The form of the legendary Super Saiyan that Goku attains during the Frieza saga has become one of the most iconic transformations in the series and perhaps arguably in all of anime.
In the manga it debuted in Chapter 317 “Life or Death”
The cover date shows April 1 though there’s sources, like the Dragon Ball Wiki and Kanzenshuu, saying it released earlier on March 19
Meanwhile in the anime series it debuted in episode 95 which aired on June 19 1991
The anime would give the form color from the black & white pages of the manga with the form given distinctive green eyes.
It seems however that red eyes were considered to be given to the form as well at some point.
Before even getting to the discussion of the red eyes Super Saiyan it is notable to bring up that the Super Saiyan form was first shown in DBZ Movie 4, Lord Slug.
DBZ Movie 4 was meant to showcase the Super Saiyan form for the first time.
In fact its Japanese title “超サイヤ人だ孫悟空” when translated is “Super Saiyan Son Goku”
However since there was no color reference yet the form looked very different.
This iteration of the form would be known as Pseudo Super Saiyan
Here is a screenshot from an ad for Movie 4 which also shows a March 9 date on it
Here is actual video of the ad
If the aforementioned Chapter 317 was published on April 1 (or March 19) this means that Movie 4 with it’s March 9th release predates it by just a margin of at least a week or two.
Keep in mind that work on Movie 4 had to be done long before it’s release so its production likely coincided with work on the manga itself so Toriyama definitely had some input at least on the movie.
Going into more research on the Pseudo form I found a page on the Kanzenshuu website, a great resource for Dragon Ball information, that says that Toriyama thought of the idea to have Goku’s hair stand up at least at that point
The cited page 134 with general info on the pseudo form An image of it is at the bottom right corner
The Kanzenshuu site did not say which exact page the info came from of Toriyama coming up with the idea of having Goku’s hair stand up in his Pseudo Super Saiyan form so I just figured it has to be this one. This page does show an image of the Pseudo form.
I couldn’t find a good scan of the book so I just took screenshots from a video flipping through the book. Here is the video:
“Art Book en HD du Dragon Ball Daizenshuu 7 大事典 Daijiten” Uploaded by ThéliaNooff
The red eye color seems to have been immediately dropped afterwards as when Movie 5 finally did premiere on July 20 1991 at the Summer ’91 Toei Anime Fair it would have green eyes instead within the actual movie
Apparently at the premiere they gave out brochures/pamphlets with information about the movie and in it they show that the art of the red eyes Super Saiyan Goku now was changed to have green eyes in it
The first manga appearance where the Super Saiyan form had color was in Chapter 323 from Weekly Shonen Jump #21/22 with a cover date of May 13/20 1991, though again sources say it was published earlier in April 27
Images for the cover and these pages were all sourced from here:
Chapter 323 was one of just several in the entire run of the manga that was given both full color in the first few pages & then a “limited color” palette of red/orange, gray, and white following that on the next pages
Here are pages of both the full color and limited color pages from the chapter
By the way the limited colors weren’t just done for the Dragon Ball manga though as Weekly Shonen Jump printed pages like that for other manga series as well, done more than likely to save on color ink printing
I’ve also read others refer to these limited color pages as bichrome pages
Weekly Shonen Jump #21/22 also included a full color fold out poster of Super Saiyan Goku
What is included on the other side of the poster is of quite interest though as the reverse of the Super Saiyan poster shows a promotional ad for Movie 5 and along with it the art of the red eyes Super Saiyan
Asides from these two Daizenshuu books there was another book that showed the red eyes Super Saiyan. This book being Dragon Ball Z TV Anime Guide Son Goku Densetsu which was published in 2003
Something I noticed on that page is that one of the color palette choices they demonstrated seems to have been previously used on the brochure/pamphlet that was given at the DBZ Movie 5 premiere
Well that’s about all that can be said about the red eyes Super Saiyan. It was a color design choice that was at one point considered and then abandoned in favor of green eyes.
Something that I came across while doing research on this topic was a Facebook post that was claiming that a Thai magazine called “The Talent” had the coloring of the Super Saiyan, including the red eyes, before Japan’s Weekly Shonen Jump #21/22
The image claims that the Thai magazine was released on March (มีนาคม) 19 1991
I can’t see a date on the cover itself so I can’t determine where they got that info from. If it really did come out in March it’s possible whoever colored the cover may have seen the red eyes art from somewhere else or it could’ve just been a really good guess.
I also found an image that shows a batch of “The Talent” magazines. I noticed Zarbon and the first & second forms of Frieza having different color schemes so perhaps the colors for the Super Saiyan cover really were just guessed upon if the actual red eyes Super Saiyan art didn’t exist at that point
The topic of the cover art for the Thai magazine is interesting to me so I figured I would share it here since it sort of loosely involves the red eyes Super Saiyan
Now don’t get me started on the whole debate on whether or not they are definitively green eyes or blue eyes because that is whole other thing in itself 😆
The last thing I would like to say is that I want to give special thanks to the Twitter account (@PiccoDamayonaiz) as they post very high quality scans of Dragon Ball art and other Akira Toriyama art in general. Please visit there page if you’re interested:
They actually helped provide me a scan of the page from Daizenshuu: TV Animation Part 3 as I was not able to find a good quality image for it. I asked if they could scan the page and they fulfilled what I asked for them to do
Discover many facts and details behind one of the most celebrated pieces of animations for the Sonic series that’s been seen for over 30 years!
PLEASE WAIT TO ALLOW ALL IMAGES TO LOAD. ON DESKTOP YOU CAN TELL WHEN ALL THE IMAGES HAVE LOADED ONCE THE TAB ICON NO LONGER HAS A LOADING ANIMATION. IF SOME IMAGES STILL DO NOT APPEAR THEN PLEASE REFRESH THE PAGE. ALSO CHECK THE STATUS OF THE INTERNET ARCHIVE WEBSITE AND IF IT’S UP OR NOT AS MOST IMAGES ARE HOSTED THROUGH THERE.
⚠️ This article has a lot of Japanese text in it so I had to use both Google Translate and DeepL for translations. They may not be accurate translations
With that in mind I would like to give a Special Thanks to Vertekins/greenyvertekins for providing translations whenever I needed them for images with Japanese text. I am always appreciative for their help in translating information
UPDATED FEBRUARY 2024
INTRODUCTION
The Sonic game series has had many 2D animations done throughout its existence. In the 2010’s a slew of animations were starting to be done beginning with Sonic Mania in 2017 for promotional material and in-game with the opening/ending sequences. Sonic Origins in 2021 also followed through with having in-game animations.
The rest of the other animations were done only to promote their respective games. There was the Mania Adventures mini series for Mania Plus, Overdrive for Team Sonic Racing, Rise of the Wisps for Colors Ultimate, Prologue: Divergence for Frontiers, and Trio of Trouble for Superstars.
Sonic Superstars which was released in October 2023 also includes in-game animations as well.
Sega has created a subsection on their website dedicated to having all the promotional animations in one place for people to watch whenever they want. Check it out here:
Before that influx of animations there was Sonic Riders in 2006 which only had a 2D animated opening. However, there has been one game whose animations have had more of a resounding impact for how well loved it has been.
For over 30 years, for over 3 decades, these are the ones that the fandom have come to watch and love. They are the animations for Sonic CD which was released back in 1993.
For most people the closest anyone got to having a behind the scenes look at any of these animations was a reference sheet for Sonic which appeared in 2011’s Sonic Generations as an unlockable piece for the games collection room.
For years that was pretty much all we had going for it but in March 2017 that would all change.
Out of nowhere someone had made a Tweet showing images of much more sheets
【ＳＯＮＩＣ】ゲームＯＰ／ＥＤアニメ(１９９３年)キャラクター設定↓
[SONIC] Game OP/ED anime (1993) Character settings ↓
The first image shows a more refined version of the model sheet seen in Generations as the one in that game had just 2 head quills while this one has the standard three. It also looks like his shoes are less bulbous than in the initial version.The second image has Sonic doing some poses. One of them has Sonic looking over some very tiny version of the Anton badnik.The third image has other poses. One of them looks similar to a pose Sonic does in the ending animation. Another has Sonic doing the figure 8 super peel out.The fourth image shows several hand poses. They are very detailed hands.
Who was the person who posted these and how did they have these sheets?
Well if you see the name of the person who uploaded them then it’s【江口 寿志】which when translated is Hisashi Eguchi. If you’ve seen the credits for Sonic CD then you will see that name being credited as Chief Key Animator.
By the way, it looks like two of the poses on those sheets were based on artwork by Naoto Ohshima who is the character creator of Sonic himself.
Eguchi has quite the resume on the many anime that he has been involved with.
Before this goes any further it is very important to make a clarification as there is another Hisashi Eguchi that is a manga illustrator. Understandably people get them mixed up. Eguchi, the animator, has addressed this before much to his annoyance/frustration.
《I’ll say it again and again! 》 Most people who call me “teacher” still mistake me for the manga artist Hisashi Eguchi. My name is Hisashi Eguchi! It’s not 『史』 but 『志』! I’m not a manga artist or illustrator! I’m an ordinary person!
Really. I wonder how many times I’ll say it so there won’t be any misunderstandings. Manga artist and illustrator Hisashi Eguchi (me) and animator Hisashi Eguchi are two different people with the same name and surname with one letter difference. The animation director for “Spriggan” and “Lupin the Third: Assassination Order” was 江口寿志, not 江口寿史. There’s no way I could be an animation director.
This is a screenshot taken from a 2017 video. The video is of an interview with Eguchi which I found to be quite interesting as it gives us an insight into him. For one part he talks about the manga he made titled “Stop!! Hibari-kun!“. This article is not about this Eguchi but I still recommend checking out the video as it is only 12 minutes.
Animator Eguchi seems to be more of a private individual as those two images above are from a long time ago dating back to more than 20 years and I wasn’t able to find any more recent pictures of himself. I can totally respect the decision to not have many pictures of yourself out there.
I did find this image of him from his Facebook account that was posted in 2015
[SONIC] Game ED anime (1993) Excerpt from the original ↓ The first half of the OP is also used, but for some reason this cut is the only one I have a copy of…
These are for the ending animation from the Wacky Workbench segment.
These sheets are a good time to mention what key frames are. You see in the Sonic CD credits the animators are credited specifically as “Key Animators”. Key frames are basically the key poses that are drawn in a sequence. Then they are filled up with “in-between” frames to fill up the entire sequence.
If you followed the links to watch the animated sequences that Eguchi worked on then you will have seen that the clips came from a website called Sakugabooru. They are a great resource for animation of anime and they even gave out a definition on key animation that I think explains it better than I ever could.
Key Animation (原画, genga): These artists draw the pivotal moments within the animation, basically defining the motion without actually completing the cut. The anime industry is known for allowing these individual artists lots of room to express their own style.
They also explained the in-between animation as well:
In-betweens (動画, douga): Essentially filling the gaps left by the key animators and completing the animation. The genga is traced and fully cleaned up if it hadn’t been, then the missing frames are drawn following the notes for timing and spacing.
So if you ever see the terms “Genga” and “Douga” in anime discussions then I hope you will now know what they mean.
For this topic I want to bring up that in November 2023 Sega of Japan held an event for fans where they could meet each other and interact. It was called “Sonic Official Fan Meeting”.
#ソニックFMT in東京 ✨まもなく開場✨
受付のビジュアルバナーが目印です✅
#ソニかつ
SonicFMT in Tokyo ✨ Opening soon ✨
The visual banner at the reception desk is a landmark
The reason I bring up this event is because at it they displayed animation material for Sonic Superstars and more surprisingly even for Sonic CD. They showed off some of the key frames.
#ソニックFMT in 東京 会場内にはたくさんの貴重な品を展示中です✨
会場の皆さまたくさんお写真を撮っております📸
#SonicFMT in Tokyo
There are many valuable items on display at the venue
A special thanks goes to (@WanderingLana) who had taken good quality photos of all the Sonic CD key frames.
From the Wacky Workbench segmentFrom the opening when Sonic is standing on the top of the rocky spire looking up at Little PlanetFrom the Stardust Speedway segmentFrom the Quartz Quadrant segment
From the ending when Sonic is jumping down as the chains that were holding Little Planet break around himFrom the Wacky Workbench segmentFrom the Quartz Quadrant segmentFrom the ending when Sonic is running away from Amy
This article may not be about Superstars animations but I think it’s still worth showing the frames so they won’t be lost. Here are 3 other frames that weren’t shot by (@WanderingLana)
Love how Eguchi utilized shading and lighting in this and the way he drew the smoke of the cigarette. Also notice how the white band/strap of Sonic’s shoes go all the way down to the soles.
It looks like Sonic smoking in that poster was a trait that may have come from Eguchi who actually did smoke cigarettes.
Nostalgic photo. This is a shot taken about 30 years ago. This was taken in front of the Pearl Mansion in Studio Junio. On the left is me [Eguchi] and on the right is my junior [Takahiro Umehara].
He had actually tweeted about that door poster earlier around the same time he tweeted about those first sheets but for some reason he decided to delete it.
Eguchi has a tendency to delete tweets after a while which is why it is important to archive tweets, or anything else in general, whenever you can. I can respect the decision to delete tweets by the way. I’m sure he does it to reduce clutter as I do that for my Twitter account too. He is not obligated to keep every tweet he has made but it is a shame to see when something valuable is lost.
Here is proof that the door poster was first tweeted in March 2017 as this forum thread shows one of the posts with a broken image where it previously was:
↑↑A sheet showing some expressions↑↑ You can see how they highlighted his neck which was only seen for a few frames in the animations↑↑A sheet showing how Sonic’s running cycle is like↑↑↑↑This is a sheet showing Dr.Eggman↑↑ The vehicle he flies away with in the ending animation is also here↑↑This is a sheet showing Amy Rose↑↑
That Amy pose was also originally from an artwork by Ohshima:
So how did Eguchi get involved to do the animations? Well thankfully he has provided some insight into how it happened. He mentions that he got the job thanks to Yukio Kaizawa, credited as the director for the animations, as they had previously worked together on the Magical Taruruto anime. The last episode of Taruruto aired in May 1992 so this was likely the previous job Eguchi worked on before he got hired to work on the Sonic CD animations.
I think it is different. If they wanted to have “DB” like drawings, they would have asked “Maeda-san,” “Nakatsuru-san,” and “Masaki-san” at that time. I think I was selected because of the push from [Mr. Kaizawa], the director with whom I worked on Taruruto.
The Sega staff was very eager to have an animation like Dragon Ball, so they asked Hisashi Eguchi, who was in charge of original art for Dragon Ball at the time, to produce the animation.
The slightly cocky drawings were perfect for Sonic’s character.
《I wonder if it’s muttering…? 》 “Magical☆Taruruto-kun/ED-2”↓ Storyboarding and direction by Yukio Kaizawa of Toei. This is the first time we have worked together. After that, we worked together on the third movie and “SONIC”. I drew the original illustrations for all the cuts myself, so I have a lot of feelings for them. I surprisingly like it…
Speaking of Taruruto, apparently Eguchi drew himself in a single frame of episode 87 (the last episode) which can be seen around the 18:10 mark of the episode.
You can see his name [江口 寿志] down at the bottom left corner He was even drawn with a cigarette here
《Forbidden》 “Magical☆Taruruto-kun” final episode I participated in the production and supervision of [Kumapooh (Tetsuya Kumagai)], who was in charge of the movie version, with the original drawings. This is a variety of subliminal paintings in that episode. The fourth photo is [Kumapoo]. I’m sorry for making you waste effort for 1K💦 *It’s prohibited now. Don’t imitate!
There was an interview with the staff in a magazine at the time, and it said, ‘We definitely want the animation to be done by the Dragon Ball people.'” I remember that it was written in a nuanced manner.
The evidence is no longer with me at this time, but I am very sorry.
I think I saw that on Beep-Mega too? I think I saw that the Dragon Ball Z team created the animation. I’m not sure, I’m not familiar with the director or the company.
In fact, it seems that the request was made by Studio Junio, not Toei Animation.
The information about Dragon Ball that was written in the magazine may have been half accurate, but the truth is that Eguchi-sensei has talked about it on Twitter in the past.
It’s true that Mr. Oshima liked the animation for Dragon Ball and asked Toei Animation to do it. It’s not an afterthought. As for who was actually in charge of the animation, that’s another story, but since I wanted sharp, Dragon Ball-like movements, I decided to ask Toei Animation.
If you don’t recognize the username (@Mazin__) then that is the account of Masato Nishimura who was one of the developers of Sonic CD. He is credited in game as a “Landscape Designer”.
I believe I was able to find the exact magazine they were referring to in that thread. With the mention of “Beep Mega” I figured it was the Beep MegaDrive magazine.
A translation was done by the shmuplations website:
Kenichi Ono – Planner
For the Sonic CD animations, Toei Animation created the OP and ED. We made a lot of crazy demands on them, like “you have to use the Dragon Ball team!!!”
I’m not trying to shill for Dragon Ball here or anything (laughs), but apparently it’s extremely popular over in Europe too. Even though the two scenes together are only 4-5 minutes worth of animation, they’re fully animated (30fps) and required over 5000 cel images to create. They really gave us something amazing.
By the way, if you don’t touch the controls for 3 minutes, Sonic will get bored and jump off the screen. We added a lot of little touches like that, which I’m excited for players to see. Also, if you keep practicing the time attack you can get some crazy times, so I hope players try that out.
This is a good time to make another point for clarification now that the name Toei Animation has appeared alongside the name Studio Junio.
Most people think the animations were done by Toei as that is the name that appears in the credits. It’s a name that is much more familiar for those that are into anime so Junio which is also in the credits gets glanced over getting completely ignored. Toei are the ones involved with the Dragon Ball franchise.
In the credits you will see for Toei that it says “Produced By Toei Animation Co. Ltd.”
For Junio the credits say “In Cooperation With Studio Junio”
What Toei did was basically subcontract Junio in order for them to do the animations.
Toei has done this before in subcontracting work to other studios in order to keep production going. Take for example the Dragon Ball series. In order to keep up episode production on a constant basis they outsourced to other smaller studios to make episodes. Studio Junio was one of those studios that were usually subcontracted.
There is a website called Kanzenshuu that is a great resource on Dragon Ball information and they have a page going over info on episode production:
Here is a chart that they made on that page going over the studios that were involved throughout the entire run of the original Dragon Ball, Z, and GT:
Studio Junio itself no longer exists and from my research they apparently restructured no longer being involved in animation. It is now known as Junio Brain Trust:
Eguchi has revealed that these animations were done not in the most ideal conditions. He has said that he was not paid a decent wage so much so that it didn’t cover the rent he had at the time. He resorted into using the savings he had.
People like Tatsuyuki Tanaka, who leaves behind great work while living in shambles, are the ones who stay with the results. The amount of passion for animation is amazing. The stories that Mr. Motoya told me about Mr. Anno were amazing, and I was sweating so much that it hurt. He said that the work he did when his annual income was in the single digits was the greatest. I’m amazed that he survived…I’m crying.
Wow, that’s not good. When I was staying at the company and working on the character design, animation direction, and original animation for [Toei] & [SEGA]’s “SONIC,” my monthly income was 40,000 yen. The rent for my apartment at the time was 56,000 yen, so I was using my savings.
In another longer thread he spoke to someone else about his experience revealing some other details. Details such as the whole process of animation taking place in just four months and that he would not have accepted the job if it was Sega that offered him the role.
The truth on SEGA’s side is that I can’t remember who was in charge with Mr. Oshima, but I think the pub manager at the time knew. When I was writing the manual for Sonic CD, I was bothered by the word “Sonic”… Mr. Oshima told me “You don’t understand Sonic, T-san (in charge of design) understands it perfectly”.
Please don’t mind me. Here is the back story from our side. The only people who know the real situation of the animation part of the project at that time are the people who were in charge of the project. Even I, who was involved in the company for a short time at the time, do not know what they said in interviews, etc.
I see. But that anime was the ideal Sonic for fans, no matter what the circumstances. Unlike the current environment, with the constraints of the Mega CD, I don’t think there has ever been an animation that moved around that much. Thank you very much.
I worked as a character designer, original artist, and animation director for four months, and my income was 240,000 yen. The original artists from [Studio Junio] who participated also worked hard with low wages and hard labor. I don’t want to do this kind of work anymore.
I didn’t know that such a situation existed. Even I, who worked in a department that didn’t make any money until I left the company and rarely got raises, think it’s too hard. It may not be of any benefit to apologize now, but I am sorry.
I had no idea that the company in the middle was exploiting them, and I just assumed that the main contractor was producing the product. I really don’t know what to say…. So in that sense, SEGA would not have taken on the project. I am finally convinced. I apologize for not being able to do anything about it.
Here is just the tweet where he mentions the roles he did and doing the animations in 4 months in case anyone would like to just have that information by itself:
It’s unfortunate but Japanese work culture in some places, especially in corporate jobs, makes it so that people are overworked to the point that they could literally die. There is even a word for it called “Karoshi”
In November 2023 Eguchi would post bringing up the subject again about how much he got paid in the span of four months. This tweet certainly gained a lot of traction in comparison to the tweets where he previously brought this up.
In an additional tweet he stated that he was the one who came up with the design of the figure eight super peel out. He drew it in one of the reference sheets to which the Sonic Team loved it so much that they told him they were going to put it into the game.
In the Sonic OVA credits Tsuneo Ninomiya is credited as “Character Designs & Director of Animation”. So apparently according to Eguchi, Ninomiya was given a copy of his revised model sheets.
CEL ANIMATION & WHAT IT IS
The animations for Sonic CD were done traditionally in the way all animation at the time was done and that is through cel animation. How does that process work? Well keep in mind not all cel animation is done the same way but they do at least follow the same kind of structure.
First they do the drawings on paper, that is the part with the key frames.
Second they copy the line art of the key frames into a machine where that line art is then put on to a clear sheet of celluloid, or cel for short.
Third they paint the backs of the cels to give it the color.
Fourth they place the cels on to the corresponding painted backgrounds.
The individual cels are then photographed for each frame that will be in the master film reel.
I may have not explained it properly so here are some videos I think are worth sharing showing the process of cel animation:
This is a video on how Sailor Moon was done showing the steps mentioned above:
By the way, have you ever seen an anime and the last shot at the end of an episode looks to be done in a different art style, usually for more of a dramatic effect?
Well from my research I learned that these are commonly referred to as “Harmony cels”
Usually after production is done the cels are destroyed or are either stored or to be given away as novelties. The latter is is what occurred with the some of the cels for Sonic CD.
In April 2017, a month after Eguchi posted those model sheets, Naoto Ohshima showed off some other things pertaining to the animations. That being some cels he owned of the animations.
I also found something nostalgic. As a director, I was given a few copies. Sales should have given the rest as a gift, and left the rest in a box to Sonic Team.
You may have noticed that the black outlines on some parts of this cel are gone. Unfortunately, that means that those parts have degraded. From what I’ve read, in order to preserve cels as best as possible they have to be stored in a proper environment with adjusted temperature and little exposure to UV light such as sunlight.
On the left side you can notice faintly in the background Amy and Sonic from the first scene of the ending animation
Ohshima does provide a correction in an additional tweet as he didn’t mean to write Toshushi. Sometimes online translators translate Eguchi’s name like that for some reason.
You may have also noticed that these cels are paired up with the wrong backgrounds. This is quite common when cels are distributed. I assume this is because there aren’t as many backgrounds made as opposed to cels. For a scene many cels are used behind just one background.
The backgrounds may also be disposed as they are probably even less of a priority to keep than cels with cels being much more easier to give away especially as collector’s items.
The official Sonic Twitter account also posted showing off even more cels.
After 24 years, here’s a look at some of Sonic CD’s original animation cels.
That cel of Sonic leaping reminds me that I have to do a brief detour. I would like to mention that around this time Ohshima not only showed off cels that he owned but that he also showed sketches that he did of Sonic. Here’s one for example:
懐かしいラフ画を1枚見つけた。笑 フィニッシュはプロに頼んでました。 It is a nostalgic rough picture. ha ha I was asking a professional for the finish.
It’s a rough sketch that would end up looking like this:
Yes, this is artwork that was included in both Sonic Jam and the “Sonic the Screensaver” PC program. The rest of the similarly styled artwork was also sketched out by Ohshima.
That group of artwork was originally intended for Sega’s internal company magazine called Harmony. Harmony was given only to Sega employees and because of that only just a few of the magazines have been documented.
Perhaps Ohshima based this sketch off of that pose Sonic does in the opening animation from the part where he leaps in the air. The giant 1993 in the background indicates that this drawing may have been used to celebrate entering the new year of 1993.
I would say Ohshima based it off of the animation and not the other way around with Eguchi using that pose for the animation. I say this because the animations had to be done in 1992 which is a point I will elaborate on much later.
Something that makes this sketch different from the other sketches is that its finalized artwork was not present in either Jam or Screensaver.
Luckily though there was another place where we were able to see how it looked like:
The source of this image comes from a line of cards called Sega Freaks:
It is card #102. The back of the card has information where it is confirmed that it was done for volume #115 which was dated for January 1993. Volume #115 has not been scanned yet.
Translation by Vertekins
HARMONY January issue
Vol 115. Publication date 1st January 1993.
Comment: On the 6th December last year, the first large-scale event “Yuusei Sega World” was held at the Ryogoku Kokugikan, with 16,000 people attending. At the time, “Sonic 2” was on sale, and game tournaments were held all over the country.
※Above illustration: Editor in charge
※Harmony is SEGA’s in-house newsletter. It contains information on the company’s monthly events and activities. It is rarely seen by people outside the company.
Speaking of entering the new year, check out this postcard that was made to celebrate the new year of 1993 signed by Sonic Team. The pose Sonic uses in it was based on a pose from Eguchi’s reference sheet.
Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find a source as to where this came from anymore. From what I recall I read that it came from an artbook
Kazuyuki Hoshino found the full artwork of Sonic and posted it.
He was the one who did the artwork:
When I was cleaning up my room, I found a doodle I had done a long time ago🙂
Looks like the reason Hoshino even posted about finding that artwork in his room was because he would then bring it to that “Official Fan Meeting” event as he displayed some of the concept art he made for Sonic CD.
In case you’re wondering how I got it, at the “Sonic Jam” section of the 1997 Spring Game Show, there was an event where you could try to collect rings in the Sonic World (3D stage) several times a day, and if you were picked and met the quota, you got a celluloid. I didn’t get picked on the first day, so I went first thing in the morning on the second day and managed to get picked.
