[Music] did you know 2006's sonic the hedgehog was made to celebrate the sonic franchise's 15th anniversary according to series creator yuji naka the game's simplistic title was chosen to mark this milestone but also to signify the series going back to its roots despite sonic team's lofty ambitions sonic 06 released with numerous bugs and technical issues and is widely considered one of the Worst games of all time in its original form sonic 06 was not meant to be a sonic title at all instead it was supposed to be a brand new title set in a realistic
world making use of a dynamic physics engine but when the time came to create a new next-gen sonic the hedgehog title the team combined this idea with the sonic world they felt the realistic look in physics would enable them to create vast environments for the player to explore to complement these Huge levels the team wanted to include multiple playable characters allowing players to tackle the same levels in different ways the character silva the hedgehog was created out of the team's desire to capitalize on the dynamic physics engine as a character with psychic powers silver would
be able to grab and throw objects around the environment with ease in his initial design silver was an orange mink named venice this name came from the real life City of venice which inspired the game's setting soleanna in fact silver went through over 50 iterations before the team settled on his final look to integrate him more with the existing cast they eventually made him a hedgehog to make full use of the increased power of the next gen consoles they apply a more complex texture to the character that was silver in color silver was also inspired
by the character trunks from dragon ball z the influence is clear Both characters travel back in time from their respective futures to prevent an apocalyptic disaster the game script even ends silver's character description with essentially think trunks from dragon ball z silver isn't the only character to be influenced by outside sources the characters iblis and metholis take their names from world mythologies based on the devil mephilus is a contraction of mephistopheles a demon who appears in the legend of faust Mephistopheles appears before the titular dr faust offering him knowledge power and pleasure in exchange for
his soul iblis on the other hand is the islamic interpretation of the devil blaze the cat's character was heavily revised for her appearance in sonic 06. in 2005's sonic rush she was originally a princess from an alternate dimension in sonico6 she's silver's companion traveling back in time with him to prevent the apocalypse when asked about This inconsistency series producer takashi izuka said basically what happened is that everyone had like amnesia according to her bio in the game script blaze is deeply embarrassed by her bust size and gets angry if anyone mentions it sonico 6's development
was troubled the team was pressured by heavy time constraints speculated to have been caused by a deal between sega and microsoft to launch sonic 06 on the xbox 360 before christmas this deal involved viral advertisements through microsoft's windows live messenger service which advertised both sonico 6 and sonic rivals for the psp although there are obvious visual examples of the game's lack of polish the game's audio also suffered at one point in shadow's story the player will receive a message from gun hq the message's audio contains two takes from the voice actor with the first take
being an obvious failed Attempt at speaking the line agent shadow e123 omega has engaged head to the [Music] developers simply forgot to remove the failed take the time constraints were exacerbated due to the team working with unfamiliar hardware sega had intended to release sonic 06 on pc and the three new 7th generation consoles the xbox 360 the playstation 3 and the wii sonic team expected the wii to be comparable to the 360 and the ps3 in terms of power and functionality of its controller however when they were given the development kits for the wii they
realized it would be impossible to port sonic 06 to the system as sega demanded there be a sonic title on the wii near launch the sonic 06 team was split into two halves one half continued their work and the other half was told to develop a wii game from scratch this resulted in sonico 6's director yojiro ogawa leaving Development to work on what would become sonic and the secret rings the team was then further fragmented when yuji naka left sega in march 2006 to start his own studio the game's pc version never came to fruition
presumably due to time constraints sonico 6's rush production resulted in a lot of cut content the game's manual describes a shield power-up identical to those found in the older sonic titles that never actually appears in the game its model can be Accessed through hacking but the shield is functionless when equipped to a character in the original teaser sonic was shown turning into super sonic at will a remnant of this can be found by hacking the game to find an item called the rainbow gem when equipped and used sonic will perform a brief transforming animation before
dropping to the ground as normal it seems this gem was going to be the catalyst for sonic's transformation into super sonic but as Super sonic was never programmed into the game only the animation remains the game was originally supposed to have a day and night cycle which was later used in sonic unleashed as well as multiple endings an achievement in the xbox 360 version called knights of chronos is awarded to the player for clearing the last story with an s rank the achievements description reads unlock the complete ending to the last hidden story implying that
the game should have Had extra scenes when the player fulfilled these conditions an infamous glitch allows silver to continuously trap the player against a wall and attack them this causes the player to lose and recollect the same ring over and over again preventing them from breaking free or dying as well as the game's frustrating glitches the romance between sonic the hedgehog and princess elise has been criticized some have even accused sega of advocating bestiality Game spy asked elise's voice actor lacey chabert about this situation chabert said ha no you're just being silly it's not an
appropriate relationship let's just say sonic and princess elise have an attraction for each other as sonic 06 served as a series reboot it's possible that sonic's relationship with elise was a nod to an unused concept in the original sonic the hedgehog where sonic was planned to have a human girlfriend named madonna [Music] did you know much of sonic mania's development staff have a history in creating sonic fan games and other projects christian whitehead also known as the taxman was known for creating the fan game retro sonic retro sonic ran on the retro engine which was
custom built by whitehead and allowed him to replicate the physics of the classic sonic games this engine would become integral to whitehead's official Involvement with sega in 2009 white had developed a proof of concept for the ios port of sonic cd unlike sega's ios ports which ran on an emulator whitehead's proof of concept was instead rebuilt from the ground up and used his retro engine software development kit this allowed for new features to be added as well as a consistent frame rate and widescreen support however it was not the engine itself that replicated sonic's physics
