Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 81: Sonic the Hedgehog

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

Ah, Sonic the Hedgehog: a designed-by-committee character born out of pure cynicism that nonetheless won over a generation and continues to be extremely popular today. Despite the brand's notoriety throughout the 21st century, Sonic earned his place in gaming history with the three-and-a-half Genesis releases that made him a household name. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Ray Barnholt, and Tim Turi as the crew explores Sonic's origins and the brief period where he shone the brightest. Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

This week on Retronauts, we got to go fast. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining me for another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host, Bob Mackie. And that Sonic slogan always reminds me of an irritable bowel syndrome medication commercial. If anyone knows what I'm talking about. Do you know what I'm talking about? Is it an IBS?

Or I thought it was for... It was for something. It's got to go ladder. It's a bladder issue. So whenever I hear, got to go fast, I think Sonic has. has to pee somewhere, but I apologize you for that condition. It's probably very debilitating. I'm Bob Mackey, by the way.

We're talking about pee immediately. What's wrong with this episode? I apologize, sincerely. Today's episode... Well, it's fitting because I'm on blood pressure medication now because of things like the Sonic the Hedgehog Collin episode. Oh, okay. And that makes you pee a lot, so...

Wow. It all comes full circle. I guess it all makes sense now. So, yes, I'm your host, Bob Mackey. This is all about Sonic the Hedgehog. Finally, we're doing a sonic episode. But before I go on, who else is here with me today? Across the table, we have...

Yeah, that's Jeremy Perry. What a jackass. And who else do we have next to me? It's Ray Barnhold again. Hooray. And special guests right over here. I'm Tim Turrey. And Tim is our, I guess, our Sega expert.

We had him in, to pick on him during the Super Nintendo episode. But I'm going to take it, Tim, that this is your area of speciality, Sonic the Hedgehog and Sega and stuff. Well, I'm putting this all on the line here. You have to say yes. I appreciate it. It's hard to go toe to toe with your guys' depth of knowledge. But I have a personal attachment to that hedgehog. I mean, he's the reason that I live in the city that I have.

the job I have. I mean, he was, he's the reason that I care about video games. So you played Sonic Adventure 2? You're like, I have to escape to this city. That's correct. Escape the San Francisco. You tried to, you tried to like skate down, I guess, banisters and were immediately arrested by the cops. It didn't work out for me. The truck, it did run me down. You need to soap up your shoes first. That's, that's right. Yeah. I see the ads everywhere. That's vital. That's vital. But yeah, I think we touched on it in the Super Nintendo episode a little bit. But yeah, it's a strong history with this hedgehog. Cool. So Tim, I'm going to defer to him for memories of the past because these games I

sort of played on the periphery when I was more of a Nintendo kid, but the reason we're doing this is because I feel like we really have not done a great comprehensive episode with Sonic the Hedgehog about Sonic the Hedgehog. He's not here, by the way, in case you're wondering. I did call Julio L. White, but he did not return my call. I feel

like we did one in the past, Jeremy, that you referenced from time to time that unfortunately had Chris Kohler on it. What? Yeah, there was a Sonic episode. Maybe it was a Genesis-focused episode. Oh, yeah, the Genesis anniversary episode. And not that Chris is a bad guest, of course, but I feel like he's got a, he still has a bone to pick with Sonic. And to be fair, just Sega in general.

Just say in general. I'd hurt him as a child. Like, to be fair, like, I gave all these games a try for the first time as an adult over the past week. And I'm not a huge fan of them either. The first time? No, no, like, as an adult for the first time. Like, I play these games a lot as a kid, as a teenager. But I never sat down as...

Tim, you're doing your job. Yes, exactly. Get the damage low. Get these guys in check. I never really sat down, like, with an analytical mind looking at these games. games. I really just would play a beautiful mind. A beautiful mind, yes. But I never just sat down with these games thinking about the design, thinking about the process they were made under, thinking about, like, I don't know, more than just like playing Green Hillsone and turning them off immediately.

So that's why I'm here. I really sat down with these games, gave them an honest try. I didn't like them that much, but I want to talk about these games because despite what I feel about them, they are interesting, they are important, and I feel like they are very special to people other than me. But before we go on, I do want to talk about the history of Sonic the Hedgehog, or sorry, our history was Sonic the Hedgehog, I kind of explained where I'm coming from, I was a Nintendo kid, I could really only afford to have one console at a time, and really, like, all of my friends, for some reason, had Genesis, Genocide, whatever you want to call that, and...

Genesees. Yeah, Genesee, sure. And, I mean, I played Sonic a lot at their houses, but I always preferred Mario. Like, it was fun to play Sonic. I didn't hate him. I watched both of his bad cartoons. Yes, the other good one is still kind of bad. But it never really spoke to me

The gameplay itself I felt it was too basic I liked the more secret driven Mario games I like the bigger moves that Mario had I like the world a little better But I never hated Sonic I just kind of preferred Mario I guess I'll start with Tim because you are

You are the Sega kid Like what is your personal relationship With Sonic the Hedgehog I can put it in those terms Yeah I mean I can That's a dangerous question Oh my gosh yeah I don't know how much I can disclose

So I think I touched on it a little bit in the Super Nintendo episode, but you know, I grew up in a Sega household. It went Atari and then Sega Master System, and then my brother asked for Sega Genesis one Christmas. I didn't know the difference between all the consoles well enough. All I know is we got the new

console, it comes packed in with Sonic. This is amazing. It was just, and he was outgrowing games at that time, and so he's kind of like, you want to play this thing? And like, so, you know, I always had to compete with older cousins and brothers for, like, gaming time, and this was it. So Sonic was my first, like, really big

deep dive and it was so beautiful and like he was such uh I mean he still resonates with kids today you know despite how much the games have changed over time like that character there's like a Mickey Mouseness to him that people just latch on to and it worked for me in you know at the at the very outset of you know Sonic's career or whatever and it was also probably aided that I had a you know I wasn't great at the game it probably took me over like a year to beat it at some point but I had watched some Nick Arcade thing And I learned, it was my first, you know, code I ever learned was, like, level select. And so it was just this confluence of points in my life as someone who loved video games is, you know, first cheat code, first game I'd ever seen credits roll on.

It was just the right difficulty level for me. And it just kind of unlocked part of my imagination. I feel like I grew up loving Super Mario Bros as well. Super Mario World was huge for me, which I think I always loved more on mechanical level, you know, gameplay-wise. But just there was a personality to the world. Sonic that kind of, you know, maybe want to go out at recess during school and make up Sonic characters with my friends and, you know, be in that world. Go deep dive into the Archie Comics and watch the cartoons you mentioned, though I think the Saddam one was not maybe as bad

as you remember. I dare you to go back and watch it. There is a, there is a, the French character is what really ruins that show. Yes, it's just like, this inexplicable character who, I believe it's theorized, was added to make fun of the president of Deke Animation, who was a French guy. So they put a cowardly French character He does not fit But it is much better than the Saturday morning I mean much rather than the daily one To focus on the games

Yeah sorry we are getting off track I did cover that on a Christmas special I believe last year But as for the games you know The Genesis was the height of the franchise in my For my hands on with it You know for as a fan That was where I really fell in love with that

And that hardware and so I played those games to death And have been on and off throughout the franchise When I worked at Game Inform before I'm at Capcom now I reviewed a lot of those games that kept up with the franchise. It was kind of my beat, I guess I'd say, Sonic beat.

But anyway, yeah, real personal connection to the franchise. So, Ray, how about you? I feel like you have more of a Sonic connection than I do. First of all, let me say, as someone who's been very close to Retronauts ever since the beginning, we've tried two times now to get a good Sonic episode going

at some sort. This one is going to be good. I can feel it. I've been on both, and it's just ruined incomprehensibly by some factors, mainly Chris Culler. Come on. No, I'm just... Chris wasn't even on the second one.

No. That was my own stupid fault. Oh, actually... Chris is nice. Chris is a friend, of course. But you can't have him on a show about Sega. No, I know. Just don't do it.

We can't do this. Is he here? Is he here? No. Chris is on lots of shows about things that aren't Sega. It's... I say it for humor. It's out of love.

Anyway. Nevertheless, I'm hoping the third time is a charm here. Is it like a great. Kremlin that comes and attack you guys? Well, you guys mentioned Sonic's name. That is actually... Sure you can explain it, yeah. Well, last time I said, hey, we're going to do an episode on Sonic the Hedgehog.

Give us a phone call and we'll take your questions live. And that got tweeted, or actually not tweeted, but promoted on Sega's Facebook page. This is just us in a vault. No wacky formats. Yes. No strange children will call in and... You don't want phone calls. And a nice friendly man in the form of Tim.

Facebook. Yes. We'll see. Yes. So, I'll go ahead, write. I was a Nintendo kid

by default, but I've always been pretty agnostic about games over since. And so I was very interested in Sonic when it first appeared.

And, you know, I always, I wanted to Genesis pretty much as soon as I saw it. But actually, I started, my first Sega system was a game gear,

and that came with Sonic. Sonic 1 on Game Gear. So I actually have a bit of a, more of a fondness for the 8-bit Sonic games than I do. the Genesis ones.

However, I do respect them all very much. And they do all have their flaws, of course. But yeah, that was pretty much how I was introduced. So Sonic was getting not just, you know, this novelty of this color portable game system, but also getting like my first taste of Sonic that way. And eventually I did get a Genesis and Sonic 2 after that. Jeremy, how about you? I feel like Sonic was really designed more to target the tastes of people like the ages of Tim and Ray and myself.

Yeah, a bit. Younger than this old man. I feel like you were probably 16 or something when this game came out or in your late teens. And you might have been over this kind of thing. Like what did you think of Sonic? Did you play? Was it interesting at all? Okay.

So I discovered Sonic the way Sega wanted me to discover Sonic flipping through a magazine, probably EGM. There was this magazine ad on the bottom half of a couple of pages. There was like a trail of someone's smoke from having been running and like a little hint of a shoe. And I turn the page, and there's another one. It's telling me to go fast. Like, catch up, wow, something crazy is happening. And I turned the page and there's a big fat hedgehog who's like, I'm cooler than Mario.

That would be a really annoying pop-up ad today, you know? It would be. Like, every time you click to close it, and new one pops up. Yeah, so, I mean, that's kind of how I discovered. I was like, oh, this seems important. They made a multi-page ad about it, so this must be a good thing. But, you know, I was pretty deep into Nintendo at that point. definitely didn't have the money for multiple consoles.

So I thought it was interesting, and I saw Sonic playing at store kiosks, and was like, wow, this looks great, and I love the music, and I had a friend who bought a Sega Genesis and would let me borrow it sometimes. I'd let them borrow my Super NES, and that was one of the games, and I was like, wow, this is really cool, but I think I like Mario better. Even though Mario is uncool and slow and stuff, I just feel like there's more to do in Mario games, so I'm okay owning what I own. But, yeah, I never disliked Sonic.

I just never really got into his games. And I have found that some of his games hold up better than others. And I have made people angry by saying that without realizing that there are certain things that are held sick or synced. So I apologize for that. We're all approaching this in good faith. Some of us might be more critical than others. I feel like an episode about the early 3D Sonic games would be much more negative. And I want to do that eventually because I find those games to be interesting as well.

But we're going to start with the Tuddy games. Yeah, Shadow the Hedgehog Deep Duh. Oh, God. What's the Twilight Zone episode where there's the kid and if he gets upset, people just die? Oh, it's a good life. I feel like that's how this is being handled a little bit. Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts. So, really, I'm just going to cover.

It was good? Sonic did that. Yes. It was good that he had a wheel chase him again. Okay, so I'm just going to cover the first three and a half games. Ray is going to lobby to cover Sonic CDAP time. I really wanted to cover more, but there was a surprising amount of information. to pull out of this.

In fact, I'm not going to cover everything, so please don't complain if I don't get everything. It's amazing what you can find on Wikipedia. Yes, exactly. No, I went to the Sonic Wiki. Let me tell you something. That is, like, you're going on an adventure there. That's the labyrinth zone, my friend.