Koryan had actually shown these cels on their website as well which is dated all the way back to at least 2002.
This image was found in a Q&A section of their website. The image is seen by following the yellow text in the answer to Q40.
For Q75 they answer recounting the same thing they said in the above tweet with the additional mention that cels were also given away as prizes for a Sonic CD Time Attack competition that was held by the “Mega Drive Fan” magazine.
Ｑ４０．「コレはレアだぞ」っていうのがあったら教えて。
入手するのにいろんな意味で苦労した『ソニック ＣＤ』のセル画。Ｑ７５参照。
Q40: Please tell me if there is anything that you think is rare. See Q75 for a celluloid of Sonic CD, which was difficult to obtain in many ways.
Q75: Do you have any Sonic episodes that you would like to share? In the “Sonic CD” Time Attack held by the “Mega Drive Fan” magazine, I got 3rd place in the overall category, but didn’t get anything. I was furious and sent many postcards to protest, saying, “Why can’t I get anything when I can get prizes (Sonic CD celluloid, etc.) up to third place in the Act category? I was so furious that I sent many postcards to protest. Later, I got the celluloid at Game Show ’97 Spring.
The event where Koryan had to collect rings in Sonic Jam’s 3D Sonic World hub actually remains in the final release of Sonic Jam as a secret mode entered through a code.
From the Sonic Retro page it says you have to press and hold the A button and then press start to activate it. A timer counting down from a minute will start and the goal will be to collect as many rings as possible. There are a total of 100 rings to collect. If you get all of them nothing will actually happen in game.
The Japanese Sonic Jam official guide mentioned how to access this event mode on page 118.
SONIC JAM TRICKS OF THE TRADE The original tricks of the trade for Sonic Jam all relate to Sonic World. Lets play around with them in Play Mode.
Middle Body Text –
GAME COMPETITION MODE When you select Sonic World on the title screen, hold down the A and Start buttons until the game starts, and you can enter the competition mode to see how many rings you can collect within a minute. To replay, just press the Start button. This is the mode that was available at the Tokyo Game Show ’97.
Bottom Box Text –
<COMMAND> Select SONIC WORLD on the title screen and hold down the A button and Start button until the game starts <COMMAND>
Now here’s a random cel that was found to have been sold sometime around 2022 in an online store site called Buyee. It was sold for the equivalent of close to $39 U.S. Dollars.
The post really does not say anything too substantial as it is just talking about general information on Sonic CD and how it is the 30th anniversary of the game.
In one response the person does confirm that they did buy this cel from an online market.
1 – Yo would kill for a painted cell from Sonic CD.
2 – how did you get this? Are they selling them anywhere?
3 – I bought it at an online flea market a long time ago.
With Koryan stating that cels were given out as prizes through magazine competitions could this be one of them? Perhaps there are some more out there that we haven’t seen?
In August 2022 Nishimura showed off more cels that he says were kept in his parents house.
Nuooooo! ! The Sonic CD celluloid that was in storage at my parents’ house! I still kept it! As you can see, some of the tracing lines are starting to disappear…
In an additional tweet he mentions that he had received many DMs (Direct Messages) asking how much he was willing to sell off these cels but he says that they are not for sale as they are a treasure to him.
あー、すんません、DM等で売ってくれHow muchって沢山来ていますが、ソニックCDのセル画は私にとっての炎のたからものなので一億万メセタでもnot for saleです。しっかり保管しときます・・・。幸せを訪ねて、私はーゆきたいー。
Oh, I’m sorry, but I’ve received a lot of DMs asking me how much I want to sell them, but It’s not for sale even if it’s 100 million mesetas, because Sonic CD’s celluloid is my treasure. I’ll keep it in a safe place…. I want to go to visit happiness.
In response to a user’s comment Nishimura revealed that the company (perhaps referring either to Toei or Sega) did not keep the background paintings of the animations as they were too big and so were then disposed of.
If you are not careful about the storage environment, deterioration over time is inevitable. The background art picture was so large that even the company didn’t keep it and threw away most of it, but now that I think about it, I should have kept it properly. Well, if it was left to the company at that time, there is a high possibility that even the celluloid pictures would not have been properly preserved.
Four months later in December 2022 Nishimura showed even more cels and this time he would show them off in an official Sega livestream that was about the Sega Mega Drive Mini 2 which would include Sega CD games. Sonic CD was one of those games that were available to play on the mini console.
生配信で自慢させていただいたソニックCDのセル画です。テカっててゴメーンまことにスイマメーン。
Here is a celluloid picture of the Sonic CD that I was proud to show off in the live broadcast. It’s shiny and I’m sorry.
This time Eguchi actually commented on Nishimura’s tweet asking him how he obtained those cels. Nishimura says they were collected by Sega after filming of the animation at Junio was completed.
Thank you for your help. It has been a while. I am one of the development members of Sonic CD. As you probably know, these cels were collected by Sega after the filming at Studio Junio was completed. (to be continued)
After that, the cels were distributed as prizes for time attack contests sponsored by magazines, and the remaining ones were given to development members and other people who wanted them. (At that time, the company did not have a culture of storing development materials)
Eguchi brings up that there was no filming equipment at Junio so the filming had to have been done at Toei instead. Nishimura acknowledges that he may have been mistaken and apologizes for the error.
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【ジュニオ】には撮影台はありませんでした。撮影は【東映】じゃないですか〰？
There was no filming stand at [Junio]. Wasn’t the filming done by [Toei]?
Well that was all of the cels that have been seen so far. It would be great if we will get to see so much more of them in the future if there are any still left to be uncovered…
Before Sonic CD’s release in September 1993 there was coverage for the game and with it came the discussion of its animations.
In the July 1993 issue of Beep MegaDrive they discuss points of the game with one of those points being the animations. Along with it came two images.
THE STAFF OF THE OPENING ANIME IS FULL OF TALENTED PEOPLE
Main Body Text –
The opening song by Keiko Utoku of Mi-Ke is great but it’s also worth noting that this is the first opening anime in a SEGA software. I have introduced part of this video before but in fact, the production of this anime is a fullscale production by Toei Animation, known for “Dragonball” and “Magical☆Taruruto-kun” (Director: Yukio Kaizawa. Animation Director: Hisashi Eguchi. Art: Shinzo Yuki). Keep an eye out for future updates on “Sonic CD”, which offers a different kind of game Sonic flavor!
Blue Image Caption Text –
Here are some storyboards and setting pictures made for the anime. The animation looks good.
From the two images shown we can see one that is a model sheet of Sonic that Eguchi has shown on Twitter. The difference though is that it has just two head quills just like the model sheet that was seen in Generations. So it seems that at one point Eguchi drew Sonic that way until he had to have been corrected with giving Sonic the right amount.
The other image is of a storyboard for the opening. In August 2023 Ohshima posted the entire storyboards for the opening.
Toei has turned the SonicCD OP storyboard I drew into a wonderful video. ソニックCDの絵コンテだよ。 これを東映アニメが素晴らしい映像にして頂きました。
You can even see the storyboard that was shown on that Beep MegaDrive magazine
From these storyboards you can see that the opening with the first five pages is completely different but by the sixth page it starts to become the same starting up to the point where Sonic runs up the rocky spire. You can also see at the bottom left corner of the pages that these were made early in the development as it refers to the game as “CD Sonic”.
It’s a surprise to learn that Ohshima had a part in the animations as well. I like how you can see Ohshima drew Sonic with the completely black eyes in these storyboards as that is how he used to draw Sonic early in his concept drawings.
It’s probably why it also appears in some parts of the final animations.
Another place that had pre-release coverage of the game was a December 1992 event called Yuusei Sega World.
In it Sonic CD was one of the games people could have previewed. This was the earliest time people were able to see the game as it was nine months before release. That is a long gap in time but what most people don’t know is that Sonic CD was originally going to have a Spring 1993 release around March or April but then the game got delayed all the way to September.
It looks to me very reminiscent to the background of Special Stage 4.
Knowing the existence of that artwork I now see that gray structure in the background no longer as a clock tower but as a satellite dish with it’s antenna casting a shadow
Here is a version of the artwork that doesn’t have the UFOs or the vehicles on the road. It shows that those elements were likely made separate of the scenery.
It looks like at the Sega World event they displayed cels that were framed so those that attended were able to see them.
You can see that one of them is actually the one that Koryan had won years later at the ’97 Tokyo Game Show. I wonder what happened to the other framed cels?
SEGA CD VERSION OF ANIMATIONS
The way people see the animations nowadays is quite different to how it looked when it first appeared on the initial Sega CD release of Sonic CD.
While the Sega CD was able to play FMVs they still had to be compressed down as there was still limitations. They had to be bordered as well.
When they were first seen by the public in the Sega World event they had a different border frame compared to the final.
This early border would last until at least the June 21 1993 prototype.
The Japanese text at the bottom is [開発画面] which translates to “Development Screen”
Since the opening was shown at that Sega World event which took place in December 1992, along with the cels on display, this indicates that the animations were at least finished before that time. Furthermore, they had the time to then compress the opening for the event build of the game. The ending wasn’t done at all yet at this point as it wasn’t present in that build.
While for the final release it looks like some parts do still seem to be just compressed down, mostly in the opening, they actually went through the extra effort to redraw everything over with pixels to make a cleaner presentation. This allowed them to add details that were not present in the actual animations.
For example in the ending animation they added details such as reflective crystals in the Quartz Quadrant segment or a metallic surface to Metal Sonic in the Stardust Speedway segment.
Here’s rips of all the frames from these Sega CD versions of the animations
It was actually found who at least participated on this redraw work. A Sonic Retro user (@Tanks) discovered something within the opening animation. They found something hidden in one of the frames.
If this is known it’s not up on the wiki.
In the 188th frame of the Sonic CD FMV on the Sega CD you can see 2 hidden signatures in the right corners. In the upper right is possibly the hiragana character “け (ke)” (Thanks Susumu!) while the bottom right is “CXX”.
We could speculate on “Ke” all day since there are several members of the team whose name could potentially begin with that character.
CXX is very notable since they hold the Sonic CD dev team time attack record for Palmtree Panic Act 1
When asked how they found such an obscure thing they answered this:
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Holy… how in the world did you come across this?? :O
Amazing find!
2 –
Literally stepping frame-by-frame.
I’m working on a side project for the Sonic CD animation cleaning and I just happened to notice that by the time I got there. I love finding this sort of stuff!
It’s just a frame of a brown rectangle though and Tanks didn’t really specify where exactly it could be found, only saying it is the 188th frame. So in order to be more precise I will say that it’s in the part where Sonic is jumping around the rocks.
I’ve put it right in the middle so you know how the surrounding frames look
Here is how the frame looks like running in the actual game. It is hardly visible and I’m sure on a CRT television it would become practically invisible.
Here is a good way to see the two markings.
Sonic Retro user (@Pengi) gave out some additional information and posted that CXX is likely from Masato Nishimura as they were credited as CXXMAJIN in another Sega CD game titled Dark Wizard.
Masato Nishimura cleaned up/corrected the Mega-CD compressed version of the FMV
From @YouTube Oh, if only we had a color reduction tool as beautiful as this back in the days of Sonic CD, we wouldn’t have had to rework every single piece!
・Sonic CD pixel art design ・Specifying the opening and ending animations of Sonic CD and color reduction correction work (this is what killed me) ・Fun ∞ doodles
Here is a screenshot of the Sonic CD Team Time Attack records which has CXX on it.
In the past version of Quartz Quadrant Act 1 there is an inaccessible room at the very end of the act that can only be seen by using debug mode. In the room there are the letters CX. This was also likely done by Nishimura.
Here is a link to the full map. It is right before the goal post:
Here is the part of that game’s credits where Nishimura is credited as CXXMAJIN for being an “Assistant Digitizer”
Tanks posted that they messaged Nishimura over on Twitter about this hidden signature.
Hah that’s awesome. I @’d him in a reply to see if he’d recognize it. He responded “Awesome!” so I’ll take it lol. Not much to say about a brown frame I guess.
In November 2022 Yasushi Yamaguchi (also known as Judy Totoya), the character creator of Tails, had posted that they were also involved with doing some of the redraw work. Yamaguchi specifically did the Stardust Speedway segment of the ending animation.
A story to commemorate the recording of MegaDrive Mini 2 Sonic CD. When I returned to Japan and joined the Sonic CD team, I was given the task of fixing the special stage graphics and ending animation dots. (The part I’m in charge of is the chase scene with Metal Sonic) I was in charge of correcting the captured and decolorized images. continued ↓
The captured image has been automatically reduced in color and has low saturation, so I couldn’t get the quality just by correcting the dots, so I drew it from scratch using the captured image as a base with all frame dots. I also improved the texture of Metal Sonic. It was crazy work when I think about it now, but I would like to praise the effort I made at that time.
All the dots were drawn up, so you don’t get the noise that is characteristic of capturing. However, it was difficult to select a palette because 16 colors had to be used to express the scene. What saved me was the ability to change colors every frame, so I could adjust the colors according to the scene. With a fixed palette, it would have been impossible to express the distant view of the city at the end.
I tweeted yesterday about the ending animation for Sonic CD, and people took the trouble to extract the part of the animation that I was in charge of. I worked on editing both the OP and ED animations with all the graphics tools, but this cut, which had the most frames and was the most difficult, was left untouched so I could work on it
By the way, in the July 12 (712) prototype the ending had been implemented but a thing to note about this is that just a few frames of it hadn’t been redrawn yet so we could get a glimpse into how these animations looked like before they were completely redrawn.
Here’s a select few frames to demonstrate a comparison:
It shows how they could have just left these animations as is but they didn’t want to leave it a mess with all those compression artifacts so they went through the extra effort to redraw everything.
Here is how these ending frames look in motion within that build:
After Sonic CD was released for the Sega CD the next re-release of the game was on the PC in 1996. This was the first iteration of the animations that were seen without having to be redrawn. However, they still used the Sega CD border and they were still very much heavily compressed.
The next time these animations were seen were on Sonic Jam. Even though Sonic CD itself wasn’t a part of that games compilation they still had the opening and ending in the movie theater part of the game. They are however still compressed as well:
It’s worth noting that prior to Sonic Jam and the PC re-release there were VHS tapes that did have the opening animation in full quality. They come from promotional tapes.
If you’re curious, the music that plays in the background in that clip is actually called “Sonic 6290 Mix”. Most people have heard this track as a bonus in Sonic Gems Collection but it originates much further back as indicated by it’s use in that VHS footage.
It was part of a bonus CD album given away by the Super MegaDrive Fan magazine:
Those VHS tapes were not quite common and only for promotion of the games so they were not easily accessible to see. Not to mention they were only in Japan.
It wouldn’t be until Sonic Mega Collection in 2002 and then Gems Collection in 2005 that we would be able to see all the animations in full quality without any compression whatsoever.
Although there was the issue of the frames blending into each other but the sources in those compilations were the best we had for awhile…
GENERAL INFO ON THE ANIMATIONS
For this section I will provide information about the animations themselves.
So here is a tweet where Eguchi mentions what parts he did for the animations and saying that he did over 200 drawings.
This is a celluloid picture of C-08 of SONIC OP. I drew about 200 original pictures… I am in charge of C-01 to 09 of OP and C-11, 12 and 14 of ED. I also supervise all the cuts.
In that post you see Eguchi using the letter C along with numbers to say what parts he was in charge of for the animations. The letter C in it means Cut. This is a term animators use. A cut is basically whenever there is a camera cut/scene change.
For instance the opening animation has 20 cuts. So Eguchi says that he did the cuts 1-9 for the opening and cuts 11, 12, and 14 for the ending.
In another post Eguchi mentions that the second half of the opening was done by Toshiyuki Komaru:
I also did the original drawings for the first half of the OP (the second half is by Toshiyuki Komaru) and the stag beetle, praying mantis, and rhinoceros beetle in the ED! I think the cut of the water running was a failure because the camera work was too noisy.
In an additional response he says he did the first 10 cuts as opposed to 9 that he said in a previous post. Perhaps he may have slipped up on that previous post.
My original drawings are the first 10 cuts! I didn’t change the movement of the original drawing for the latter 10 cuts, but I did correct the characters. Has the mystery been solved?
To add on to the fact that he did the first 10 cuts here is another post where he responds pointing out the cutoff point in the opening from where his animation ends and Komaru’s animations begin.
A word from the staff of this film! The first two cuts are original drawings by me [Eguchi], and the third cut is by [Toshiyuki Komaru], a junior staff member of “Junio!
Those credits were rather vague though so I decided to ask him for more specific credits and thankfully he responded. Thank you so much Eguchi! 😊
I must preface this by saying that in my question I provided a clip containing the scenes for both the good ending and the bad ending in that order as that is how the compilations like Jam and Mega Collection did it.
This means the scenes involving Little Planet disappearing over Never Lake in a flash and then Eggman flying away with a Time Stone to which Sonic throws a rock at him. I also excluded the two little clips from both endings that had the accompanying texts of “Try Again” and “You’re Too Cool”.
This totals up to 17 cuts and that Eguchi did Cuts 12, 13, and 15. While Furuichi did the last 17th cut. Eguchi must have said he did Cuts 11, 12, and 14 in that previous post because he excluded the one good ending clip of Little Planet disappearing which moved the number of cuts down by one.
So now here is the question and Eguchi’s answer:
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こんにちは @eguchi_1203
【SONIC CD】の ED アニメーションのすべてのカットの正確なクレジットを提供していただくことは可能でしょうか?
C-1 〜 6 [Kenji Kajiwara], C-7 〜 11 [Yasuyuki Shimizu], C-14 [Ichiro Furuichi], and C-16 [Yasuyuki Shimizu].※All effects have been corrected in all cuts.
So here is what we now know about the animations and what scenes the animators specifically worked on:
Opening [OP] – 20 Cuts
C-1~10 → Hisashi Eguchi
C-11~20 → Toshiyuki Komaru
Ending [ED] – 17 Cuts
C-1~6 → Kenji Kajiwara
These are the scenes from when Sonic is carrying Amy out of Little Planet and then all the way to when Little Planet floats high in the air and disappears in a flash.
C-7~11 → Yasuyuki Shimizu
These are the scenes from when Eggman is flying away with a Time Stone and then all the way to the Palmtree Panic segment.
C-12~13 → Hisashi Eguchi
The segment allegedly showing R2 and the Collision Chaos segment
C-14 → Ichiro Furuichi
The Quartz Quadrant segment
C-15 → Hisashi Eguchi
The Wacky Workbench segment
C-16 → Yasuyuki Shimizu
The Metallic Madness segment
C-17 → Ichiro Furuichi
The Stardust Speedway segment
I also asked him if he knew who did the 2 clips that I excluded. Those being the “Try Again” and “You’re Too Cool” animations. He just responded with his name so I suppose he did those 2 cuts as well. They are very short.
By the way from the November 2023 post where he mentioned how long he worked on the animations and how little he got paid from them someone asked him asked how many cuts he made and he would respond
I do 15 cuts of original drawings. I also work as a character designer and animation director, but the salary for those who only do original drawings is even lower. It seems like there are quite a few from Sega, but there’s a △ mark between them
I bring up this specific post because if you noticed Eguchi is counting the 10 cuts he did for the opening, the 3 cuts for the ending, and then he is counting the 2 additional cuts with those being the aforementioned cuts that are accompanied by the texts of “Try Again” and “You’re Too Cool”. So this just reaffirms that he also did those 2 cuts.
I suppose just to have all the credits not get lost as just a response in a thread he then decided to make a separate post crediting all the animators together who did the ending animation. He would quote tweet my initial question.
If you’re still really not sure how this categorization all works with the use of the letter “C” and a number then I have made 2 clips to make a better visualization of which animators did what parts by placing their names along with the cut numbers on the animations.
I would like to add on one last little detail about the opening that may contain a detail not many know about. I didn’t know where else to bring it up so I will tack it on here. In the opening in the part where Sonic runs towards the camera and then sees Little Planet encased by a metallic shell he does a quick gesture.
Initially I saw it as Sonic doing some sort of double take but if you pause at the right moment it looks like he is sneezing.
They even added in sneeze droplets
Unused sprites were found in Sonic CD that seem to be of Sonic sneezing as well.
You could see they even added in droplets on to the third sprite as well
Here they are in motion:
This sneeze gesture may have been a part of some characteristic for Sonic that they wanted to give to him early on but was ultimately abandoned after some time.
(@Vertekins) posted about a discovery they made when they came across a profile for Sonic in the Japanese Sonic Jam official guide where it mentions that whenever Sonic senses danger he sneezes.
I’ve been delving into translating Japanese Sonic material into English and Sonic’s and Dr Eggman’s profiles in the official Sonic Jam guide are actually pretty interesting.
It is stated in the above that when he senses danger, Sonic has a tendency to sneeze. It occurred to me that perhaps that’s why he sneezes in Sonic CD’s opening animation, you know due to seeing the chained Little Planet in it’s metallic shell?
A blue Hedgehog (♂) whose motto is to run daily “As the mood dictates.”. He takes pride in his absolutely unbeatable strength and his running speed in particular is second-to-none (It exceeds Mach 1). His only weakness is his inability to swim. He seems to have a precognitive ability and sneezes upon sensing danger.
Image Caption Text:
↑He loves adventure and travelling the world. The vivid red biplane “Tornado” is his favorite machine
(@Pengi) responded mentioning some additional material where Sonic is seen sneezing.
This is something I was going to post about too. Sonic sneezing when he senses danger is also mentioned in a chapter of the Shogaku Sannensei Sonic manga, from early 1992:
What is of most interest is the tweet they linked which shows a manga panel where Sonic sneezes so hard he blows away someone who looks like they were trying to attack him.
Something to note about this Shogakukan manga is that the characters of Amy Rose and Charmy Bee would first appear in it predating their appearances in the video games.
They both look radically different:
Charmy is below Sonic and Amy is below Dr. Eggman standing on her tiptoes
Kazuyuki Hoshino would be the one to redesign Amy for her appearance in Sonic CD. This shows that they took elements from this specific manga so it probably isn’t a stretch to imagine that they could have taken the “sneezing sense” characteristic from this manga as well. That is if it originated there first though
Here is a video from the channel “Badnik Mechanic” that goes over this whole sneezing subject if you would like to see it:
In February 2021 the previously mentioned (Tanks) would make a thread on the Sonic Retro forums about a project they were doing, along with another user named Quazza, which involved upscaling the opening of Sonic CD. They utilized AI to clean it up.
Hey all, my boy Quazza and I have been working with ESRGAN for a while now, building AI models for film cleaning and remastery purposes. After several months of us just talking about how cool a project it would be, we’re happy to finally bring you the Sonic CD Opening, cleaned and upscaled…
Before I go further, we get it. AI upscaling is controversial, especially in a communities that pride themselves on archiving the genuine article. But the thing to consider here is that it’s extremely unlikely we’ll ever get a proper rescan of Sonic CD’s animation ever (Seriously SEGA, hit me up! We can scan and clean using the latest methods, no AI needed!). The 25th Anniversary DVD release and Mega Collection versions are what they are, and this isn’t intended to replace those, but the dot crawl, coloration issues, compression… There were always issues with the opening animation that made us feel we could do it justice with a little ESRGAN love. And thanks to a some new model training techniques and a little effort we’ve finally been able to achieve this.
We stuck to our proprietary models for most of the frame cleaning and scaling, using the film cels SEGA released not too long ago as a guide post. Some of the darker scenes needed some extra support and it’s thanks to the recently released celframes model we were able to fill in some gaps.
Also in the main post they mentioned a detail of the opening which I will copy here:
Well, while inspecting a near-final draft frame-by-frame, Quazza noticed Sonic does a flip just prior to his famous one-armed boulder pose in the video. While we hesitate to call it a true “animation error”, it’s pretty clear the original intention was for Sonic to front flip cleanly into a drop versus a middair pivot. See Quazza’s tweet for a comparison video. It’s just speculation, but it could have been an artistic choice on the part of the animation team to make it Sonic appear more active in that scene. Personally, it does seem to change the flow of things, looking back the intended frame order. We opted to use this frame order in our release.
Here is Quazza’s tweet along with the comparison video:
Was re-watching the Sonic CD OP and I noticed there were a few out-of order-frames, so I corrected them to see what it’d look like.
The giveaway here is that the rock moves away and then jolts forward. That would imply sonic started moving backwards towards the rock after the flip, which doesn’t seem to [make] sense. However, when reordered, both the flip and the rock move linearly.
Going back to the Sonic Retro thread there was a response made by someone that is quite surprising to see.
Love to to finally see this with the saturation and values adjusted. Those deep blues really pop now. Also, regarding re-scanning the originals of both this and the OVA at the very least for archival purposes… we are trying. There are at least a few people inside that care about this stuff.
If you don’t know then that username (@Boxer Hockey) is actually of Tyson Hesse. Yes, Tyson does go on the Sonic Retro forums. He doesn’t go on there often and only shows up from time to time.
Sometimes he would make interesting posts on the things he has worked on. If you would like to see the rest of his posts then go to the “Postings” tab on his profile and then go down to where it says “Find all content by Boxer Hockey”.
The name Boxer Hockey comes from Tyson’s original web comic series of the same name.
Here are some sources to know more about the web comic:
Back to the upscale thread, on the second page another user with the name (@RGX) pointed out something from the opening that seems to have gone unnoticed by many, myself included.
Hello Tanks, I really appreciate the work and attention both you and Quazza have done! I grew up with Sonic CD on the SEGA CDX & been obsessed with the OP/END animations for a long time. I have always wanted these animations restored as well. This is the cleanest the intro has ever looked!
There’s a pretty obscure detail that barely anyone knows of in this scene in the opening that’s lost in this upscale. When Sonic spin-dashes into this rock, the stars form a circle, an upside-down triangle, and a square. Unfortunately, in the upscale, only the square can be seen but it heavily blends in with the environment.
Here’s an edit I made to show where the shapes are as admittedly the outlines are hard to see.
It’s probably not the greatest but I did the best I could in placing the black outlines. I’ve noticed that Sonic also leaves trails of stars in different shapes in the part when he jumps down from the rock and runs towards the camera.
