 2's environments. Hell, Toxic Caves and The Machine even repurpose unused graphics from Hidden Palace and Genocide City, respectively. And if I may present an unpopular opinion, I'm very much glad that Sega seemingly recognizes Spinball as canon these days. It's a neat little game despite its flaws, and I think that it compliments the four (or five if you count S&K) mainline Mega Drive/CD games nicely. I wouldn't even mind if Mt. Mobius gets its name changed or the Freedom Fighter cameos are retconned into just random characters, I'm just glad that this game is getting the respect it deserves.
I strongly disagree. The color palettes are very different and there's a grimy grodiness to a lot of it that doesn't match the aesthetic of the previous games, along with flourishes that don't fit the Sonic feel, like the Toxic Cave teleporters licking their lips. The closest thing you'll find to a Spinball level in Sonic 2 is Oil Ocean, which both Naka and Yamaguchi have commented has a color scheme different from the Japanese Sonic style. Even then, Yamaguchi was around to redraw the background. Spinball programmer Peter Morawiec has himself commented on Spinball not looking Sonicy enough: https://www.sega-16.com/2007/04/interview-peter-morawiec/
Agreed, it's a Japanese franchise that takes inspiration from media around the world, even Sonic's design took inspiration from Mickey and Felix the Cat But I think it's clear it is Japanese just by looking at the official art released by Sonic Channel, a lot of the art there is the characters wearing traditional Japanese (Or from East Asia as whole) clothing or following some Japanese habits, like that one art of Silver eating slices of apple shaped like bunnies, something common there
I think a lot of the aviator stuff, winged medallions, the odd pilot backstory, were all a Japanese view of what American culture was. Disney and military air force presences were probably most of what they had experienced as "American Culture", so to a Japanese guy trying his best to add "American influence" to appeal to the Western market, it's no wonder that those elements came in, and hung around even as the series clearly took a natural turn to the Anime influences that they were more culturally familiar with, even if the Animation industry as a whole and anime in particular were inspired by Disney and other animation studios. Remember that SEGA started out as Service Games, a manufacturer of entertainment for stationed troops. To the Japanese living in Japan, they were the predominant US influences to them. A Westerner might disagree with what US culture actually is, especially given it's melting pot nature, but on the same token many westerners love the imported Japanese cultural media dearly, even if a Japanese person might severely disagree with an otaku, about what predominant Japanese cultural elements actually are. So much of the Western media pandering got wiped out from the lore anyway. We never got a bizarre sexualized Madonna, we never got the Missing Pilot (even if you could argue that Tails being a pilot and mechanic is the remnant of this idea), we never really got much of Porker Lewis, we never got Sonny the burger eating hedgehog from Nebraska (though we did get a burger eating Alex Kidd) but we never got a lot of other early Japanese lore attempts like Nicky even if we carried over Amy and Charmy, or the Sonic band characters even if the concept carried through to Sonic Underground which thematically tied itself to SatAM. It seemed that the whole series was like a Too Many Cooks scenario, with everyone wanting to go in their own direction, with so much spaghetti hitting the walls to see what stuck. Nobody could agree on much except "Sonic is a marketable character, let's make big bucks" and everything else were indications of individual artists trying to craft narratives around it. Ultimately the things that stuck most were the direct influences and inferences from the games themselves as the dominant shared media form, but even that was just borne of individual artists trying to spackle on cool shit they enjoyed like Miyazaki and Toriyama anime onto this blank template of a character that had no real defined traits except "can roll into a ball" and "must sell to Americans". The fact that it hung around in spite of a billion renditions in it's first few years alone, is a testament to the power of strong character design, eager media-programmed kids, and a ridiculous marketing budget.
basically, the best way to sum up Sonic's mix of JP and US influences is to just tell a layperson what the last few levels of Sonic 3 & Knuckles are like Sonic gets teleported up to the very ghibli-inspired Sky Sanctuary Zone, practically the Castle in the Sky down to the color scheme, to eventually board the Death Egg, which is just the Death Star from Star Wars with Eggman's face on it. After beating the giant mecha final boss in Not The Death Star, Sonic has to go super saiyan with the power of the 7 Drag--er, Chaos/Super Emeralds to go chase him down in space.
I was always under the impression they were given that one of their things is that they are said to grant wishes, just like the Dragon Balls.
Magical gemstones are such a common fantasy trope that I'm inclined to believe that the Chaos Emeralds weren't inspired by anything in particular.
it's less "the macguffins are the dragon balls" and more what Sonic does with them LMAO, even if the Chaos Emeralds weren't inspired by the Dragon Balls, one would be hard-pressed to not make the comparisons between a Super Saiyan and Super Sonic.
I still don't fully understand what was the point of the emeralds in the first game, like... "I got the all of the emeralds! Woah! Flowers in Green Hill Zone, hold on, where did the emeralds go?!" Were they supposed to just be an excuse to make the game a little harder and have a different (it's not SO different) ending? Sorry, I never really checked the lore of the first game, in my mind it's just supposed to be a simple and fun 2D platformer Blue FAST hedgehog fights against funny doctor that wants to turn everything into a robot
Long story short, early platformers often had a slightly different "true ending" that was harder to get for the sake of replay value, as most of them were very short by modern standards. In most cases, you'd unlock a harder version of the main campaign after beating the game once, and beating that would get you the true ending. Mario 1 is perhaps the most famous example of this. However, the developers of Sonic 1 wanted to brag with the Mega Drive's graphical capabilities, so the true ending was instead locked behind rotating "secret" levels.