Yes, exactly, except with less drowning. But, yeah, I was reading. Drowning in information. Yes, exactly. Totally. I mean, I was reading tons of interviews. Tons of these are great analogies, by the way. I was reading tons of interviews, reading tons of theories,

just like so many recountings of this time in Sega's most fruitful and most productive and most profitable part of their lifespan. But let's start with the origin of Sonic That Chalk. So there's like, I mean, I feel like the origin of Sonic the Hedgehog is now kind of like the origin of Mario and Pac-Man where it's mostly known by a lot of people. But I feel like there's still some things that are up in the air. It's like, did Yugi Naka create Sonic? Did the other guy create Sonic, Oshima? It's actually more of...

It was UbiWorks. What's that? It was Ubb E Works. Yes, it was that in Walt Disney. Wait, well, it'll be UbiWorks and whoever created Felix. Oh, I don't know. Okay, so yeah, I mean, essentially that. We'll get to that, though, but essentially a three-man team who created Sonic,

and we'll go over every member of this team. But they're all part of Sega's AMA development group. And the first one, of course, is Eugene Naka, who I feel is the person who is the person who was most associated with Sonic the Hedgehog. He was born in 65. He was like a young hot shot game designer in the of that era. He basically, in Jeremy, you'll find this interesting. He got into games because his favorite bands, including YOLMagic Orchestra,

were using them to make music. So he found that angle of computing interesting, and he wanted to get into working with computers. And I guess he had something to do. He was interested in video games, too. He didn't go to college after high school, and this actually stopped him from being hired by Namco. So it'd be interesting to think about what would happen to Namco if he had been hired there. Like, would they have another thing as big as Pac-Man? We don't know that, but that's just like an alternate timeline.

I would love to, like, just jump into and figure out, like, what's going on there. What would happen to Pac-Man's attitude, I think is big? Yes. He would immediately have flashier shoes, would run faster or eat faster. I wonder if Namco had the same sort of freewheeling, internal design freedom that I sense from Sega in the 80s. Like, Sega was just all over the place. It was just like, if you think something, do it. I don't know that Namco, like they, I think Pac-Man and Gallagher, Galaxian, made them big, and I think that made them more corporate. So I don't know that they would have, like, Naka would have had that freedom of NAMCO.

Yeah, like, they didn't have anything to prove. Sega definitely did. They needed a hit. And Namco really didn't at this point when he was hired in 83 by Sega. What was, what was NAMCO doing in 83, like Miss Pac-Man? Pac-Man sequels. Yeah. Namco didn't do that, I know that, I know that.

Yeah. But, like, you know, Tower of Druaga. Oh, yeah, they were fine. CVS and Tower and Tramaga and stuff like that. But like a lot of people from this era, he did not go to college to learn computing. He was self-taught. He basically was copying code from computing magazines, which is what a lot of people did in that era. They would get these magazines that would have code in them, and he would play around with the code and figure out what he did.

He would learn, like, assembly language and things like that. So he was hired by Sega and 83, and his tenure began with the Master System game Girls Garden. Not Master System. Oh, I'm sorry. SG 1000. Oh, SG 1000. You're right. Sorry about that.

And it was a game where you basically have to prevent your boyfriend from being stolen away by another girl. Is that how it works? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. It was a very interesting game that really was super advanced for the hardware, I think. And I definitely impressed the superiors at Sega, and he was given other projects. Like, Naka is sort of like, I point out in my notes, he's kind of like a Iwada figure where he is like a programming wizard. Not so much a creative talent, but he can just kind of get things done.

Yeah. So if they have an idea, he can usually do it. Naka made the 3D Dungeons and Fantasy Star, which is a very, very great technical effect on a master system. That is a master system game. I know that for sure. And he also worked on the super impressive Genesis port of Ghost and Goblins, which is a great port.

Goals and Ghosts. I always get that confused. I even wrote Goals and Ghosts and Ghosts. I get that. There was no good home port of Ghost and Goblins. Yes, that's true. But, yeah, that is just such a great port of that game. Yeah, considering, I mean, it's not perfect,

but considering all that way it was that. There were some bad arcade ports on the Genesis at that time, too. So, yeah, so basically, NACA's programming know-how made Sonic happen. It all came out of an idea where he wanted to make a fast game. We'll get into the origin of Sonic in a bit, but he made a tech demo that involved a sprite moving smoothly on an incline. Instead of just being limited to flat surfaces, like Mario would be. Occasionally Mario could slide. Sonic Sprite could scale and move and rotate according to the surface he was on.

So that was a very interesting technical feat that only. only he could do basically at Sega, and he wanted to make a game based around this concept. We'll get into the creation of Sonic, like I said, but I think he's one of the people, one of the first creators that notably got sick of the Japanese corporate hierarchy very, very early. He basically left Sega of Japan after Sonic 1.

He got some bonuses, but they were upset that the game was delayed. And according to Mark Serney, he was making $30,000 a year, despite making one of the biggest, hugest games of that year. Like 30,091 was a reasonable middle-class salary, but not what the one of the main programmers of the biggest game of that year should be making, I think. I mean, how many millions did Sega make on Sonic the Hedgehog? And that money all went up to the top people, I'm assuming, just like, yeah,

so he left Sega of America and got a job at Sega Technical Institute where he would work on Sonic 2 in America. So it's funny, we're already setting up the strange battle between Sega of Japan and Sega of America. that would really just play out until they kind of defeated each other in a way. It was really kind of more Sega Japan's fault, I think. I mean, all those sonic earnings went directly into the pockets of the people who came up with the idea for the 32X. So you can see where Nock would be like, you jackasses. So this is a quote from Mark Sernie, who, I mean, he's still a relevant name.

He designed the architecture. Let's not talk about that, please. But he made the architecture of the PS4, which I think is a great system. I'm actually made Marvel Madness, and he's just been around the game industry, being sort of a sage. Yeah, and he was sort of like a Wunderkin. He made Marvel Madness as like a teen, I think. Is that correct?

Yeah. So Mark Serney said one big issue was that even though Sonic was immediately a big hit, Naka got a lot of grief for having missed the schedule. He took 14 months rather than 10. And he used more people than he promised. He used four and a half people rather than three. I don't know where the half factors in. They just use like, Oshima's legs or something.

I think the person was like typing different codes in different games with each round. One hand was like some failed altered B.C. The Rick Wakeman of programming. And then certainly goes on to say, I think he also felt unappreciated on many levels, including financially. I believe his base salary at the time was $30,000, the way to get bonuses. And now, this is the joke I trot out every time. He sells pro pay and pro pay accessories.

He works for prop or propay. I'm not sure how you say it. And some games that are okay, I guess, there was let's tap, which was a very strange premise for a game where you set your Wii mode on a box. And it was like a rhythm game where you tap the box. I don't know if it came with the box. You built. It's a copper box

They just folded it in And there you have a little box Okay Propay and Propay accessories You really just blazed right past that Yes I think I've used that joke before Is that a hill joke?

It is, yeah Hank Hill Zone You got us like propai Yeah I'm sick so I didn't want to attempt to Hank in a liberation But I can do one I don't doubt you

Yes so I feel like He has not really gone on to The Noblest of fate I mean his games are okay Rodea the Sky Soldier Which I attempted to write about for U.S. Gamer when I worked there. What a disaster.

What an unmitigated disaster. I mean, the game that they did make was great. Yeah, the Wii game that we, wait, that came as a bonus on the special edition that, yeah, that is the preferred version of the game. I guess it was delayed so much that they had to package it on the Wii U. But it's meant to be played with the Wii mode. I'm sure it works fine. But playing it with the Wii U controller is just a night, like, just unfathomable nightmare. I just was so bad.

Jeremy, did just something so? I was just going to say, like, yeah. It was an attempt to kind of do the next nights pretty clearly, but I don't know that it panned out. And I want to play that we version at some point. I assume it's better, but man, just kind of a bad, bad thing that happened to him. But I assume he's keeping on. I'm sure Propay is still around. I have not heard rumors of its closing.

They are. They just don't do a lot. I think they really just get outsour stuff. Like they develop some of the street pass games? Yes, yes. Yeah. Like the haunted house one, I play a bunch. It's a lot of fun.

Yeah, I like that one. It really weirded me out that Timbo, the badass elephant, was not a propay game because it seems like something that Yuji Naka would have worked on. And it's published by Sega, but that's a game freak game. It's weird. It's like so many people have made, like, what feel like Sonic games. Like, even Tropical Freeze, the Donkey Kong game, feels like a Sonic game. Tembo definitely does feel like a sonic game, especially with how it moves

and how there's a focus on speed and things like that. So we're done with Yuji Naka. Our second dude is Nauto Oshima, born in 64, he is kind of, in a way, the true creator of Sonic in that he created the design. He created design for Sonic and Robotnik, who at some point was envisioned as a possible main character. He was like a fat guy in pajamas carrying a pillow.

I'm sure we've all seen this early art. Teddy Roosevelt, sort of. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was a really cute character. Like, the American side was just concerned about kind of making things a little angrier. But regardless of what they did with the marketing and the packaging, this game is, the original game is also very cute. They could not have stopped the game from being cute.

And Robotnik is a cute character, despite his evil intentions. So basically, Oshima said, he admitted much later, he's like, I just put Felix the cat head, Felix the cat's head on Mickey Mouse's body. And it was sort of like the ultimate cynical ploy to appeal to Americans. So we have these popular American cartoon figures. We have red, white and blue design on the character. And apparently the shoes are either like Santa Claus' shoes or Michael Jackson's shoes. There's like conflicting argument.

about what Sonic's shoes are supposed to be. Does anyone know this? I was not as Santa Claus is having, you know, brown boots. I think it's like the buckle might have been part. I mean, Sonic has buckles on his shoes in the early games. That could be part of it, I don't know. Or he's a pilgrim or something. Wait, do they, oh, wait, they do like buckles?

Yeah, they don't like buttons, got it. Okay. It's very important to know. Just forget zippers. Yeah, so Oshima directed Sonic CD. He worked on that after Naka fled to America to work on Sonic 2. And Oshima actually directed two of the Saturn's biggest games, Knights and Burning Rangers. So

I guess Naka was busy programming on nights. I assume that was like his brainchild and he might have come up with a concept, but maybe he was just in just trying to get that idea to work on the Saturn which was not a great system for 3D. And then

Oshima left Sega to form Artoon which made the equally popular character Blinks the Time Sweeper. Am I right? I mean, kids I see kids with the Blinks hats and the Blinks backpacks and those Blinks happy meal toys all over the place. And boy, did they take Yoshi to New Heights. Yes.

Oh, yeah, Yoshi's Island DS, which I think is very bad, a very bad game. It's very bad. And Blue Dragon, which is fine. I mean,

I feel like they were just sort of copying Dragon Quest in a way and I play through the game. No, it's more in Final Fantasy. You did it. You did it. You've done it.

I mean, I played through it. I mean, the Toriyama stuff. That's all that's Dragon Quest. But the job system is kind of like lackluster. I don't know. I agree with you, Ray, I guess.

It's fine. I mean, Blue Dragon is inoffensive. That's the best thing I can say about it. It was dissolved. It was absorbed by AQ Interactive, and then they left that formation to become Arzest, which made Yoshi's New Island, which I think

Jeremy, is it better? I will stand up for that game. Well, it's better than Yoshi's Island DS because it's not trash. It's zestfully mediocre. It is a very good beginner's introduction to Yoshi's Island. If you were not born when Yoshi's Island came out...

You'll never play it. No, if you were not born when Yoshi's Island came out originally in 1996 or 95 or whatever, then this is like you're still a child and this is a good game for you because you missed out on the Super NES game and you can't play it legally anyway, so here you go, play this game

because it's pretty much the same but a little more, you know, appealing to contemporary players. Maybe I'll get around to playing it one day. I just want Yoshi's regular island to exist. The new island can wait, you know, just Yoshi's Island, I want that available. With the old island first. So our last member of this triumvirate is

Hirokazu Yasuhara, which I think is sort of the more unsung member of this trio. Like, we really hear about Naka and Oshima more because they are developed. They're more of the things that are on the surface, I guess, like the tech and the character. But Yasuhara is a level designer. And he kind of directed, if you want to call it that, Sonic 1, 2, and 3. Someone else is credited with directing Sonic 2, but I feel like that person was more of a managing editor between both sides of development. He's listed as the planner.

In interviews I've been reading, I think planner just equals director in these old games. Yeah, back in the older games, designer and Planner usually meant the person who was responsible for, like, the day-to-day creation of the game, like, who is, you know, put down the vision for it and made that into reality, whereas director often was more like a producer-type role, someone who was managing and shuffling papers and figuring out staffing requirements and resources and that sort of thing. Like managing schedules and... Right.