whitehead had to Manually reconstruct them through rigorous frame by frame analysis of the original title whitehead emailed sega to pitch the game to them but did not receive a reply two weeks later sega asked the community on their blog which games they would like to see ported to ios in response white had publicly revealed his sonic cd prototype wanting to send them a clear message about what they should be working on he also prompted fans to let sega know if they Were interested in seeing this prototype become a reality the push was successful with sega
responding to the video on twitter whitehead's version of sonic cd was even published by sega in 2011. following his port's success sega contacted whitehead again this time to handle ports of sonic 1 and sonic 2. working with him was simon thomley aka stealth tomly also had a storied history with sonic fan works he was involved in the community during its formative years Heading the popular sonic megamix project and was responsible for porting fan creations to the wii and sega cd he also created an unofficial port of sonic 1 for the game boy advance a response
to the poor quality of the game boy advances sonic genesis while whitehead reproduced the games through observation and recreation tomly was more familiar with the assembly code of the original games the pair's collaboration was fruitful and their ports of sonic 1 and Sonic 2 boasted many advantages and were well received by the community whitehead and tomly under his company name headcannon would go on to form a core part of sonic mania's development team joining them was pagoda west games a company born of yet another sonic fan project this time the unofficial remake sonic the hedgehog
2 hd pagoda west's tom frye and jared castle met on the project and formed a close friendship based on their similar outlooks on game Design their experience on sonic 2 hd was invaluable teaching them the importance of keeping to deadlines and choosing the right team for the job joining them was musician t lopes known for his unofficial sonic remixes sonic mania was pitched to sega by these three companies the project was first presented to sonic team head takashi izuka in 2016. only studio plus zone was made at the time and the game went under the
title sonic discovery after the Presentation concluded izuka simply told the team i have many questions before they had to break for lunch when they came back izuka wrote a series of titles on a whiteboard going from sonic 1 through sonic and knuckles he then added one more title sonic mania as the project advanced more staff had to be brought on with many of these new members also boasting a history in the sonic fan community programmer hunter bridges and designer brad flick Previously worked on the fan game sonic nexus artist paul veer known for his work
on nuclear throne was commissioned to provide cook and becker's official sonic print audio engineer falk o young is known for his contributions to several sonic soundtracks and artist kieran gates has helped organize the uk fan convention summer of sonic the game's pre-order trailer and introduction were animated by tyson hess known for his work on archie's sonic the Hedgehog comics and the parody sonic's big fat adventure one story considered for the game saw eggman fall into a deep depression following sonic and knuckles to fill the gap a group of egg robos would become independent calling themselves
the hard-boiled heavies while the eggman angle was dropped the hard-boiled heavies remained as major antagonists in the game the mania team were shown production material from the genesis titles including scrapped levels And concepts mirage saloon was based on two levels that didn't make the final cut dust hill from sonic 2 and desert dazzle from the 2011 re-release of sonic cd [Music] sonic mania was influenced by the aesthetics of the saturn era sonic titles this choice allowed the limited team to produce a high quality title with a lot of content rather than opt for hd graphics
and have potential Complications arise the 3d models in these special stages pay homage to the character's saturn model seen in games like sonic r although they are in fact brand new to drive home the 90s aesthetic sega produced an advertisement for the game in the style of an old sonic 2 commercial both spoof infomercials by comedically boasting about the game's practical applications such as handling tough stains and acting as a hairpiece mania's commercial even Featured kazuyuki hashino a sonic team artist responsible for the character design on sonic cd as you might expect sonic mania contains
a huge number of nods and references to the rest of the sonic series as well as other sega properties signs can be found in studiopolis that read cope this is a reference to similar signs found in spring yard zone in sonic 1. clipboards in studiopolis have the following initials on them cw hc and pwg these Stand for christian whitehead headcanon and pagoda west games respectively the sega sonic popcorn shop is named after a product released exclusively in japan a combination arcade game and popcorn vending machine the televisions in studiopolis show a symbol that highly resembles
the logo of the sega game gear signs in studiopolis reading pinkbot are a nod to signs in streets of rage that read pinebot the club spin ages signs seem to reference both club sega in Japan and an old logo from uk mega drive commercials to be this good takes ages with ages being sega backwards wanted posters of knack the weasel bark the polar bear and being the dynamite appear in the mirage saloon zone while this is a nod to the character's long absence from the series it's also a nod to sonic generations where they also
appeared on wanted posters in city escape the studiopolis zone shares its name with studiopolis inc the production studio That records the english voiceovers for the sonic series funnily enough this was actually a complete coincidence the team were unaware of the studio when they were naming the level when they found out they drafted some different titles for the zone thinking that they would be asked to change it suggested titles included opening night and fame plaza however studiopolis gave the go-ahead to use the name and so it was kept with whitehead thinking it was now a cool
Reference [Music] did you know sonic generations was prematurely revealed to the public after a document was leaked by sega of america in august 2009 the document appeared on sega of america's official press site and detailed a meeting between sega and sony computer entertainment america the document described plans for various upcoming games and features including a title simply called sonic anniversary The initial concepts for sonic anniversary included a collector's edition that would gather the best of sonic for around 99 more information was leaked during a convention in madrid called game fest in 2010 a staff member
of the website sonicparadise.net spoke with a sega representative who revealed that sonic anniversary was in development for the ps3 psp ds and wii with an xbox 360 release being negotiated the Representative also revealed that the game would compile some of the most popular levels from the series and re-imagine them for a modern playstyle the development of sonic generations was somewhat influenced by the state of the sonic fanbase in an interview with destructoid sonic series developer takashi izuka commented on the fractured fan base he mentioned that some fans preferred the 2d games on the genesis while
other fans preferred the more Recent 3d installments because of this when the time came to celebrate the series 20th anniversary the team decided to revive classic sonic and have him star alongside modern sonic this way the team could cater to both sides of the fan base the fans also had another more direct influence on the development of the game to decide which stages would be included the fans were asked to disclose their favorite levels on facebook in 2009 the poll contained a comprehensive List of levels from the major sonic titles available at the time interestingly