The work Tanks and Quazza did wouldn’t just end here though…
In April 2022 when Sonic Origins was officially announced there came another reveal that would be quite surprising in regards to the animations for Sonic CD. Brady Hartel, who actually worked on the Mania animations credited as doing compositing and motion graphics, would also announce that they got to produce a remaster of the animations.
With them came along the help of none other than Tanks and Quazza.
In an additional tweet Brady mentions that Tyson Hesse helped him get involved with this remastering.
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Super happy to finally announce that I got to produce the remaster of the Sonic CD cutscenes for Sonic Origins with a small team! The AI Model training was done by @tanks404 and @Quazza97, with rotoscoping and redraw help by @Kitsunelaine.
Special thanks to Coury from @MyLifeInGaming for some technical help, as well as @tyson_hesse for getting me involved and @sega / @sonic_hedgehog for having us. 🙏
Tanks and Quazza would also make their own posts talking about being involved with this work.
Many thanks to @BradyHartel for looping @Quazza97 and me into this project. It was an honor to have worked on an animation so near and dear to my heart! #SonicOrigins
Sonic CD is incredibly near and dear to me. Being given the opportunity to help @BradyHartel bring this to completion was awesome and hope everyone looks forward to seeing them in #SonicOrigins!
This was an INCREDIBLE ammount of work for everyone involved, lots of late nights and long hours for me personally, by far the most intense thing I’ve been involved with even including Discotek work, really proud of it and I can’t wait for you to see it!
It’s worth noting that Brady had also made their own upscaled version of the opening in 2020.
I was testing some new upscale/cleanup tech recently, so I experimented with the Sonic CD opening. The best quality source for it is pretty poor with a bunch of dot crawl and rainbowing, so I was pleasantly surprised it came out this nice. (watch in 4k)
In response to another tweet Brady mentions what software they used for their upscale:
Waifu2X overlaid over an NNEDI upscale, then color-correction, mostly to fix the line-color from grey, and a grain layer. The source is unfortunately not too good.
When I say overlaid, I mean like, with a different opacity. I don’t remember what it was (50% doesn’t seem right.)
If SEGA ever does another release of Sonic CD, I’d LOVE to do a proper cleanup of the video from the original master tapes (if the film is lost, anyway.) This is what the source I used looked like, BTW. Lots of Rainbow + Dot Crawl.
Very great to see the works of people who did their own versions of upscaling the intro animation ending up actually working together to do on an official upscaled remaster.
Here’s the section of credits in Origins where they mention everyone involved.
Since Tanks and Quazza were involved with this work on Origins they also, if you look very carefully, reordered the frames of the flipping sequence in the opening just like they did on their own 2021 upscale:
Once Origins had finally released it had, much like the other compilations that came before it, a museum/gallery section that contained never before seen concept art. Within this section there was some more reference sheets.
What’s great about the following sheets are that they have dates on them so we can tell around what time they were made. As the sheets say, they seem to have been made around the time of July and August 1992.
↑↑Here’s an early model sheet where Sonic has the two head quills↑↑↑↑Another sheet where Sonic has two head quills↑↑ This is the version of the sheet that appeared in that Beep magazine page↑↑This is a sheet that even Eguchi hadn’t posted before↑↑ Something I noticed is that this one is numbered 4 even though Eguchi posted a sheet that was also numbered 4 which had entirely different expressions↑↑A sheet showing how Sonic turns into a ball. I love how he looks more like a saw blade↑↑ You can also notice the bottom of Sonic’s shoe has the band/strap just like in the room poster art↑↑A sheet showing Sonic sitting upon a rocky cliff↑↑ In the background is a chained up Little Planet and I assume the bigger circle is the sun. Again you can see the bottom of Sonic’s shoe with the same thing as the sheet above.↑↑A version of the Sonic model sheet that now has color codes↑↑ These codes are for the exact paint colors they will have to use in the cels. Another thing you can see is that they drew over Sonic’s left eye to be more circular This is an addition that may have been late as the more ovular “bean” shape of the eyes was kept in the animations.↑↑A model sheet of Amy with color codes↑↑
Here is a sheet that basically describes Sonic as a character.
Translation by Vertekins
American-typical cartoon character is combined with Japanese animation techniques – Direction – Motion and so on to pursue a speedy and invigorating impression. This is a combination of American and Japanese and a new experiment.
↑↑Here’s a model sheet of Metal Sonic↑↑
That Metal Sonic sheet was actually shown in a Spanish gaming magazine called Hobby Consolas. It was in the August 1993 issue which means it was just one month before release.
Additionally on page 22 there are two photos of staff working on the game.
On page 23 there is a photo of Ohshima holding an issue of Hobby Consolas. The reasoning behind this was because the magazine wasn’t allowed to take a photo of any of the staff which is why the other two photos show the people from the back of their heads and why Ohshima’s face is only partially seen.
Translated caption from magazine: The executives of Sega did not allow that their luxury artist, Naoto Ohshima, be photographed. The excuse was that he might look at the magazine at least to be of some use…
Here is a page where it translates parts of the magazine pages related to Sonic CD:
Back then in the Japanese gaming industry they were a lot more secretive of the developers that worked on games so they had to usually be credited under pseudonyms.
Naoto Ohshima’s pseudonym was “Big Island” as that is the literal translation of Ohshima. “Shima” means island and apparently from what I’ve read “Oh/O” is an abbreviation of the word “Oki” which means big.
Yuji Naka’s pseudonym was “YU2”. This comes from the fact that there was another worker named Yu Suzuki who wrote there name as just “YU”. As Naka had Yu in his name as well he decided to be considered the second Yu after Suzuki and therefore his pseudonym was “YU2”
Yu-san is Yu Suzuki, and he used to write “YU”. I’m Yuji so it’s also “YU”, but since Yu-san was using that “YUJI” was suggested so I decided to make it “2”. It didn’t mean I was trying to better Yu-san, but that I’m next after him, a sign of respect. You see, I added the “2” with the feeling that there’s no way I could surpass him; I would be after him, or beneath him.
I’m glad that they no longer have to use pseudonyms as I think people should get the proper credits for the work they have done.
NEW THINGS FROM EGUCHI
There is something about Eguchi that I do want to show as well. Starting around February 2018 he started drawing original new artwork of Sonic on his Twitter account. This section will display them here.
That pose for Sonic is actually based off another series that Eguchi worked on. It’s from Lupin III and it’s a recurring sequence shown in almost every new iteration that is made for that series. It usually involves Lupin, the main character, getting caught in a spotlight and he has to start running away as he is getting gunned down. Of course he is able to not get hit by any bullets. Lupin also has a distinctive animated way of running.
Here is a compilation showing the many iterations of Lupin doing this sequence:
Ohshima also has a love for Lupin III. At a Game Developers Conference (GDC) event he was asked what anime or animations was most influential in his creation and he answered Lupin III which his translator reiterated as well:
The version of Sonic is called DB [Dragon Ball] Sonic, but that is not true. I borrowed the impression from the old Lupin by Yasuo Otsuka. (The same goes for “Taruruto”). After that, I started playing Lupin SP, and I feel like it’s fate. Coincidence? Is it inevitable?
Unfortunately, a lapse in memory made me forget to take the time to archive this post and of course he deleted it so I only have a link to a now deleted tweet.
I made an attempt to transcribe the Japanese text by hand through Google Translate and here is the result:
coffee break！(holiday) 【ＳＯＮＩＣ／ソニック】
メカソ二ツクの設定が出てきたので1枚描いてみました。↓(⌒‐⌒)
It’s more than likely not accurate. I did ask Vertekins for a translation of the text so here is what they provided:
I drew one of Mecha Sonic’s scenes just like when it first came out
The animated version of “Sonic the Hedgehog” is based on “Speedy Gonzalez” and “The Road Runner” by Chuck Jones, but of course it was no match for him…
It’s a Japanese new years tradition where decorated bamboo is placed in pairs in front of houses and businesses. It is meant to welcome spirits in for the new year. It is placed some time after Christmas and is left up until January 7 where the bamboo is then burned out.
The Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure had DLC (DownLoadable Content) released for it involving contests and certain events, like Christmas and Halloween, that would decorate the Station Square hub world area.
One of the DLC was Japanese exclusive and was meant to celebrate the new year of 1999 by placing several kadomatsu in the area. For the longest time it was lost DLC as every other DLC was at least saved.
It wasn’t until November 2019 that a user on the DCEmulation forums purchased a Japanese Dreamcast memory card finding that the DLC was within it and thus making all the Sonic Adventure DLC now available.
Artwork #27. I’m not even sure if I should count this but I’m still going to post it anyways.
Eguchi decided to make a drawing of characters that he had previously drawn before. Characters such as Lupin, Taruruto, Yu Ominae from Spriggan, and of course Sonic.
《graffiti》 Character design work↓ I don’t have a character chart handy, so I’m drawing it from memory. This time it’s a one-shot rough copy without coloring!
↓We will present the following two original rough drawings to one person.
※Please note that we will only ship within Japan. Please like us and write what you would like to receive. The winner will be contacted by DM. Please do not write your personal information before you receive the DM!
Please indicate in the comments that you would like to receive a gift. We will accept applications this weekend. Winners will be notified by DM on Sunday the 20th.
I have read all the comments of those who have requested. Thank you. We will make a fair selection regardless of the content of the comments. Thank you for your cooperation.
That’s about all the new drawings Eguchi has made so far. It’s likely possible he will make more. We’ll just have to wait and see..
THE LEGACY OF THE ANIMATIONS
The impact that these animations have had on the Sonic fandom is quite immense. The design by Eguchi is one that is very popular by fans and is emulated the most when it comes to making fan art.
One fan in particular I would like to highlight is (@tripplejaz)
I think they have managed to get down this design quite well.
This design was then used for the animations for Sonic Mania and the Mania Adventures mini series.
It is fun to compare the designs of both Hesse and Eguchi to see the influence that Eguchi left on these newer animations.
Here is what Tyson said about the animations from CD being influential to him when doing the animations for Sonic Mania:
“I knew from the second we started on it that that’s what people were gonna, in their hearts, compare it to. I knew growing up I watched that Sonic CD intro hundreds of times. It was like my little animation bible that I would look at and think ‘Wow this is what animation is’. I’m not gonna even say that we hit that but that was my goal, was to make something that people would wanna watch over and over again and find little extra things and find screengrabs from and try and draw themselves because everyone when they were young just copied screengrabs off Sonic CD”
He said this in an official Sonic livestream from September 2017:
That’s about all the information I have wanted to share with you all about these animations. These animations have left such an impact being made so early in the franchise’s creation.
I would like to leave you all with just this last thing. Most people still call this design Toei Sonic as they aren’t aware of any of Junio’s involvement. Eguchi wrote about his thoughts on this:
《Muttering》 Dear “SONIC” fans outside of Japan! Although you say “[Toei] SONIC”, please do not misunderstand that the animation (character design, animation director, original picture, animation) is done by the members of [former Studio Junio].
In an additional tweet he mentions that he doesn’t mind that naming but that he feels sorry for the animators of Studio Junio as they worked hard with low pay to do the animations. He ends it by saying that it wasn’t Toei but Junio that did the work.
This is Eguchi. The naming is actually not important to me, but when I heard “Toei Sonic,” I felt sorry for the people at Studio Junio who worked hard for 4 months with low wages and hard labor. That’s why I tweeted this message to let them know that “Toei is not the artist, but Junio”. Sorry for my poor explanation.
I think we should all be calling this design Junio Sonic so that that we can acknowledge all the hard work the actual animators at Studio Junio did. Perhaps if you see someone calling this design Toei Sonic please politely, and I emphasize politely, correct them and tell them about Junio’s involvement. Maybe even show them the tweet above with the archived link as a source.
May these Sonic CD animations continue to amaze people and for the new generations of Sonic fans who will see them for the first time
AFTERWORD
This is the section where I will give my own thoughts, opinions, ramblings, etc.
This article is now my third one I have made about Sonic. So I can now say I have a trilogy 😁
If you would like to read my other two articles then here they are
This article itself sure was a lot to write about, as with the other two articles, and I am always very ecstatic to share all my research and findings with all of you.
Doing this article made me learn a lot about Hisashi Eguchi and what other work he did. In particular with Dragon Ball/DBZ. I love the Dead Zone movie and to read that he specifically animated that sequence with Goku fighting and dodging the two enemies was incredible to discover.
I have been seeing some fans are now calling the design he made either Eguchi or Junio Sonic and I am glad people are starting to discover the rightful credits that those animators deserve.
I used to be one of those people who would call that design Toei Sonic as I was guilty of glossing over Studio Junio’s name in Sonic CD’s credits.
Anyways, after finishing up my previous article and releasing it in July I was thinking about whether or not it was time to start working on my next one which was on the Sonic CD animations. It is 2023 so it has been 30 years since the release of Sonic CD which included these animations. I wanted this article to be a celebration of that. However, I was burnt out on writing so I decided that I would put it off until next year in 2024.
However, putting off writing has always just made progress to complete them much slower. Not to mention the temptation to actually do it before 2023 was over since I would miss out on the 30th year milestone. Ultimately, I decided to do it.
So I started writing down all my collected research into this WordPress article beginning some time in the middle of last month in October.
Luckily for this one I already had the majority of research materials already collected in a Google Docs (along with images saved on Google Drive) so I was able to crank out this one much quicker than my previous article. I have had that Google Docs document since 2018:
That’s five years that I amassed all this information together and then wrote it down here. There was always some new information coming out about these animations and while it was great to see that happening there was a bit of a small feeling of tedium as that meant I had to keep putting in that new info into my article. Even up to finishing this article there were new things coming out with that Japanese event displaying key frames being so recent that it was a few days ago from this article being finally published.
I’ve actually been interested in doing research on this for a long time now and sharing the little tidbits I find with others. I remember sharing it on some Sonic Stadium forum posts:
I even did a little Twitter thread about the hidden signature in the Sega CD version which I then transitioned into bringing up the upscale by Tanks and Quazza:
Overall, after all is said and done I do have to say that I am not satisfied with the structure of this article and it was actually the most challenging part in doing it. I had to figure out how to thread all these subjects seamlessly and I feel that it could be better in flow.
I also don’t feel like I explained the animation terms like key frames or cuts properly. I am no expert when it comes to animations so I am sorry if I completely butchered those kind of terms.
If your interested in seeing how anime is created then I have some videos I would like to recommend. The first is an hour long documentary about how “Little Witch Academia” from 2013 was made:
The channel “ForgottenRelics” made a video describing how the production of a Dragon Ball Z episode was made. At around the 10:18 mark of the video Eguchi is actually mentioned for helping to create one sequence as an example:
It was meant for a fangame called Sonic DVD which was supposed to be an unofficial sequel to Sonic CD. I think from what I’ve read it has been unfortunately cancelled.
(@snowwood_) recreated one of the poses from the reference sheet that was in Origins, colored it in, and ran it through a CRT television. It’s like looking at an alternate universe where Eguchi was able to do a series for Sonic with the other Junio animators.
There’s so much more fanart that I would also love to show but I think that would bloat the page up so this is what I will show for now.
One final point to mention! Eguchi actually posted about the idea of making an artbook for his Sonic CD materials.
《呟き》 私が参加した『ソニックＣＤ』のＯＰ／ＥＤアニメは国内外でそこそこファンが居るようなのでフィルム画像とキャラ表とイラストにＤＶＤを付けた本を出しても良いのかなぁ〰と思う今日この頃・・新作イラスト描きますよ〰！w 《Muttering》 Since the OP/ED animation of “Sonic CD,” in which I participated, seems to have a lot of fans in Japan and abroad, I wonder if it would be a good idea to publish a book with film images, character charts, illustrations and a DVD… I’ll draw new illustrations!
He announced that he was making a second artbook in 2019 and that it would be focused on character design including an image of a Sonic CD reference sheet:
《Announcement》 Following “Hisashi Eguchi: Animation Background Drawings”, GENKOSHA will publish my second art book. This time, the main focus will be on characters. (The release date has not yet been decided.)
《Interim Report》 According to [Genkosha], [Sonic] is not as popular in Japan as it is overseas, so it seems difficult to publish it. [DB] and [Taruruto] by Shueisha, which could not be published last time, are also expected to be difficult this time. All that remains is [3X3EYES], but will [Kodansha] approve it? This is the situation.
《Postscript》 I don’t think [Genkosha]’s opinion is wrong at all, and when I actually post pictures of Sonic, most of the reactions are from American fans…
Eguchi posted that the reason the book was taking too long to be made was because of a delay due to the global Covid pandemic:
《Status report》 In addition to scanning three cardboard boxes and obtaining permission from the publisher, the work seems to have been delayed due to the coronavirus. They are going to publish it…
Sometime later Eguchi would post which works would be included in the book. Sadly he said that Sonic would be one that would be hard to include in the book.
《Interim Report》 The works scheduled to be published in the new book… Taruruto, Minky Momo, Steamboy, Mousho Agency, Paprika, and Onigami Den seem to be okay. Lupin the Third, Spriggan, and Naruto seem to be in a delicate situation. DB, Sonic, Cutie Honey, and 3X3EYES seem to be impossible.
In a later tweet he said that he could not include Sonic due to rights issues which is a shame since I would have loved to have seen those materials in a book.
《Extra》 One of the settings of “SONIC” which unfortunately could not be included in this year’s “Hisashi Eguchi Animation Works” due to rights issues! #Sonic
I have bought the book and I must say even without knowing Japanese I still think it is a good book to go through just to see what he has worked on. I used the Google Translate app’s photo capture translator that is on smartphones so I can read through the book.
All the photos seen in the section where I show the various series of animations Eguchi has worked on were taken by me from my own copy of the book.
Well that is all for now folks. Thanks for reading all this if you got up to this point. I think I still have more to write about on Sonic in the future but for now I am going to give myself an indefinite break for now 😴
Discover the story of how an Original Character (OC) was made involving some of the Sonic Mania team and a few fans.
PLEASE WAIT TO ALLOW ALL IMAGES TO LOAD ON DESKTOP, YOU CAN TELL WHEN ALL THE IMAGES HAVE LOADED ONCE THE TAB ICON NO LONGER HAS A LOADING ANIMATION. IF SOME IMAGES STILL DO NOT APPEAR THEN PLEASE REFRESH THE PAGE. ALSO CHECK THE STATUS OF THE INTERNET ARCHIVE WEBSITE AND IF IT’S UP OR NOT AS MOST IMAGES ARE HOSTED THROUGH THERE.
Original characters, or OCs for short, have been a part of the Sonic fandom for as long as it’s been on the internet itself. They are a way for an individual to express their imagination and/or creativity. The possibility to make an original character in an official game would be realized in 2017 with the game Sonic Forces. In a Nintendo website interview Takashi Iizuka, a member of Sonic Team, mentioned why they added in this feature
“When we were thinking about the concept of Sonic Forces, we received a lot of fan letters and messages from fans where they wanted to create their own characters. So we listened to that and wanted to make their dreams come true. So that’s one of the reasons why we created the custom character system.”
However, they have also been a point of contention being looked upon negatively and mocked by others typically outside of the fandom. A phrase that has been associated with these Original Characters, also satirical in use, is “Do Not Steal”. It basically asks whoever is seeing their OC to not steal it as it’s theirs.
A type of internet game, and I say game in the loosest terms, was made where a person looks up their name by Google image search and adds “the Hedgehog” at the end of it to see the results.
In an interview from Polygon for Sonic Forces the interviewer, Allegra Frank, actually brought up this thing to Iizuka and Shun Nakamura, another Sonic Team member, to which they laughed at it as they already knew about it. Here’s an excerpt of that interview:
That’s not to say that Sonic Team isn’t well aware of how much Sonic fan art is out there. They’ve seen it, alright, as studio head Takashi Iizuka told us with a laugh.
“I’ve seen so many things in my life, that I have the knowledge of what people want to create or what they have created in the past,” he told us. “I’ve been seeing that for decades now, and I do understand on a certain level, but when the team was creating the customizable character, when they were making content, they just went out and did what they wanted to do.”
Hence original avatar characters that come from an array of different species, each of whom are strong — but, importantly, not quite as strong as Sonic, as Nakamura pointed out.
At the same time, Iizuka, Nakamura and the team did pick something up from the Sonic fandom. When I mentioned that anyone can Google their name plus “the hedgehog” and find a fanmade character in the series’ style, the pair laughed. It turns out that they’re aware of that goof, too, and the fascination with Sonic-style hedgehogs influenced how they designed the Custom Heroes.
Among the OC’s there are also the recolors which also get flak, probably a lot more, due to them being a lot easier to make and thus being perceived to be more lazier. Recolors just alter the color scheme of a pre-existing character and maybe add some flourishes here and there.
In a way even some of the actual classic games have had their very own “recolors” primarily occurring from messed up glitched graphical color palettes. Of course the fans have given them names too.
Take for example one of the earliest ones being this one from Sonic 2
This black and green palette was eventually given the fan name Ashura. To find out more about how to activate this palette, what causes the color change, and the origin of their fan given name you can read this page here:
Something to add from all that is known about Ashura is that there was a French gaming magazine called “Consoles+” that documented the palette glitch in their July/August issue #22 from 1993. This is as far as we know the earliest documentation of it unless someone else finds something dated even earlier.
These two palette glitches are notable in the fact that they would later influence Sonic characters. Though these are characters that would only be in the comics.
First up is Scourge who was an evil clone of Sonic. Initially looking just like Sonic but with a black jacket and shades.
Later on in the comics run he would get turned into a green color. Something to do with the Master Emerald changing him.
It was confirmed that this color change for Scourge was based on the Ashura glitch in the 1st issue of the Sonic Super Special magazine from 2011.
Did you know…The character of “Scourge” was conceived as an attempt to add more of a unique angle on the character of “Evil Sonic,” who debuted waaaay back in Sonic the Hedgehog #11. The idea for a change in his blue color to green originated from a glitch in the original Sonic the Hedgehog 2 game for the Sega Genesis, in which Sonic turns to a black and green color palette following a specific series of actions in “debug” mode in the Emerald Hill Zone.
In the IDW comics the character Surge the Tenrec would be based off of Ashura too.
Another character named Dr.Starline was based off of the Wechnia palette glitch. The name is even a reference to it since Starline refers to the way Wechnia is named in the character select in Chaotix as just “**********” or in other words, a line of stars.
The choice to make Starline a platypus can also be a reference as it is one of the few mammals to lay eggs asides from echidnas. Both animals belong to the group called monotremes.
There is even some concept art that shows Starline with a hairstyle that is like Knuckles dreadlocks.
And here is the last of this IDW glitch trio, Kitsunami the Fennec Fox.
According to Ian Flynn (a writer of the IDW comics and who eventually managed to write for Sonic Frontiers) this specific character was based on a blue Tails palette glitch that he personally experienced.
Caveat: Kit was inspired by a different “Blue Tails” glitch I remembered fondly, but folks seemed much more familiar with the “Blue Knuckles is Tails” thing, so for simplicity’s sake, I used that for the image. And now I’m here, making it complicated again.
Okay so here’s one that I wouldn’t have known myself and I figured I would share it here so others can know it as well. While I already knew about the others, here’s a character from the Archie comics run that while not based off any palette glitch was still based off of something from the classic games and was also made by Ian Flynn. Their name is Thrash the Tasmanian Devil.
From Ian’s old forum he stated in a post that Thrash was based on the mini character sprite that appears on the Sonic & Knuckles title screen. As you switch back and forth between the two there is a little animation that makes them morph from one another.
The original inspiration for Thrash comes from Sonic & Knuckles on the Genesis. When you switch between Sonic and Knuckles, there’s this half-second morphing animation where you get this purple hedgechidna/echihog thing, and I’ve always wanted to do something with that.
Now at first glance you can see that the sprite has a checkerboard pattern on it so it really doesn’t look purple. However that pattern indicates that it’s a dithering pattern so looking at this through an emulator is not truly ideal to see it.
Using the emulator “Kega Fusion” there is a video filter I used called “TV Mode (CVBS)” in order to try and get a more approximate look to a CRT TV.
It’s still not perfect but now the purple is a lot more noticeable to see here. When I found out about Thrash I couldn’t believe that a character would be based off of something so minor. I would like to give credit to (@Dark Sonic) over on Sonic Retro where they made a post bringing up this character which is how I discovered this:
The unreleased 1992 arcade game “SegaSonic Bros.” was almost going to have actual “recolors” as it was going to have red and yellow Sonic clones.
They don’t have any official names but Sonic Retro user (@Jayextee) did make joke names for them. They called them Ketchup and Mustard. I’ll let you figure out which name is for which 🕵♂️
Here’s a different “character” I would like to mention that was not based from a palette glitch in any way but was inadvertently tied to one. Here is a parody character called Rankles the Otter which was made up by the UK Sega Magazine. It appeared more specifically on page 70 of issue #11 from November 1994.
Yes, we’re offering an amazing ONE MILLION POUNDS to the first person to send us a photograph of Rankles, the hidden character in Sonic & Knuckles. Rankles, a green otter with outsize sparkly ankles and Knuckles’ sidekick, is hidden somewhere in the cart, and he could be your ticket to easy street. If you’re not quite up to this challenge, we’ve got a slightly easier contest for you – the first reader to photograph (or accurately describe) the ending to Sonic & Knuckles when played in conjunction with Sonic 3 will walk away with a brand spanking new Multi Mega. Can’t say fairer than that, can you? Just send your photo (or accurate description) to us here at HE’S COMPLETED SONIC & KNUCKLES, AND MANY A MICKLE MAKES A MUCKLES COMPETITION, SEGA MAGAZINE, PRIORY COURT, 30-32 FARRINGDON LANE, LONDON, EC1R 3AU, and the first proven response we receive gets the Multi Mega. Anyone who sees Rankles should call Alcoholics Anonymous because Tom Guise just made him up. And we’re afraid we couldn’t give you the million pounds anyway.
Even with the magazine saying that he was made up they still got sent a letter by someone claiming they found Rankles. The magazine wrote about this in the tips section of issue #20 from August 1995 on page 66:
Cast your minds back, if you will, to issue 11 of SEGA MAGAZINE where we ran a competition in which we asked you to find Rankles the green otter with sparkly ankles hidden in Sonic and Knuckles. The first person to do so would receive a massive ONE MILLION POUNDS! Rankles turned out to be one of Tom Guise’s many imaginary friends and isn’t really in the game at all but some people refused to believe this. Recently, we got a letter from Peter Withey and Daniel Lennard from Malvern in Worcestershire telling us that Rankles the Otter DID in fact exist and sent in photographic evidence of him in Sonic 3. Here we can see their original photos of Rankles (just about) and, following their complicated description to finding him, our pictures. Sadly, we have to tell you that they can’t have the one million pounds because, as you can see from our pictures, the mystery character hasn’t got sparkly ankles and therefore cannot be Rankles and is actually just Knuckles underwater.