Planner almost always meant, like, the person who actually designed to this game. Yeah, I think it came out of an interview with, like, kind of... Mega Man Guy helped me out here. Inafune, yeah. He was describing what his role as a planner was. I was like, oh, that's basically a director. So, yeah, that makes sense. So Yasuhara, along with everyone else, left Sega in the early OOs to work on at Nottie Dog.

Notty Dog. Not everyone left, everyone kind of left at a certain point. And he worked on games like Jack and Daxter. It makes sense that they would borrow Sonic Talent because it was sort of a mascot platformer, of course. And strangely enough, uncharted. And he was also hired away by Sega Technical Institute with Yujunaka to work on Sonic 2. so they both worked in America, presumably making more money on Sonic 2. And now he works at Nintendo's NST Division,

where he apparently only works on those Mario and Donkey Kong games that keep coming out that I don't know if anyone actually plays. But the first couple, I like them a lot. They're good, but it's like, I'm kind of done with these. It's just like, NST seemingly only makes these anymore for the past almost a decade, I think. They're probably doing something amazing for Switch. Just you wait. Yes.

Just you. I can take those games on the road, wait. I already could, and I don't want them. Anyway, so let's get into the creation of Sonic the Hedgehog. God, I hope there's time to talk about the games. I find the creation kind of more interesting than the games themselves in a way, just because of this era of Sega, which I think is captured well in the book, console wars.

You may disagree with how the information is presented. I think it's a book written for Normos, not nerds like us. Like, how do I get a normal person to care about this stuff? And I feel like I can get over that and just get the information in the way that the author presents it. So I recommend that book if you're interested in this. It's where I'm pulling some of this information from. But Ray's grunting. I know he's holding back something.

Sorry, Ray. Careful. He's going to show up in your mentions. Get out of my mentions, dog. Okay, so, this, as Jeremy is pointed out on past retronauts, like,

Sonic was sort of spearheaded as a way to dethrone Mario in a way. It was an internal contest held by Sega of Japan's AM 8 division, which would eventually become Sonic team to come up with a new character because, you know, Alex Kid, nobody cared.

Nobody cared. I cared. Oh, right. Yeah. I cared a lot. Wait, did you? I really did. I mean, I thought you, I grew up with a...

You've been really quiet. Let's hear your heresy. Yeah. I mean, it was a... I think there was an element of it was what I had. You know, like, I get... Like, Alex Kidd had a very... That explains the fervent spectrum fandom in the UK.

Of course. Like, it's, like, America World specifically. I think that there was a lot... Is it the Genesis one? That was the master system. Yeah. I think the Lost Stars, you might be thinking of. There's a couple of Genesis ones.

But anyway, Miracle World was fun. I had a good time with it. It was really unforgiving, but it had a really catchy soundtrack. I, to this day, do not understand how the rock, paper, scissors, boss fights go. But I have a soft spot. I understand your perception of your perspective of Alex Kid as a mascot. I really want to like that Genesis game, but I feel like whenever I try to play it, I'm immediately hit by a car, and then I want to stop playing.

Well, you should hold the jump on there. Oh, that's how it works. I think Alex Kidd was definitely more of a knee-jerk reaction to Mario than Sonic was because they basically saw Mario and it's like, okay, we have to make something like this. So we'll have a game that has jumping and blocks and then we'll also add a punch and then also some more verticality, I suppose, and a motorcycle. Yeah, I feel like the... It's just like, it's more of that.

And then they sort of like didn't improve on any of it for the Genesis sequel. And so that just kind of felt flat as well. And so Alex Kidd was like, what the... I mean, what else? They also didn't even treat him quite as well as Mario because, like, Mario had a bunch of great platformers. Alice Kid was, like, one platformer, and then a fucking BMX game. Puzzle game.

And then a adventure puzzle game converted from a girls' anime. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like with Sonic and Mario, it was easy to sum up who they were. It's like he's a plumber. He's a hedgehog that goes fast. Alex Kid, he's like he's a monkey-ish man. He's a track suit. Monkey Man Prince.

Yeah, it's like... Punches and eats rice balls. It's a weird nebulous idea that... It's hard to pin down. Yeah. The thing is that they had to create the story for him after they made the game, essentially. Yeah, because Boas Sonic was more methodical. So this contest was spearheaded within saying his AMA Division to come up with a new character that would be like the new thing. We need a new Mari.

We need something compelling for this mega drive for this Genesis. So we talked about how Eggman or Robotnik was sort of the first idea for a character. He's like a mustache guy in pajamas. You look at the concept art online. He's like skidding on his butt. He's carrying a pillow. It's very cute. But I do not see him the throne.

Mario. He's another mustache guy, but a little more grotesque in a way. And they kind of decided at first to go with this rabbit character who would pick things up with its ears. And I love this design. I think it would eventually turn into Cream the Rabbit. It's a very, very like Fleischer Brothersy, very like 30s, late 20s cartoon design. Oswaldish, in a way. It's super Oswaldish. It's a great design. I'm glad they eventually kind of retooled it a bit. So Oshima created a teamed up with Naka. And Naka was really into racing, like cars and racing. So he wanted to create a game that had that same kind of racing field because you couldn't necessarily save your game all the time in those days. So he wanted a game that players would want to replay the levels

over and over again in order to get better times, get better scores, and that was sort of baked into Sonic the Hedgehog's idea. Like, you won't be able to save, but every time you play, you'll get a little better. You'll learn these courses a little better. There's like the mid, like the high, mid and low paths through, like a lot of the levels, which I think feeds into that, which is a cool perspective on that. For sure. And I think I heard stories about like Naka getting a Ferrari as like a bonus for Sonic 2 or something like that. People say he was like

standoffish or he was like very brusk but I feel like he was just realizing his worth, you know, unlike a lot of other people in the Japanese gaming industry. He broke out of it and he realized like he was important. So, you know, good for him. So we're always a programmer.

Like programmers tend to be introverted. Yeah, yeah. Don't take it personally. He's just really smart, okay? So Yasuhara, who's like the level designer, he joins the project, and Nakah wanted this to be a speed-focused game, but he's like, if we make this game about a character, this rabbit character who throws things with his ears, the player's going to have to stop, he's going to have to pick things up. It's going to really defeat the purpose of, you know, the speedy game you want to make. There's going to be this annoying shake, shake sample. Yes. And I feel like it could have been more like Mario 2 or something like that if they would have went with this idea.

But am I wrong? Did some of those ideas for the rabbit and throwing things go on to be, like, Restar in some form? It could be. Yeah. It definitely has that kind of, like, sonic but slow and grabby. Yeah, I don't know who made it, but I'm sure. That's what, that's blessed. Wristar's awesome.

Like, I wasn't being, I wasn't being insulting. I'm saying, like, you can see a line of evolution there. Okay. Yeah. So what they did, they ditched the rabbit character. They used the previous design, which was an armadillo. They added spines to him, and boom, he got Sonic. And then it's like, armadales are slow.

Hedgehogs are apparently fast, from what I know. I don't know why they decided on a hedgehog. But it's important to remember. None of these characters look like what they're supposed to be outside of tales, maybe. Like, Sonic looks nothing like a Hedgehog. I'm sure we all are aware of this. Don't look for blue hedgehogs. If you see one, it's probably very sick.

Humaneer spikes. Yes. So, yes, instead of throwing projectiles, the character would be a projectile. And that was sort of the idea behind Sonic along with the speediness. And there were some weird complications with the character's origin. like Sega of Japan wanted him to have a bunch of friends, which eventually would happen with his crappy friends. He had a rock band at first and fangs

and a human girlfriend named Madonna. And this apparently really horrified Sega of America's executives when these complications kind of horrified them. I was reading this in the book, Consul Wars, and looking at the designs, they seemed rather cute and harmless, but the recounting of them looking at these things, like, this is just terrible, this is horrific.

I don't know why they were so afraid of them because that's eventually what Sonic would become. eventually have friends and have a human girlfriend who would kiss. That's true. Yeah, in Sonic 2006. So I guess they wanted to avoid interspecies romance at that point. That's just a fling. So that comment you made about how Sonic would become the projectile, I think is really the key to, like I never thought of it that way, but it's really the key to understanding the game.

And also games that want to be Sonic. I mean, you look and you see a lot of games that were influenced by Sonic. Like Bubsy. Like Bubzy. Like Bubzy. They grasp that element. That's why you have Rocket Knight, where your character is the projectile.

Yeah, that's a much better take. All the, like, Sonic clones. I mean, it's an opossum. It's pretty blatant. Arrow the Acrobat, I feel like has some of those. I mean, I wasn't a... A little bit. Yeah, I mean, that's an element that you see in certain games.

And, like, it's hard to capture, but the people who got that, they did a good job of capturing the essence of Sonic in their own way. Yeah. So that's a good observation. It wasn't my observation. It was the development teams, but I will take credit for it. Yeah, they did a good job.

So this took 11 grueling months, and the AM8 eventually dubbed themselves Sonic team. And, okay, so we've already established that, like, Sega of America and Sega of Japan were sort of at odds with each other. I think it's been established that Sega of Japan was a bit resentful that the Mega Drive or the Genesis was much popular in America due to the aggressive marketing of Sega of America. And, of course, we have the Sega screen. If you live through the 90s, you know what the Sega marketing was like. how Nintendo tried to copy it badly. And I think Ray might be keyed into some of this because I think we talked about it before.

So SIG of America executives came up with their own story Bible for the series that the Japanese side seemed to ignore altogether. It's not present in the game at all. It's like Sonic is from Nebraska. His real name is Sunny. Robotniks was named Evo Kintobor. He was a nice scientist until he turned into a bad scientist. And the Chaos Emeralds gave Sonic Power.

It's like all of these things. And it's like one of the executives that they talked about in this console wars lot, Kalinsky, he was like, we need to sell kids a story. They just don't, they need to define this character with a story. There's him and Al Nilsen. Yeah, he's like the real marketing guy there. Yeah, but like, and I found their stories to be kind of stupid. True, but.

Yeah. Nintendo of America did the same shit, especially back then. Oh, really? Okay. When they were not as much on the chain from NOJ and CL because, you know, we had stuff like not just the Mario cartoons, but you may have also seen on the internet recently, like somebody discovered like a binder of like the same sort of like character bios and Yoshi was, Yoshi's full name is Yoshi T Munchakupas or something.

Yoshi's or like that shit was immediately ignored and not really used anywhere else. It's funny you mentioned that. But it was just the American marketers run amok and trying to create some shit that they think kids would be into when really we just like good video games. I think that was probably sort of the fallout from the early 80s cartoon toy tie-in things, Things like Masters of the Universe, Transformers, G.I. Joe, where they created toys, but it wasn't just a toy line. It was like a storyline within the toys that could be expanded into other media. Like that was the key to those product success. And Kalinsky being from Mattel, of course, would be more open to that. Like if you bought a G.I. Joe, you would get like a dossier on the character on the back of the toy packages. Yeah, I mean, they had like a professional comic writer come in and create like an entire universe around the G.I. Joe characters. And that works when you're making toys

and a cartoon around those toys but not when the game is already made and you're seeing it happen on the screen like you're trying to build around that and it doesn't really work. It was interesting growing up with that and it was such a, you know, it had about as, I mean, I think Mario had a more defined story

by comparison of just trying to like hunt down it was almost by attrition. Eventually somebody gave way. It's like, yes, okay, he's a plumber for Brooklyn, whatever. Just go with it. I think those gaps. Make the movie. And how colorful and like how much personality

Sonic had in the first one, those gaps were easy to fill in with your imagination. And it's just, I don't know, like the ending cutscene, him running through. It's like all the flowers are blooming again. You know, you have the KS. Emeralds. If you lose the game or if you don't get all the KS. Emeralds, you know, Robotniks juggling them and taunting you. You beat the game, but you didn't get them all.