the poll did allow fans to choose levels from sonic and the secret rings and sonic and the black knight suggesting that these levels were once to have been represented in generations as well in an interview with the sonic stadium izuka revealed that the 3ds port of generations was intended to be a celebration of sonic's portable history despite this the game only contained one Handheld exclusive level in the form of water palace from sonic rush [Music] a downloadable demo for sonic generations was released on june 23 2011 which was the 20th anniversary of sonic 1's publication
soon after the demo's release its data was mined to reveal many of its assets these assets included head icons for the supporting cast sparking speculation that other characters may be playable in an Interview with sega bits sonic brand manager aaron weber expressed disappointment with these leaks he felt that they created false expectations calling them a misrepresentation the demo also revealed that classic sonic's physics were not a one-to-one recreation of those found in the genesis games the reason given for this was that the physics had to be estimated using the modern sonic engine making a perfect
recreation nearly impossible many unused Textures from the game are from 2008 sonic unleashed suggesting that generations was built on top of the unleashed framework ryan drummond sonic's english voice actor between 1999 and 2004 was originally going to reprise his role for sonic generations in 2010 sega chose to replace most of the series voice cast this included jason griffith who was the voice of sonic and video games since 2005. in an interview with the gaming liberty drummond revealed That sega contacted him during the development of generations asking him to re-audition for the role of sonic drummond
initially appeared to be a shoo-in for the role but eventually declined due to his distaste for the contract in his own words when the actual offer came to my agent it was a complete joke they asked me to leave my union which is how i make a living do all kind of work for no compensation etc it was a real slap in the face i really Don't see it ever happening sega is a huge corporation with zillions of dollars and they don't see any need to change the way they do things since drummond declined the
offer roger craig smith was chosen for the role instead an interesting offshoot of this is that a third playable sonic may have been intended for sonic generations according to unseen 64 this third sonic was going to have represented the dreamcast era of sonic adventure sonic adventure 2 and Sonic heroes this seems fitting as those were the three games in which drummond voiced the character in an interview with kotaku aaron webber revealed that jaleel white was once slated to voice classic sonic in the game as white originally voiced the hedgehog in various cartoons throughout the 90s
for unknown reasons the plan fell through and so classic sonic was left mute according to jaleel sega didn't approach him to voice sonic so this plan likely Didn't get very far sonic generations was written by the writing team of ken pontak and warren graf best known for their riding on the ultra-violent animation happy tree friends pontac became involved with sega when they published happy tree friends false alarm for xbox live arcade in 2008. this led to the pair working on mad world and eventually sonic the hedgehog despite this pontak claims that he's not much of
a sonic fan he hadn't Played many of the games and instead had to look up cutscenes online to get an idea of the characters he also addressed the criticisms he received from fans simply thanking the fans for being so enthusiastic about the characters despite the writers not being fans however generations is still jam-packed with references to the rest of the sonic series tails becomes nervous when he sees the purple liquid that covers chemical plant zone this is perhaps a Reference to an infamous sequence in sonic 2 where the player must climb a vertical shaft in
order to avoid drowning in the liquid sonic 2 of course was tails debut game sonic quips that the color being sucked out of the land is no stranger than rescuing genies in magic books or saving aliens in an interstellar amusement park referring to the stories of sonic and the secret rings and sonic colors respectively in the level select knuckles can be found In front of sky sanctuary with bunches of grapes growing behind him this is a reference to the sonic 3 instruction manual which mentions that his favorite food is grapes when performing stunts as sonic
pressing l and r to finish the stunts will cause sonic to strike an identical pose to the one seen on sonic adventure's cover art and in city escape there are posters in the background that make references to five seemingly forgotten sonic characters there are Wanted posters featuring knack the weasel being the dynamite and bark the polar bear from sonic the fighters as well as missing person posters featuring rey the flying squirrel and mighty the armadillo from the arcade game sega sonic the hedgehog at both the uk convention summer of sonic 2011 and the us convention
sonic boom 2011 the respective crowds were asked to cheer happy birthday sonic both of those cheers were recorded and can be heard at The end of the game's credits [Applause] did you know sonic advance was one of the first projects sega considered after the discontinuation of the dreamcast in january 2001 sega of japan issued a press release stating that they were restructuring the company they specified that they were in negotiations with sony and nintendo who until very recently were sega's fiercest competitors the negotiations were over the creation of Software for the playstation 2 and game
boy advance and at the end of the month sega revealed one of the titles they discussed would be sonic the hedgehog advance although sonic advance would be the first sonic game on a nintendo console it was not sonic's first game on a third party system sonic jam had been ported to the tiger game com in 1997 and sonic pocket adventure was released for the neo geo pocket color in 1999 sonic pocket adventure was developed as a Joint effort between sonic team and snk the game was staffed by the likes of takeshi nishiyama and hiroshi matsumoto
who were the director and designer for the original street fighter respectively nishiyama left snk soon after to create demps the company that would produce the sonic advance series he was joined at dimps by matsumoto who'd go on to become the producer on sonic advance 1 and 2. series creator yuji naka found his return to creating 2d games refreshing Especially after developing 3d games for so long he often wondered what it'd be like to make a sonic game for nintendo hardware and felt that a sonic game made for a nintendo console would be very different in
tone and style to the one made for a sega console naka understood the importance of a company's identity and felt that a sonic game made for a nintendo console would be very different in tone and style to one made for a sega console sega had always presented Themselves as being more high tech than nintendo and as such had an easier time marketing towards an older audience nintendo on the other hand always had an easier time appealing to children thanks to their toybox approach to game development sega and nintendo also had vastly different approaches to quality