If you want to see this for yourself, load up Sonic 3 and use the level select (Up, Up, Down, Down, Up, Up, Up, Up on the SEGA screen). Highlight “Marble Garden” zone act 2 and hold A then press Start. Play the level through to the lamppost just before the boss and then pause and press A. You will go back to the level select screen where you should highlight “Launch Base” zone act 2. Hold A and press Start to begin the level and press B when you appear to turn into a ring. Move Sonic upwards and, going past some strange writing in the background, you’ll come across the green Knuckles who is definitely not Rankles.
Of course as they don’t have those distinctive orb feet the magazine said that they would not give out the reward money. What a shame 😔
Going off of a similar method as mentioned above here’s a screenshot of this green Knuckles that I managed to get.
Now here’s something interesting I found about Rankles that I don’t see get brought up from any of the videos I have seen about them. In the midst of those 2 issues is something from the letters section of issue #14 February 1995 on page 44 which was a response to the magazine from a parent who says they had a son who was obsessed with Rankles. The son’s drawing was included.
How cute! How endearing!
DEAR SEGA MAGAZINE, Ever since you printed your feature about Rankles the green otter (Nov issue) my 6 year old son Christopher has been obsessed with him, drawing him and making up stories about him. Can you please tell him if he will ever appear in a game? Eg Rankles and Knuckles.
Yours sincerely, Nick Jolly, Chanlersford, Hants. *Eg stands for exempli gratia in Latin, which means “for example”
SM[Sega Magazine]: Erm, I don’t know quite how to put this, but Rankles isn’t a real game character at all. We made him up as a bit of a joke, you see. However, we personally think he’s got a lot more going for him than Tails or Rosie [Amy Rose] and reckon he’d be great in a game. But we’ll try to get more Rankles appearances in the magazine to make up. Sorry.
I don’t think this gets brought up along with the very little there is of Rankles because it isn’t documented with the rest of the other info. I only found it because I was trying to find the source of the follow up submission as none of the videos seemed to have given an exact source to which issue that was in and so I decided to find it on my own. As I was going through all of the issues I had found the submission with the kids drawing and it was such a pleasant surprise to find during my search.
With all of those characters shown I would like to present one final original character and dedicate an entire section for them.
THE EGGETTE SECTION
Upon the release of Sonic Mania more specifically on August 28 2017, Twitter user Alpha Gamboa (@blackbookalpha) had posted about an observation they made with the Flying Battery Zone boss. Now sprite misinterpretations are always rather amusing to see just to get the perspective of someone else who might have seen something different. The first Sonic game has an example of this within Marble Zone.
What was just supposed to be an upside down Eggman was being seen as someone else all together. Many responses were made from this post writing about their adoration for this character. It even got the attention of some of Sonic Mania’s very own artists.
Lucas Carvalho (@midio), one of the pixel artists, wrote:
Alpha Gamboa themselves preferred the name Eggette. If you noticed in his post with the initial drawings the name appeared in there too but with a question mark. They were probably not entirely sure of choosing that name up until that point.
For those asking, you can name this OC anything you want. I prefer Eggette since the Omelette tag makes me hungry every time I search for it
In it I show the many things that were made from the creation of Eggette. Along with that I also briefly bring up two other fan characters that stemmed from Eggman as well.
Who are those 2 others alongside Eggette? Check out that article to find out
While there was a fervor for Eggette there was another original character that was made just right before Mania was released. This time coming from some of the actual Sonic Mania team members along with a few fans.
Before this goes any further I would like to give some background information on some of the key players that will be constantly mentioned from here on out. They are names that will appear throughout very often in the following threads so I think you should familiarize yourselves with them and what roles they will have.
THE KEY PLAYERS
Brad Flick (@bradflick55) was credited as one of the level designers for Mania.
Hunter Bridges (@HunterBridges) was credited in the roles of sound designer, programmer, and project manager for Mania.
Additionally Hunter also made just one track for Mania Plus. It’s the one called “Back in Action” which plays in the Encore Mode when you have to make the decision to choose either Mighty or Ray as your partner character in the Angel Island stage.
Here is where Hunter mentions that he did that track:
Both Hunter and Brad are friends of Christian Whitehead which is how they were a part of the Mania team. They all met from when they were working on the fangame called Sonic Nexus.
Brad was the director and level designer while Hunter made the music. The music Hunter made for the fangame was actually very good. Here is some of the music that he made.
Lola Shiraishi (@chibilola) was credited as the producer for Mania.
Lucas Carvalho (@midio) was one of the pixel artists for Mania.
Sergio Montealegre (@gene_hf), while not a part of the Mania team he was involved on the social media side of Sonic and appeared on camera alongside Aaron Webber, another person involved with the social media, in livestreams held on the official Sonic Youtube/Twitch accounts.
Indigo Rush (@indigorush101) is just a fellow Sonic fan. He wrote for the Sonic Stadium fan website.
Tracker TD (@Tracker_TD) is just another fellow Sonic fan.
Tracker has made fanart of Sonic in the past. Here are two that I really love and would like to share here. Here’s his design of Sonic in the CD/Eguchi/Junio style.
You’ll see that this was a quote tweet responding to Brad Flick who originally shared Tracker’s artwork and in the responses are Tom Fry, Paul Veer, and Kieran Gates, another artist for Mania.
What makes it even cooler is knowing that it was based on this illustration of Sonic with the members of the “Dreams Come True” band.
Masato Nakamura who was a part of that band would make the music for Sonic 1 and 2.
This page comes from the Sega Players Enjoy Club magazine.
Paul described in his Tumblr how doing this was like:
I got to work with feedback directly from SEGA and Sonic Team. It’s kind of incredible to think that they saw my work there, as I grew up with this series and it’s been such a huge influence on my overall artstyle.
The idea for the piece was to tie it in with Sonic’s 25th anniversary next year, so I decided to do the entire series justice and include as many characters from past and present as I could! I was a bit worried I’d have to remove some of the more obscure ones, but SEGA and Sonic Team were totally fine with it, so that was great!
The way Paul managed to get involved with Mania is actually pretty interesting. He tells of the story himself in a livestream celebrating the launch of Mania on the official Sonic channel:
Basically when the 2013 mobile Retro Engine version of Sonic 1 by Christian Whitehead and Simon Thomley was released Paul enjoyed it but felt that Knuckles was out of place as he was only in the Sonic 3 style of sprites. So he decided on his own to create a Sonic 1 styled sprite for Knuckles and showed it to Christian and that is how they connected.
Paul would also openly express wanting to work on a new 2D Sonic game with Sega.
Here are 2 tweets from 2014 where he brings this up:
During an unspecified time frame Christian would send Paul a Direct Message (DM) telling him that he was working on a game that he was going to pitch and that he will keep him updated. That game was Sonic Mania.
By the way, I believe I actually found the Sonic 1 styled Knuckles sprite he made.
Given that the username on that thread is Pietepiet which is also Paul’s username on Twitter I can say with absolute certainty that this is his sprite.
What about the sprite work that he actually did for Mania though? Paul was one of the pixel artists for the game and the major work he did was creating the sprites for characters such as Tails & Knuckles
He mentions doing those sprites in the same livestream above:
With the roll call complete it’s time to move onto the next section.
THE KOOKABURRA EMERGENCE
Brad would post a countdown until Mania’s release starting from 11 days beforehand on August 4 and with it an image of a bird, specifically a kookaburra bird.
Now the image used above specifically comes from a May 2010 article from the Australian “news.com.au” website about how one kookaburra got fat due to eating too many sausages handed out from people. Since the bird became overweight it was too fat to fly and was attacked by dogs. Luckily it survived and it was taken into the local zoo in order to be rehabilitated to lose weight.
It’s actually 3 separate images but it’s formatted in a way where it appears to look like one image. In order to demonstrate this here’s a different page where they show them as separate images:
It seems like kookaburra love sausages as shown in this little clip of another snagging one away from a guys hand. Well they are carnivorous after all:
On a semi-related note I am reminded of the story of another animal from Australia that also got too fat from eating food. A possum that broke into a bakery and ate a lot of pastries.
Although the authenticity of this photo is questionable and just looking at it from a glance the possum does look blurry in comparison to the rest of the surroundings. Someone actually tried to investigate the authenticity of the story along with the image and it looks like there was no definitive answer on whether it was genuine or false. I want to believe it’s real just for how funny it looks.
They are a bird that is primarily native to Australia and New Guinea. The name apparently comes from the Wiradjuri language word “guuguubarra”, onomatopoeia for the sound they make.
There are a few species of kookaburra as written out here:
They do this call as a way to communicate to other kookaburras in many ways like attracting a mate, claiming a territory, or just for general comradery.
Have you ever seen a TV show or movie where there’s a scene taking place in a jungle? There’s a certain sound that you may hear being used. Take for example this scene from “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark”
Personally I thought it must have been some type of monkey. As it turns out though it’s actually from the sound of a kookaburra. They don’t even commonly live in jungles or rainforests so the use of their calls in these scenes don’t really make much sense once learning about this. Here’s an article detailing their use:
They go into further research by going through old Tarzan films in order to pinpoint when the earliest use of the kookaburra sound was done as it has been reported that these films were some of the first to utilize them.
Apparently it isn’t from a dolphin and it is instead a modified sped up kookaburra laugh. Dolphins don’t really sound like that. Here is that same sound clip pitched down:
Looks like the kookaburras haven’t been given the proper credit they deserve. There not the only birds to have their call be overused in places where they may not belong either as the loon has this issue as well:
I just have one final topic involving kookaburras that I want to mention in this section and that’s it as I don’t think I will have another opportunity to ever bring this up.
These birds are a well known part of the Australian wildlife that there is a nursery rhyme about them called “Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gumtree”. Around 2008 it would be a part of a lawsuit as the owners of it, Larrikin Records, would take the band “Men At Work” to court as they claimed that one certain part in their song “Down Under” had taken from the nursery rhyme. If you somehow haven’t heard “Down Under” then I must please implore you to listen to it.
It’s one of the iconic songs of the 80s and one of my personal favorite tracks that I’ve known since I was a kid that heard it on one of those greatest hits DVDs:
The “”offending”” part is at 0:50 where the member, Greg Ham, plays the flute to the apparent tune of the Kookaburra nursery rhyme. Here’s a brief news report talking about this whole issue:
If you would just like to know what happened without delving in to all this then result of the lawsuit was that Larrikin Records won, unfortunately if I may say so, which rewarded them 5% royalties dating back to only 2002. They initially were wanting 40 to 60% in royalties by the way. This means the total amount in money Larrikin received was $100,000. Although it was estimated that the legal fees of this years-long court case was in the millions so there was such little gain for that much loss.
More consequently though the stress of the whole legal case may have likely contributed to the death of Greg Ham who suffered a fatal heart attack in 2012. Greg had felt guilt for being the one responsible for playing that part in the song and he had this to say on the matter, “I’m terribly disappointed that that’s the way I’m going to be remembered—for copying something.”
Music copyright is very strict and something that isn’t to be messed with. The Sonic series itself had also crossed itself with music copyright issues very early on with the classic games but not as severe. Here’s just a listed rundown:
Case #1
Sonic 1 and 2 were composed by Masato Nakamura from the band “Dreams Come True”. By the time Sonic 3 was being made Nakamura no longer wanted to make the music apparently after payment disputes from wanting to be paid much more and Sega refused to do so. Since Nakamura was not an in house producer this means they would have to pay royalties anytime Sega wanted to use the music he made.
When Sonic Spinball was being made at the American Sega Technical Institute they were unaware of any of this so they made a rendition of the Sonic 1 title screen jingle for their own game assuming it would be fine to do so. However, once they were notified of the situation they quickly whipped up a new jingle.
The Spinball team was unaware of all this and used the original Sonic theme at the start of their game. Development was completed and the bunch held a party to celebrate. Some of the Japanese staff working on Sonic 3 stopped by to chat, and Hirokazu Yasuhara came in and saw the opening sequence. When he asked how they had talked Sega into paying for the rights to the song, he received a roomful of puzzled stares. Everyone had assumed that all the music belonged to Sega, and with the game on its way to manufacture, the song would now have to be changed at the last minute. “Well, no one had told us about this, and we had used the original music.” Remarked former STI level artist Craig Stitt, “Howard, our music guy, quickly ran to his little room and started writing a new piece of music. At about midnight that night we released a NEW gold master version of the game, this time with our own original theme song.” Thus the song was swapped out in time, and Spinball made it out to stores on schedule.
Here’s a comparison between the two. I must warn you to lower your volume for the original version as it has that rather “distinct” Genesis sound that comes from the GEMS sound driver:
It looks like they may have patched things up with Nakamura later as his music for the series is being used again in more recent games and I’m sure he has to get his royalties along with it as well.
In 2022 “Dreams Come True” actually did a vocal cover of Green Hill Zone which sounds so superb:
While at the time of its release Sonic CD would have no issues with it’s music although it would creep up in the 2011 Retro Engine version by Christian Whitehead. The vocals in the Japanese opening & ending songs were taken out and instead replaced with alternate instrumentals. While there was never an official reason given out for their removals it is has been heavily speculated that the issue stems from the estate of Casey Rankin who did the additional vocals & wrote the lyrics for both the opening and ending. Casey had passed away in 2009. This issue may have been resolved as his vocals were restored for the version of Sonic CD on the 2022 release of Sonic Origins.
Case #3
Of course the biggest case for music copyright that this series has would be for Sonic 3 and the many producers that were involved mostly being a part of the Michael Jackson sound team. This topic can be an entire article’s worth of information so I will just say that because some of the tracks were made by that team the game was not able to be re-released for the longest time. The Steam version of Sonic 3 which came out in 2011 was followed by the games absence, missing in compilation releases that had the rest of the classic games, for an entire decade until Sonic Origins which instead replaced the Jackson team tracks with butchered versions of the prototype tracks. Here’s a Sonic Retro page detailing the topic about the music of Sonic 3:
Indigo Rush would also draw their own interpretation on a dry erase board making a joke that they are going to fight Big the Cat in the “Sonic the Fighters” style hence the angular polygonal look on both.
User (@sketchmii) actually asked how he was able to make that model to which Tracker thankfully responded. It was a composite of both Bean and Bark’s models put together in Photoshop with some additional edits as well.
I think it looks so good for what it is. Also I recognize what “lol” is but I wasn’t familar with what “orz” meant so I went to do some research. It turns out it doesn’t have a meaning it’s actually a type of emoticon representing someone who is kneeling down on their hands and knees. Here is an image demonstrating what it’s supposed to show.
Returning back to the last post from the main thread and then continuing off from it. Brad jokingly pressures to have Paul make something about the kookaburra.
1 – I now wish to see this too.
The Kookaburra, not the firing. The firing is bad.
Hunter responded to which another branch of replies were made. Brad would say it was one of the all time greatest threads he had been in and also for Paul to hurry up finishing what he said he was going to do. Paul revealed he was making an actual sprite.
…but seeing someone who actually worked on the game create a sprite of an original character makes it feel a lot more special in my opinion. He fits in with the rest of the boys.
There were a lot responses made from that sprite. Here is Brad’s reaction:
Svend Joscelyne (Dreadknux) is actually the one who made the Sonic Stadium fan website. Along with that website he was the one who started up the “Summer of Sonic” fan convention.
As a part of the 30th anniversary he was involved, along with many other Sonic fans, in a video wishing Sonic a happy birthday. This video is in the Sega Europe Youtube Channel.
Here’s another thread of comments started by user (@Spyro839) who mentioned that it would be hilarious if Fat appeared in random places in the game comparing it to finding Fake Crash in the Crash Bandicoot games:
The Wacky Workbench statue refers to a hidden room with an angel statue that is in the past version of Wacky Workbench Act 1. All there is to the room is that the statue will drop a lot of rings.
There has been theories that the sprite assets of this little room where originally for the scrapped R2 zone but that is a whole other topic in itself to say here.
Here are some additional responses other people made about Paul’s sprite
User (@UnlimtedTrees) played along with the joke of Fat being playable and expressed that they couldn’t wait to play as him and then buy all the merchandise. Would’ve loved to have seen Fat turned into a marketable plushie.
man i can’t wait to play as Fat and then buy all the merchandise
Paul made a response to Brad asking if he beat the game as Fat to which Brad said he couldn’t as Fat only had an idle sprite so he wasn’t able to move.
On the same day Paul would make a post saying that he grew attached to the silly little guy 🫏
tfw a twitter joke gets out of hand and you end up growing attached to a dumbass Sonic OC. I better be able to make this guy in Forces
*tfw could either mean “that face when” or “that feeling when”. Usually the second meaning is the more commonly used one and I’m sure that’s the one Paul used in his post.
User (@endshark) commented that Fat looks like they could fit into their own standalone game and mentioning that they are like the 90s cartoon animal mascot characters but much cooler.
1 – he almost looks like he could fit in his own game tbh, standalone from being a Sonic OC. kinda like the 90s ripoffs but cooler!!
(@pachyperfect) would respond and from their conversation mentions that she wished they could have picked a better name besides just “Fat”. However, Paul brings up a counterpoint that there is a character who is just called “Big” in the Sonic series as well. I think Big and Fat would be good friends. They could go on a Big Fat Adventure.
Brad would then make his own post for the day and instead of just posting a photo of the kookaburra again he would make a GIF from it this time. There wasn’t any substantial replies for this one so I am moving on.
Meanwhile (@Dagr8_Carlos) would show that they had been working on their own artwork of Fat based off the Fighters model made by Tracker. Still in a Work In Progress stage.
So unfortunately, I ran outta time to finish my illustration…but I made sure that I made strides with most important part. 2 B Continued..
The account for the Sonic Hacking Contest actually commented telling Brad that he will disappoint people if the kookaburra didn’t appear in Sonic Mania. Brad responded that the kookaburra does not care. Then the Hacking Contest account says something very profound. Words that have resonated with me since I first laid eyes on them.
1 – Brad, you’ll disappoint a few people if that friend of yours doesn’t show up in Mania!
The Sonic Hacking Contest is a yearly event that involves showcasing ROM hacks and mods of Sonic games. It has been around for a long time now as it apparently started in 2002.
The context and the way it is written out reminds me of the whole biblically accurate angels thing and the phrase to “not be afraid” of them for their otherworldly appearance.
I don’t want to get too religious but since I am sort of on the topic I would like to share this interesting theory I came across in regards to a Sonic 2 cheat code.
In Sonic 2 the code for the level select (19-65-09-17) is Yuji Naka’s birthday which is 1965-September(09)-17
The code for debug mode is (01-09-09-02-01-01-02-04) which is the release date of Sonic 2 being 1992-November(11)-24.
The code to get all the 7 Chaos Emeralds is (04-01-02-06) which has no significance as far as we know. However, I read a thread on Sonic Retro made by the user (@saxman) which theorizes that the numbers 4126 may have some meaning and ties it into a bible verse. Here’s the thread:
I suppose there could be the connection of having seven of something and how it represents prosperity like the 7 emeralds and Super Sonic always saving the world. Then the second quote could be like how Super Sonic is invincible.
Now remember that this is all just theory and not official. Again, I just thought this would be interesting to share.
I will add that in Sonic R there was a religious symbol that was placed within one of the racing tracks. In the Resort Island track a Jesus fish symbol, the Ichthys, was placed on one of the buildings. It was put in by Jon Burton, the founder of Traveller’s Tales, as he is of Christian religious belief.
Since the post was about Simon’s birthday I think it’s worth bringing up that when the Plus update was released for Sonic Mania many new cheat codes were added in including a code of his birthdate just like Naka’s birthdate in Sonic 2.
The code is (01-09-07-09-00-08-01-01) which is 1979-August(08)-11. Simon himself shows his birthdate on his Twitter profile bio.
What exactly does this code do though? It’s quite simple really. All it does is replace all the little animal buddies so that only the squirrels appear out of badniks and capsules. The name of the squirrels are Ricky by the way.
Below is a screenshot of the code when it is not activated. Just a regular playthrough. I chose the beginning of the Metal Sonic fight in Stardust Speedway Act 2 because it is a quick and great way to demonstrate a comparison. I will also note that I did use the level select and debug mode in both screenshots as I just wanted to get to this particular part quicker.
See here how there’s a mix of all the animal buddies.
Now here is the same part but with the code activated:
Now it’s all just Ricky.
What’s the reason of just having only Ricky though and why is tied with Simon? Well it turns out Simon has his own original character and it was based on Ricky.
The name of the character is Stealth.
I was asked for a reference sheet today, so my wife, who usually does my twitter and youtube art, drew one!
Don’t know if anybody else is interested, but here it is – the default look for my mascot character “Stealth”!
Remember what I said about there being one last major sidetrack earlier and that I will tell you when it will happen? Well it’s happening now 😉
VAPORWAVE – A BRIEF INTRO
With the spaced out letters and the use of the word “aesthetic” I think now is the time to tell you all about something. The videos Brad made with the slowed down music of Stardust Speedway Act 1 and the instances where he has also used spaced out letters are an indication that he seems to be into vaporwave, a type of music genre.
I’m not so great at explaining music genre so I’m sorry if I complete butcher this explanation but at its simplest vaporwave emerged around 2009/2010 and at it’s most simplest it remixes/alters music mostly spanning from the decades of the 80s and 90s. They will alter it by doing things like slowing it down, chopping it up, adding reverb/echo, and other techniques I might not be aware of. Here is the Wikipedia page of it:
I’m sure anyone who’s already familiar with vaporwave will know which example I will use to demonstrate how the genre sounds. You may not like the choice but it’s practically the poster child of vaporwave due to its popularity from meme use.
That’s right it’s “MACINTOSH PLUS – リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー” or just more simply known as “Macintosh Plus 420”. The Japanese in it translates to “Lisa Frank 420 / Modern Computing”. Give it a listen if you never have before:
It has been commonly said that one of the earliest points of origin for vaporwave can be attributed to videos that can be seen on the YouTube channel called “sunsetcorp”
You’ll see in the first video uploaded to the channel from 2009 which is just titled “angel” that there are many comments about it being the birth/origin of vaporwave.
I love the visuals which look something like a Rainbow Road track from the Mario Kart games. It originates from a 1984 FMV arcade racing game called “Laser Grand Prix”
You’ll see that some of the music in that album was also on his sunsetcorp channel. However the album predates those videos by a month as it had a June 2009 release while the first video was uploaded in July.
In 2010 he would release another album called “Chuck Person’s Eccojams Vol. 1” which had some of the same tracks but done in a different way:
It could be argued that vaporwave music is rather simplistic/lazy in the way it alters original music and to some extent I can understand that point. For me however I get to listen to the vaporwave track and then if I like it enough I will try to discover what they sampled from so that way I can find out some new musicians from there.
Accompanying the music are the visuals or rather as they call it “aesthetics”. Among some examples of them are the color palettes of pinks & blues, simplistic 3D models, models of palm trees & Roman columns/statue busts, VHS filters, imagery of 80s/90s television shows or commercials, and 90s internet website designs that are associated with the likes of Geocities and Angelfire.
All of this to evoke the feelings of nostalgia which thinking about it now is amusing as vaporwave itself has existed for about more than a decade now so for some it’s just about enough time passed for it to already also be nostalgic itself as well. Here is an excellent article talking about some of the imagery used:
One of the more prominent examples used in vaporwave aesthetics is of Japanese letters & Japanese 80s/90s commercials, videos games, and anime. You will see that on most vaporwave track names there is Japanese letters included as well. The preference to use anything Japanese is one of the recurring themes when it comes vaporwave aesthetics.
Perhaps, and I’m definitely going to explain this poorly, this is because Japan was a country that had a prosperous post-war economic period with the 80s being the last decade to experience this. This has since been called the “economic miracle”. Japan was at the time the second largest economy behind the United States of America. The relationship between the two countries made it so that Japan would export high quality products like cars and electronics to America.
So Americans would be exposed to Japanese products and be made familiar and enjoy the entertaining media they provided like the video games and anime they made. There was a huge interest and fascination with this foreign country that was overseas. Even though they may have not have understood the language there would also be some who would use their letters. It just looks so much more different than the English letters they are accustomed to which is why I think when it comes to vaporwave they use it.
This is just my interpretation on why vaporwave uses Japanese imagery though so you can feel free to agree or disagree with me on this.
You may also notice on some track names that the English letters are written in a very certain way. You’ll see that they are spaced out so it will look something like this:
A E S T H E T I C
However, for the more authentic vaporwave look you would make it look more like this:
ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ
The reason the second one looks different is because it is written out in what is called “Full-width”. Along with it there is also “Half-width”. These are a part of the Japanese typing system. From what I understand (and without going into too much technical detail) half-width came first then full-width was made later as there was more memory allowed to display them in that manner. Full-width makes it so the letters are much more legible.
Here is a comparison between the two in both Japanese and English:
Now with all this in mind it looks like some of the other Mania members are also into vaporwave. Here is a clip that Hunter Bridges posted on his account. You’ll see elements that all correlate to vaporwave. The fullwidth text, the 90s weather channel footage, and the altered Mania Lava Reef Act 2 track to make it sound more vintage.
Vaporwave also may have got it’s way into Sonic Mania as well. During the 2017 San Diego Comic Con panel Tom Fry, the art director, said this about the special stages:
“And as you can see, I mean, the backgrounds I mean it’s pretty trippy already but it gets really vaporwave later on as well”
Clearly with a crowd of like minded people who also knew about vaporwave they cheered when Tom mentioned it.
He ended his statement by saying “ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ”
Here is a link to the panel jumping to the part where he says this:
I think Special Stage 3 is the best example of the vaporwave look:
I additionally think Studiopolis Zone also has a vaporwave look but I’m not sure if anyone else will agree on that.
That’s not all though. A year later when Mania Plus was released there was an unused mode that was found by modder “CodenameGamma” that was called “Vape Mode” which just slowed down the music of the levels much like what vaporwave music does.
I think that was all I wanted to say about vaporwave now. I just want to assure you all that this will be the last major sidetrack I write about in this page. Everything from here on out will just be about Fat the Kookaburra okay.