And those for me were really colorful ways to tell a very simple story that I didn't get out of games that only had, like, you know, did you beat it or didn't you? And it allowed me to, like, fill in the gaps to some degree, I guess. Yeah, I mean, they never really tried to. tell a real story until Sonic 3 and then it was all told through very simple animations which was fine but it's like they were overthinking this a bit when I sat down to play Sonic when I wasn't like

who is Sonic? What are his motivation? It's like no I'm going to run to the right, jump on things, have fun, fight bosses. It's like the guy that I fight all over, sorry, the guy that I fight over and over again is the bad guy and that's all I need to know basically but I think they were they really needed a hit and they did not want to overlook any angle and again Ray like you said they were

toy people and they're coming at it from a very toy angle and these things were considered toys about this time. And I think, like, there were so many different versions of Sonic, so many different kind of universes. We had, like, we had the American version. There were the, you know, Nebraska, his name is Sunny,

Evo Kintobor, whatever. There was a Japanese comic series written to promote the game, and apparently Sonic was created via a series of storybooks written by the first pilot to break the sound barrier. Chuck Yeager? Maybe. Maybe Chuck Yeager wrote storybooks.

He wrote stories about Sonic, and that brought Sonic to life? And then he came to life. I don't know. I didn't read these comics, but apparently that's what the summary of them was. And then we have the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon where Sonic is this wacky bugs bunny guy.

And then we have the Saturday Morning cartoon where it's like their Freedom Fighters, which has some weird baggage these days. Which is a little bit more closely tied to the comics, like the Archie comics. Yeah, and Archie Comics are very much sort of in line with the Saturday Night cartoons. Which I think I pulled mostly from that.

I decided that that was my son. Sonic Canada growing up, and I kind of projected that onto the games as much as possible. And that's where Tim discovered the concept of head cannon. It's going to kill us all one day. But also, and then that always confused me like, okay, we get the Sonic Adventure, and then there were humans suddenly, and that really disturbed me. I wanted to pull out as soon as they were humans in this world, outside of the one. Yeah, besides robotic, right, who just seems like he's just this gargamel kind of character.

Exactly, yeah, no, that's a great comparison. I like him. Eventually, even the Smurfs had Johann and Pee, we... That's true. Yeah, so when Sonic Adventure came, I was like, oh, there's a bit of retconning to do. I'm not on the American side. We're going off on side things, but then I'm just thinking of Sonic X where it's like Sonic enters the real world and his best friend's a kid just like you and you can have adventures

with him and just like, come on, let's decide on one canon, please. I beg a few. So the marketing and the localization would be very, very Americanized. The Japanese team really disliked this at the time and they really fought against this and we'll talk about more things later that they fought against. But again, the game remained very cute. I think Sonic would never be cuter than he is in this first game. Everything is very cute and colorful.

There might be some, like, kind of melancholy music, maybe some scary things happening in the background, but it's a very, very cute, very Japanese game in that style. You destroy a robot, you save a furry little creature. They made even the little cartoon spiders look cute. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you still look at the original illustrations from Japan. It's all cute.

It always had been for quite a while. Fetal Adventure. You hop on Robotnik, you hit him, he looks at the camera. He basically looks at you, like, stunned. And I thought that was like a really cool way. Like, Robotic is a cute character, and I thought that was really clever way to connect. You know, you fight, you just chase him throughout the entire game. And I think it really strengthened the connection between, you know, Sonic and Robotnik more.

You know, you fight these disparate, like, bespoke bosses in most games that are, like, tenuously connected to any narrative that's trying to pull together. And he managed to do it while being. being adorable. Yeah, there was a comical, there's kind of a comical angle that he would keep coming at you with these creations and you would always keep,

you know, just destroying them every time. Yeah, very Saturday morning cartoon. Yeah. Next time, gadget. And again, communicated without text, without a voice, without a few animations. Like, you didn't need these backstories. So in another bold move,

Sonic would replace Altered Beast as the pack-in title. And this was a very, a move that the Japanese side did not like. They were like, this is our killer game and you want to give it away for free. But Sega America was like, okay, altered beasts is fine, but it's very short, and we're afraid that consumers will think it's a satanic game.

They were concerned about that at the time. This is the satanic panic era of the late 80s, and this was a way to get the system into people's homes having this killer app that you could still buy independently, but it was an incentive to buy the Genesis as well. I'm going to be like, I'm going to be. I'm going to I'm I'm I'm

I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm So we're going to talk about the games finally, because the creation of Sonic and the people behind is so we're going to talk about the games finally, because the creation of Sonic and the people behind is so interesting.

but the games are worth talking about as well. This is a Sonic the Hedgehog episode after all. And the first game came out in June on June 23rd, 1991 in the U.S. first. And I feel like I played all of these games again for the first time approaching them analytically as an adult. And I feel like these are arcade developers trying their best to adapt to a console mindset. You have to realize like these people were working on things like Altered Beast before Sonic the Hedgehog. And I feel that sort of arcade mentality is at play here. It's a very short, flashy, and difficult game.

longer than your typical arcade game would be, but I do feel like there is a arcade mindset in place where playing Sonic 1, and people complain on comments and stuff when I say games are hard sometimes, and I understand if you grew up with this game, it might not be as hard to you, but Sonic 1 is a difficult game.

Yeah. And actually, playing it reminded me of 1001 spikes because there are so many gotcha moments, and 1001 spikes is great. It's all about gotcha moments. But Sonic, I was immediately reminded of that game because it's like, it flings you into something, you think you're fine, spikes immediately come out and kill you.

It's just like there are so many gotcha moments and the game is really built around that sort of memorization of those gotcha moments for the most part I think It's interesting not for the most part Oh not for the most part Those are the things that stuck out the most to me though Yeah but I don't think they make up quite as Much of each level

Okay I think it's really yeah I just remember them though sorry Tim It's a striking comparison like I think everyone thinks of Sonic the Hedgehog And they immediately say oh you know you You run really fast to the levels right You just blaze through that and that's what I think Green Hill Zone is like, it's what Emerald Hill Zone is like. They always start out that way.

And then those are great attract screens. You know, those are great, like, oh, my God, look at how fast he's going. It looks so good as a demo playing, you know, in a Toys R Us or something like that. But then, yeah, like, you mentioned, like, those gotcha moments, which there are those. But, like, you go from Green Hill Zone to Marble Zone, and it's just a dungeon of just, you know, it's just a dungeon of traps, like things trying to squish you, lava everywhere. And the game, like, screeches to a halt. in the pacing of it all. And you have to be very deliberate

and very slow and really just eke your way through this dungeon. And if you try to attack Marble Zone like you did Green Hill Zone, you'd get game over with it. I'm sure there's plenty of people that did die five minutes

and it's like, oh, this is different than what I thought. I find this game pinballs back and forth between the Green Hill Zone style and the Marble something zone? Marble. I think it's, I think it might just be Marble Zone. Marble Zone, yeah. Green Hill Zone and Marble Zone level

where it's like you have a more open level and then you have a more enclosed level with lots of platforming challenges. They just kind of go back and forth. So they have really kind of two types of levels at play here. I'm not as big of a fan of the platforming in this game. I feel like Sonic works best. Like Green Hill Zone is sort of the ideal Sonic stage for me in any case.

Like in this game, in the second game especially, I feel like that is a great Sonic level. I don't know. Like I feel like Labyrinth Zone is, I've been talking to people on Twitter about this and working through my Sonic anxieties. And everyone agrees, like, these games are difficult, and labyrinth zone is just the pain in the ass. It's terrifying.

I mean, the puzzle elements of, you know, the one thing that comes to mind, well, there's two things. Like, one is drowning. And I remember playing through that game. And basically, it's this happy go lucky music, very aquatic and fun. And then, you know, you'd start to run out of breath. And, like, essentially the Jaws theme starts playing. And you mentioned anxiety. It's just like, that would, I didn't want to see Sonic die.

so I would just reset the game. It freaked me out that much in that zone. And then on top of that... Okay, all right. Sorry. I don't want to play for too long. I know. But on top of that, you know, you'd spend so much time drowning

because Labyrinth Zone was a Labyrinth. Like, you had to... For a kid, I don't know, I was like six. So the concept, the puzzles, and having to, like, break the loop and break out of that was really beyond me at the time. And it was very different than stuff like Mario or even Alex Kidd.

It just was a different layer that I wasn't used to. You know, for a runner, I have to say that Sonic has really poor lung capacity compared to Mario. Maybe he just smokes a lot. That could be. We're not looking. He's that guy. He's a rad guy, you know? I will say, I mean, to its credit, I feel like the anxiety the game gives you about the fear of drowning is really effective.

But I think it's too effective where it makes those levels not fun. You're like rushing. You're not being careful. And like, like, when you're waiting. But the buckles are always well spaced. I don't know. Like, sometimes I didn't spawn when I wanted them to. Like when you're just waiting for the big bubble to come up.

Yeah. I think you need to manage it better. Okay, sorry, Ray's going to be constantly battling me on this episode. Yeah, I didn't want to mention the music because we brought up the death music. This is all, this and Sonic 2, created by Masato Nakamura, the Japanese band Dreams Come True. Just great, great music. Like, listening, playing these games again, I'm like, wow, I forgot how good Sonic music is. And apparently he owns the rights of the music.

Like, his name is credited with a copyright and the credits. His real name, which would not happen in Sonic 1. everyone was pseudonyms. And that's why you don't hear any of his music in Sonic 3 because he wanted too much money, which I'm guessing was a reasonable amount of money, but they didn't want to pay him a reasonable amount of money. But he was a big part of Sonic being popular in Japan. Like his band would use Sonic as like a character on their posters and stuff like that.

Like he was being promoted through Sonic the Hedgehog and vice versa. So, yeah, to talk about Labyrinth Zone. And one of the reasons this game is interesting and one of the reasons I kind of like, like kind of was baffled by it as a kid was it's a one-but-one. game in an era where every button did something, especially on the Super Nintendo controller. So, like, the first time I sat down with Sonic,

it was at a friend's house, he was showing me, and I was like, what's the A button do? Oh, it jumps. What's B? jumps. And he's like, they all jump. And I'm like, that's all you do in this game? So that kind of put me off.

It was kind of a bold move in an era where, um... I liked it. Things were good. I mean, I like it now, but it was like, it took me a little bit to, uh, work through. He's always running. There's no run button. Yeah.

It's easier for you. I just, I mean, I played so much Super Nintendo before that for maybe a few months, and I'm like, but you need all the buttons to do stuff. The game should be like this. How do I manage my inventory? Exactly. How do I look to the side of the screen? Where do I find the shop to spend my rings?

Yes. And so this game is lacking the spin dash, of course. Future versions would hack it in like the DS version, the 3DS version. And it doesn't break the game. It makes it better. That's the one problem with this game, I think. Building a momentum is a pain in the ass sometimes when you need it. And having it instantly is great.

It doesn't break anything. It just saves you. time saves you having to run back and then run forward again. So I'm glad that they hack that into the future games. So again, it's a very simple game. You have three power-ups, one, which actually kind of disempowers you, the shoes,

where it's like, I can go fast, but usually going fast without knowing where I'm going, kind of gets me in trouble. And the time limit is so generous. You're not really in a hurry to go anywhere. I think in Sonic 3 and Knuckles, the time limit would be more of an issue. But you have a shield, which is good, invincibility, which is

even better. Those are your two basic power-ups for this. And I have to say, like, I love Mario World, but looking at these games side by side, God damn, Sonic is beautiful. Like, Sonic is a beautiful game. I don't know if you agree with me on this, guys, but I feel like they really won this aspect of the console war, despite the underpower technology. I feel like Mario World is a good-looking game, but man, they went to such lengths to make this a pretty, pretty, like, immediately eye-catching experience, which is why they toured it next to Mario World. I think that Super Mario World has a more consistent style.

Oh, for sure. But Sonic goes through all... Every zone is so disparate and what it's trying to go for that you just have this huge variety of aesthetics. I think one of the key things is that Sonic pretty much looks like he does in all the pictures, which is something you don't get in a lot of Nintendo games. They didn't really respect character palettes all that much. That's true.

Even in the Americanized cover art, they didn't really deviate very much from him. I mean, he would eventually get to look more like the sneering cover art in like Sonic 3 and Knuckles. but they didn't touch too much of it. They kind of made it look like an airbrush mold t-shirt. They played Mario World and, like, Luigi has purple overalls, and there's, like, Link to the Past, Link with Pink Hair, stuff like that's Super Mario Brothers,

Mario is wearing brown, which is it doesn't happen in any official art. Exactly. I hear you. I think back to just the spectacle of starting up that game and, like, you know, it fades in from black, you see the sparkles, and he pops out of the big banner thing. It's this huge, beautiful sprite. Yeah. That just comes live and you're hidden over the head with his personality.