control while sonic team had only spent a couple weeks tweaking and balancing their titles before release nintendo were a lot more meticulous naco was also Interested in the connectivity between the gamecube and the gba and was eager to include the feature in sonic advance the chao garden presented the perfect opportunity to use the technology in the dreamcast version of sonic adventure 2 players could download chao into the dreamcast's visual memory unit to interact with it on the move but in the gamecube remake the player could instead download their chow into sonic advance's tiny chao garden
the gba's greater Processing power allowed for more advanced ciao interaction on the go naka's enthusiasm for the system actually spurred on nintendo's teams to make better use of it the chao garden is also linked to a notable glitch that contributed to a second version of the game being released if the player deletes their save file in the game they'll be prevented from transferring new rings they collect to the chow garden this is because deleting the main Save file doesn't remove the ring count data from the chow garden and if the ring count in the main
game and the garden aren't synced the rings won't transfer this can only be fixed by collecting the exact same amount of rings as the player had before or by using hacking devices like gameshark the glitch was fixed in the japan exclusive version 1.1 release and is said to be fixed in the english combo pack releases sonic advance was also released as sonic N for the nokia n gauge handheld in 2003. this version of the game was largely criticized for its lack of a chow garden slower speed and inferior audio and visual quality the n-gage's screen
was taller than it was wide making the game near impossible to play in its portrait mode as players couldn't see approaching enemies or objects to compensate for this sega added an option to play with a 4-3 landscape aspect ratio however this scaled the sprites Down without any filtering causing loss of detail in a grainy finish this version of the game also never released in japan sonic advance's opening stage neo green hill zone is possibly a reference to a scrapped level name from sonic the hedgehog 2 on sega genesis the aquatic ruin zone was called neo
green hill zone in an earlier version of the game however this isn't conclusive many zones in sonic advance share similarities with zones from sonic Pocket adventure and neo green hill zone may be inspired by the first level neo-south island zone south island is the setting for the original sonic the hedgehog meaning that green hill is located there casino paradise zone also contains a few secrets the castle in the zone's background bears a strong resemblance to the magic kingdom at disney world and is even lit the same way the magic kingdom is at night as well
as being a clear nod to sonic 2's Casino night zone a platform similar to the barrel of doom from sonic 3's carnival night zone also appears in act 2. a welcome sign at the start of the level may also be a reference to the sonic the hedgehog prototype where there was a welcome sign in green hill zone sonic advance 2 was conceived immediately after the completion of the first game on gba and work began in february of 2002 the speed of the game was increased so much from sonic advance That the levels had to be
made around six times larger to compensate sonic advance 2 was creamed the rabbit's first playable appearance in a video game she was originally created to fill the role of team rose's flying character and sonic heroes but ended up making her debut in sonic advance 2 a whole year before heroes released she was added to the sequel to distinguish it more from the first advanced title sega also wanted her to debut in a game before she Appeared in the upcoming sonic x anime series technically cream's first appearance in a game was even earlier in the sonic
mega collection extras menu the character went through a few incarnations as a squirrel and a raccoon before the rabbit design was settled on she was designed to be easy for beginners to play her chow cheese will home in on the enemies to deal damage allowing cream to stay out of danger as she does so she attacks this way because Yujinaka felt that it damaged the character's cute image if she attacked enemies by herself advance 2's music plant zone may be inspired by a similar area from a previous sonic team game rystar's planet sonata sonic and
reichstar even share very similar poses and animations when they're launched off a spring in these levels sonic mega collection also showcased a trailer for sonic advance 2 that featured music not heard anywhere in the game sonic advance 2 also features a track that went unused in the first games data the track seems to be an alternate invincibility theme and replaced the traditional invincibility tune in both sonic advance 2 and 3. the 2011 android port of sonic advance also uses a different invincibility tune that's a remix of the game's title theme and several other tracks were
swapped out for new music including the tracks for the x-zone fights interestingly all the replaced Gba tunes were remixes of tracks from sonic 1 and 2 on genesis these alterations may be linked to a larger issue with sonic sega and composer masato nakamura the tracks nakamura made for sonic 1 and 2 and even remixes of the music are rarely used in modern sonic games it's speculated that this is because nakamura owns the copyright to these tracks himself and sega must pay him royalties whenever they're used sonic advance 3 was the final game in The sonic
series to feature the original voice cast that debuted in sonic adventure from shadow the hedgehog onwards they were replaced by the four kids cast that dubbed sonic x the game also marked the last time eggman's voice actor dean bristow would record new lines for the character before he passed on dedicated sonic fans assumed that bristow's passing is what made sega replace the existing voice lineup with the sonic x cast but this isn't the case In 2008 sonic fan site sonic scene.net interviewed eggman's current voice actor mike pollock pollock revealed in the interview that the choice
to replace the sonic adventure cast with sonic x's was made before bristow passed away pollock said it was strictly a business decision which also lines up with statements from simon jeffrey who was president of sega of america from 2005 to 2009. jeffrey told sonicstadium.org sega of america are a subsidiary of sega of japan they Reside in japan and do not come under my jurisdiction at all likewise i know this will make you all mad sega of america has no say in the voice casting absolutely none one thing that set sonic advance 3 apart from the
first two games was its use of teams and according to an interview with ign it was yujinaka who conceived this partner system it wasn't the first time in the advanced series that players could use two characters at once however by using a cheat code on The original sonic advance's character select screen it's possible to play as sonic with tails following him like in sonic the hedgehog 2. sonic advance 3 was planned internally at sonic team but was again exported to dimps because of a lack of staff and resources at sega the sonic advance series contains
a number of musical references to other games in the series the invincibility jingle and the first sonic advance is a remix of the invincibility jingle in sonic 1 and 2. [Music] ice paradise remixes the mini game music from sonic advance's tiny chow garden sunset hill zone from sonic advance 3 is a remix of green hill zone from the original sonic the hedgehog but it also takes its drum samples from sonic battle's central city theme similarly parts of route 99 were remixed from tails's lab from sonic battle altar emerald remixes holy summit and the Secret level