BACK ON TRACK
For the 14th Brad just asked if he should probably make his last kookaburra post. From what I could find I don’t think he ever did.
You know I thought Adam was just another fan chipping in by adding in his own art of the character but as it turns out he actually had some involvement with Sonic Mania as well as his name appears in the credits.
Nice seeing friends in credits. Right @AdamRB #SonicMania #NintendoSwitch
He was one of the QA Testers for the game. QA stands for Quality Assurance. The role of a quality assurance tester is essentially to make sure that a product, in this case the game, is running properly by testing and reporting if there are any issues they can find like glitches/bugs to the developers. So these are some of the people to make sure that products come out with the least amount of issues. I commend the work they have done for this game 👍
And so on the 15th of August Sonic Mania would finally release to the masses. Brad would make a celebratory post with a picture of him along with Paul and Simon all together at the Sega of America building holding boxes of the pre-order copies of Mania.
His signed statue would appear on the launch stream of Sonic Mania by the official Sonic channel hosted by Aaron Webber and Sergio. Aaron would show off the doodle on stream.
On another stream from September 28 2017 that was dedicated to going into details for the animations of Sonic Mania they invited Tyson Hesse over to talk about the process being as he was the animation director for it. When they were taking in questions from the live chat a user named (@TheDeleter) asked Tyson what he thought about Fat the Kookaburra to which Tyson answered the question.
@Tyson What do you think of Fat the Kookabura
“‘What do you think of Fat the Kookaburra?’ I love the kookaburra. DLC. Fingers crossed.”
I would have loved to have seen Tyson actually draw his own design of Fat in his art style. It definitely would have looked great.
Speaking of art, (@Dagr8_Carlos) posted that they were finally able to complete their own artwork of Fat that they had been working on for awhile. It shows Fat atop everyone else in the Fighters roster as he reigns victorious of them all.
1 – What started as a quick sketch for a joke wound up being…actually I have no idea why I did more than I should. SO many days have past me >
Later on they would make a comment where they were considering to make a drawing based off of Paul’s sprite and if they should be a separate sidekick character to his own version of Fat and that they could be called Chubby instead. As far as I could find I don’t think they ever did go through with doing it.
Hmm…I wonder if I should draw this version too? Or maybe he can be Fat’s kid sidekick, Chubby?
Personally I think Chubby sounds like a much cuter name. It evokes things that are cute like the chubby cheeks of a baby or a rotound animal. It also reminds me of a line of soda that were targeted for kids which was called Chubby. Does anyone else remember them? They were very small bottles.
After all this Brad would comment that the kookaburra got better Sonic fanart than most Sonic characters.
The fat kookaburra got better Sonic fan art than most Sonic characters lmaaaooo
After Sonic Mania was released not much was made of Fat and everything started to quiet down. That was until the next year in 2018.
ONE YEAR LATER
With the announcement of Sonic Mania Plus, an expansion of Mania including a new Encore Mode and the playable decades long re-introductions of Mighty & Ray, Brad decided to do the countdown posts again starting on the 10th of July with the image of the kookaburra.
Here is a conversation they had with (@pachyperfect) who said that Bounce is a much better name than Fat. Here (@ColdmanHot) brings up something interesting as apparently he was told by Paul that the name Fat was questionable.
1 – bounce is a way better name than what they came up with before, dam
Well after all that the time for Mania Plus to release came through and just like Mania’s initial release everything about Fat would quiet down again.
THE NEXT SIGHTINGS
Every so often Fat would get brought up again through the years by members of the Mania team. Here’s a post by Lola doing an anniversary post in 2019 tagging Paul, Brad, and Hunter. She is quote tweeting her own post that she made about the “feedback” for Fat.
Her!? She!? Fat is a girl??? Have I been misgendering them 😱
I feel like they may have just been joking though but I don’t know what to think about it now 🤔
Though now that I’m thinking about it the convention of only having the girl characters wear clothes is weird, hold on let me finish, because that would imply the guys are just running around with just shoes and gloves on. I suppose in their world clothes aren’t essential/necessary and are treated more like accessories 🤷
Well that’s enough of that. In the next year afterwards, in 2020, Brad would do a quote tweet about the running sprite animation Paul made.
Every few months, somebody retweets this and it makes me FEEL THINGS, ilu mania pals
If only we got a sequel to Sonic Mania…although it looks like Sonic Superstars is now the spiritual successor to it with Christian Whitehead confirming that his Retro Engine physics will be used for Superstars.
Speaking of which Christian and the rest of the folks at the new company they have founded called Evening Star (which the name itself is a Sonic reference as it is the name of a track from Knuckles’ Chaotix) had been working on some 3D platformer for some time. All that was shown was a silhouette of their character and a general description of the game they were working on.
I will eagerly await once the game comes out and support the Mania crew by getting a copy and hopefully it will be excellent as it looks like it will be so far.
Back to Sonic though. In 2021 the official Sonic account would celebrate the four year anniversary release of Mania by posting artwork made by Tyson Hesse.
The Japanese official account also posted about the anniversary and even included an image of a copy of the introduction manual which had signatures of the Mania team.
8/16 marks the anniversary of the release of Sonic Mania 🎉.
The Sonic Mania Plus special box was released in 2018 and included an artbook, original soundtrack, and Mega Drive-style reversible jacket bonus goodies🎁.
What a special reveal as we found an art book signed by the ❗️❗️ development team ✨😍
Kazuyuki Hoshino, an artist for Sonic Team, would make a quote tweet revealing that the signed copy that was shown was his. Hunter would respond showing his own Sonic Mania pre-order statue which also had signatures and pointed out one in particular.
1 – I’m the owner of this art book. When the Mania team came to our office for a meeting, I asked them to sign this for me. Can you guess whose signature is on one of these?
It’s important to note that this means he just didn’t play the Encore Mode as he did play Mania. He did a livestream of the game and provided commentary insight on making the soundtrack while playing. Unfortunately, for some reason Tee decided to take down that livestream among many others and none of them were even archived.
At the very least the information that he mentioned on the stream was written out on a thread in the Sonic Stadium forums:
What are the odds that neither the link to the livestream or his Youtube page during the time he made said livestream weren’t archived on the Wayback Machine as well. There is a gap in the captures between March 2017 and September 2018 so it completely misses getting a capture of his page that contains the livestream:
Cybershell, a Sonic Youtuber, managed to take a screenshot of Tee’s page around September 2017 to show in his video titled just “Sonic Mania”. The livestream is at the very bottom left of the image.
As far as I know it’s the only other remnant of this livestreams existence. Here is the part in Cybershell’s video where he shows the page:
Today is the 5th anniversary of the release of the retro and new The 5th anniversary of the release of “Sonic Mania”🎊
Ray and Mighty from the Encore Pack, the DLC for this title.💡
It’s a fresh and somewhat nostalgic character.👾😆
Ray’s appeal when clearing a stage is seems to be synchronized with the player’s sense of accomplishment.😉
#Sonic #SonicMania
Some of the Mania members would also post about the 5th anniversary.
Here is Tee Lopes comment:
5 years of Sonic Mania, the game that put my name on the map! I’m grateful for all the opportunities and friends that came from it, and happy that it introduced so many kids to classic Sonic and inspired many others to pursue VGM composition. Here’s to the future!💙
Happy anniversary to da miracle game… #SonicMania.
Thank you for all of your kind words and support over these last 5 years. We are in good spirits at @EveningStarStdo and can’t wait to show you what we’ve been up to.
Very nice artwork! However in my opinion it would pale in comparison to the additional artwork he made along with it…
Of course, this also means it’s the fifth anniversary of everyone’s favourite Sonic character. I can’t believe y’all still haven’t unlocked them after all these years smh
It’s immaculate! This is the first time Paul has done actual artwork of Fat.
I believe that the Nintendo Life website was the only place where they showed Paul’s artwork of Fat so at the very least they showed their readers this character:
Although I only agree with the part of seeing Fat in the IDW comics. I don’t know what to feel about the whole classic/modern divide having to die.
If a character like “Ian Jr.” can make it into the IDW comics then perhaps, but not really, there is a very slight possibility that Fat can too and if you don’t know who Ian Jr. is then Chaomix, a Sonic Youtuber, made an entire video all about them which was very enjoyable and is actually how I found out about that character as well:
This was a rumored unlockable color variation of Yoshi that wasn’t actually in the “Yoshi’s Story” game. It was only seen in early footage of the game. Many of those kind of cheat code websites that required no actual verification for submissions put up how to unlock this purple Yoshi by collecting all the coins in every level. Here’s a video in the GameTrailers channel from their investigative gaming series called Pop Fiction which talks about the purple Yoshi:
I recommend checking out the rest of the Pop Fiction videos. They are really good. They even made a video talking about Michael Jackson’s involvement with Sonic 3:
I’ve given much thought about how Fat would play. What would make them different and bring a unique gameplay that doesn’t deviate too far from the classic Sonic style?
Well he is a bird so he could have flight capability like Tails or Ray. However, given that he was sort of, kind of, based on the story of that kookaburra who got too fat to fly maybe he would be more limited on how he could fly. Not to mention he doesn’t really have wings and just has regular arms like the other anthropomorphic bird characters such as Bean the Dynamite or the Babylon Rogues trio.
Perhaps he could float in the air for just a bit by flapping his arms. This can be done by repeatedly tapping on the jump buttons. The closest comparison I can think of is Yoshi’s flutter jump.
Then his additional ability would be that he could have a bounce. I mean it’d fit with the alternative name (@ColdmanHot) gave them as well.
It would be like always having a bubble shield on. This could be done by pressing down on the D-pad as you jump.
With these two abilities they could be used together. Use a bounce to get some height and then do the flutter jump like ability. I don’t know about y’all but that’s the best I could think of and I think it sounds fun. I mean what do you think?
I could already envision how Fat would look as a playable character now…
You may be thinking how did I do this. Okay you probably weren’t but just roll along with me. Unfortunately it’s not a mod. It is a mockup I made myself. How did I make Paul’s sprite scale down to the native resolution that the game has? Well I recreated it myself and not just Paul’s initial sprite but the frames from the running animation he did.
I’m sure there’s some image editing program that was capable of scaling that sprite down without losing its quality but I wouldn’t know about that so I just did these recreations. It wouldn’t work for the running frames anyways since they came from a GIF/Video.
Besides that, I liked doing the process of recreating them. For the running frames I took the GIF and went frame by frame until I could see when it looped back to the beginning. From what I counted there was 8 unique frames in total.
Since I did all those frames here’s a recreated running animation I did with them:
I am aware it is definitely not the proper speed and timing as Paul’s but I just did the best I could. Since I mentioned these are scalable here is a larger version of the mockup I did above.
Since I didn’t know what to put for the goal post I just replaced Sonic with a question mark which came from the main menu font. I also replaced Sonic in the life icon with the red question mark image which came from the Encore Mode random item box since I thought the size of it fit perfectly for the replacement. I think it also lends to a look of an incomplete state that Fat could be in with all his sprites not being done yet as if he was found in the code of the game but was left unfinished.
Placing the name “FAT” was a bit of a process. I used Ray’s score tally since that meant it would be spaced accordingly as they both are 3 letter names and the letter “A” is in the middle of both. I took the letters “R” and “Y” away. From there I added in the letter “T” from Tails and since there wasn’t the letter “F” on any of the characters names I just took the letter “E” from Knuckles and did a slight edit to make it an “F”. Since the names are colored to the corresponding character I colored in the word “FAT” with his color palette.
Now here’s a joke version I did where I actually did put something on the goal post:
I flipped Sonic’s mouth upside down so now it looks like he is bewildered. I took away his hand and replaced it with a question mark to further show Sonic’s confusion.
Here’s a different mockup I made using one of his running frames making a scene where Fat replaces Heavy Rider and is outrunning Sonic in Titanic Monarch:
I was prompted to do this one from the comment left by (@Nathan_DGR) that mentioned that it would be cool to have a stage where you have to outrun him.
Here is one last mockup where Sonic finds Fat instead of a giant ring in one of the hidden rooms in Studiopolis.
This one was inspired from the comment by (@Spyro839) who said it would’ve been funny to find him in random places throughout Mania.
I would imagine once you enter a hidden room with him in it that he would jump off screen in the style of Sonic CD’s “I’m outta here” and as he does so he drops off a randomized item box. I think it would be a nice little incentive to finding him.
Enough with the brainstorming/wish fulfillment though. I actually responded to the post of Paul’s artwork showing him that I recreated his sprites along with the Titanic Monarch mockup as an example of using those recreated sprites.
You’ll see that the both of those posts got 1 like each. Both of those likes came from Paul himself.
I felt so glad to know that at the very least he acknowledged my posts and gave them a like. I was very ecstatic and I am very appreciative of him doing that. Thanks so much Paul! 😊
That just about wraps it up for this article. For now…who knows when Fat will make his next appearance.
I hope you “learned/laughed/loved” reading through all of the contents of this article 🤪
I just wanted to highlight a character that was made by essentially just a couple of friends and fans of the Sonic series.
AFTERWORD
This is the section where I will give my own thoughts, opinions, ramblings, etc. So this part is optional. You don’t have to read it if you want to.
There’s going to be a lot of ramblings as this will be more “stream of conscious” writing on the process of writing this whole thing. I will segment these ramblings too.
I’ll admit I did go through so many tangents on this article but I was just really eager to tell just about anybody of the many things I have come across while being on the internet. I do apologize if it was too much 😅
Everyone has their own stories and experiences being on the internet and this was an experience that I went through along with other Sonic fans going through those Twitter threads. I wanted to share these threads with others so they won’t get lost to the sands of internet time.
To be honest though I only witnessed the initial thread where Paul showed his sprite that he made. At the time I would lurk all the accounts of the people who were involved with Mania to see if they would ever post anything related to Mania’s development. A year afterwards when he posted showing off the running sprite animation I thought it looked pretty great so I saved both that post and the original sprite post links and pasted them into a Google Docs for any later viewing.
Later on around 2020 I realized that for both posts Paul was responding to tweets made by Brad who was counting down the days for Mania and then Plus’ release so I gathered all the countdown posts of Brad to archive. That’s when I decided that I should do a little write up about this character and the countdown posts made. I wanted to also include Eggette since she was related to Mania as well and cover some background information on what exactly a kookaburra bird is. It was only just going to be that…just a “little” article.
I planned on this article actually being my first one with the original shorter length in mind but I realized it would probably be better if I finished up the Satoshi Okano one instead as I was also working on that one too. I’ve been juggling several articles on topics of Sonic that are put on hold as life is always very busy.
My reasoning to do this article second is that I felt the information on Satoshi Okano was much more important and needed to be out there and spread to other fans much sooner. It also has a lot more closer ties to the game series as opposed to the contents in this one. Meanwhile for this one it is only loosely tied to Mania and is tied more to the fandom side of Sonic.
Here is where I made a Google Docs where I started putting all the relevant links I needed together:
This time I was conscious of the decision to place all of my writings into WordPress as opposed to the one I did for the Okano article where I wrote a good portion on a Google Docs document and then had to move all of it into WordPress. That’s why it has a much smaller file size in comparison to the Okano one:
When I actually started writing this article I wanted to do an introduction on Sonic Original Characters though that caused me to also briefly mention recolors which in turn made me write about how some color palette glitches caused some actual Sonic comic characters to be made from said glitches.
For the Eggette companion piece I wrote all of that information that was in it as a part of this article’s section on her but I realized it was way too many things I wanted to show and it would just bloat this article along with having even more images to load. I decided to just separate it and move all the contents into its own smaller article just so that the stuff I had already written out wouldn’t need to be scrapped.
Another thing I wanted to do for this article was highlight some of the people that were in the Twitter threads that I personally recognized. However, that would’ve also bloated the article too so I decided not to do that. I’ll just mention some of the people I do recognize here though because I really want to.
First is (@huttaburger) who makes such excellent pixel art. They have made some on Sonic which you can see here:
The second is (@Nerkin1985) who actually now goes by (@NerkinPixel). He makes such high quality artwork that looks like it could be official. Here is a fanart he made for Mania:
The third person I want to mention is (@MurasakiKemono) who is a developer for the Sonic Utopia fangame. I’ve got an amusing story to tell that involves them.
So I was watching this video on the top 10 Sonic fangames and they put in Sonic Utopia as one of the entries. It’s great that they acknowledged it but it was the moment when they mentioned the supposed developers which I thought was so amusing:
If you don’t know what I meant from that excerpt then the host said that the developers were Yooka Laylee. The problem with that is not only is it astronomically wrong but that is the title of a 3D platforming game:
Who wrote for that video? How did they get it so wrong that they said the name of a game? These types of listicle channels tend to really not do proper research 🤓
Here is the part where Murasaki gets involved as they would respond to a comment made by another one of the developers of Utopia, The Great Lange:
This is a really old capture of the comments so that’s why it shows an older layout of them
You know I was glad that I archived the original sprite thread since Hunter Bridges deleted his comment that Paul would respond to by showing his sprite so the context wasn’t fully lost.
Here’s a comparison of a capture from 2018 (the first one I ever did of this) and a later capture of the same page from 2020
Hunter has a tendency to delete posts. Tyson Hesse as well because he actually responded in two of the separate countdown threads but they were deleted:
Lucas Carvalho (@midio) also had a deleted response as well:
Since I hadn’t been in any of those countdown threads until I archived them in 2020 I don’t know what any of them said. They might not have posted anything too significant but it just really makes me wonder what they really said. I guess I could say that “the archives are incomplete”
By the way I am not trying to say that what they do by deleting tweets is bad because I can understand why they would do so. I also do it as well on occasions for upkeep so my own Twitter account isn’t inflated with having too many unnecessary posts on it.
Also since I was finishing up this writing I noticed that Indigo Rush has deleted their account which I think is quite unfortunate. I actually interacted with them before in passing:
I can assure you that the 1 like on those 2 posts came from Indigo.
They must have had their reasons for deleting their account and I will not prod any further than that. Indigo was one of the key players in that thread where Fat the Kookaburra was born so it’s a shame to see their account go. With Hunter’s deleted responses and Indigo’s account no longer existing it has broken up and fragmented the sprite thread much more as time has passed. You can see it here again for yourself to see:
This is why I’m so glad to have archived everything I could whenever possible.
Also can I just say that I really do not like the new layout of Twitter. Perhaps I am biased because I joined Twitter around 2018 but I really loved that layout from 2018 to around 2020 or whenever that layout sadly died.
I want to add on to the point with the Purple Yoshi rumor by talking about my own gaming rumor experiences.
I loved the time in gaming when rumors and fake cheats were prevalent throughout the internet of the 90’s and 2000’s. Since there weren’t people datamining games in order to find every single detail of them people wouldn’t know if they had seen everything a game offered. So there was still some mystery to them.
I remember going on the GameWinners website, which was shown in that Pop Fiction video I linked, to find out about codes and unlockables that were actually legitimate. I don’t think I ever really fell for any of those fake cheats/unlockables because they sounded too hard or convoluted to do.
The one I do remember the most is one involving the game Megaman & Bass
There were 100 CDs to collect in the game but there were some cheat websites that reported about a 101st CD. Here are some pages that I could still find that have that cheat:
I also remember the Pokemon rumors I heard back in elementary school like catching either Jirachi or Deoxys on the moon in Pokemon Emerald. I’ve found some videos that “show” catching either of them recreating the event by utilizing ROM hacking: [1] – [2] – [3]
I’m sure this convinced some kids into thinking it was real.
I never believed in these “going to the moon” rumors even as a kid and I think my reasoning for it was quite amusing. It was because I couldn’t imagine how the player character would have a sprite drawn of an astronaut suit and how it would look like. After all, they were allegedly going to outer space. Since I couldn’t imagine how it would look I just figured these rumors were fake.
I also remember some classmate who would chat with me during lunchtime telling me blatantly false Pokemon things like Eevee having a Flying-type evolution with the creative name of Skyeon or Groudon having a baby form with the equally creative name of Groudy. He told me other stuff but I don’t remember any of it that well anymore. Only those 2 I mentioned stuck out to me.
I knew he was lying but I just accepted whatever he said because he would share his snacks with me 😆
I wonder where he heard those things? Did he find that stuff somewhere on the internet? Did he have an older sibling who was messing with him by telling him lies? Or did he make those things up himself to mess with me thinking I would just believe it?
I wonder where he is at now and if he even remembers telling me all that false stuff.
Final point here okay.
With this article I hope I also introduced someone out there to vaporwave if they had never heard of it before.
You know what? Instead of just filling this part up with too many tracks I have decided that I will just share a Google Docs list of vaporwave tracks that I listen to.
This will expand on what I already said about Eggette in a section of that article. Here you will see all the things created off of this fan made character.
I will also briefly mention two other fan made characters that stemmed from Eggman.
Upon the release of Sonic Mania more specifically on August 28 2017, Twitter user Alpha Gamboa (@blackbookalpha) had posted about an observation they made with the Flying Battery Zone boss. Now sprite misinterpretations are always rather amusing to see just to get the perspective of someone else who might have seen something different.
The first Sonic game has an example of this within Marble Zone.
What was just supposed to be an upside down Eggman was being seen as someone else all together. Many responses were made from this post writing about their adoration for this character. It even got the attention of some of Sonic Mania’s very own artists.
Lucas Carvalho (@midio), one of the pixel artists, wrote:
While Omelette does fit with the whole egg motif I am more partial to another name that was suggested around. That name being Eggatha. See because it is close to the name Agatha. Besides Omelette is literally just the name of the egg dish so it doesn’t sound as creative.
Alpha Gamboa themselves preferred the name Eggette. If you noticed in his post with the initial drawings the name appeared in there too but with a question mark. They were probably not entirely sure of choosing that name up until that point.
For those asking, you can name this OC anything you want. I prefer Eggette since the Omelette tag makes me hungry every time I search for it
Alpha Gamboa would choose to make her Eggman’s niece showing that she came from a brother of Eggman. Although it leaves the placement of her mother unknown.
I love that this supposed brother is essentially just a reference to that concept art of Eggman in pajamas back when he was considered as one of the choices for the main character of the series before Sonic.
Alpha Gamboa would also draw a version of Eggette where she is much older to see how she would look like in the role of Eggman.
Alpha Gamboa’s character would spawn so much fan art. Here’s a few I personally selected as my favorites. I must emphasize “a few” as there are so many more I like but don’t want to fill too much here.
Here is another one where she has gotten all the Chaos Emeralds. Her hair already is kind of spiky looking so I wonder how she, and even Eggman for that matter, will look like in a super form.
Here is a collage of different drawings of her. I love the one where she is wearing pajamas with the shirt having the Flying Battery boss on it which is where she originated from and she is holding on to a Tails Doll. I also love the one where Antoine, a character that was from the Archie comics, is teasing her by saying “Omelette Du Fromage” to which she tells him to shut up. Oh and of course I love the one where she is practically suffocating Tails and calling him fluffy.
I love this one as it shows her dressed in themes of the 4 new original zones in Mania. For Studiopolis she is dressed as a movie director. For Press Garden she is wearing a Japanese kimono. For Mirage Saloon she is dressed as a cowgirl. For Titanic Monarch she is just in the boss machine of that zone.
Here is one of my absolute favorite of all the favorites. It is so high quality and it looks like it is emulating the look of the Japanese 90s artwork of the classic games.
Here is one where it has her doing a tea party with some badniks which I find to be very cute. I love the Splats badnik being in a dress along with the Motobug badnik in a top hat and monocle. I suppose the only friends she would have are machines, just like me with my computer ;D
Here is another where she uses toy robots. The toy Amy is the only one that actually appeared in Mania as a part of the Metallic Madness boss. I like the idea of the toy Sonic using a wheel to run and the toy Tails using a propeller to fly. You can see in this drawing that they also named her Yolki Dolki Robotnik.
Here is one that was drawn on paper but I think it looks so official. The line art is so clean. It’s like an animation model reference sheet. I could see they even made it so that they could show how her legs look under the dress by making the dress see through along with the shoulder parts. By the way, I’m aware that they aren’t actually transparent it’s just for better readability on how the design works.
Here are some drawings of Eggette and Eggman together
Another paper drawing. This one also has such clean line art. This one was done by Jennifer Hernandez who actually did some artwork for the official Sonic comics: https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Jennifer_Hernandez
It looks like Eggman is delightfully introducing us to Eggette as she does the “tongue out, pulling eyelid down” gesture which is apparently called “akanbe”
I like how dark the black contrasts with the white of the paper. Having Eggette’s hair be outlined in white in order to not blend into Eggman was a good detail. Also like just how grand the word “EGGS” looks.
Here is a crossover one where Eggette, holding a toy version of the Flying Battery spider, is with Eggman paired up with the Megaman series antagonist Dr.Wily and a fan made character that was named Weaseletta holding their own Terror Teddy.
Weaseletta & Terror Teddy were designs submitted by a fan for a Megaman 6 boss design contest. These designs, among a slew of others, were shown in volume 44 of the Nintendo Power magazine dated from January 1993.
I always find it cool whenever fans are allowed input on the creation of something. Here is a page where they catalog all the design contests they did for those Megaman games: https://megaman.fandom.com/wiki/Boss_character_contestHere is another crossover which pits Eggman and Eggette riding in their Egg Mobiles against Bowser and Bowser Jr. from the Super Mario Brothers series riding in their Clown Cars.
Here is a different crossover where Eggette herself is paired with the fan character Bowsette, who also spawned a lot of fan art.
Bowsette was a fan made character made a year after Eggette in 2018. It derived from the then announced game New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe which introduced a new power up called the Super Crown that was exclusive for the character Toadette and it would transform her into Peachette. As the name suggests it basically turns Toadette into a Peach clone.
Someone made a little comic showing what if Bowser used the Super Crown and that is how it started a trend of others making their own fanart from this new form.
By the way, I never really liked the choice to make Bowsette blonde and I know it’s because it was based off of Peachette but I’ve seen iterations of Bowsette where she is dark skinned and has red hair which I think looks much better. Not only does that make the design more distinct but it fits Bowser more as he has red hair.
Apparently it turns out Nintendo had an idea that was similar to Bowsette and could have appeared in Mario Odyssey. This was found in an artbook for Odyssey:
Here is one in an art style I find cute and unique where Eggette is with Eggman and a character named Katella who was from the 1993 animated series “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Katella
Katella’s only appearance was in the 40th episode titled “Zoobotnik”
She falls madly in love with Eggman, or I should say Robotnik in this instance, when she meets him but he does not love her back as she is too strong and physically aggressive for him.