And the game ends on that note, too. You know, he jumps towards the camera. It's just, like, bookended with just these big, beautiful pictures of Sonic. Yeah, I mean, I was playing this on a gaming PC, on a 4K TV. I felt like I was, like, abusing this technology. But at the same time, I was like, this is still impressive. Like, this still looks really good. So, some other things about Sonic.

So, like many games at this time, one thing I love about Sonic is this great, like, late 80s, early 90s, it's pop art aesthetic, where it's like, we have checkerboards for no reason. There are shapes loading in the background. Sonic is all about this. love, it just looks so great. The Japanese box? Yeah, yeah, especially. Total Memphis style.

It's as 80s as you get. Even Sonic's design is a little cubist in a way, the way his mouth is placed, like sort of on the side. They would eventually make these characters more three-dimensional in a way, even with their sprites, but I feel like these are like very bold, interesting choices in terms of art design, things like that. So, trap up Sonic, we have, of course, the Chaos Emeralds, which would factor into every game.

And in order to get these Chaos Emeralds, you need to collect a certain number of rings, I believe, and jump into the ring that pops up at the end of a course. You're looking for 50 rings, I believe. 50 rings, right. So, yeah, rings are important. Rings would eventually lose their value outside of being, like, a health buffer in later games. But I kind of dislike these bonus levels. They are, like, intentionally very puky. It's like you're, on these, immediately technically impressive rotating stages.

It's camel tree. Yes, exactly. But it's like, you have, like, this weird clip art behind you. Screen saver. Yeah, that's what it feels like. And it has this, like, very, like, kind of, like, sea-sick-feeling music behind it. It just, like, it makes me feel nauseous. Like, cliopey.

Yeah. And then you've got, like, it's almost like beach balls or something spinning and flying birds. It's very, yeah, very, like, what's happening here? If I had to guess, I'd say that's probably, like, the remnant of, like, Eugene Naka's original experiments with what you said about, like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It feels like, a lot of scale-aware. It does feel, like, a tech demo, but, like, again, a lot of these, a lot of these bonus stages do just feel like tech-tem. that could have been something else, but they just worked into these games. I thought it was really, I agree with you. I don't think that they were the strongest element of that game by a mile, but the sense of, like, relief when you would make it to the end of the stage with 50 rings without spilling them everywhere, which the ring system is another thing to talk about.

But those bonus stages, you know, you would see the chaos emerald in the center of it, almost immediately, and you'd have to just, it's almost like a breakout kind of, like I have to hit, you know, Sonic has a projectile again. Like, I have to knock out these things. And that feeling of satisfaction when you'd finally get it and the entire stage just starts spinning and it shows you this tally of every single chaos room you have and you're just like checking it off.

Like, for me, it was the perfect bonus stage at the time. That was also a good counter-programming against the Super Nias, which had Mode 7 and distortion and spinning and stuff and like, oh, the Sega Genesis can't do that. But here's Sonic and look at that spinning. Yeah, I mean, it feels like a very arcadey touch that in order to get the better ending, you need to collect all of these items.

I mean, Yuji Naka worked on the ghouls Goals and Ghosts and Ghosts, correct? Goals and Ghosts arcade port, which has another way to get, like, a slightly obscure way to get the better ending. Sonic is not like it at all, but I feel it comes from that same mentality. But with all of these games, I feel like the payoff is not really worth it, because you get like one new piece of art. So in Sonic 1, instead of, like you said to him, Robotnik is juggling the Chaos Emeralds and saying, try again, it's him stomping on the words at the end. That's what you get for all of your pain going through this bonus levels, which I guess. It's fine if you're a completist, but I was like, maybe I'm expecting too much for my game from

1991, after you go through all of that work to get the emeralds. They address that, like, in the sequel. Like, they immediately introduced Supersonic with that element. But I do agree that it was a little light in the beginning. It was just a collection, like a completionist. And then in Sonic 3, you get the another, like, kind of another stage in their boss. If you get all the Super Emeralds and the Chaos Emeralds and stuff on top of that, hypersonic. The Hyper Emeralds, you know, playing Sonic 3 and Knuckles back to, or, you know,

locked on to each other, but yeah, that's another thing. But the rings, like, to me, you know, that's an element of the game where it's like, you talk about how difficult this was. You know, Mario games were, they were very difficult as well. Yeah. To me, it was always like, all right, two hits, I'm out. And Sonic, you know, depending on where you got hit, it's like I could keep on eking through a tough level because I scrambled and got those rings.

So for as a kid who was, you know, yeah, like five or six, like trying to grasp playing a game from a game to the end, it was really forgiving for me. in a way that Mario games were really challenging. I was actually thinking that while I was playing. I was like maybe the reason this is so hard is because you constantly have that buffer. You can constantly, if you don't fall into a pit or whatever, you can always grab that one last ring

and keep yourself alive. And it's like you can at least push yourself through the game and not get that good ending because you need to hold on your rings to get the good ending. So it was a way for like maybe not so good players to see the end at least, although the final stage is grueling. Because I forget the name of the final stage.

Scrap brain. So you have two. two acts of scrapbrain, then you have a third act, which is a remix Labyrinth Zone, where you run to the left instead of the right. They have a tendency to put a very, very, very hard level before the final boss in these games, I've noticed,

which is kind of part for the course. I mean, Mega Man would have, like, sort of the boss, Scotland, and things like that. It was very much of this time, but it was a little frustrating for me when I was like, I just want to beat these games for research, but, uh, yeah, Sonic 1, very, very well made. I find it's a little too tough for me, but I can respect it. And we'll be back to talk about the rest of the games

after our break. What? I just wanted to add one thing. I feel like the one ring element, you know, where you can hang out of that one ring and keep going. I feel like that is also a reflection of the arcade routes. The idea that there is like the basic level of play and then there's like the real level of play. I mean, yeah, you can play through the game and you can, you know, survive with just one ring and keep going. But you're not really getting the ending to really get the game.

To like, you know, to get the highest score basically. You need to beat goals and ghosts without getting hit once. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. No, yeah, the idea that you have to, like, define the real ending. That is very much an arcade thing, you know, like play or play for score. It's the same mentality at work. So it fits very much into Sega's ethos in that era.

Cool. We will be back to talk about the rest of these games in a minute. See you then. You're going to be able to be. I'm sorry. I'm not going to be. We're going to be able to be. So we've talked a surprising amount about Sonic.

We only got through one game so far. And I want to talk about Sonic 2, which came out on November 24th, 19992, which is Sonic Tuesday in the United States. And this is pretty interesting because it's an American-Japanese co-production. We talked about how Yuji Naka and the other guy, who I forget his name, went to Sega of Japan. They were basically hired over there, sorry, left Sega of Japan for Sega Technical Institute, which was headed up by Mark Cerney. We talked about that. I read a lot about this. It was a very interesting process developing this game.

Apparently there was a bit of a culture clash. Americans weren't really used to how hard Japanese game designers worked. And this is not to say American programmers don't work, but I have this experience myself when I worked at Atlas where it was like, we all worked like eight to ten hour days, and we pulled some late nights sometimes. But the two Japanese guys, they brought over to work with us on a project, I would not see them leave.

And when I got there in the morning, they would already be there. So I can understand this sort of culture clash where maybe the Americans felt like are we not working hard enough and maybe the Japanese people were like they are not working hard enough so I can see that definitely happening. My understanding is that that's like a

like the idea there is to like create a perception that you're working hard like you can't be pulling your weight versus everyone else so no one wants to be the first to leave and you can't leave before the boss basically. George Costanza leave your car in the parking lot. actually the boss's car.

That's an awesome strategy. What I was going to say is, like, I think it was like the Japanese people that were brought over to work on the game were like, oh, you're not sleeping in the office, you're going home at night? Like, they were kind of confused by these things. And I guess it could be part of the Jeremy thing that Jeremy was saying, where it's like, you want to appear to be busy. The other George's case thing is like looking angry whenever someone walks in the room.

It makes it look like you're concentrating on something. I've done that plenty of times, too. Don't tell my boss is that. My new boss is right. So this has roughly the same amount of levels of Sonic One. And Sonic 1, another thing I wanted to bring up, but I forgot, was like, it had a very small amount of levels. Like, again, it's hard to not compare it to Mario World, where Mario World had 96 levels, and Sonic 1 had, like, 19. The Sonic 1 levels are much, much bigger.

But in Sonic 2, there's more variety because each, more variety in Sonic 1, rather, because each area only lasts for two acts instead of 3, which is a great change. Yeah, the spread was different. So you have a little more space to add more worlds, essentially. I feel like by the third act of any Sonic zone, you kind of get bored with the background stuff. So I'm glad this was the new standard, like, two acts, and you're out of there. That's the most part, yeah.

I think that Sonic 2 got, yeah, that was one part of why that I would consider probably one of the best sequels ever. I mean, I think it just checks a lot of the boxes of what you'd want out of a really good sequel. And variety is great, a great part of that. Obviously, like, you know, you're getting to all these things. But, yeah, like having a co-op add to it.

Oh, yeah, co-op is great. And have a second-playable character, more, like, interesting mechanics. We talked about the spin dash and how that changed things up. But, like, it retained all the core of what made the first one great and added things that only made it better. Yeah, in terms of levels, I think even the them were stronger. I mean, there were some strongly-themed levels on Sonic 1. Some of them weren't so strong, like, Starlight Zone.

It's like, where am I? What am I doing? In this, in this game, the, I think the themes are more apparent. Like, this is this kind of level. This is this kind of level. But talking about Caw, let's talk about Tales, who, again, I think there was an internal contest. I'm not sure if any other designs came out of this. I never saw any other alternate Tales designs. But the designer named him Miles Prower.

It's funny that a Japanese designer would come up with a grown-worthy American pun. Yeah, yeah. But I guess, again, this is recounted in console wars, maybe dramatized too much, but they were like, that is the worst thing we've ever heard, sir. Of course, yeah. So I guess what happened was they were so hell-bent on making, Miles Prower be named Tails, that they flew over to Japan. And I guess it was either Tom Kalinsky or the other guy.

They wrote this weepy story about how this young fox named Miles Monotale was mocked for a second tale. And Sonic cheered him up. And I guess everyone brought a tear to everyone's eye. And before he left them meeting, one of the Sega higher-ups was like, you may call him Tales. I don't know if that happened according directly to the dramatization. But I guess they convinced Sega to let this character be named Tails. because they did not want the Eggman-Robotonic splits that happened in Sonic 1

where in Sonic 1 he would be robotic The Japan side would not budge for Eggman Eventually we would come to embrace Eggman in some way It was kind of weird when it was just like Oh, it's Eggman now Like kind of like the peach toad still thing Yeah was that adventure? I'm trying to remember it was It was just like nope this is his name

I don't know how many people you've talked to Where you spell out the Miles quote unquote Tails prower thing and how many people in their adult lives are just, you see their mind blowing and it's just like, miles per hour, miles per hour. I didn't get it until pretty recently. Yeah. Yeah, I think it was in my 20s when that struck me. I'm like, oh my

God. Like, take the tails out of the equation. I never thought to take tails out of there. I was like, but that's his name. Now you're woke. It's funny, though, because I'm not sure how late this decision was made, because playing Sonic 2 again, I'm like, is the Japanese side being passive aggressive because you see the name Sonic and Miles

all throughout levels, the option screen, go to the option screen, the word Sonic morphs to Miles and back. In the casino night zone, you see signs that say Sonic and Miles, and then when you play as Tales, Tails is in quotation marks. Like, his name is Tails, but not really. I feel like part half of that was just like,

we didn't get the time to change shit. Yeah, but on the title screen. There's so much shit that was left over. Yeah, the morphing letters couldn't have been easy to reprogram. Exactly, yeah. I think it was a late decision. But, yeah, like, he even says Miles, Tales prior. I don't know if that name was retained for later games.

I don't remember ever seeing it outside of this one, which was kind of, like, confusing to me as a kid. Like, why does he have these extra names? Like, this is just Tales of the Fox. I don't get this. So, yeah, we have... I mean, you eventually got Tales Adventure and games that actually have Tales as their title.