non-aggression remixes e1215's theme from sonic battle sonic battle is perhaps referenced so often in sonic advance 3's music because of the nature of its villain gmorl is based on emerald the copy robot that was a key character in sonic battle route 99 was referenced in issue 175 of sonic the comic published in february 2000. four years before sonic advance 3 was released as sega had little to do with the production of a british licensed Tie-in this was most likely a coincidence [Music] did you know mario was considered as a possible character for the wii version
of sonic and sega all-stars racing the plan was dropped as sumo digital didn't want to cross-contaminate all-stars racing with the mario and sonic series the game was also planned to feature more obscure characters golden axes gillies thunderhead was originally Considered for the game soon after sumo completed work on sega superstars tennis they were asked to work on another sega themed game they decided to make this new title a racing game partly due to their experience working on the outrun series sumo also drew inspiration from the mario kart series diddy kong racing sega rally revo and
forza an early version of the game had sonic racing on foot eggman using a walking mech tails driving the tornado amy in a similar Vehicle to sonic r and gilius thunderhead riding a chicken leg however sumo decided that bipedal characters made the game less fun to play drifting looked unnatural on foot and there was a huge size difference between characters that did or didn't have a vehicle they decided to rework the game and gilius was dropped during one of the revisions the loading screens in sonic and sega all-stars racing have tips under the title sonic
says this is a possible Reference to a segment from the 1993 cartoon the adventures of sonic the hedgehog speaking of old sonic cartoons the wii and pc versions of the game contain an interesting mistake the cards on the floor of roulette road don't have amy rose as the queen of diamonds but sonia the hedgehog instead this is sonic's sister from the 1999 cartoon sonic underground vance quickly noted the image was identical to sony fan art by deviantart user lightning duchess the Connection between the two was confirmed by the game's executive producer steve lysette who apologized
for using the art without permission in his apology lysat explained that an artist looked for official art to use as a placeholder but mistook the fan art for official art of amy when the game was sent to sonic team for approval they caught the error and asked sumo digital to fix the image while the texture was corrected in hd versions of the game the team overlooked The mistake in both the wii version and the pc version at low graphics settings while the artwork was patched out of the pc version there was no practical way to
correct the wii version due to its limited online functions after the game's announcement in may 2009 fans learned that the character knights wouldn't appear in all-stars racing in response the fan site knights into dreams.com launched the don't forget nights campaign intending to show that Knights still had a dedicated fan base and was worthy of inclusion while the game was too far along in development to include knights sumo still had the characters assets from sega superstars tennis they responded to fans by having knight's cameo as a flag bearer knights riala and the dream valley stage were
also included in the sequel sonic and all-stars racing transformed the flag bearer position however was given to rystar an often overlooked sonic team Character bayonetta was also planned for inclusion in all-stars racing transformed but was ultimately rejected bayonetta's character has an adult tone and developers feared that including her would raise the game's age rating throughout development sumo needed sega's approval when implementing characters and locations however rather than being referred to a committee sumo had to get approval from the developers of each franchise sega did this to make Sure characters were as true to their original
games as possible at one point the team had to present the level rogue's landing to shantaro tanaka the director of skies of arcadia despite his cold exterior during the presentation tanaka was allegedly so overjoyed by how well they captured arcadia that he began to cry sonic and all-stars racing transformed was announced on april 30th 2012 a few months after the launch of mario kart 7 For the nintendo 3ds similarities were immediately drawn between the two with both games major selling points being their seamless transition between land sea and sky during races however transformed had been
conceived long before mario kart 7 was revealed at e3 2011. lysette told edge magazine they weren't doing the same thing but it was a bit of a shame because ours was coming later and it looked like we'd copied them we never thought they'd do Something like that the team initially had trouble making the water racing segments they tried realistic water physics at first similar to nintendo's wave racer series sumo didn't feel like this fit however and after almost 50 revisions they settled on something similar to midway's hydro thunder the team also had issues with the
flight segments they originally created a course based on sonic heroes seaside hill to experiment with flight land and Water racing players could fly freely but this made it hard to give the user any direction this problem was resolved when sumo scrapped the sonic level and created a course based on panzer dragoon the flight area of this track was placed in a canyon which limited players options and gave them a natural direction to follow sumo also had trouble unifying the game's controls originally each segment of the track felt like a completely different game And it wasn't
until a year and a half later that sumo finalized the controls the team also considered adding a story mode and transformed this mode featured a villain kidnapping characters from various sega universes and forcing them to race for his own amusement at the end of this mode the villain would be revealed as dr eggman in disguise ultimately sumo believed there was no good reason for these characters coming together and abandoned the idea they Also worried about the cost of acting and animation for cutscenes which only gave them more reason to scrap the story on the official
sega forums steve lysett issued fans a challenge if they made a poll and 1 thousand people wanted a particular character to be playable he'd ask sega if they could be in the game fans made the poll and characters that reached over one thousand votes included hatsune miku vector man rystar tojam and earl bayonetta and the japanese sega Saturn mascot segata sanchiro eventually shenmue's rio huzuki was approved by sega this was possible due to him appearing in all-stars racing and a lot of his assets could be reused although rio was the only character to make a
playable appearance segata sanchiro did make a cameo in the game's race of ages track he can be seen in the background when the player completes a lap in first place riding a missile with a giant sega saturn on his back these are references To his bizarre commercials the last of which showed him saving sega hq from a missile attack in december 2013 simon honeydew lane of the youtube channel yogscast was added to transformed this was part of a charity drive to aid special effect a charity that helps people with disabilities play video games the character
ages makes numerous allusions to other sega properties in its boat form it's shaped like a dreamcast controller as a car it takes The form of the hornet from daytona usa and in the air it takes the form of an f-14 tomcat jet referencing afterburner humorously age's boat form sounds like the dreamcast's infamously loud disc reader [Music] did you know rather than the iconic villain we know today dr eggman was first conceived as a protagonist in 1990 sega's in-house development team am8 were tasked with creating a mascot to Rival nintendo's mario they experimented with several concepts