You know with that fanart above I could imagine that she could possibly fill the role as the mother of Eggette. She’s even got a red jeweled tiara like Eggette.
Here is a link to the episode where she appears if you would like to see it:
This guy came from a 2010 4chan thread where people were trying to figure out a connect the dots page which came from the Archie Sonic comic issue 107 from 2002.
I found a high resolution digital version of this page which you can see here I guess if you want to try it out yourself:
Alongside are drawings of Sonic, Tails, and Sally which I believe were done by Ken Penders. With only the vague instructions of connecting the dots of the same color all the people in the thread struggled to figure out what exactly the figure is supposed to be.
One person posted this as their result which is how Haggard was spawned
Apparently it’s supposed to be a side profile view of Eggman but in one of the many variations of the American Robotnik design.
I can see why there was trouble figuring this out.
Here is the actual full thread where all of it occured:
Did anyone else used to go on FunnyJunk? I don’t know many others who have so I’m just wondering. I remember when that site was green colored and even yellow colored much further back.
Here’s two of the ones I found good enough to show here:
Something conflicting I’ve found in my research is another 4chan thread dated from 2009, so a year before the thread I linked above, which has the same premise of doing that connect the dots page and also contains similar posts with Haggard in it as well. So what are the exact origins of Haggard then?
That’s all I could say about Haggard. I’ve seen the character before in passing so I thought it would be something interesting to bring up here as I don’t think many people know about him. Back to Eggette once more now.
While there was a fervor for Eggette there was another original character that was made just right before Mania was released. This time coming from some of the actual Sonic Mania team members along with a few fans.
To find out more about that original character go to this article
Discover who Satoshi Okano is and how their artwork paved the way for the modern Sonic redesign
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UPDATED JANUARY 2024
After the release of Sonic & Knuckles in 1994 the series itself would lay low for a while. During that period there would only be releases of spinoffs like Sonic Triple Trouble, Knuckles Chaotix, Tails Adventures, and Tails’ Skypatrol. Sonic Team itself would move on to create Nights into Dreams for the Sega Saturn in 1996. In that same year Sonic 3D Blast, developed by Traveler’s Tales, was released for the Sega Genesis.
The next mainline Sonic game was supposed to be Sonic X-treme and was being developed at Sega Technical Institute (STI). However, after several development issues and delays the game had to ultimately be cancelled. In its place a Sega Saturn version of 3D Blast was quickly developed. The special stages were completely rehauled and would actually have input from some Sonic Team members.
While Japan would not get 3D Blast for the Mega Drive until compilation re-releases like Sonic Mega Collection, for whatever reason the Saturn release wouldn’t be until 1999, three years later. To be more specific it was on October 14 1999 the same day Sonic Adventure International was also released as shown in this archived webpage:
As for 3D Blast it would receive entirely new art of the characters that is featured on its cover and manual.
Here’s how Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Dr. Eggman look like:
Here’s the art for the four different Flickies in the game:
For the longest time it was pretty safe to assume this art was created by Yuji Uekawa, the person responsible for the modern Adventure redesigns, as 3D Blast‘s Japanese release was right after Adventure’s and just the fact that the art in both games looked rather similar. However, around 2019 an individual stepped up to finally take credit for what’s theirs. Their name, Satoshi Okano.
In one of the earliest instances of Okano commenting he decided to reply to a Twitter post made by the account (@VGDensetsu) which showed off a particular art piece with only a vague, guessed credit towards Yuji Uekawa.
While this post was from 2016 it looks like it got to Okano’s attention just three years later in 2019. He made a reply urging the account to post the correct information as he made the art contained within.
No.This is my illustration.Check on magazine credit.Please tweet the correct information.
He would make a seperate post on taking credit along with Sachiko Kawamura for making the background. Okano wrote out his post in Japanese and was also kind enough to provide an English translation along with it as well.
これは上川祐司さんの仕事じゃなくて私、岡野聡の仕事です。３Ｄのコピーもね。背景の青い３Ｄを作ったのは川村幸子さんです。 This isn’t Mr. Yuji Uekawa’s work. This work is Satoshi Okano’s work. and then,Ms. Sachiko Kawamura was making blue/3D background :)
Now who exactly is Satoshi Okano? What role did he have with the Sonic games? Prior to being at SEGA Okano had worked at KAZe on a few games with his first seeming to be the 1990 Famicom game Abarenbou Tengu (Renamed Zombie Nation in North America) where he would just have a “Special Thanks” credit for the game. He did the artwork which would appear in the games manual.
According to Okano it was a role that was just a part-time job. Apparently he also had worked at HAL Laboratories as mentioned in this post:
Yes. The title was zombie nation. I was engaged by a part-time job for the first time. I’ll continue just making the game of the Meldac. I changed my job in HAL Laboratory, Inc. The interview official at that time ware Satoru Iwata&Shigeru Miyamoto&Shigesato Itoi.😀
Wanting to learn more information about his involvement at HAL I decided to ask him some questions about it. He was generous enough to take the time to answer all the questions I wanted to ask.
In September 1995, one floor of the Nintendo Building in Kanda was renovated and we gradually gathered together. There were also a number of beginners in game production, and I remember that I was “dreaming too much” when I moved there to step up my game production skills.
There’s not much to talk about other than learning about 3D tools. Sorry…
When I was a designer for KAZe, there was a recruitment advertisement on the back cover of the best-selling game magazine called Famicom Tsushin.
I had no interest in selling a hit, so I decided to take a leap of faith and apply. Maybe you can find it somewhere if you look for it in Jack’s Beanstalk Project.
The other thing Okano mentioned in his response was “Jack’s Beanstalk Project”
This refers to the codename of a photography game that eventually became Pokemon Snap. The development period of that game was long and full of issues as they struggled with the concept of a game involving photography and most of the people who got hired through the recruit ad were very new to the gaming industry. If you would like to know more about the development then here is a page talking about it. It is in Japanese only:
A whole year. Over the course of that year, I couldn’t make friends with them. I still can’t sort that out.
Mr. Iwata took me out to dinner and said, “If you can’t get along with this team, your only options are to work at the headquarters in Yamanashi or quit.” I chose the latter
Here’s his art on a Super Famicom game titled Uchuu Race: Astro Go! Go! which was released in 1994:
Here is some additional material for this game:
The source for the images above, including the concept art for the other games, comes from a series of tweets he made with this being one of them as an example:
If you have noticed one of the images above has “Astro Go! Go! 2” on it so he was asked if a sequel was planned and he confirmed that that was as far as it went. It was only ever planned:
I love your work on Astro Go Go! So colorful and fun!
The corner of the image says “star child TV for Nintendo satellite system” which was likely in reference to the Nintendo Satellaview which was a Japanese exclusive peripheral for the Super Nintendo, or rather Super Famicom as it was called over there.
After attempting to find additional information from that image and failing to do so I just asked him myself to see if he will answer and he did. I provided my question in both English and Japanese.
His answer is much clearer in Japanese so I will translate that portion. I have used an online translator called “DeepL” which is a much better translation alternative to Google Translate.
The president of Kaze Inc. had other ideas besides games. Perhaps a plan to create karaoke with Nintendo’s satellite system, as I recall.
So this was supposed to be something involving karaoke then. That explains the musical note which appears on one of the characters in the image. Here’s one last project that was scrapped but went much further then the previous two above. There was a Sega CD titled Burning Fists: Force Striker that was nearly completed but was still cancelled regardless. More information for this game can be found here:
He would answer and provide illustrations of two characters he made. One of them was previously shown in the batch of artwork in one of the other posts above.
私はこのスト2に対抗するはずだった格闘ゲームのボスをデザインしドット絵を作りました。
Sega was the one of the landing net in opposition to Street Fighter for this title. But I was said to be by which this wasn’t sold. I had designed the boss of this game and had developed a game.
I designed and made dots of the fighting game bosses that were supposed to compete with this Sto. 2.
Dots is just another way to say pixels by the way. From what I understand “Sto. 2” is a way they abbreviate or shorten the name Street Fighter 2 in Japanese.
Additional information about this cancelled game can be found in these two other posts from other developers if you’re curious:
Translation via DeepL I worked part-time at a game company when I was a student, and after graduating from art college, I started working at Sega Games Inc. and was involved in the “Sonic the Hedgehog” game series.
Business Plus, 経営者インタビュー [Management Interview] by Kaoru Sugita. June 2019
I was a part-time (illustrating and drawing game screens) designer at KAZe since my junior year of college. I found the position at art college.
I was immediately offered the position as an employee, I became an employee of KAZe in May 1993, while also drawing illustrations for magazines for young children.
KAZeには3年弱勤めて、96年2月か3月に辞めました。 HAL Lab.の返事が遅かったので先に合格通知が来たある会社に2ヶ月だけ正社員で勤めましたが、「任天堂陣営に行きたい。」と無理を言ってジャックの豆の木プロジェクトに参加しました。
結果その会社とHALでは何のタイトルもリリースしていません。😅
I worked at KAZe for a little under three years and quit in February or March 1996. HAL Lab. was slow to respond, so I went to work full-time for two months at a company that had sent me an acceptance letter, but I insisted, “I want to go to Nintendo” I joined the Jack’s Beanstalk Project.
As a result, that company and HAL have not released any titles.
According to him one of the first jobs he did was debugging “Christmas Nights”.
1 –
I know it’s a long shot, but while you’re here posting concept art from old game prototypes, do you by any chance have any pictures of the deleted hidden boss named “Self”/”Selph” from Nights into Dreams?
Yes. I left the company in September and started working in October. I found out about Sega’s recruitment through a Famitsu ad, and at that point I thought it was going to be Pokemon.
I’m “Space Race Astro Go! Go!” I remembered that I designed a “bat character” for the game. Rather than admiring Nintendo, I said, “I want to make cool and cute games.”
This means he left HAL in September 1996 and then joined SEGA around October 1996
For clarification since he mentioned Pokemon in that response I asked him if he was referring to the fact that the Jack’s Beanstalk Project became Pokemon Snap.
Did you mention “Pokemon” in that comment because it reminded you of the same process you went through to join “HAL” and work on “Jack’s Beanstalk Project”?
That project itself eventually became “Pokémon Snap”
If you look for “Sega recruitment ad” in “96” you’ll find this ad online, too. When I discovered this, the plan for Kanda’s floor was “Let’s make this project about Pokemon.”
I didn’t understand the content and couldn’t make friends, so I decided to apply to Sega.
I followed his suggestion and was able to find the recruit ad for SEGA. I asked him if I found the correct one. I found a sale listing page of the recruit ad which I included in the question
これが正しい「SEGA」のリクルート広告でしょうか?
Is this the correct “SEGA” recruitment advertisement?
I wasn’t able to find what exact issue of Famitsu the SEGA recruit ad came from but the sales list page says it was in Sega Saturn Magazine so I went through issues of that magazine from 1996 and was also able to find it there. I provide the exact source in a response
It seems that the recruitment advertisement was also published in “Sega Saturn Magazine”. The page I linked to [the sales listing page]says it’s from there.
I found the exact source for which volume it appears in.
I watched every page of the Magazine. I remember there was an ad before the feature I expected to see. It is “Knights”. Maybe this is it! Thank you very much.🥰
YES.The tool (soft merge) I learned at HAL Lab was the same as Sega. Mr. Iwata’s programmer-style judge also seemed to fall from my eyes.
Translation of the Japanese portion as it gives a much clearer response:
Yes. The tools I learned at HAL Lab (Soft Image) were the same as SEGA. Mr. Iwata’s way of coming up with answers like a programmer was also eye-opening to me.
After he died, his wife mailed me about family temple, & the next time I went to Kansai, I decided to put my hands together in front of the grave…
Translation of the Japanese portion as it gives a much clearer response:
After he passed away, his wife told me about his family temple in a letter, and I have decided to join hands in front of his grave the next time I go to Kansai.
At the time Okano would talk with Kazuyuki Hoshino on music and in particular street culture as Hoshino understood it too. This would make Hoshino give him the opportunity to make new art.
I talked with Kazuyuki Hoshino -san about music and the culture in those days, he had understanding in street culture.
That is why he would nominate for me “Would you describe a new art of Sega Saturn magazine and sonic jam?”.
Hoshino had been a part of Sonic Team since at least 1993 starting with Sonic CD where he was credited in various roles like Character Designer, Special Stage Designer, Visual Design, Illustrations, and Sprite Design. Most notably he was the character designer for both Metal Sonic and Amy Rose.
Sonic CD itself contained hidden images put in by certain developers that were seen by inputting certain number combinations in the sound test. It’s where the rather infamous “Majin” image comes from which was put in by Masato Nishimura.
The understanding of street culture is very evident in the image Hoshino put in:
K.H are the initials of Kazuyuki Hoshino. Please also note the “Can I kick it?” phrase.
Okano tells Aitchison that he was excited about the new opportunity: “I thought ‘I’ll never have a chance like this again! How lucky!’”
He may have not known it at the time but this piece would become influential to the series moving forward. As Okano mentioned in the tweet above this would appear in the SEGA Saturn Magazine as the cover for “Vol. 22 1997 07/04” and in Sonic Jam as a viewable bonus image when the disc is inserted into a PC.
Similar to what Hoshino had in his hidden Sonic CD image, Okano would incorporate the phrase “Kick It Jam!” in the piece. Others at the company would not understand what the phrase meant.
*Please note the image of this tweet has been altered for a cleaner look due to the post Okano was responding to being deleted. It was not even archived so I have altered Okano’s post through simple “Inspect element” editing. It’s frustrating when people delete posts which won’t allow for proper context of the entire conversation but I digress at this point.
I drew with a in 3d in ‘kick it jam!’ sonic illustration in ’96. But that couldn’t get understanding at the inside of the company. It was the slang which is often used in HIPHOP.
COMMENT FROM SONIC TEAM We produced this image of Sonic with the wish that he’d always be provocative, always be ahead of its time. For the back pattern, we tried to make the initial “S” look like the mark of a hero. (Designer – Okano)
The “S” would stand for Sonic of course.
Similar to the previous tweet I also did some editing on this one.
You must see blue CG of the background well. Then you can find a mark of ‘S’. This is S in sonic. Will it be like a superman❓😄
These are free advertising cards. There was such a younger student in the sonic team. “I entered SEGA on seeing this. “Project sonic means the secret name of sonic adventure & new sonic🦔🦔🦔
Satoshi Okano’s influence off of street culture and the use of the “Kick It Jam!” phrase would seep into the upcoming Sonic game at the time as he would be the one to give it a new name. The name he chose, Sonic Jam.
“The “Sonic Jam” title was my idea. My SEGA coworkers would ask me ‘what does that mean?’ I would politely turn and explain it to them like this: ‘The jam is like the jam in a jazz session. It means it’s packed with cool stuff.’”
Interestingly enough, Sonic Jam had another name that was being considered and that was Sonic Ages. Special thanks to Sonic Retro user (@Vertekins), yes the same Vertekins who provided the translation above, for pointing out this information here:
According to the above, one of Sonic Team’s original titles they had in mind for Sonic Jam was “Sonic Ages” (“ソニックエイジス” “Sonikku Eijisu”)
Sega Saturn Magazine ■ “So the first is “Sonic Jam”, a 4-pack of classics?”
Naka ■ “Yes. At first, we talked about wanting to do something like “Sonic Ages”. But Hamano here is the main person working on the project whilst me and Ohshima are doing other jobs. So we’re mainly providing advice.”
Source: Sega Saturn Magazine 1997 04/25 Vol 13 Page 29
It seems like this name was supposed to tie in to the Sega Ages line of games that were on the Saturn as pointed out by user (@Ted618) on the same thread just a post below from the one (@Vertekins) wrote.
I personally would not have made the connection so thanks for pointing this out.
IIRC it was also going to be named under the Sega Ages series of Saturn ports at some point, which gives that more sense.
Sega Ages is a line of re-released games that began on the Sega Saturn with the first game under this line being Sega Ages Vol. 1 Syukudai ga Tant-R which had a release date of May 24 1996.
To go even further, according to Okano Sonic Jam was also going to possibly be named Sonic Mania. Yes that’s right, Sonic Mania! It was a name that apparently came from Kazuyuki Hoshino and given that he is still at SEGA to this day it’s possible he may have been the one to give the name to the 2017 game, which itself was initially being named Sonic Discovery, especially given as Mania contains reimagined levels of the mainline classic games.
By the way, my idea adopted the title called ‘SONIC JAM”. Hoshino-san showed an idea called ‘SONIC MANIA’. He carried out the idea after 20 years passed ❗️👍
By the way, the idea to implement reimagined levels from the classic games was also something the Sonic Team, specifically Takashi Iizuka, suggested:
Mania’s dev story is pretty neat actually, and I’m sure we’ll discuss it in the fullness of time but the short of it is this:
Our initial proposal was actually to do a rather modest little original 2D game & bundle in the remasters to sweeten the deal. Iizuka-san then suggested the “Mania” concept of re-imagining the classic Zones along with our new Zones as one cohesive game, and our team went to work coming up with a new story and ideas to go with it. So yeah, we’ve really been able to run with it, and produce something considerably more grandiose (classic zones have new BGs, layouts, bosses & gimmicks after all).
“So we get to the end of our presentation meeting. We had the game up on the screen and then Iizuka-san just casually turns to us and just says ‘I have many questions.’ and then that was it. We were kind of like herded out the room. We went to lunch. And we were sort of like ‘What’s going to happen?'”
“We were brought back in about an hour later and then Iizuka-san rolls in this whiteboard and starts writing a list of games down. He starts writing Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic CD, Sonic & Knuckles. And I’m like ‘Where is this going?’ and then it ends with two words, Sonic Mania.”
Sonic Mania Comic Con Panel July 22 2017
Timestamp: 14:10
Title: Sonic Mania: Behind the Scenes Panel SDCC 2017 by The Sonic Stadium
Upload Date: July 24 2017
I don’t like to personally add conjecture to writings intended to be purely informative but is it possible during this meeting when they were taken to lunch in that hour that Iizuka consulted with other members of Sonic Team, specifically Hoshino, and the name Sonic Mania was thrown out there again to which Iizuka then showed to Christian Whitehead’s team which was then ultimately accepted. Just a thought. Then again Iizuka was also the director for Sonic Jam so he may have just recalled the name himself when they were going through their own naming process for that game.
One of the reasons Sonic Jam was even greenlit in the first place was to make a concerted effort to create more awareness of the Sonic brand in Japan. This brand awareness campaign would be called Project Sonic.
Something to note about this logo is that it was also used in Sonic Pocket Adventure, which was released in 1999 for the Neo Geo Pocket Color, as it’s title cards for acts.
In 2022 a new campaign was made and it would carry on the name of this campaign as it is called Project Sonic ’22. This one is to promote Sonic Frontiers and the sequel to the Sonic movie from 2020. This campaign even uses the same type of logo but with Modern Sonic instead.
A new render of Modern Sonic is also doing the same pose:
Not only did they bring back the name of the campaign for this but they are also using the “Welcome To The Next Level” slogan which was used during the 1990s originally coming from North American marketing: https://segaretro.org/Welcome_to_the_Next_Level
Despite being a Japanese creation, Sonic has always been more popular in the west as opposed to the country of his origin. This seemed to be a part of the goal however as Sonic’s creation focused on trying to appeal more towards western audiences with the releases of the mainline classic games even being prioritized to come out first in those markets before Japan.
Returning back to the original campaign, Naoto Ohshima and Yuji Naka in an interview with the magazine Saturn Power, (No. 2) the July 1997 issue page 9, explained the origins of Project Sonic.
Q: What can you tell us about Project Sonic? A: Initially this project started as a company project. One of the games which the Sonic Team did was Jam. This game’s been written for people who’ve never played a Sonic game before. When we made NiGHTS we received a lot of letters asking us what the Sonic Team was and who Sonic was. That’s why we started this project; we wanted to introduce those people to Sonic.
The Project Sonic label would span three games. Sonic Jam, Sonic R, and Sonic 3D Blast in that order. The logos could be seen on the back of each game’s case and disc itself.
During this period the next mainline Sonic game, Sonic Adventure, was being developed as well. It turned out that Sonic Jam’s 3D “Sonic World” was the remnants of what little was worked on for the Sega Saturn until Adventure was moved on to the Dreamcast due to the Saturn already reaching the end of its lifespan.
In an interview with Retro Gamer in the December 2007 issue Iizuka describes these events
“Yes, we’d been developing our own full 3D Sonic game, Sonic Adventure. However, due to technical issues and the timing of the upcoming Dreamcast project, we had to end it and instead incorporated it into the Saturn’s Sonic Jam. We then moved development for Sonic Adventure on to the Dreamcast.”
Unfortunately, I could not find an actual scan of the full magazine as the only source for this snippet was found here:
To give credit where it’s due (also because it seems as time passes it will get lost) according to posts over on Sonic Retro and Sonic Stadium the images were taken by (@namineahtellai)
By the way (@namineahtellai) now goes by TheEmuEmi, which is a name that might be more familiar to some. If you’re not familiar though she is a fan who sings about Sonic. Here is a sample:
Just another example of SEGA connecting with the community I suppose. Enough sidetracking though.
A clean image of the one that had multiple images in it was finally fully revealed in 2020 during an official Sonic charity stream for the “Extra Life” organization.
Title: Sonic Official – Season 4 Extra Life 2020 Special! by Sonic the Hedgehog ✔️
Upload Date: November 14 2020
It was at this point that a redesign for the entire series was decided from several factors. One being the proportions and the visibility of body language from Sonic as he was too short all around. From the Sonic The Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Art Book by Cook & Becker Kazuyuki Hoshino discusses this aspect of the redesign process.
“A lot of things happened at once when we started work on Adventure,” remembers Kazuyuki Hoshino. To his mind, the newly styled Sonic was born from necessity, after the move from 2D to 3D.
“For instance, the third-person camera would follow Sonic from behind and from a certain height, to give the player an idea of the area in front of him,” Hoshino continues. “But when we used our existing character models, which were very short in size, Sonic’s head suddenly looked so big you did not really see anything below. His body was obscured, and you could hardly see his arms and feet. To us it was clear we needed to change Sonic’s basic design, make him taller, change his head-to-body proportions.”
Other things became clear, too. With 2D pixels, and with a character animation seen from the side, there had never been a necessity to draw details like the undersides of Sonic’s shoes. With 3D, you could see much more of the character than before, so Sonic Team needed to fill in things that had been left to players’ imaginations in the 2D days.
Excerpts of the Sonic The Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Art Book by Cook & Becker taken from a Polygon article published on April 17 2017
Another reason for change being Sonic’s image was already reaching a point of being considered too cute and “Japanese”. From the same book there is another excerpt with some words from Yuji Uekawa.
Sega’s marketers informed Sonic Team of new fashion and merchandise trends they wanted to target, and indicated they were looking for something that was more ‘mature’ compared to how classic Sonic was perceived.
Also, there was a growing unease at Sega about Sonic being perceived as a ‘Japanese’ character. Although none of the Japanese members of Sonic Team ever expressed concerns about this, there was a general feeling the mascot could perhaps benefit from a more ‘American’, more ‘Western’ design — a distinction that is “kinda hard to explain,” Uekawa admits, but nevertheless is there.
“When you print a cute, Japanese-styled character like (the robotic anime cat) Doraemon on a T-shirt, it will look very childish, and most adults won’t wear it,” Uekawa explains.
“But a Western cartoon character like Mickey Mouse doesn’t look unnatural on an adult’s shirt. What we tried to do is to lean the Sonic character design towards a Western ‘design art’ style, rather than the typical ‘cute’ or ‘kawaii’ style that is more Japanese, to aim for a more adult and cool ‘American’ style of expression, to enhance his international appeal.”
*Kawaii is Japanese for the word “cute”. The word itself has become associated as a part of a subculture:
It’s amusing that Sonic was being viewed as such given that he was always designed to appeal more to a Western audience anyways.
In a different interview from 2018 with Retro Gamer magazine on issue #189 both Takashi Iizuka and Kazuyuki Hoshino would also talk about the redesign process and how the redesigns could fit into shirts. Here’s excerpts of the parts where they mention these topics:
“My impression was that Sonic had lost that fresh, new image he had when the character debuted. Almost all of that was gone and the character felt very safe, boring and conservative,” explains Sonic Adventure art director Kazuyuki Hoshino.
The existing characters had been tricky to represent well in 3D. However, the feeling that Sonic’s design was dated allowed the art team to give the entire cast a refresh. “Space Invaders and Pac-man were becoming popular again as retro games and characters, and they were popping up in indie music and urban ‘street’ fashion, so they were very interesting and attractive,” Hoshino recalls.
“It made us jealous, and we wanted Sonic to also become popular with this edge of subculture, or at least have some cool T-shirts being made with Sonic on them. I was thinking that, and there were other designers that were thinking the same thing, so we all got together to try and find this new graphic style for Sonic.” New illustrations were produced, with characters sporting longer limbs and twisted styles. “What it boiled down to be was a graphic style and pose that was more aware of the fashion trends. The artwork was a good fit for the club music I was really into at the time,” says the art director.
Though the illustrations were 2D drawings, their new style helped when representing the characters in 3D. “The new Sonic design had longer arms and legs, but one could say the bigger solution to the problem was the ability to pose the character where everything looked good from a variety of angles,” says Hoshino. This is a common issue when adapting character designs into full 3D. “Characters posing in 2D can be very easily faked to look cool, but there are a lot of instances where you try and represent the same pose with a 3D model and it really can’t be reproduced,” he explains. “An example would be Sonic crossing his arms. That was so difficult.”
It looks like the Sonic Team was able to fulfill their vision of wanting to see the Modern Sonic design on T-shirts as there was actually a store that was in Japan opened some time around 2001 that was dedicated to selling Sonic merchandise and there was a lot of shirt designs.
There are also images of 2 people wearing the shirts that were sold at the store:
Apparently one of the shirts that was sold in this store was found by user (@AbelMunizJr) which contained a pose of Sonic that wasn’t seen anywhere else.
Today I bring you a little piece of Sonic history with this piece of artwork.
Yes, this is official and from the Sonic Adventure days. It was featured in a shirt that was sold in the “Sonic The Hedgehog Store” in Japan.