Yeah, and, yeah, even, like, the Game Gear mainline Sonic games are like Sonic and Tales and Sonic and Tales, too. So, Tim mentioned the co-op mode, which I think makes this game much easier, and I would always be, like, Tails, would play with my friends. I don't know if that says something about me, but he's basically immortal. so it's a good way for unskilled players to jump in with somebody else or to help somebody beat the game easier. Like, I would do boss duty.

Unfortunately, having Tails with you kind of ruins the bonus stages a bit. Oh, it's unplayable. Yeah. As far as making a concerted effort to try to get, Sonic 2 is still the one that's like, I have not gotten all the Chaos Emeralds in that game. Those half-pipe special stages are grueling. And yeah, if you're playing with Tails for the benefit of having, you know,

someone along, unless you guys do a mind meld and are just like in lockstep, he just goes off the course and he'll make you lose all your rings and it's a nightmare, yeah. But a skilled tails player who throws himself against Robotnik endlessly during a boss fight is like,

it breaks the game, yeah. Yeah, I found that like playing with the AI Tails, which you can play as Sonic Alone, Tails alone, or Sonic and Tails, the AI Tales would always like hit the bosses for me sometimes. Like I would jump and then pull away, but then Tails would actually hit the boss.

So you can get a lot of like cheap hits and I guess you can't really get the Chaos Emerald if you have him as name. partner, that could be like the main downside to having him. But again, we talked about the spin dash, just adds so much to this game. It's so much easier to immediately have a boost of speed, which would really make this a much more playable game of Sonic 1, although they would eventually hack this into Sonic 1, future ports of it.

And we talked about these special stages, which are half pipes. I recently learned that essentially, so you're running down these half pipes, the perspective is behind Sonic. Apparently, these are pre-rendered video compressed to fit on the Genesis, like these pre-rendered video loops are essentially running on really primitive animated gifts that are stitched together. So there's probably like five or six different ones

like a curve, a bend, like a hill, and so on. And then they're just colored differently and then you're off to the races. Like it's not quite color cycling. Like some games would use to give the illusion of traveling down a tunnel but it's actually just like a pre-rendered animation that is compressed that a Genesis can display it, which is like again

every bonus stage feels like a weird tech demo for something that they either couldn't do anything else with, or maybe they thought it would be like a flashy thing, too, including a Sonic game. They borrowed the best from laser disk technology. Yeah, it's no, it's no 3D world runner, but I'll take it. And then, of course, we have Supersonic, which is, this starts the flagrant Dragon Ball

Zee homages, which I think escaped all of us until we actually got that series over here. Yeah, because I thought it was the coolest thing. It's like, oh, Goku does. Yeah. So collecting seven of these emeralds, which... Oh, right, seven. Yes, exactly. And this was in place in the first game.

but there was no supersonic. So this is the logical conclusion of this idea. Collecting 70 of these chaos emeralds, which I think you can do at a very early part of the game if you beat every bonus stage. Yeah, I mean, unlike Sonic 1, where it was you have 50 rings and you get to the end of an act,

and so you have a really finite amount of opportunities to try to get all the chaos emeralds. You can be supersonic, so it's in your benefit to get all the chaos emeralds as quickly as possible, and there's checkpoints now. Right. So now if you have 50 rings when you cross a checkpoint, a little halo of stars appears,

you jump through it and you get a shot at it. And so, yeah, you could conceivably, you know, get out of the first act with, like, three chaos emeralds, and then by the second level or second, you know, stage, you could be supersonic already. I really think it was designed like that with that in mind. Like, if you're good enough, you can play through most of the game as Supersonic, and if you don't know how this works, you collect 50 rings, and Sonic turns into basically a super saan, where he's super fast.

He can jump high, he's invincible, but he does lose, like, one ring per second. And you have to, can you, I think you can just keep filling that up if you, if you collect rings while you can play. Yeah, you can, but you end up with that tricky situation, where, you know, a boss can only be hit so many times and they have invincibility windows, so you'd think being Super Sonic and a boss fight would be your advantage, but if it runs out, you're left, halfway through the boss

with zero rings, so yeah. I feel like the scheme is much more, much less punishing, I think, than Sonic 1. There's more open areas, although Metropolis Zone is like the grueling 1001 spike style level where it's like, projectiles are firing you from every angle,

and there are three acts, and the third act is just another Metropolis Zone act that just wants to crush your face. In my nightmares, I still see those starfish with the exploding spikes on each tip. The scythe, like, praying mantises. Like, it's a brutal level. Yeah, there are so many bits in that level

where it's like, they have these crabs that extend their fist to punch you. So as soon as you land on the cliff, you're just punched off into the lava. Like, I have no idea how to get around that. They're tough. I should have to collect my rings and scramble and get back to that cliff.

But, yeah, Metropolis Zone is pretty tough. I feel like it's more fair throughout. I had more fun with this game. Uh, the final boss is, uh, probably one of the more difficult, uh, sonic experiences where, um, you're given zero rings to fight this boss. And it has two phases. One is, uh, metal sonic, sort of like a Terminator 2 style, uh, take off, I think. So, Robotnik develops a new sonic. Uh, and I feel like, uh, robotnik develops a new sonic. Uh, and I feel like, uh, playing with mecha sonic. Exactly. Wait, they're different. Wait, help. No, no, it's the same. Well, I think maybe it's been reticle a little bit, but like, that was like the mark one of metal sonic. Okay. So I feel like, uh, playing this again, and of course I'm playing with SafeStates, because I'm not. crazy. I'm a weak gamer boy, rather. For research, it's okay. For research, yes. I did not play this game as a true hardcore gamer, but I feel like a lot of these final bosses are designed to

really have you memorize the attacks. Like, I think you have to die a few times to know what's going to happen because Metal Sonic comes flying at you on the ground and you jump over him. And after a few times, he actually arcs up. Yeah. And then you are trained to jump over him and that kills you. So you have to kind of memorize, like, these are different things you can do. At some point, he jumps up and fires. spikes out, that'll get you two, and you can only take one hit, and then you die. Actually, you take one hit and you die. You can take zero hits. And then you go on to fight Robotnik in this giant robot, this cool robot mech suit. But again, you are playing both

of these bosses back to back. If you die Robotnik, you have to fight metal Sonic again. And it is a very, very tough boss fight. But I think once you learn the patterns, it's easy, but it's just like throwing yourself at these patterns with all the lives you've collected so far is really what makes a difference, because there are no saves in this game. Right. And I think you have to earn continues, I'm pretty sure. Is that correct? Yeah, you're right. Those were, I remember those last two bosses, and it was the king of like, oh, that thing barely touched Sonic's toe and he died. Yeah.

I feel like there was just like, I have vivid memories of playing that game with friends. It's just like the tension of those final boss fights, knowing that at any point one hit could end you. It's like, I need to send friends out of the room. It's like, I need to concentrate. You're getting tense. Yeah, yeah. I hear you breathing. Go away.

It was brutal. Yeah. I think I, like, playing this game with my friend, I think it's like, I had one of those moments, too. Like, we both have to be quiet. This requires total concentration. You're right. Like, the hip boxes are so specific for both of those bosses. Like, Metal Sonic, you have to hit him, like, in his forehead.

Like, directly in his forehead. You've hit the top of his head. You die. Robotnik has these, like, claw arms where it's sort of nebulous as to what will actually kill you, but you don't want to actually attack him until he lands and his, like, front part juts out. You can still hit him when the claw arms retract, but you're really playing with fire there. It's pretty tough. I'm kind of out of things to say about this

I think it was interesting I was looking at the credits and it's like all the Sega of Japan defectors were credited by their real names but no one else was so I guess it's like we get our real names in this game and I thought it was cool how it's like

they also put their pseudonyms next to the real name so it's like oh if you've seen this pseudonym before you know what I've worked on which is pretty neat to me and even the creator of Tales who I don't think flew over to STI was credited as the creator

of the characters and stuff like that that was pretty neat and I keep seeing Phoenix Ria which is the fantasy star creator Rako Kodama. I see her name over all of these games. I'm not sure what she did. I mean, she did graphics and stuff.

Probably. She was like one of those. Graphic illustrator. Renaissance women. She directed things too, I guess. Yeah. That's awesome. I think the only other thing that I would maybe point out by sides like, I don't

know, goofy stuff like robotic outrunning tales or outrunning Sonic as you're chasing him to his huge robot. That doesn't make any sense. Things like that as a kid. I'm just kind of, that's not right, was the fact that there was also a competitive split screen mode that was. That was like, it wasn't the reason I loved that game We're like playing with friends

But it was really ambitious, I feel like, for the time Because it was like completely different assets generally It was some of it felt like it was squished But a lot of the sprites looked totally different The ratio was very squished But they would fix that in Sonic 3 Yeah, that could be it. That could be it.

Maybe so two, yeah, maybe it was just switched that time. Yeah, I think Naka was just like, that was like his passion, his side passion project to like squeeze those in and get that mode working. It's impressive. It feels like it fits him with his racing mentality though, for sure. Yeah, you can screw each other over.

It was a fun extra mode. I played a bit of that, yeah. It didn't need to be there, but it was fun that it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't know if you know about this right, I don't have time to look into it. There was, like, a cut level from this game that they added back into later points.

Hidden Palace. I downloaded it, I downloaded the iOS version because it was kind of rebuilt and put into the iOS version. Right. And you have to fall through a certain pit in Mystic Cave Zone. And I remember, like, I have a friend who worked at Sega's Fabian. He gave me a map of like, this is the pit that you need to fall down. And I went in and you go into Hidden Pal's Zone.

It's like all the assets that you'd seen pulled from it and playing through it. It's like a little dinosaurs that like little red dinosaurs. And it's also like robotic is like a music theme. He's got like a big, big trumpets on him. So it's like a full zone with a different accent? Yeah, they basically made it from scratch. Keep in mind that those new ports were done by the fan. Christian Whitehead.

I didn't realize that. I'm also doing Sonic Mania now. But yeah. Like there was just fan guys. And so there was a, first of all, there's a lot of shit left over in Sonic 2 because it was basically built on top of Sonic 1. And so, you know, if you know anything about the Sonic fan community, there's this big history of all the different betas and alphas that showed up and stuff.

And so people have just been tearing that apart ever since for like almost 20 years. There were clues to that hidden pal's zone with like the sound test or something like that, I think, in Sonic 2. There were clues that there was something that should have been there. You can kind of see like a little graphic of it on. on the stage like screen, I think. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, but yeah. It was shown early in magazines, but it was all like mockups in,

and so it wasn't really done. But yeah, it was by Christian Whitehead, again, who's on Sonic Media. And so it wasn't officially like what the original vision of Hidden Palis Zone was, but it's fun as a long-time fan. Yeah, that's cool. So we're going to move on to

So we're going to move on to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 in Knuckles, very complicated game, and I'll get into that in a second. This is really just like one and a half games that's actually three separate games. It's so complicated, but let's go through this really quick. Yes, exactly. It makes sense to me. That's all I've got to say. So what happened was this was meant to be Sonic the Hedgehog 3, one game alone.

Naka, apparently, according to interviews, according to things I've read, is a notorious perfectionist, which is why Sonic 2 was delayed, which is why Sonic 1 was delayed. And Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was supposed to be out for the Christmas season of 93. that did not happen and they could not delay it any further and this might be a little slippery these facts but I think the source is reliable. Sonic the Hedgehog 3

had a tie-in promotion with McDonald's a happy meal promotion and they could not miss that release date because when you work with a big company like that they make all the toys ahead of time they make you set these things up way in advance. I have not personally worked with McDonald's I'm just assuming that this is what this is the case and you don't want to piss off McDonald's because they are a very

key promotional tool and selling your game to children. So they had to basically put out the game unfinished, and it is a very short game. I believe it's 12 levels as opposed to the 19 or the 18 that preceded it. But let's talk about Sonic 3.

This was originally supposed to be, I guess they toyed around with playing with the virtual processor, which power games like virtual racing on the Genesis. What else was on the Genesis that used this? Anything? Nothing. Nothing. Okay. Just virtual racing. And they were like, they played around with it, but they're like, there's no way we could do Sonic on this.

I'm glad they didn't because it would looked awful, played awful, and it would cost $100, I think. Virtual Racing was an expensive game, right? It was $100. Yes. I imagine they wouldn't have made the whole game with the thing, though. I guess. It could have been at, like, a bonus stage, maybe? It could have been, like, you know, a Mega Man X2 situation where this one

mini boss uses it. So, of course, Sonic Thatchog 3 introduces Knuckles, which I feel like there was no fight between Sega of Japan and America, because Sega of America's naming was like, just named the thing what it is. Sayo Is he? Yeah, exactly. So Knuckles has knuckles. He's a pink echidna. Akinnas are one of nature's greatest mistakes.