before finally choosing one of yujinaka's ideas a character that could curl into a ball to smash through obstacles it was around this time that sega hit upon the simple idea of making an egg-shaped character artist naoto oshima's original sketch was close to dr eggman's eventual design besides the polka dot pajamas he was also made circular so he was easy for children to draw the team were fond of The character and kept the sketch even after they'd moved on with a different hero design as the protagonist's role had been filled they decided to recast this egg
character as the villain eggman's iconic mustache glasses and grin bear a strong resemblance to theodore roosevelt 26th president of the united states that said it's unknown if this was intentional or a simple coincidence eggman was also intended to embody industrial development to rival Sonic's environmental themes ironically roosevelt was himself an environmentalist he created wildlife sanctuaries throughout the u.s and founded the national conservation commission when sonic adventure released in the west fans were surprised by some of the game's canonical differences to the rest of the series the villain they knew as dr robotnik had been renamed
dr eggman and sonic now lived on earth as opposed to planet mobius the reasons Behind these changes go back to 1991 when sonic the hedgehog was being prepared for release in america and europe sega of america were given very little information on the japanese story and wrote their own account of the sonic world known as the sonic bible the sonic bible was an attempt to fill gaps in the story and was rewritten several times one early trap cast sonic as a normal hedgehog in nebraska whose father had drowned in a poison pond while the Setting
would change drastically throughout the drafting stages robotnik's origin story remained largely the same the story says he was once the selfless scientist dr ovie kintibor who attempted to rid the planet of pollution by drawing all of the world's evil into the chaos emeralds unfortunately a freak accident caused kintibor to fuse with the evil energy and a rotten egg transforming him into dr ivo robotnik the sonic bible was never released Publicly but the story was still considered canon by sega's divisions in america and europe it even became the foundation for tie-in publications like stay sonic and
sonic the comic the name dr ivo robotnik itself was suggested by dean sitton a game counselor at sega of america as one of sonic's earliest playtesters at sega of america sinton would often be asked to join brainstorming sessions for new story lines and character names sitton Suggested many names including mr bad wrench mr bad year dr bad vibes nasty mcrotten and fatty lobotnik before robotnik's final name the name ivo was chosen because it vaguely sounds like evil and had multiple secrets hidden within it the word spelled backwards is ovi which references the doctor's original name
before fusing with a rotten egg and the latin prefix for egg ovi it might seem like the name robotnik was derived from the word robot but it's Actually the other way around the 1920s play by carl chappiq titled rosem's universal robots was the first recorded use of the word robot in the english language it referred to a subclass of synthetic people made to be slaves the word was coined by chabick's brother and was derived from robotnik the czech word roughly meaning servant or slave the word robot would go on to become a widely used term
for man-made automatons sit and heard the term robotnik and Thought it was a good fit for the character the sonic bible was considered canon until sonic adventure released in 1999 when the japanese continuity was adopted worldwide to address the confusion surrounding eggman's name his two names were combined into one yuji naka explained in an interview that dr ivo robotnik was the character's real name with eggman being an insulting nickname used by sonic and company sega had Already done something similar in the series combining two potential names for sonic's sidekick into miles tales prower this compromise
is only true for western audiences however as the name dr robotnik has never been officially adopted in japan according to eggman sonic channel profile his real name is unknown but some references to the name robotnik have slipped through the cracks in the japanese version of sonic adventure 2 eggman's grandfather is Called gerald robotnik and the words robotnik empire can be seen in the background of a cutscene the sonic triple trouble level robotnik winter also retains its name in japan dr eggman's name wasn't the only thing that changed between continuities the character's appearance was completely altered
for the first animated sonic adaptation the adventures of sonic the hedgehog animator milton knight was responsible for robotnik's redesign Interpreting him as the perfect image of self-love robotnik's narcissism manifested as a focus on sex appeal which was used for comic effect animators began drawing attention to his bottom in particular leading knight to claim that he was animation's sexiest fat man the writers soon picked up on the joke finding excuses to dress robotnik up in different outfits robotnik was recreated in order to make him more expressive with the knight Instructing the show's animators to defy conventional
wisdom and go off model if they thought it would make a scene funnier the design change became the template for much of robotnik's merchandising in the west which resulted in some confusion for example different versions of sonic's spinball have a different robotnik on their covers the genesis version features the original eggman design but the game gear version featured the cartoon robotnik the game Dr robotnik's mean bean machine was simply a reskinned puyo puyo for the sega genesis this version of robotnik was redesigned yet again for sonic's second animated series known as sat am in 1993
dr cliff tabbin discovered a protein essential to embryo development in many animals including humans this protein was named sonic hedgehog at the request of dr robert riddle after his six-year-old daughter brought a copy of sonic the comic back from england the Name attracted outrage from members of the scientific community many of tabin's collaborators hated the name having grown up in liverpool where sonic was a slang term for groovy and more seriously many scientists felt the name trivialize an important protein and gene the gene was linked to several serious conditions and it would be inappropriate to
tell a parent that their child's illness involves sonic hedgehog however the name stuck and when a molecule was found that Potentially inhibited the sonic hedgehog gene it was named robotnikon in honor of sonic's arch nemesis despite supposedly having an iq of over 300 dr eggman is often portrayed as a clumsy buffoon in the 1996 sonic movie this was done to show a more human side to the character in spite of his evil deeds sonic the hedgehog a video game superstar who was perhaps considered one of the strongest icons of gaming and though more recently having
fallen from Grace continues to have a strong presence within the industry games themselves however have evolved and another icon of the industry was the stoic arcade machine the tall structure that intimidated the young and the penniless nostalgia is an incredible thing with many who have a keen interest in games wanting to explore the youth of the industry and see that which made it grow so why then is there a sonic the Hedgehog arcade game which has never seen publication in the huge number of compilations released by sega for the many consoles over the many years