Yeah, I know they were kinda short and they would try stuff for the sake of replay, some developers would just make game hard... But damn, that's it? Just for the sake of replay
I'm not sure if you're grasping how important a game being replayable is in 1991, and in the way these platformers are. So it's a very important moment for you as a kid: you are now mature enough to pester your parents for your first console game, and you know they'll let you choose which one. For the longest time, all you've seen are your older siblings or cousins playing their games, which they only let you play once in a blue moon -- and sometimes they'll give you the unplugged controller at that. So you choose Sonic the Hedgehog. Now, Sonic the Hedgehog is pretty hard for a kid like you. You have limited lives, and you can barely get past the first boss. More often than not, you won't even reach the end of a stage with more than 50 rings. On the off-chance that you do -- now that you've gotten so good at Green Hill Act 1, and only because you got so many game overs -- a giant ring appears and, if you catch it, you're transported to this really magical place where things work the same, but not quite. You have to learn how to play that on top of Green Hill Zone Act 1 if you want an emerald. But it's quite a mysterious world. What do you get for clearing it? What is a Chaos Emerald? What happens if I get all of them? And remember, daydreaming about a game is a large part of playing it here, because gaming isn't a part of your regular life before smartphones, gamification and broadband internet. It's not something trivial you do on your downtime, and it's not an accessory identity that takes up your whole life. It's something you have to hog the family's TV to do, maybe for a limited time every day or maybe only on weekends. Maybe you rented the game on Friday and have to return by Monday. It's a world you choose to enter. It's your cousins' arcade games, but with a higher level of commitment. You will have to finish it someday, while finishing an arcade game is the stuff of legends in your local area. So after a lot of daydreaming, looking up guides, exchanging strategies and controllers with friends, you finally beat Sonic the Hedgehog. The game pats you on the back, because it's not a monster... but tells you to try again and get those emeralds. Now this doesn't mean "play more of the same game". This more or less means "great, you beat Sonic the Hedgehog. There's a whole new game for you to play in the same cartridge". You now have to learn whole new skillsets in the game to beat it again with the emeralds. If you are to finish a stage with 49 rings, it's better not to finish it at all and just die on purpose or something. Suddenly, the objectives change, your behaviors change, your skills change. This is a big deal because it makes the game feel incredibly fresh. It's uncharted territory in a map you already have, so it's magical in a way that even a new game isn't, nor even it would be if Sonic the Hedgehog was twice as long, but didn't have the Chaos Emeralds. The closest feeling you've ever experienced is finding allowance money in your pockets. Don't ever let this kind of experience be reduced to "oh it's more content per dollar" or some inane shit like that. The way you'll interact with the whole thing, how you'll relay the news to your friends from school the next day, all of this matters. This is why they would do that. Cynically speaking, it's just to pack in more action in the limits of a cartridge. But it doesn't work without looking at the magic of it.
I remember this feeling from quite a few games back in the day; moreso the 8-bit Sonic games than the 16-bit ones though. My experience of Sonic 1 8-bit was basically "this is cool, oh no I died I should get better at this game, keep trying, huh there's this weird gem that plays a jingle when I get it, whatever, keep trying, huh another weird gem I should investigate that sometime, beat the game that was fun I liked teleporting on top of the fat guy, something weird about these gems though, I should look for more of them, wow I never knew all this part of these levels existed, this is a cool puzzle, okay I got six of them now what, oh wow it actually cleans the air and I get a special bonus for it, wonder if there's anything else I get bonus points for" and so on. And then Sonic 2 8-bit adding a whole extra level was crazy. I'm a bit too young for classic Sonic games to be playground talking points (especially when I was mostly given hand-me-downs anyway), but getting the good ending in Abe's Oddysee was a major talking point among those of us who'd played it, even though it's literally just a different pre-rendered video that plays at the end of the game, again because of the fact that you have to engage with more of the game and in a different way. The small thing of seeing a different ending is not so small when you can't just look it up on YouTube and have to go through the learning process yourself to see it. Battle Arena Toshinden 3 was another one. You start the game and you get a cool character select screen with 14 characters to choose from, surrounded by question marks just to let you know you're choosing I guess: So you beat the game with one character and read through their ending (because it's all text) and go back to the game. You figure maybe you'll try another character so you go back in and suddenly the music is different and the question mark above or below the character you just played as turns into a new character and you're like... hang on, what do you mean there's 28 characters? So you play through as all of the regular characters to unlock their evil counterparts and you think, "right, I'm done". But you notice each character has its own set of times in the records option and figure "well, I may as well beat the game as these other characters too" and suddenly even more characters appear and the music changes again. It's not the same feeling as starting with all of these characters - if they were all available from the start, I would've played a match or so with each one, found my favourite, beaten the game once, maybe twice, and called it there. But because there was always something new around the corner, I wanted to see what it was, so I learned to play as the other characters, I got good at the game. The last one I'm not even going to give any context to, I'll just post this and let someone else do the talking:
Remember when replay value was something players and critics looked for in a game? Feels like that got dropped by the wayside because modern games aren't replayable at all. Games are seventy dollars now so they better be full of the most egregious padding you've ever seen because God forbid we get another short but sweet and polished game like Sonic Generations, someone might complain it only took them two hours to beat!