Please look it up. They're egg-lating mammals, one of like two on the planet, I think. Monotremes, I think, is what you call them. Remember being very confused by that animal because it's just like tossed out there. Oh, you know, hedgehogs, which were kind of like, oh, it's kind of like a porcupine. But then there's, oh, here's a fox. And it's like, Echidnaz, everybody. Hey, children, your favorite animal.

I think that was a ploy to sell encyclopedias to children. Like, I need to look this up now. Worked on me. I did a, I did an animal report. Wow. I think it was just a race to find the next obscure mammal, because all the, obviously. ones had been taken. So you end up with the kidnas.

Oh, that would better. Bandicoots. I mean, it's just like a horrifying spiral downward. Koda Mundi, we need one of those, I think. No one knows what I'm talking about. After a Mirkat was in The Lion King, it was just over for everyone. Oh, yeah. And Knuckles is more of, he's like more of a badass and Sonic even.

Like, uh, he punches the chaos emeralds out of Sonic. He does. Like, uh, the game starts with you. I guess you're going to go on vacation with tales. Uh, I don't know why. But, uh, you land immediately and the, the chaos emmer are stolen from you by Knuckles, who apparently was tricked by Robotnik into stealing them. This is the game with an actual story behind it.

It's run to the right and fight this guy with a mustache. I mean, Knuckles is defending his home. Yeah. I think that, you know, Robotnik wants to get to the Master Emerald, which keeps this whole thing afloat and has convinced Nuckles that Sonic is trying to steal all the... Yeah. And restoring his home is like one of the 23 endings in this game. We'll get to that in a second. So this game has saved.

Sonic 3 has saves. which is pretty interesting because Sonic 1 didn't have saves, Sonic 2 didn't have saves. I don't think Sonic 3 need saves because it's such a short game, but it's nice that they're there. It was great. I mean, it's probably like a four or five-hour game, but still, if you want to play through it a little pieces at a time, you can do that. I don't know if you can use this to grind for Emeralds. Can you do that? I want to play through stage one again with this character.

I think that you had to maintain progress. You couldn't go back. From my memory, you couldn't go back and just like, I'm going to try this stage. No, no Dracula X approach. Oh, too bad. So there's more story like I said But what's interesting is there's more of a story told through the levels themselves Like Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 would just drop you from different scenery without any explanation

These games would all have some sort of in-game reason for you to be going to another area that looks different Like you either fall that are waterfall and up in a water world You fight through a desert and go into a pyramid There's all kinds of stuff that has a logical transition into the next stage and there's also a very big focus on changing the stage halfway through route. Again, each of these zones is two acts long. I feel like the second act of every zone there's some new twist, even if it's only visual. Like in the first zone

of Sonic 3, you have the jungle that catches on fire and so on. There's like, Robotnik is like chasing you with this thing that terraforms the land in one of the levels. It's all very interesting. They're really thinking more about what can we do with these levels. And what's new in Sonic 3

also is like every stage, every act one of every zone has a sub-boss which is new. It's a lot of bosses in this game. Some of them are pretty lame. I'll admit, a lot of them use the, their orbs floating around me sort of idea where it's like, you can only hit me at these certain times. But it's cool that they're really delivering on things people like about

Sonic, like interesting bosses, different boss designs, not just ending with a, you know, jumping through a hoop or hitting a sign or whatever. There's some sort of climax at the end of every stage, like some sort of encounter like that. It also introduces some weird mechanics like the elastic rope

things that you grab onto. Yeah, yeah. I found those a little weird. in the sense that they, I don't know, they feel kind of counter to the basic Sonic philosophy. It's hard for me to explicate it, but... It's interesting that you say that. Because when I was playing these games, I was thinking, like, Sonic's abilities are limited,

but it's really how to put those limited abilities to use with these varying things around him in the environment. That's what I feel these games are about. It reminds me of Yoshi's Island in a way where Yoshi has a lot of moves, but there are so many different kinds of platforms and things you can interact with in the world. It's all about using those basic moves

on these things that are. happening around you. But to what Jeremy said, Sonic, excuse me, Ristar does all that stuff. Oh, really? I need to play Ristus. Yeah, maybe that's,

it feels like, oh, this is a carryover for Ristar. Yeah, and the overhanging, yeah. Yeah. It seems like... No, Ristar came after. To me, I feel like those, those mid-bosses were an answer to

there was more abilities. You know, you had an extra shield, so you could make magnetic shield and added a double jump or, you know, the bubble shield, which allowed you to breathe underwater, or the fire shield, which was huge because you just turned into a fireball. It's not quite like Mario suits, but...

Yeah, there's an element of that, though. Their shields, yeah. The bubble shield was great because it cut down on the... I'm underwater, I'm safe. Like, everything's fine until I get hit once, and I got some time. Which was huge. And taking that edge off, I think, helped. And those bosses, those mid-bosses, I think, helped spike up the challenge a little bit more.

And the second player is Tails, and Sonic 3 had way more agency. You know, tails could actually lift you up, carry you around. That's true. Tails could swim, too. Yeah, exactly. Which is sort of like flying underwater. Yeah. He's very adorable.

He's, like, doing a little dog paddle. It's great. Yeah, so we have the bonus stages, which we didn't mention yet. They are these, you find them in the levels, which kind of cuts down on the value of the ring, because you no longer need rings to access them. You need to find these very, very big stages. So they're kind of hard to find. And I find these kind of irritating.

I mean, I like the- It's a downgrade. Yeah, I like the technology on display. You're running on these sort of like Super Mario Galaxy-style orbs. But it's all about, like, hitting these blue orbs and jumping over the red ones and, like, sort of knowing the layout of these circular, levels because you can trap yourself too. Exactly. You can paint yourself in a corner and you have to have the pattern right.

But I do agree that, I mean, I think they were frustrating. It could be really disorienting because you'd turn on these 45 degree angles or 90-degree angles. But I felt more in control than, you know, the spinning of the first Sonic stage where it was just kind of like a pinball thing and there's traps to fall in. And two, we talked about the pitfalls there. But I actually felt like I was in control, even if it was a little frustrating sometimes. So I feel like I had more agency over actually getting all the, all the emeralds. If they slowed these down a bit, I could deal with them. But I think, like, even my friend who was good at these at the time, like, kind of cashed his chips in it, like, the fourth one.

Like, I'm done with this. Yeah, I mean, when you make that 45-degree turn, it's just like you turn and then you can't move out of it or anything. It's just like, you're forced to go in that. And so I don't think, I don't think you have as much control as you would. It looked really cool. It still does, but it's not very playable. Yeah. Jesus, there's no sort of map or anything.

I know. It's like, how do you put that together? in your head, running on this sphere and knowing where you'll be like kind of caged in. And stages that do get progressively larger. Yeah, for sure. I guess there has to be a strategy guide out there. I don't know how you would print those maps out or how you would render them.

Yeah, I've seen them print it out. Yeah. It's just a grid. They use a, they they use a Mercator projection. You need to have like a planetarium in your home in order to like actually see. These project. So we talked about the music. Nakamura I believe was the musician who worked

in the last games. He was not available for this one because he wanted more money than they wanted to give him. Most of this music is good, but I feel like Nakamura is more cohesive, because it's all coming from one guy who is a talented musician, and there's lots of composers on this game. There's like almost a dozen, it's seemingly making music for this game. I wonder why that is.

Yes, but one of them is, of course, Michael Jackson and Ray, you seem to be really invested in this. Can you talk about this? Do I, gee? Yes. You ran up to me, you're like, Bob, you got to talk about MJ. Am I wearing my bad tour shirt? Okay, where to begin, I guess.

Well, you already said it. And I can play the clip. I mean, what do we know? Hold on. Okay, well, this is great. We know that there's a lot of evidence that points to parts of those music tracks belonging to actual Michael Jackson songs. I think the first one that was sort of like the big McGuffin early on was the fact that the stranger in Moscow is really similar to the ending theme. It is, yeah.

Which is, Stranger Moscow came after Sonic 3, though, right? Correct? I think so. Yes, was it from history or something? I'm not sure. Keep talking. But yeah, the thing is that Michael Jackson, I guess, was, you know, going to do with the music, but along with a lot of his collaborators or yes men, I guess, you know, all these guys who help out on producing his tracks and things, guys from, you know, guys you've never really heard of, but, you know, a lot of them were credited in the game.

But I guess things kind of fell through. The story went that Michael Jackson heard the music coming out of the Genesis, like, what the hell is this? Even though he's the guy who had a Genesis game, liked Sega a lot, probably had, you know, 500 Genesis on Neverland Ranch. I was reading he just walked into Sega of America. I'm Michael Jackson, and I want to talk to people who make Sega games, and that's how they kind of set up the meeting with him.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, okay, you want to do something? Okay. But yeah, haven't you played one of these games? heard one of them at least. So that was kind of like the falling out, but a lot of the remnants

of the music similarities were in there. And then, you know, the story kind of, you know, it didn't really go anywhere for a lot of years because, you know, nobody from Sega was going to say anything. And then Michael Jackson died and nobody else was really going to say anything otherwise. And so there was a lot of

vague, vagueness still about it. But then I think the most recent development was that somebody figured out that, oh, the ice cap zone music, It's very similar to a song from Brad Buxer who was one of the collaborators with Michael Jackson and who worked on Sonic 3 and who also in the 80s had his own band

called the Jetsons with a Z. I can play that. And yeah. Snowboarding right now. Okay, pretty good. This song is called Hard Times and it's on the Jetson's album. Yeah, I mean, do you want me to play the Ice Cap Zone?

Yeah. Okay, go ahead. The riff is pretty much identical. So, yeah, I can definitely hear that. Yeah, that baseline. It's okay to rip yourself off, though, right? Yeah, I do it all the time. Rip yourself off under the name of Michael Jackson.

Yeah, I haven't done that yet. Yeah. But, yeah, it's interesting. Like, I was reading that the Amolestation scandal happened in fall of 93. People working on the game were not told to stop or do anything differently or stop working with Michael Jackson. And then, you know, he didn't like the music. I feel like it's one of those Mike Tyson things where it was like, they didn't have the contract anymore for Mike Tyson, but again, he was a rapist and they didn't want to work with them anymore. Don't not call us.

We'll not call him. Yeah, it's like, oh, you don't want to work with us? That's great. Don't worry about it. So I feel like it was like, okay, they kind of won that one out. And, yeah, I don't know. Like, I feel like at that point, Michael Jackson, even before the Mal Station Scan, it was kind of a joke in 93. I don't know if he was sort of like...

He was big tabloid fodder. Yeah. It was like the peak of that. maybe black or white era or what was this 91 album I forget as the black or white single I'm not actually an expert Okay sorry

I thought you were I feel like that was the last time he was like viewed as legitimate everything after that was like grasping at former success But yeah that's a story Michael Jackson and Sonic 3 There's no official word

But it's like he did Like I feel like he did Yeah Or if not these producer guys And also like who's it gonna hurt If you say he did I mean it's like he's dead It's like

And also he turned out project. It's not going to, it's not going to, like, damn his name. Yeah, there is that, too. It's like, I mean, staying mom about it is, it's kind of weird when it's been so long now. And it's like, I don't know, like, I guess if you just want to honor the secret, fine. It's like the Simpsons thing in a way. So we talked about the next game, Sonic and Knuckles, which is really just like the back half of Sonic 3. Did you mention the barrel and? Oh, the barrel. Thank you, it's right there in your notes. I was like, did I miss that? Thank you. Thank you for reaching the barrel.

Yeah, there's my contribution to the episode. Carnival Night Zone sucks, by the way. And it's not just because of that barrel. I tweeted this out when... Oh, boy. Before I were talking about it. Yes. I tweeted this out like last night, probably about a few weeks ago or maybe a month ago by the time you're listening to this, but I'm like, the Carnival Night Zone is one of the

worst levels of all time. They're like, that barrel. I'm like, yes, it's the barrel, but it's more than that. But the barrel got me this time, and it always gets me what happens in Sonic, and it happens in every game. There's like, you're introduced to a mechanic that is not taught to you. They just expect you to sort of know what to do without being signaled in any way. And Sonic 2, there's like, or maybe it's Sonic 1, you have to, like, hit a platform with your head to have it drop down.