well let's find out together as we take a look at the classic japanese arcade title sega sonic the hedgehog sega sonic the hedgehog was released in 1993 and though it could be found outside of japan it had an extremely limited run to the point that those who Frequented arcades at the time weren't even aware the machine existed nor that it was ever released within their country the cabinets that did make their way overseas were said to be entirely identical to their japanese counterpart to the point of having the game's text and voice acting entirely in
japanese as well not just in typical arcade game style but also the style of sonic the hedgehog the game's plot is mostly relegated to the back seat only taking Place as a means of giving some sort of explanation as to what the player's goals are as they play the game the game's plot is delivered through cut scenes which play at the start of the game as well as briefly occurring between stages the game's story involves sonic alongside two characters who were introduced to the sonic franchise within this title rey the flying squirrel and mighty the
armadillo the trio have been kidnapped by dr eggman and have been Taken to eggman island a hazardous environment infested with traps to keep the heroes occupied the three anthropomorphic marathoners team up to better their chances of escape working together to survive eggman's perilous threats as they try to reach eggman's tower the game is viewed from an isometric perspective unlike any sonic game that had come before but which would later be seen again with the likes of sonic 3d unlike most games sega sonic Is played with only a single button and a trackball which must be
rolled to move the characters on screen by pushing this button the player is able to perform the iconic sonic spin jump these controls are sometimes color coded to the character which they operate with some cabinets allowing for three player multiplayer the game is broken up into seven stages all taking place on eggman island with the player attempting to reach the end of each stage as quickly As possible though as with most sonic games his desire for speed can lead to a huge boost in difficulties in control courses are linear in nature and will throw an
unfettering barrage of threats the heroes there are only a few enemies scattered throughout the entire game and on top of that only one section that even remotely resembles a boss battle found midway through the game most of the game's challenge is in avoiding hazards from the game's arenas unlike Most sonic titles the player has a health gauge though rings are still used as a way of regaining life these rings are scattered throughout stages as well as being hidden inside walls and obstacles unsurprisingly rings are also used as a way of improving a player's score with
additional points being awarded should half of the stage's rings be collected in multiplayer the bonus is awarded to the player who collected the most rings Sega sonic for hedgehog's life is a curious one for fans of the series considering its relative obscurity there is not a lot of information surrounding the events that led to its release during the 90s sego was perhaps one of the biggest owners of arcades across not just japan but also worldwide their origins came from their extremely popular arcade titles more so than their home consoles yet their biggest mascot was made
in the blue hedgehog sonic a Character who could only be found attached to their home systems it's believed that this was the reasoning behind sonic's eventual appearance within sega sonic for arcades as it would give sega's arcade connection some tie to their iconic mascot as for the game's name and the reason behind the inclusion of sega attached to sonic's name was due to a legal issue involving rival arcade manufacturer taito taito filed a trademark application for their Game sonic blast man on december 10 1990 this was exclusive to arcade video games and machines however three
days before this sega also filed a trademark for sonic leading up to the upcoming release of their first game on the genesis this covered arcade video games machines and all kinds of merchandise japanese trademark applications take two to three years to process so to avoid dispute sega filed a trademark for sega sonic a year later on december 11 1991. taito's Trademark was approved two years after on june 30th 1993. this specified the trademark deal dealt exclusively with arcade punching games metal games coin pushes and ufo catches however it wasn't until 1996 that the sonic trademark
went through for sega rumors of a home port of sega sonic had circulated in the likes of gaming outlet cvg with the suggestion that it may be converted for the sega 32x though this ultimately never came to fruition mighty would Later go on to appear as a major role within knuckles chaotix as a playable character in 1995. two years after his limited debut while rey wouldn't show up for a significant number of years within sonic's games both he and mighty would make continued appearances through the sonic the hedgehog comics series created by archie comics the
two characters were also referenced together within sonic generations where they can both be seen on a missing person's poster in the city Escape stage rey and mighty had been considered for an earlier playable reappearance within sonic heroes appearing on a team alongside metal sonic though this never came to fruition in 2018 sonic mania plus was announced bringing both rey and mighty back into the limelight this updated version of sonic mania gave players the chance to play as both heroes for the first time since sega sonic which many would have never played At all ray's return
was 25 years in the making while mighty's brief stint in knuckles chaotix made his absence only 23 years during an interview with famitsu sonic's series producer takashi izuka spoke on the two characters being brought back into circulation he considered them both as sealed characters and they wouldn't ever be added to a sonic title again but after many requests they were on top of the fact that with sonic mania the team were Squeezing in all series materials aimed for specific manias so the stage for them to appear has already been prepared prior to their reappearances the
sonic community had found a keen interest in both of these fallen stars despite or perhaps as a result of their complete lack of fleshed-out background it was likely that this interest was actually the true reason for both characters to be brought back into circulation particularly within sonic mania as the Game was created as a way of appeasing fans of the classic sonic franchise sega sonic was also the first game in the sonic universe to give the characters voices [Music] with sonic's voice being supplied by famed japanese voice over artist takeshi kusao best known for his
work as trunks from the dragon ball z series and yusuke numata portraying mighty armadillo also known for his work as a wide variety of Characters from dragon ball as well rey was voiced by hinako kanamaru a relatively unknown voice actress otherwise known for her role as yai from the mega man nt warrior anime series while robotnik's voice was supplied by masaharu sato who has worked on many shows though again probably best known as master roshi from dragon ball [Music] it is clear by looking through the data of sega sonic that the game was Definitely intended