They even included their own recreation of that pose:
Yuji Naka would go back to that “Kick It Jam!” piece and would ask who made it. Much like the creative process for Sonic’s creation, it would prompt an internal competition to see who could make the next redesign for Sonic and the rest of the characters. From a 2019 Game Developer, formerly Gamasutra, interview Okano discusses this:
“As an example,when Sonic Jam came out, I drew a cover for Sega Saturn Magazine, which was well received. Yuji Naka was going around asking, who did this? He was working on the plans for a new Sonic for Dreamcast, and wanted to give him a new style, so they held an internal competition. There was me, Naoto Ohshima [original Sonic designer], [Takumi] Miyake-san who was in charge of drawing “Nights,” and [Yuji] Uekawa-san. I was working as a 3D map designer at the time, so I didn’t have much time to prepare, and I got second place to Uekawa-san. I was disappointed, but it was because of my drawing that the competition happened at all, which wound up setting the direction of the new Sonic, so it’s a bittersweet memory.“
Game Developer, Dreamcast 20th anniversary interview extravaganza by Brandon Sheffield. September 2019
It seems that he not only took interest in this art in particular but that he suggested a minor revision to it as well. Going back to that Twitter post including the postcards, user (@ArcadeMegamix) pointed out that the shoes were different in the postcard.
Okano would respond saying that the reason it’s different is because of Naka intervening.
(@ArcadeMegamix)
Oh! The shoes are different. The white and yellow pattern is missing. 靴は違います。 白と黄色のパターンがありません。:o
As for the competition, as Okano stated it was Yuji Uekawa’s submission that made him the winner. It wouldn’t be until August 2020 that the designs from each of the four artists would be revealed when the website SEGADriven obtained a scan from a Sega Harmony Magazine. More specifically it was Volume 154 (November-December 1997). Only this specific page was scanned and not the complete magazine for whatever reason.
New Updates to Hardware and Merchandise Sections:
A fresh selection of updates have now gone live in the hardware and merchandise sections. See below for a full list of additions and direct links to each entry:
FOR PROJECT SONIC CHARACTER IMAGE SURVEY This illustration is to be used for Q.18 on page 7.
From the interviews we can determine which design belongs to who by process of elimination.
Unfortunately, the scan on this part of the page makes it look blurry
Number four is Takumi Miyake. They had previously worked on other Sonic titles like Sonic CD and Knuckles’ Chaotix. Miyake apparently was also the character designer for Espio:
Number three is Naoto Ohshima. We can determine this is Ohshima’s design since it has actually appeared in some places. Burning Rangers was a Sega Saturn title developed by Sonic Team and released in February 1998. With that in mind, in the game you can rescue several Sonic Team developers and they’ll send you a thank you message. For Naoto Ohshima’s message it includes an image of Sonic with a similar design.
Later on in the video you can see Ohshima’s message and the included image which are at 34:30 in that video.
Spikeout: Digital Battle Online was an arcade game released in September 1998 and it also includes an image of this design but this time it’s not just similar. It’s the exact same image.
As it turns out Ohshima wasn’t even aware of this game’s existence let alone the appearance of his design in it.
1- (@Tracker_TD)
I mentioned this a while back, but a piece of Sonic art in Ohshima’s distinct style shows up in SEGA’s SpikeOut. Not seen it anywhere else.
There will be more to be seen from Spikeout in just a bit but for now here’s a drawing Ohshima made of Nights and Sonic appearing again with that same style.
Not entirely sure when exactly this was drawn but the earliest source I could find of it was for this Nights fan site where Ohshima actually provided a lot of high resolution images of concept art including the drawing above:
I think this design is a bit of a departure from how Ohshima initially drew Sonic but I suppose he just wanted to evolve his style at that point in time. This is particularly seen with the spindly fingers and sharp teeth.
It has been said that fangs were initially a part of Sonic’s original design and that they were scrapped during the whole process of removing other early aspects that included the music band members and Sonic’s human girlfriend, Madonna. Although, it has been a point of contention on whether or not Sonic actually having fangs is true. No concept art showing this alleged feature has ever cropped up and the only people who have ever made such claims were from the Sega of America branch which include Tom Kalinske, Madeline Schroeder, and Al Nilsen. It’s quite possible they may be misremembering things given that it has now been decades at this point or they may even be blatantly lying but I don’t want to make accusations so who knows. An example of this discourse can be seen here:
The sharp teeth did come back in one of Ohshima’s later original designs for a brand new character in a mobile game, Terra Battle. The corresponding character’s name would be Knack.
This particular pose looks to be taken from this Sonic one
Ohshima would create other characters for this game all with clear influences from Sonic.
Viscount O’eyl with Chaos
Kat with Big the Cat
Wukong with Sonic
Wukong is based on Sun Wukong who is actually one of the main characters from “Journey to the West” which in itself is what the story of the original “Dragon Ball” by Akira Toriyama was loosely based on along with their own main character, Son Goku. The Sonic series has always had comparisons made with Dragon Ball, what with Super Sonic being a blatant reference to the Super Saiyan form, and this is just one more to add to the list.
Another thing I would like to bring up is this other design that was seen on this jacket that also bares sharp teeth:
What’s special about this jacket is that this was made only for members of the Sonic 3 team. Here is Yuji Naka wearing it in a 1995 interview from Sega Saturn Magazine:
Here is another image where he may possibly be wearing the same jacket given that it looks to have been taken around the same period of time with Naka seemingly working with Mega Drive development equipment and a Sonic 3 cap in the background.
It’s unknown whether or not Ohshima drew the design in the jacket but the distinctive sharp teeth are reminiscent of his style.
Linkabel (@Abelmunizjr) has shown off that they own one of these jackets over on Twitter:
Here’s a piece of Sonic history I got earlier this year. It’s the “Blue Gale” bomber jacket that members of Sonic Team wore when they were making Sonic 3!
For those who know Sonic’s history will recognize it’s based off the jacket wore by the test pilot in the Mary Garnet story.
The last image is actually of Ohshima wearing his own jacket:
Unfortunately, the original source for the image was deleted from his account but a Tumblr post managed to mirror them with the source which is how I was able to find this out:
Linkabel (@AbelMunizJr) has provided additional information over on Sonic Retro and even mentioned the fact that they managed to have a discussion with Ohshima himself:
I talked about it with Ohshima some years ago when he reached out to ask about stuff from my collection.
So I took the opportunity to ask him about it since I knew fans were going to be curious about it. That leather jacket is not sold. It has only major members of the Sonic Team. Wow!!
When I asked him if he drew the emblem/plane nose art he said: It was made in Sega of America. Illustrations are not mine. I designed the patch. I have that leather jacket.
However, even for how small the image is I think I could recognize that the art on the buttons were from the SegaSonic line of artwork from the late 90’s so that narrows it down to that period:
The DJ Sonic artwork will be of interest for later. If you would like to see the images above in a larger size then follow these image links that correspond to the order they appear above:
Ever wonder why they even had to specifically call him SegaSonic for a certain period in the 1990’s? Well it apparently spans from a trademark dispute between another game company. You can read more about that here:
Prior to making the Modern redesign he had worked on the 1995 Mega Drive game Ristar as the character designer.
It’s quite clear that Ristar has influences from Sonic and even earlier concepts show when the character was called “Feel” that they had red shoes that looked quite reminiscent to Sonic’s.
It looks like Uekawa’s first role in the Sonic series would be on Sonic Jam where he drew Sonic. So the modern redesign wouldn’t actually be the first time he drew him as I had always assumed. Here’s how his design for Classic Sonic looks like:
Okano would confirm that these were done by Uekawa as he answered a question that came from Sonic Youtuber, chaomix.
Okano-san, I’m sorry. I was wondering if you could help me with my question. Who drew this classic-looking picture? Is it Okano-san’s picture? Mr. Uekawa’s? I’ve always thought it was Okano-san’s work, but I don’t know anything about it. Thank you very much! 😁
Going back to that Sonic Jam strategy guide and that excerpt that was translated thanks to Vertekins I was able to confirm for myself that these drawings including two others were done by Uekawa. Again going back to the initial description from Okano’s Kick It Jam! piece:
Since the translation shows that the last part of the text in parenthesis is credits for the art I could determine by looking up Yuji Uekawa’s name in Japanese that the rest of the others shown in the strategy guide were done by him.
This is the only time I will use Google Translate since Deepl translates his name as Yuji Kamikawa for some reason
Here’s the other two pieces in the strategy guide credited to him:
In 2016 in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Sonic in Japan an event was held at Tokyo Joypolis with Takashi Iizuka, Jun Senoue (one of their prominent music producers for the games), and Yuji Uekawa. As a part of the event they revealed never before seen art for most of the characters including designs for Modern Sonic.
Unfortunately, I don’t understand Japanese and there are no subtitles so I am interested to know what they are saying in case there might be more information to learn from them.
I would like to point out one of these in the batch
Notice how Sonic’s shoes lacks the bottom gray soles in this artwork along with the black/gray eyes
This one actually appeared in the front cover for Sonic R‘s soundtrack album:
Now notice the addition of green color to his eye
This is interesting because this album predates Sonic Adventure by a few months with a January 1998 release. This information was obtained here:
While it does have a copyright for the year 1997 the date is apparently the section that is boxed in with the sequence [98•1•21] or in other words, 1998•January•21.
The Japanese Sonic R Official Guide Book which was released in December 1997 also shows the album cover with that artwork
That artwork would eventually evolve into this piece adding in the gray soles of his shoes
The modern redesign was teased to the public with this image showcasing a silhouette of only Sonic’s eyes and grin:
Why was the color green chosen for Sonic’s eyes?
Going back to that Polygon article’s excerpt on the 25th anniversary art book:
“Sonic now had irises around his pupils instead of the basic black dots he sported as a 2D character. Uekawa made them green to contrast with the other colors on his body and clothes, and also “because he is always seeing these green pastures around him, like in Green Hill Zone. I thought it would be nice to reflect that in his eyes.”
Sonic Adventure itself was unveiled publicly on August 22 1998 at the Tokyo International Forum. Here is an advertisement of the event that was seen on a train using that silhouette of Sonic.
Here is a VHS video that was made detailing the event:
The theme is “Back to Basics”! Cool Sonic has returned!
Even more important than the world view was the direction of the new Sonic’s image change. Dozens of ideas were considered by the team, and after repeated research, the design for the new Sonic was chosen. “We kept the original traits, but raised the age of his appearance, making it easier for the design to express the parts of his character that have grown, his movement, and his facial expression. (Uekawa)”
The new Sonic is a modern version and return to the original image of the old Sonic, which was becoming more family-oriented. The green eyes, mouth expression, and moving pose are the key points.
Pages 24 and 25 have an interview with Yuji Naka who would express his thoughts on the redesign where he also mentioned Sonic started becoming a cute character.
Another translated page from (@Windii)
Q: It seems that Sonic has a new look?
A: Actually, this time, we rehauled Sonic himself with an eye to the timing of the announcement of the Dreamcast, Sega’s new generation hardware. If you look at the character illustrations, you’ll see that we changed Sonic’s touch drastically. We did this because we thought that the character of Sonic has been perceived as a “cute guy” by people lately. To us, Sonic has always been a “cool, cocky guy who doesn’t butter up to anyone.” That’s why we thought that Sonic was going to be a little different.
It was a milestone for us as we entered the new era of Dreamcast, but we wanted everyone to look at Sonic with new eyes by daring to go back to the basics. All future Sonic games from Sega will have this touch.
If you would like to see the other two pages (@Windii) translated then here they are:
Uekawa would go into further detail of the process for the modern redesign once more in that excerpt from the 25th anniversary art book:
Designing a Sonic that answered the many challenges was left to Uekawa. He kicked things off with examining what made the classic Sonic design great. “His iconic image, I reasoned, mainly stems from the unique eye shape, and the strong impression of his big quills: they make Sonic recognizable just by his silhouette, even when in motion. So, for the new illustration style, I prioritized the lines of the quills, always showing their beautiful curve, independent of Sonic’s posture. To further express his dynamism and strength, I used a calligraphic ‘line’ expression you see in a lot of comics. This may well be the reason why to many people Sonic looks ‘graphical’, ‘graffiti’, or ‘street styled’.”
Uekawa’s designs went back and forth with the rest of the team, until everyone approved of the new art direction. “Uekawa-san’s final designs convinced us, yes, this is it,” Hoshino says. “Next, he changed the other characters in the Sonic universe to fit the same design sense and style. Once the basic design was locked in, there were no problems for us adjusting the other characters.”
Uekawa remembers the process as a ‘refining’ of Sonic, in which the character evolved to go with the times.
As a finishing touch, the color of the modernized Sonic changed to a deeper blue “Although his age didn’t change, his proportions were improved upon, to the effect that a more grown-up Sonic emerged,” Uekawa explains. “His previous light blue color did not match with the new image, so I changed it to a more mature navy blue. Importantly, when confirming the new degree of blue, I considered the color of a new overseas [Sega of America] logo, too. Sonic’s skin color parts were adjusted too, by the way, to keep the overall color balance.”
Uekawa is referring to the change to a darker blue from the fact that the SEGA logo itself is actually two different shades of blue depending on what region it’s in.
The Japanese logo
The international logo
The official Japanese SEGA Twitter account confirms this in a 2015 post they made where they show documents of the logos with the two different colors.
Good morning Sega! I wish you all the best, and today is 1/6, Color Day!
The corporate color “SEGA BLUE” represents SEGA’s vision of a safe and bright future with advanced technology, fun entertainment, and peace of mind. Did you know that?
The Japanese logo has a RGB hexadecimal of #008dd0
Meanwhile the international logo has a RGB hexadecimal of #0060a8
Sonic Generations had the Classic and Modern designs of Sonic have two different shades of blue as a way to differentiate each of them.
Classic Sonic was given the lighter shade of blue and every appearance afterwards, including Sonic Mania, has him with this shade of color. This can be seen as a baffling, unnecessary decision to some given that Classic Sonic was usually colored in with darker blues in older art like this one from Sonic 3 for example:
However, the lighter shade of blue has always been intended as a part of his design as Ohshima shared a color chart that was used for the original Sonic the Hedgehog:
This chart is following the CMYK model for assigning colors for printing purposes. CMYK meaning Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and the K stands for Key but it’s basically Black.
So Sonic initially had a color value of C100 and M60 but that was indecisive as it became M40 then M30 (at least I think it’s 30) and then finally back to M40. The reason the values for Yellow and Black (K) aren’t written down is because they aren’t used to make that specific shade of blue. In other words, they would both have a color value of zero for each so there is no point to write them down.
The Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog manual contains some artwork where Sonic does have a lighter blue color to him:
I like to imagine this is where Sonic’s color palette for his sprites in Sonic Mania are from.
I suppose they chose M40 then went to M30 and realized it was too light and then finally went back to M40.
This color chart lines up with another later color chart that was found in the “Sonic Art Assets” DVD where it also has Sonic’s blue with a color value of C100 and M40.
This DVD was used as a guideline for merchandising and promotional purposes. The DVD became publicly available in 2009 when Sonic Retro user (@drx) obtained a copy and shared its contents:
All this talk surrounding the game, and now finally on to the actual game itself. Okano would help be involved in its development being credited as one of the “Field Artists”. From the Game Developer/Gamasutra interview I think it is fair to assume that the title of the role is just another way to say he was a map designer. Again from the interview:
“I was working as a 3D map designer at the time, so I didn’t have much time to prepare, and I got second place to Uekawa-san.”
These weren’t just his only role with this game however. He would also still partake in doing artwork. According to Okano himself, he was the one responsible for the Modern Eggman logo. If you don’t know what it looks like then here it is:
Oh! There is the egg man mark in PS5! I designed this icon at the making of sonic adventure in 1998😁
Okano would also apparently still be semi-involved with the Sonic artwork for this game as he has stated that some of them were done as a two person effort with him and Uekawa:
I drafted these sonic. And great Uekawa-san finished it. hands and feet aren’t joints like the human being. The reason is because I love and respect Oshima-san’s classic sonic. There are the sonic which two artists made a coproduct elsewhere. However, I can’t remember now😓
From what I can gather from this post Okano is saying that there are more than these two artworks that he worked on along with Uekawa but he can’t remember which ones they are. Here are high resolution images of both of them:
This definitely explains why some of the art from the first Adventure game still retains some of those bendy “noodle” limbs that Okano’s art had as he had influence working on some of these and also why Uekawa’s artwork for the games afterward no longer had this look.
Ohshima’s original artwork of Sonic did also have this type of look with bendy limbs as Okano mentioned.
One of the pages even includes another color chart for Sonic with the same values of C100 and M40:
Images obtained from a document that is called “Sonic the Hedgehog Settei Shiryoushuu”:
There is a clear influence to old “rubberhose” style cartoons in these and if you don’t know what that means then you can learn more about that term here:
Not only did he like Ohshima’s design of Classic Sonic but he also likes the design of Greg Martin. This is the design that appeared in the box art of the classic games in North America.
I like the classic style of Oshima-san and Greg Martin. That’s why the modern sonic I drew has a round belly. And the arms and legs are round joints.
Sonic is becoming more and more serious anime style. I like the mischievous cartoon style.😋👍
yea. It’s really hard to get an upright stance to look unique to a character’s personality. I think I’d draw Sonic more often if I knew how to do it more easily. there’s a lot of times where i started drawing his face and head but had to stop because thinking of a stance is hard
Okano also showed that the DJ Sonic artwork has a similar pose to his 3D Blast artwork
As for the old sonic of ‘SONIC 3D BLAST/SONIC 3D FLICKIE’S ISLAND’, most of the poses are the same as this DJ SONIC(new sonic). Would you understand it?🤗
What does this mean though? Was the 3D Blast artwork made first or after this one since Sonic Adventure came out in 1998 while that game’s Japanese release was in 1999. Somebody actually asked him when did he make that 3D Blast artwork and he would respond.
Satoshi Okano (@okanotion)
Thank you very much. I drew this sonic too.’Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island ‘ It’s a very nostalgic job. I understand you and all. I don’t mind. Yes,Uekawa-san is a super cool creator ;D
Just keep in mind with the way he phrased his answer though as he isn’t too sure himself with his recollection. This is understandable as it was a very long time ago. Memory is a very fickle thing. If he really did make that artwork in 1997 then he probably made it for himself and then when they needed new art for a game he decided to use it for 3D Blast.
Remember that DJ Sonic artwork mentioned awhile back from the SegaSonic line that I briefly showed? You know, this one:
Well Linkabel (@AbelMunizJr) noticed the Adventure DJ Sonic artwork looked similar to this one and asked Okano if it was in reference to it or was if it just a coincidence. Okano seemingly answered that he did reference that artwork for the Adventure one.
Was the DJ artwork a reference to this one or was it just a coincidence?
I took a look at all documents in the company in those days. This art surely existed. I was stimulated very much and returned it to new sonic. The arts of the oversea sonic of this time/’91-92 are the most splendid👍
This album was released in November 6 1998 which makes it interesting because a 12th hidden track that was not listed happens to be the main theme of Sonic Adventure, “Open Your Heart”. Adventure wouldn’t be released until December 23 1998, about one month later. The Japanese Sega website details this here:
ジャケットにもどこにも記載はされていないんだけど、実は12曲目にシークレットトラックとして、ソニックアドベンチャーのメインテーマ”Open Your Heart”が収録されているんだよ。 色々なところで、中さんが「一足先に未来を聴けるかも…」と語っていたことも今となっては懐かしいね。
実は”Open Your Heart”の最終的なレコーディングは、1998年の9月中旬にL.A.で行ったので、このCDに収録するためには本当にギリギリなスケジュールだったりしたんだ。 でも、それまでにソニックチーム宛でメインテーマに関する問い合わせを多数頂いていたので、収録出来て本当に良かったなぁ…と思います。
Translation via Deepl
Although it is not mentioned on the jacket or anywhere else, there is actually a secret track, “Open Your Heart,” the main theme of Sonic Adventure, included as the 12th track. In various places, Mr. Naka has said, “You might be able to hear the future one step ahead of the rest…” I miss it now.
Actually, the final recording of “Open Your Heart” was done in L.A. in mid-September 1998, so we were on a really tight schedule to get it on this CD. However, we had received many inquiries about the main theme from the Sonic team, so we were very happy to be able to record it… I am very happy that we were able to record it.
To add on to this, an earlier version of “Open Your Heart” was performed at the Tokyo International Forum event where it was sung by Eizo Sakamoto.
The DJ Sonic art from the “Power Play” album also appeared on other kinds of merchandise. It appeared on mousepads:
It also appeared on T-shirts. Linkabel showed off the shirt which they owned that also has this art on it after Naoto Ohshima posted about their own shirt collection.
It looks like after some time passed Okano would remember which other art he made after he watched a video from the previously mentioned Sonic Youtuber, chaomix.
I remembered it on seeing his Youtube. I drew ski sonic & laugh sonic of the sonic adventure! Conversely, Kawaii Sonic of SONIC JAM ware work of Great Yuji Ukekawa-san.
Some these Youtube had the mistake, but one step got closer to “the complicated truth”🧐
They start talking about Okano at 15:38 and after that they then talk about the Adventure art style.
Now remember in that Fanbyte interview when Okano said he wanted to make a new Sonic companion after joining SEGA? Well it turns out he may have sort of fulfilled that for Adventure even if it was in the most minor way. So which character is it? Well it wasn’t any of the newcomers. It was more of a background character. In the “At Dawn” section of the Speed Highway level there are several kinds of posters throughout and one of these contains this unknown character.
New information on this would be revealed when Okano mentioned in a post about still having a sketchbook from this time period and was thinking about releasing it or not. Evidently, he decided not to as this post was eventually deleted.
I still store a sketchbook. Everybody will be pleased when I release it. However, I do not intend to be released now. They may be at a loss as it is different from official history of SEGA💙🦔💙🦔
Coming off from a response Okano made to someone else the user (@ArcadeMegamix) decided to ask him whether he knew anything about this poster. They asked their question in both English and Japanese so there is no need to translate the Japanese portion.
This may be a strange question. Do you know anything about the girl character on the posters in Speed Highway in Sonic Adventure? Top-left. これは奇妙な質問かもしれません。 ソニックアドベンチャーのスピードハイウェイのポスターの女の子キャラクターについて何か知っていますか？ 左上。
(@ArcadeMegamix) would ask for further elaboration as they didn’t understand what a “planned spider” meant. They would ask entirely in Japanese as it is clear Okano is more comfortable with using his native language.
Yes, I am interested in the company. I wanted a job creating characters. I remember this was a model of a spider girl that I made and rendered from my sketchbook with the 3D tools I was using at the time between jobs.
So it is now confirmed by him that this character is supposed to be a spider girl and anytime he is questioned about this he asserts his statement on it even mentioning that he still has the sketchbook with her in it which he used during this period.
User (@MainJPW) created an enhanced version of the image, likely through filters, and made some observations on it. They even outlined what they believed the design to look like.
About that spider girl designed by Satoshi Okano in Sonic Adventure’s Speed Highway, if you enhance this it reveals some things. Are those, um…boobs? That looks like a bra. Spikes on her head instead of ears, big ol’ eyes and lips.
Probably not a bra, it could be a low cut dress. She’s pretty spiky with the spikes around her shoulder, too. Could be inspired by the Peucetia viridans. I wonder what her full body design looked like.
As shown in their first post, they did observe that the character looked like they had breasts and they may have had a point on that as Okano mentioned this too.
The image which performed rendering is composition of the breast enhancement. However, I think that the picture of the girl of the spider is left in the old sketchbook more than my 25 years.🕷
The spider girl was also acknowledged officially as a cameo in the IDW 30th anniversary special comic book in the sub story “Sonic Learns to Drive” as a poster just like it appeared in Sonic Adventure.
In November 2023 Okano would finally show off the full art of the spider girl amongst concept art for the game “Samba de Amigo”
納戸のお宝？発掘。ソニックアドベンチャーのスピードハイウェイの蜘蛛女もあるよ🕷️
Excavated sketches of the storage room! I used to draw analog lines before the Bezier curve. There is also a spider girl on the speed highway/Sonic Adventure.🕷️🦔
There’s two images that would be used for Sonic 3D Blast
You can see Tails from this image as wellYou can see the red and pink Flickies from this image
On the left side of this Sonic sketch there seemed to be a page showing a room where E-102 Gamma receives one of their upgrades
I have also flipped the image here
There is a sketch version for the Kick It Jam! pose
This one thankfully has a date on it of April 21 1997 so it was made around that time
There is also a sketch version for the drawing that was for the redesign contest
This one also has a date on it. It is dated from around October 31 1997. This date lines up with the finalized version appearing in the November-December issue of Harmony. You can even see another drawing behind it that seems to have never been seen before.
Since most people are unfamiliar with Astro Go Go he had to clear up that the two characters shown in that post are from that game:
彼らは私が携わった宇宙レース アストロGO! GO!のキャラクターです。
They are the space races I’ve been involved in, Astro GO! GO! These are the characters.
There is art of that character from Astro Go Go and alongside it a character who looks rather similar. Notice how he wrote the name as Fly the Bampire. This will be a point that I will mention later.
With a naming structure that is like that of a Sonic character there were people questioning if this was going to be a character that was planned to appear in Adventure.
I didn’t really think about that. The reason was that Sonic was a clean IP at the time.🦇🦔
I thought this character with the pig nose would be scary.😅
I would call her Aracne, the name Aracne is in reference to a character from Greek mythology who had a great talent for weaving linen fabrics and nets who was transformed into a spider by the Goddess Athena.
Here’s some concept art for the Kick It Jam! artwork that would appear on the cover of the Sega Saturn Magazine.
You can see some other kind of concept art behind this oneConcept art for the movie theater and hall of fame history buildings in Sonic JamConcept art for the character house and sound shop buildings in Sonic Jam
Something I had noticed in one of the sketches for the Kick It Jam! artwork was that he wrote “Me Company” on the side of one of them
Me Company is a UK based graphic design company that also utilized 3D modeling for their work.
I asked Okano if he was inspired by them when he wrote Me Company on that sketch since the Kick It Jam! artwork did utilize 3D in the background and the phrase itself was also modeled in 3D. I even mentioned the fact that they were the ones who did the European cover for 3D Blast.
Looks like Fly the Vampire was named instead as Fly the Bat here Also they are paired up with Sonic, Tails, & Knuckles It looks like he also wrote Sonic ADB
If you noticed in the post Okano wrote ADB→ADV. ADV is supposed to be an abbreviation for Adventure. Why did he write it as ADB in the first place though?