Like, I was kind of stuck there. I'm like, what do I do next? This is more infamous for everybody across the world, I think, because there is a barrel in Carnival Night Zone where when you jump on it, it's sort of like a buoyant barrel. And you're like, I have to keep jumping on it. But that doesn't work. But the way it looks, it looks like it should work. But again, if you're playing with tails, that messes with it, what you have to do is hit up and down in alternate ways in order to get the barrel to bob up and down enough for you. to pass under where it goes under or whatever.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well enough, but it's somebody talk, please, this peril. It's just like, it's like you're looking at a seesaw from front on, but you can't see the other side of the seesaw. Exactly, exactly. And it's like there should have been a, like, maybe like something that signified a control input you should do or some other way to teach it to you.

These games, I feel like... That element was fixed a lot in later Sonic games, where they will give you signs and shit. And I think in Sonic Jam, I read they took this barrel out. They just took this one barrel out of the... Sonic Jam was the collection of Sonic 1, 2, and 3 for the Saturn. They took this barrel out. But that's one thing I feel...

Was that a working designs tweak? No, we can't create... You can't cut out of that. Oh, no, they did Sega ages, never mind. Yeah. So, like, I feel like that kind of ties into this idea that I was thinking of when playing these games. It's like, I think you have to constantly compare these games to Mario,

but I feel like Nintendo does a better job of teaching you. And it's examples like these that make me feel like, you could have taught me this, and I'm sure it's stumped many a child who could not go on the Internet, could not like look in a strategy guide. And I'm wondering how many people got stuck. If you got stuck at this barrel, let me know through a comment.

Yeah, I don't even remember because maybe I debug code. 100%. Yeah, I must have. Vivid memories of this one. I haven't played it that far. But there was a NeoGaf thread some time ago. It was like show a photo or show a picture of the worst boss in gaming. And a bunch of people just posted that barrel.

There were these videos made by a Japanese gamer person online. maybe a decade or so ago, where it was like Michael Jackson, like the sprite of Michael Jackson from Moonwalker, like kicking ass through all these different video games. Someone replied with, those are great. I want to find those again. But someone posted the animated gif of that when he goes to Carnival Night Zone.

We see Michael Jackson kicking ass through all these games. He walks up to that barrel and then Moot walks out of the screen. So it's like Michael Jackson does not want to deal with that barrel. So I love how someone, whoever that was, thank you for posting that. That made me laugh in my darkest time playing with this game. So talking about Sonic and Knuckles. The back half of Sonic and Knuckles was released later that fall. Sorry, the back half of Sonic 3.

I'm very sick, by the way. Sonic and Knuckles was marketed twice as much, it seemed like. Yes, and this had the lock-on cart, which basically, so I guess you got some of your monies worth by waiting because you could play Sonic 2 with Knuckles, Sonic 3 with Knuckles, and any Sega published game, I believe, would give you the Sonic 3 bonus stage. Is that correct? Is it just Sega published games? There's a lot of them.

Yeah. It's games with a certain header type that are. it would recognize and they would give it the thing. What I read was they wanted Sonic 1 to have knuckles in it with this lock-on cart, but there was an issue with the color palette and they couldn't get it working, so it was just but I think hackers have made it possible

in recent years, so that's something that happened. So we have that lock-on thing that lets you play Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 with Knuckles, but here's the thing. It's so complicated, but I'll try to break it down. So this essentially creates three separate games. We have Sonic 3, which you can play front-to-back as a complete game. We have Sonic

and Knuckles, which you can play front to back as a complete game. And then we have Sonic 3 and Knuckles, which is also a complete game. You can play front to back. In a much, much longer game than Sonic 3 and Knuckles vanilla. And each version of these games has their own respective endings. But in order to get the true, honest to God, super awesome ending, you need to play through Sonic 3 and Knuckles, get all of the Chaos Emeralds in the Sonic 3 part, then upgrade them the Super Emeralds in the Sonic and Knuckles part.

And then once that happens, you will fight the true final boss and Knuckles' magical kingdom will rise into space or whatever instead of sinking into the ocean. That's essentially how to get the true honest to God ending of this like strange bizarre creation we call Sonic 3 and Knuckles. It's insane to me. I almost made it

through my childhood with having played both Sonic 3 and then Sonic and Knuckles and then the combination of them like dozens of times before I happened upon a strategy guide and read it and just like, what is Doomsday Zone? Oh, right. Yeah. What is Doomsday Zone?

And then finally stitching it all together, it was a complete, like, I don't, I don't, I still haven't totally processed how lock on technology works to this day. But it was just, it is as if, you know, you went back to Super Mario World. And, you know, the years later, you're just like, oh, there's, this is the real ending. Like, are you serious? And I don't know, looking back, like lock on technology, especially with Sonic 2, I don't know, Bob, if you found something that is more revealing about it. but how that works? Like, how, how, like, was Sonic 2, was any part of it developed with Knuckles in mind?

Or is it just like... It's basically, like a pass-through. It's like, it's like using a game genie or something. So it's just adding in, you know, because like in Sonic 2 in Knuckles, you'd climb to the top, Knuckles can climb. That was a big part of his gameplay and glide. Yeah.

And so you could access areas that weren't, you could never get to in Sonic 2 regularly. And then there'd be a one-up up there. It's just kind of, that was what, with me. So, yeah, I mean, if it's a pass-through thing, like you're mentioning, and, you know, just having, there was, there was code in Sonic and Knuckles that affected

that, you know. Yeah. Yeah. There is what's, I mean, there's the thing in the Sonic and Nuckles ROM that's just basically patching the Sonic 2 ROMs. Yeah. It's literally adding it onto it. It's, it seems so simple when you say it that way. But having grown up in, with just like the Vaseline over the lens of it all, it was just, it was magic.

Yeah. We have to wrap up soon, but I want to say, like, this is so, like, this is very complicated, because you can play Sonic 3 alone by itself, if you play those levels via Sonic 3 and Knuckles, there are changes to those levels, like some parts are made a little easier, some parts are made a little harder. So there are tiny tweaks to these original Sonic 3 levels. If you play Sonic and

Knuckles, each have their own different roots. So, like, these are all conceivably different experiences each worthwhile. I will say Sonic 3 was a little too tedious for me. I feel like the Sonic and Knuckles' chunk of that content was a lot better. I don't know, as the Sonic Officiottosciano, Tim, like, what version of this three-part experience do you prefer?

To me, every time it would be, yeah, so Sonic 3N, Knuckles with Sonic and Tails, like, from beginning to end, because I think the co-op experience where Tails can actually lift up and carry Sonic around, like, it's a really fun co-op experience, and I think it allows you to explore and have more fun with someone. And then, I mean, as far as Solo goes, I think that Knuckles is a lot of fun because you have more opportunities to explore without Tails. You can climb walls and stuff like that. But I think that Sonic and Tales through both of them, you know, through Sonic 3 and Knuckles is the way to play it. And when Super Mario 3D World came out, I immediately thought of Knuckles with a cat suit. So running along, but before we go, Ray told me he had a rant to deliver,

a Dennis Miller style of rant, get out your... Don't call too much attention to it. It's kind of behind the scenes. Yeah, I just wanted to, first of all, talk about when we were talking about levels and stuff, especially with Sonic 1, like, I think the big point of bullshit that cropped up is that people think Sonic is supposed to be about going fast because that's sort of how he was marketed, of course.

So, I mean, I think people just have to ask themselves, like, what do they pick up on from Sonic either by Sega's marketing or from fans or anything else about its history over the past few years? I think there's two things to really grasp, which is two things that you can really get from it is that Sonic is either a game where you go really fast or a game that is as good as Mario.

And if you're leaning more towards the Mario side, then I think you're more forgiving of the level design and the sort of slowing down at certain points. And I think that's where the big disconnect happened and why people sort of get upset when they think Sonic's supposed to be about going fast and holding right. And when it doesn't do that, oh, the levels must be bad. But in reality, I think the levels are mostly well designed

because they're made by a good video game company. Excuse me, I just ran around with it. Race tearing up. This is very important. Totally fine. I trust, believe me. The thing is also is that, you know, when Sonic was made, the most current Mario game at the time was Mario 3.

And a lot of stages in Mario 3 are kind of straight lines, whether diagonal or not, up and down, whatever. A lot of levels in Sonic games, Sonic 1-2-3, are very S-shaped. There's lots of ways where they, take you down underground and back up and stuff. And so I think that's a key differentiator. And why I think levels are not that bad and why they tried to do something actually different from Mario a lot of the times.

Of course, I changed a bit with Mario World, but there was more verticality and stuff. But at the time, that's sort of what Sonic was going for. And sort of built on what was going on with Alex Kid in a way, too. There's a lot more open levels. And so I think when people sort of knock Sonic for not being as fast as they think it should be, I don't think they were thinking about it the right way. It's not supposed to be fast, even though everybody said it's supposed to be fast. If you just treat it as a normal platform game, I think it is pretty good, kind of rewarding.

Very well said, Ray. I can not argue with that. And that's what I wanted to say on Retronauts for 10 years. You finally said it. I'm glad you finally have the chance. Well put. I would say there is a third takeaway that we've received from the Sonic games over the years. And that's that the games are also about having sex with cartoon characters.

Yes, absolutely. Here's the thing. I want to say this. Now I have a rant about that. Oh, geez. I welcome all furry list. I feel like there was a time on the internet where that was... There was no judgment in my voice.

Oh, no, no. I want to make sure no one thinks we are judging them. Because, I mean, like, there's some persecution out there, Jeremy. I want to make sure we're not jumping into that. But I feel like there's a time on the internet where people being attracted to cartoon characters was the weirdest thing you could find. We are so far beyond that now, especially in our modern era of, like, 4chan and stuff. And I'm friends with fairies, and it's cool, and we welcome you to the show.

And I like animal characters, too, but not sexually. I don't want to say that for 10 years Okay, great I'd rather defend the games Okay Well, Jeremy brought it up So thank you so much for listening Well, it's just after our last Sonic experience

I Yeah I think it's okay to say There's no There's no bad blood between us In the Sonic community Of course not I killed off the podcast

For a few years because of it But we're over that now I spent valuable free time playing all these games again And I think it was worth it I wanted to talk about these games I'm glad we made it What I think is a good episode

Even though I'm sick And maybe a little rambly But I want to say thanks for listening so much. You can listen to all of the Patreon info in the commercial break, probably some extra stuff I threw in there, so please don't skip those. As for me, you can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. I also work at Fandum, powered by Wikia. You can go to fandom.com to read my new stuff there.

And I also host the podcast Talking Simpsons, which is a chronological exploration of The Simpsons. You can find that at Lasertime Podcast.com. Let's go with Tim first. He's a special guest. Not that you're not special, right? Tim's just not here. I know.

Well, hey, thanks for having me, guys. always down to talk about Sonic so I work on the Reson Evil team I'm on the marketing team at Capcom USA Resident Evil 7's coming out January 24th Whoa that's soon? 2017 yeah Right up there crap PS4 Xbox 1 PC so tell us how

combat works you gotta get you gotta get spooked So that's coming on up scared it snuck up on me If you have PSVR you can play the entire game in VR It's the same content I couldn't do the demo I'm sorry I can't You get a little spooked? Two spooked. Okay, gotcha.

I'm worried about my pants. I understand. The contents of my pants. You know, when you budget for video games, not everyone factors in pants. I understand. So that's part of it. Otherwise, I'm at Tim Turrey on Twitter. Love Capcom games, but clearly love talking about all games.

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Jeremy, how about you? Oh, you guys, you can find me on the internet. You know where. GameSpite on Twitter. That's where I post my dad jokes. And if you're interested in me talking about the history of video games,

that are never going to be Sonic. Check out Game Boy World or Good Intentions or Mode 7. Yeah, it's all Nintendo stuff. Sorry. How about you, Ray? Sorry. Seriously, I had to go step out to my car, so I apologize, listener, for the breathlessness. But now I'm okay. Yes, I'm on Twitter, RDB, AAA, and I also do a podcast. It's more goofy than this one called No More Whoppers. That's not No More Woppers.com. Cool. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with a brand new microepisode. See you then. Thank you. So, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.