for an international release data these include fully translated english dialogue boxes that would have appeared throughout the game with one having the game's villain referred to as both robotnik and eggman possibly as the team were unsure on which would be used should an international release be made the limited international release meant that machines could only really be found in places such as the now permanently Closed london sega world arcade odyssey in miami and galloping ghost arcade in chicago considering that these international machines are still without a specified regional version being programmed in still retaining all
japanese it's easy to say that sega did not invest in an array of machines for international shipping those that did play the game considered it to be a worthwhile play breaking expectations with a high level of polish on not just The game's graphics gameplay and audio but the variety of design in its levels the reason that such a highly praised game never saw any form of re-release despite the less well-received arcade titles sonic the fighters receiving a port comes down to one very simple issue controls yujinaka former head of sonic team was asked by gamespy
in 2005 during the run-up to the release of sonic gems collection whether he had any involvement in the project and whether Or not the game would see a place in the compilation he stated that's another one that was developed outside of my control it was done by part of the sega arcade division at the time we did think about adding it to gems collection though but we couldn't implement it in the end because the game used a trackball control scheme that is very very difficult to replicate with a standard controller it is a pretty fun
and unique little game though [Music] did you know even though chaos didn't appear until sonic adventure the character may have been alluded to almost five years earlier in sonic the hedgehog 3's japanese game manual it stated that knuckles mistook the death egg for the literal egg of a legendary dragon it was foretold on the master emerald's altar presumably through images or hieroglyphs on the walls that this dragon would emerge and destroy the World interestingly the lost world area and sonic adventure also has a mural of perfect chaos causing destruction while chaos is the guardian god
of the chow and a mutated chow himself this is never outright stated in sonic adventure however the original japanese game had stronger hints of chaos's ties to the chow in the japanese game chaos can be heard making chow sounds after he first appears in one of takao's flashbacks in the international version the sounds Were removed although never confirmed it's speculated that dr eggman's name was inspired by the beatles song i am the walrus the song features the lyrics i am the eggman they are the eggman i am the walrus gugu guguguju eggman's theme from sonic
adventure 2 even references i am the walrus with the line i am the eggman it's what i am in sonic rivals eggman nega mentions that he's eggman's descendant however sonic rush had previously framed the two Egg mans as counterparts from different dimensions many consider this as one of the most substantial continuity errors in the series alongside how blaze was set to be from the future in sonic 06 how nega managed to come back after being transformed into a card in sonic rivals is also unexplained in both rivals 2 and sonic rush adventure [Music] sonic rivals
2's metal sonic 3.0 was made by dr eggman nega as an improved Version of metal sonic the character's design appears to just be metal sonic's leather costume from sonic rivals but with a painted head the two characters are so similar in appearance that american toy company jazz wares plan to add metal sonic 3.0 to their sonic toy range by reusing their existing metal sonic molds however sega refused jazz wears requests metal sonic debuted in sonic cd which was developed in japan while the majority of sonic team went to The united states to make sonic 2
for the development of sonic cd designer kazuyuki hoshino was tasked with creating a pair of new characters to help flesh out sonic's world these characters were amy rose and metal sonic interestingly work on a mechanical version of sonic had already been worked on for sonic 2. while it may be possible that hoshino knew about sonic 2's mechasonic which is an entirely different character his design had a Completely different and sleeker look hoshino's creation fit in with the world of sonic so well that metal sonic would ultimately become an adversary to sonic on the same level
of eggman as a testament to metal sonic's impact on sonic fans one of the earliest rom hacks ever made was a hack that replaced sonic's sprite art with that of metal sonic [Music] although we've mentioned in the past how E105 zeta's lower half contains several sega dreamcast consoles what's also interesting is that zeta is the fifth unit in eggman's e100 series and the dreamcast was sega's fifth major home console additionally e101 beta eggman's first non-prototype e100 robot had a revision called e101 mark ii this parallels sega's first major home console the sg-1000 which also had
a revision commonly referred to as the mark ii eggman's aid orbot didn't get an Official name until sonic colors as he was never mentioned by name before this he was given the title ergo by fans due to the character's frequent use of the word ergo however in the sonic unleashed game script given to archie comics writer ian flynn he was supposedly named sa-55 this early name is leet speak for sas which refers to his overall sassy behavior in the archie comics cubot is also given the serial number idi07 meaning idiot in leadspeak these aren't The
only villainous eggman robots with an interesting history sonic mania director christian whitehead came up with the hard-boiled heavies while imagining eggman entering a state of depression after the events of sonic the hedgehog 3 and knuckles whitehead envisioned eggman at home lounging around in his pajamas during this time the abandoned egg robos would go a little mad resulting in the events of sonic mania in many of sonic mania's Game files the heavy magician is referred to as heavy mystic additionally sonic mania programmer simon thomley accidentally called the character heavy mystic instead of heavy magician during a
live stream this seems to indicate that the character's name was changed from heavy mystic to magician some point during production the heavies also have a few audio easter eggs the heavy shinobi uses sound effects from sega's the revenge of shinobi on genesis And the heavy rider uses sounds from sonic spinball the sound effect that plays when heavy magician emerges from their boxes fang bean or bark was originally used as an effect for losing rings and 8-bit sonic titles this is likely a reference to the game fang first appeared in sonic triple trouble for the game
gear bang was also planned to appear as a boss in the cancelled saturn game sonic xtreme in several magazine screenshots bang was Shown to be unusually large compared to sonic as was metal sonic because the game was cancelled fang never made his appearance in the early stages of sonic heroes bang was also planned to appear as a playable character he would have been on a team with bean and bark sonic unleash maybe also has an obscure reference within it dark gaia may be inspired by the second form of the final boss in the super nintendo
game terenigma which is also Named dark gaia both foes have snake-like bodies wide heads and an aura emanating from their back this reference would likely have been lost on many north american fans as terra enigma only released in japan and pal regions did you also know that sonic was planned to be in mario kart double dash or that mario creator shigeru miyamoto teased mario 128 in an exclusive playboy magazine interview for an entire hour of mario facts click the video on screen [Music]