You see in the Japanese language there really isn’t a pronunciation for the letter “V” so it is instead said like the letter “B”. Here are two pages where they discuss this:
During my session of asking questions to Okano he had brought up that the bat character was inspired by Sonic. For clarification I asked him if that meant he was referring to Fly High as his comment was talking about KAZe beforehand. This is what he said
I used to play Sonic 2 during my breaks when I worked at KAZe. I had a Mega CD at home.
KAZe was led by Mr. Nakagata, who was formerly at Namco and created Genpei Toumaden. I remember being scolded by Director Nakagata for playing too much instead of working…
When I first joined Sonic Team, Yuji Naka asked me, “What do you like most?” and I had to choose between 2 and CD. When I answered, “It’s Sonic CD” Mr. Naka smiled bitterly. Naoto Oshima seemed happy. I didn’t know who made what
So what exactly was his deal? Was he just a little something you made up, or is there more to him that never got used (role, backstory, etc.)? I just find these kinds of unused characters so fascinating.
It looks like this version of Tails was repurposed into a more classic design that would be used for 3D Blast You can see it looks like there is a sketch of Amy behind since it looks like her shoe is visibleA Christmas themed Sonic artwork It looks like there is a never seen before sketch of Sonic surfboarding behind it
There was some actual Christmas artwork of Sonic for Adventure but it looks like this one did not get finalized by Uekawa. The closest artwork to this sketch is likely this one:
This sketch of Tails would not be finalized by Uekawa You can see a sketch of Eggman behind as wellA Halloween themed artwork of Sonic There seems to be another sketch of Sonic behind
09 エッグマン 10,11,12ソニック
私は他にも沢山描いたが、使われなかったなぁ。🤣
09 Eggman 10,11,12 Sonic
I drew a lot of other characters, but they weren’t used.🤣
It looks like this one was repurposed into the classic design for 3D Blast There is a sketch of Tails behind this one.
With this Eggman sketch and that other sketch of Tails both looking like their modern redesigns but then seemingly being repurposed into their classic designs for 3D Blast, someone asked just to be sure if these sketches were made first. He answered that they were originally going to be for Adventure.
当初、ソニックADV用に描きました。結果は、ソニック3Dブラストに使いました〜😊
I initially drew it for Sonic ADV. However, the result was used for Sonic 3D blasting.😊👍
A sketch of Sonic singing There looks like a sketch of Sonic playing hockey behind itIn that same image above the sketch of Sonic singing was this seemingly unfinalized sketch of Knuckles This has been flipped for a better view of it
That was certainly a treasure trove of concept art that Okano was really generous of to reveal to us. It had taken him a long time to reveal the spider girl art and then all this other never before seen material but it sure was welcoming.
He admitted he was rather hesitant to publish any of this
Anyways that’s all the involvement Okano had with this game as far as I know. While Sonic was given his modern redesign there were still remnants of his Classic design in some parts of the game. The 1UP icon still has the Classic design:
The mission objective cards that are used for Tails levels also show this classic Sonic in full.
(@MainJPW) noticed that this model seems to have been the same one from that image shown at the Sonic Adventure Music Experience event.
The larger Sonic image at the bottom of this textures sheet looks like it was taken from one of Uekawa’s artworks as shown earlier in that Sonic Jam guide:
Outside of the game there are also remnants of Classic Sonic. Here are storyboards for the opening cutscene where Sonic is drawn with that design.
These were apparently drawn by Kazuyuki Hoshino and they were sourced from the book Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works by Simon Parkin:
These storyboards could have been made before the redesign but there could also be the possibility that he was drawn in the Classic design because it was much simpler and quicker to do. Also outside of the game are small sketches illustrated for the tutorial that appeared on Sonic Adventure‘s website.
The reason for its much better quality is because this image was given out as a part of the material for the press. Frank Cifaldi, who is a video game preservationist, says that this image among others were taken from a batch that was originally from Sega’s Gamers Day 1998 event:
This little remnant was only ever present in the Dreamcast version of the game. The DX re-release has it so that the Sky Chase segments are consistently using the model that is used throughout the rest of that version. Here is a comparison:
Title: Sonic Jam – Sonic World / SA1 Similarities by SPEEPSHighway
Upload Date: December 14 2016
This next thing isn’t from Jam but it is still worth mentioning. The texture from the last special stage in Sonic 3D Blast‘s Sega Saturn version was reused in the Twinkle Park level. However, from what I can see it doesn’t look like it is an exact match across both games as there may have been some alterations to it.
After Adventure was released Okano described in the Fanbyte interview how he was assigned to make the art for 3D Blast and how he felt about this.
“After Sonic Adventure’s release wrapped,” Okano says, “I naively became a ‘shadow’ during the ‘new Sonic’ work. Frankly, I was young and thought ‘ahh… I blew the biggest opportunity of my life.’ However, I was abruptly called by both Yuji Naka and Kazuyuki Hoshino.” Okano was presented with the opportunity to draw the cover for the upcoming Sonic 3D Blast Saturn port (known as Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island), a Japan exclusive release.
“At the time, I thought this was my consolation prize for losing the Sonic Adventure contest. However, when I think about it now, the ‘rarity and added value’ of me drawing it my own way they spoke of has been admirably recognized by fans.”
“I’m surprised people from North and South American know about this,” he adds. “This is very interesting. Perhaps this is the best reward after all?”
Asides from the art previously shown here for the game there were also some wallpapers that were presumably unlocked when the disk was inserted into a PC:
After this his next involvement would be with the development of Sonic Team’s Samba De Amigo. Not being as familiar with this game, it looks like he faced a similar situation for the credit given to his artwork as he explains that it was once more done by both him and Uekawa.
A left illust drew by Uekawa -san,right illust drew by me.Can you understand these difference?The character of SANBA DE AMIGO is drown by two artist😊
In samba de amigo, Uekawa-san performed art direction of my character design. The illustrations ware made by two artists. The wall paper is so, too. These are some creations with the memory that I made.
It was said, “I liked it, & you described” the cover of Segasaturn magazine and illustration of sonic 3D from Naka-san & Hoshino-san. The character design of Samba de amigo is my work. I ‘m mistaken for most Uekawa-san of my work. I’m understands it. It’s OK🙆♂️
Okano described his experience with making the art for this game in the Game Developer/Gamasutra interview.
I got to work on Samba de Amigo. The game had a rough demo and a 1-sheet design document when I saw it. I thought to myself… this is definitely gonna sell. Shun Nakamura was in charge of the project, and at the time people were assigned to games by higher ups, and didn’t get to decide what games they wanted to work on. But I kept going over to Nakamura with my ideas, saying “how about this?” I got scolded by some bosses of other teams for that.
But in the end I got to do character design for the game, which was a huge hit in arcades, and got two versions on the Dreamcast. I guess you could say it’s my personal masterpiece. The art director gets the credit for the character design, but it was me – I hid in the shadows like a ninja. I even got invited out by vice president Hisashi Suzuki, to the frustration of my team. It was a pretty rare opportunity to eat high class eel while talking casually with the vice president!
The game got a lot of magazine coverage, and I’ll never forget the first time I saw it in a game center. When I saw someone take a 100 yen coin out of their wallet and put it into the machine, I swallowed hard wondering how it would go. You never get to see people’s faces when they play your games if you’re making console games, so that was a really priceless moment for me. Seeing that person’s 100 yen coin go into the slot I knew it’d be a hit. And, well, I did get a bonus!
In all I feel like the Dreamcast was Sega’s attempt to appeal to a broader audience. It may not have been as “cool” as the Genesis, but after hearing that the Wii may have been inspired by Samba De Amigo (in fact, I got an email from Iwata after its release), I think the Dreamcast was ahead of its time.
That last paragraph raised my interest as he mentioned that he got an email from Iwata after Samba’s release so during my session for asking questions I brought this up to him. Here’s all that he said
I wrote to Okano sending him the video made by the Youtube channel “Gaming Historian” about the life and career of Satoru Iwata. He would reminisce about Iwata in a response
That’s a nice video. Is Mr. Iwata the model for Kirby? There were rumors like that, but I still remember seeing him on the Kanda floor. We talk while constantly eating sweets
When I was a kid, I played pinball on the NES, and the company I first joined, KAZe, also had a digital pinball game.
After all this Okano would have less involvement with games with his last major role being for Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg from 2003 credited as one of the “Field Designers”. Also in that same year of 2003 Sonic Adventure DX: Directors Cut was released. He didn’t work on this version but it still worth mentioning this game for one thing. For whatever reason there was a slight redesign to Sonic where only his eyelids were changed from his flesh color to the blue color of his fur.
I don’t have a better way of showing a comparison at the moment so I made a screenshot from a video which was sourced here: https://archive.ph/23GOG
This would be how it would look from then on. No explanation has ever been given for this. It’s also worth mentioning that the Sonic Advance games, while having a practically unified set of sprites all throughout, did actually make the effort to add on this design revision to the sprites of Sonic Advance 3 since it was released in 2004.
As for Okano, during this period his name would only ever be mentioned under the credit of “Special Thanks” with his final credit being one of these for Sonic Rush in 2005.
In 2006 he would leave SEGA to go independent and do freelance work. Apparently he specified that he left in June 2006 and was involved with the demo version of Sonic and the Secret Rings right before he left.
I guess it was after Mr. Yuda came earlier than everyone. I left the company in June 2006 after working on the Wii demo version of Sonic and the Secret Ring. I didn’t get to meet you.
Satoshi Okano may no longer work at SEGA anymore but he certainly left an impact on the series by kickstarting the Modern redesign that has been set in place for the series ever since 1998. Meanwhile Yuji Uekawa is still at SEGA and is constantly creating new artwork. I’m no art critic so I will do the best I can to describe the following art for the next part.
Uekawa’s style has evolved and changed throughout the years starting off from Sonic Adventure 2 and the Sonic Advance games which still had the same type of shading from Adventure but with more standard posing and proportions with limbs that aren’t as bendy.
At the time for the development of Adventure 2 Okano was working on the Samba de Amigo games while Sonic Team was over in the United States. So Uekawa was the only one who did the artwork. This is likely why the Adventure 2 artwork lost that bendiness to it.
I don’t know about that. Because while Sonic Team U.S.A. was making SonicADV2 in the US, We ware making SANBA DE AMIGO series.😉
I had the observation that if you were to combine these two characters, you would essentially have Rouge the Bat. Did these two characters play any role in the concept of her character?
Going further in to the 2000’s Uekawa’s artstyle would change and the Adventure style shading would be reduced. The poses would be more subdued.
The art he makes for Sonic Channel, which is the name for SEGA of Japan’s official website of Sonic, is also a lot more distinctive to anything else he has done and he only does these for the website.
Initially it looked like his standard art style but he started to make art which had a rough sketch look to them by leaving in lines that should have been taken out.
In other art he has made there is a use of jagged, rigid lines. Here is one example which was seen on a Sonic and Puyo Puyo 2012 calendar collaboration which were in celebration of both series’ 20th anniversary in 2011.
What’s interesting about this calendar is that there was a fan art contest with the winning submissions being the ones that ended up in the calendar itself. Information was sourced here:
Here is another similar rendition using this art style for the Sonic Adventure Music Experience event which occurred in 2016. This is how it appeared on the CD cover for the music in the event.
Uekawa also still utilizes the “Adventure” style shading on other pieces of artwork but his art style keeps getting revised. Here is his updated artwork in the Sonic Channel for Sonic’s bio.
Uekawa also still does a different artstyle for Sonic Channel and it’s like an update of that rough sketch look shown from earlier except it’s like he has cleaned it up now removing the leftover lines. Here are two examples that were a part of a series of cover stories that were released monthly for the year of 2021.
This is all for Uekawa now but there is still two more miscellaneous things I would like to bring up. Here is a humanized version of Sonic that he made for the 2001 Tokyo Game Show expo.
From the earliest captures of the page above they look to have at least been around since 2010. There is an additional page which has more images of each character. Here they are compiled together.
In 2021, after 30 years, Okano would return back to the first game he ever worked on “Abarenbou Tengu/Zombie Nation” by creating new artwork for a Nintendo Switch and Steam re-release of the game.
One notable thing he has done was in 2022 when he redesigned the bee mascot for a volleyball sports team. It was for the JTEKT Stings team. Here was the design before
An image of a mascot costume is shown in that page as well
Even though Okano is no longer at SEGA he has done some artwork of Sonic as well. In 2019 he made this artwork for Sonic in order to celebrate the oncoming Reiwa era for Japan.
He made at least two tweets of this but they were both deleted and not archived. Luckily they were archived on an external website here with dates included:
From what I have researched the Reiwa era of Japan meant that there was a new emperor that was enthroned. The previous era, Heisei, lasted for about 29 years as it began in 1990:
The artwork did appear once again repurposed for the 30th anniversary of Sonic under his Freaky Highschool account which is an original series where he is in charge of the artwork for the characters in it.
He must have realized he made a mistake with that post because it is not the 25th anniversary yet but rather the 20th. He would respond acknowledging the mistake
That isn’t the end of him making new artwork though. In fact this would be rather minor to what he would make next. In 2020 the official Sonic social media account made a post with the hashtag #SonicRedraw which challenged people to redraw a certain frame from the fifth episode of the Sonic Mania Adventures web series in their own art style and they would have the chance for it to be featured by them.
Time for a #SonicRedraw challenge! Recreate this classic piece in your own style, and share it with us here this Friday for a chance to be featured!
Okano would participate in this challenge and even acknowledges the success of the Sonic movie within the same post as it had already been released at the time.
封切おめでとうございます！ちょっとだけ時間をかけて描いてみました。 Congratulations on the special first-run showing of the sonic movie. I drew sonic with this style after an interval of 22 years.🦔💙
Not only did he make this but he also made more art when the second Sonic movie came out in 2022 and this time with the Modern design which as far as I know is the first time he has ever done it. Here are his posts that he made:
Congratulation success of #SonicMovie2
These are congratulatory fan art from me of a former official illustrator.
I present you desktop PC wallpapers & smart phone wallpapers.
The phrase on this art is “Trill Blue is Back!”. What exactly does “Trill” mean though? In his next post Okano explains that this is another hip-hop slang for True and Real combined together. He also shows how this art would look like on T-shirts just as a concept though as he is not actually selling them. A small spelling correction was made for this post which I have included too.
And net are for SNS icons & fantasy Tshirts designs.
I wanna these goods.💙
‘TRILL’ means True and Real. It’s HIPHOP slang.
Back ground designs are’90s taste graphic and simple blue.
He provided the new art he made in another aspect ratio this time to accommodate for SNS icons. From what I could find SNS stands for Social Networking Service. So in other words it means it is for social media profile icons.
However, he would notice that the images of the art he made weren’t in an aspect ratio that was wide enough to even fill his own screen.
Ever since Okano came forward to take rightful credit for the artwork he made there has now been a new wave of fan art for his design of Sonic. Here are some examples:
If your curious what the “317 Days” means then the artist who made this was doing a countdown to the date June 23 2021 for the 30th anniversary of the Sonic series:
If you ever do create fanart of Okano’s design then you have a good chance that he will actually see it and make a comment along with it. Here are some instances where he does so:
It’s not guaranteed he will always see it but like I said the chances are high that he does. So go on ahead artists make more out there and he shall see! If you would like to see more fanart then I have compiled them over here along with the comments Okano made for each of the ones that I could possibly find to accompany them:
So why did it take so long for Okano to step up and take credit for what is rightfully his and get rid of the mix up for Uekawa’s art that had persisted for years? Well as he admits, he is a rather shy person.
Thank you very much for your advice. I knew that these sonic became various products and fan art. However, I hesitated about talking about one’s past. I’m a shy person🤐
It was you who drew it? Wow!! I never thought I’d see the artist after all these years. I remember seeing this artwork on my Windows 98 Desktop Wallpaper, and among other things, with the occasional bootleg toy or product (but that’s to be expected. Hahaha)
I’ll leave off with some final encouraging words from Okano that he said in that Fanbyte interview:
“Even if the spotlight doesn’t hit you, be patient. Even after 10 ~ 20 years, there will be times when the spotlight misses its aim. Even the ‘shadow’ becomes sunny. There’s no futility in life. You are the one that makes it interesting.”
This is the section where I will give my own thoughts, opinions, ramblings, etc.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the great folks over at Sonic Retro who are very knowledgeable when it comes to this stuff as I learned practically everything from that site. This thread in particular is what kickstarted my interest into this topic:
In particular the post by (@Pengi) which provided sources to some of Okano’s tweets. This lead me to dig even deeper into this and read the interviews he did along with combing through more tweets he made which had additional information:
I’ve seen (@Pengi) around on those forums and they always drop some great trivia on things I didn’t know so I just want to say you are amazing in that regard!
I would also like to thank (@Vertekins) for taking the time to translate a few bits of the text that I could not translate with Deepl after I asked them if they could possibly do it. You can check their Tumblr blog here:
I personally think it makes accessing each image much more quickly and conveniently. Just skip over the files that have the word “thumb” on them as they are smaller versions of the original images.
A zip folder file of all the tweets can be downloaded here:
Initially I hoarded a lot of the links for the sources in a huge Google Docs document where I store all the miscellaneous links I come across on the internet. If I find something interesting enough I will save them there. It’s not just Sonic related by the way it’s practically anything I come across. However it started to get to a point where I had to create a separate document for easier access to the sources. I created that separate document on January 17 2021.
At first I was writing this article itself in that document but the page count started to get too high to the point where I realized I should start moving my writing into this WordPress website. The first 40 pages are the writing and the rest of the pages were all just links to sources. If you must know I stopped writing on Google Docs at the part where I showed the different Modern Sonic designs that were shown at the 25th anniversary event at Joypolis. For a refresher it’s this image:
So basically everything past this image was no longer written on the Google Docs document and the writing was then moved and then finished on WordPress instead.
Well after all this I have to say it was fun to learn all about who Satoshi Okano was and the art style he created for Sonic. I hope more people learn about him and his contributions to the series. I was one of those people who thought his art was by Uekawa because of how similar it was so it was enlightening to find out it was someone else who made them. I have always particularly loved the art style used for 3D Blast as it looked like a mix of Classic Sonic with the proportions of the Modern design.
Something I found in my research of Okano that I didn’t think fit in the article but is still worth mentioning is that he has also expressed that he would be interested in drawing Amy as well in an official capacity as he never had the opportunity to do it before:
Okano also had some very interesting choices with the musicians he mentioned in that Fanbyte interview too.
“My inspirations were…the Adidas tracksuits RUN DMC wore in their 1988 photoshoots, Flavor Flav’s clock and glasses, De la Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Jungle Brothers lyrics, Björk, Underworld, and other music, music videos, and artwork like that.”
Sonic 3 actually uses a RUN DMC track as a sample. In Launch Base Zone there are vocals that say “Go!” and it was found that this came from the track Peter Piper from RUN DMC.
Okay so I had gotten into Björk thanks to the movie Leon: The Professional using one of her tracks and I just thought I should share my new found discovery of her music by recommending some of my favorite choices:
Maybe I’ll convert some of you into listeners as well…
I don’t know where else to put this so I’ll write it here, do you remember the brief part in the article where I mentioned EmuEmi? Well Okano drew some art for Emi. He created a character based off herself called Emiga
Okano shows just how great and friendly he is with fellow Sonic fans. Speaking of which, I would like to share my experiences that I have had with Okano ever since this article’s release.
After two months of my article being published it actually got to the attention of Okano himself in August 2022. It started from a chain of events. He had retweeted some fanart made by (@YaBoiShyy) that was in his style.
I decided to make a comment linking my article so (@YaBoiShyy) could read it as I had been sharing my article with any person I thought would be interested. Initially I had also unintentionally tagged Okano into the response since if you respond to a post off of someone’s retweet they will also be added on to the response as well. So in the part of the post that says “Replying to” it also had Okano’s username.
After noticing that I added him to the response by mistake I deleted my tweet and reposted it again this time without him being added to it. He may have seen my initial version of the tweet or something because he would then actually respond to my post.
Love how you replicated the art style of Okano’s Adventure submission design. I have actually written an article about Okano and the designs he made for Sonic. If you want you can read it here but please make sure to let the images load first:
I have to admit I wasn’t too sure in sending him the article in the first place so I was surprised to get a response from him. I wrote back to him in Japanese.
What a pleasant surprise to hear from you. Since I know that English is a second language for you, I will use translation software to speak to you in Japanese.
Did you read the full article? Since it is in English, I was not sure if you would read it.
It’s amazing that you stayed up until 2AM to finish reading the article. You deserve all your newfound love and appreciation for what you’ve done for the Sonic series.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing my article.
Since I had just gotten into Björk at the time I decided to have a conversation about her with him. Here is where I first mentioned the fact that “Me Company” did the European cover for 3D Blast.
By the way, in the [Fanbyte] interview, you mentioned several music producers, but the one I like the most is [Björk]. The first time I heard her music was in the 1994 film [Leon]. My favorite songs of hers are “Joga” and “Pagan Poetry”
Coincidentally, there was a company that made 3D models and they made one for Björk’s album and another for the European cover of Sonic 3D Blast. They start by making a clay model, which is then digitized into a computer.
Also, the British magazine ” i-D ” featured Sonic and Björk. I think these covers are cool. You can clearly see that these two were really popular in the 90s.
I still very much love this image I had put together. I love that both of these covers have them winking and the color palettes of pink and blue on each of them. The Sonic one was from January 1993 and the Björk one was from September 1994.
この一連のアートを作るクリエイターは有名でした。日本でもたくさんのフォロワーがいました。
The creators of this series of art were famous. He had many followers in Japan.
Some time later in May 2023 the Youtube channel “Did You Know Gaming” uploaded a video about Sonic Adventure facts and they mention Satoshi Okano for one segment.
Always glad to see whenever Satoshi Okano is mentioned. I have written a very detailed article on him which goes more in depth about his contributions. All info is sourced.
Check out his Twitter account (@okanotion) as he drops new art and info at times.
I wish they could have dug deeper, as the video only talks about you for a very short part. But I am glad they acknowledged you rather than not mentioning you at all.
I bring up these conversations from May 2023 because Okano would actually then send a Direct Message (DM) to me thanking me for the work that I have done and likely from all the times that I send the link for my article to others so they can also know about his work.
1 –
Thank you so much for always doing your best. I really respect your observation eyes.
2 –
Also, I really appreciate you using your time for that. Thank you very much😊🙇🙇♀️
3 –
岡野さんこんにちは！ ダイレクトメッセージで連絡をくれてありがとう
Hello Okano! Thanks for reaching out over Direct Message
I had initially wanted to send him a DM first but it looks like he did it before I did. I was quite surprised. I just send him fanart that either involves Sonic Adventure or that is done in his design. I don’t try to ask him questions over DM because I would rather have any information that he says be publicly viewable.
Here is an instance where I had shown him a 3D model of the DJ Sonic artwork done by (@_OreoArt_) where he would then make a quote tweet about it.
1 –
This CG is evolving the Sonic drawn by me and geat artist Uekawa-san. That’s the coolest❣️🦔💙
Here is the message where I showed him that model and then his response
1 –
ソニック アドベンチャーの DJ アートワークに基づいて誰かが作成したこのクールな 3D モデルをお見せしたいと思います。
I’d like to show you this cool 3D model someone made based on the DJ artwork from Sonic Adventure.
2 –
凄いですね❣️教えて頂きありがとうございます。
It’s amazing ❣️ Thank you for letting me know.
With all that being said the last person I want to thank is…YOU!!! The person reading this. If you managed to read through all of this, including this afterword, then thank you so much for taking the time to do so.
This is a companion piece to the main article of Satoshi Okano and his contributions to the Sonic the Hedgehog series with his design which will be linked here:
This will show all the fanart of his design that I have found and liked which I will share here with you all. I will include sources and the comments Satoshi Okano made from each of the ones that he did as he practically commented on almost all of them.
Here is just a few of the fanart made of the spider girl character that Satoshi Okano designed which appeared on posters in the Speed Highway level of Sonic Adventure. For context:
If your curious what the “317 Days” means then the artist who made this was doing a countdown to the date June 23 2021 for the 30th anniversary of the Sonic series:
Hello World! This is my first post online here. I’m just making this “blog” for my own leisure. I’ll post just about anything I find interesting or if I want to put my own thoughts down. I rarely use social media so I guess this is my way of leaving my digital footprint. I do want to make a Youtube channel sometime in the future but in my current situation I just simply can’t. For now all I can do is just record gameplay footage from my computer but personally I don’t think that would be engaging enough for others especially with the saturation of gaming videos on the site. What would make me any different? Well I already have some ideas of what I want to put on my channel. People always like to learn about new subjects right? So I decided maybe I can make informative videos on gaming or history.
Some of my ideas include:
The Kowloon Walled City. A densely packed city in Hong Kong that no longer exists. I have read so much about it lately and I have been intrigued by just how it looked. I can talk about the history and its end.
The Internet Archive. A site that archives many things like books, audio, games, etc. The archive also contains the Wayback Machine which catalogs websites spanning back for decades. I can talk about it’s creation, what it contains, how useful it is, and the overall importance of archiving digital content.
A history on Sonic Mania a game that was developed by a majority of fans. I’ll go over the backgrounds of each person and how they got involved with the project. I have seen videos on this but they mostly focus on just Taxman and Stealth. Some may also additionally mention Tyson Hesse and/or Tee Lopes. I want to give the limelight to the many others who had a hand in this as well as they seemed to have not gotten the same amount of attention.
A Sonic ROM Hacker known as MarkeyJester. He wasn’t involved with Sonic Mania but he has made his own ROM hacks that are really impressive like Sonic 1 The Next Level. I want to go over his other ROM hacks he made.
Taking an in depth look on the animation of Sonic CD. I really love how it looks so I want to go over background information on it, the many re-releases of it throughout the years, theory on earlier level placement, the legacy it has left, and the characterization and design of Sonic himself.
The rebound mechanic from the classic Sonic games. Basically when you bounce off of something like a badnik or monitor and the jump button is still being held the height can get pretty high. An example of this is in a video called Sonic the Hedgehog 2: The Bouncing Challenge (Before you click the link I recommend lowering your volume if it’s up high as the audio is rather loud). I want to make a montage showing all the places that I have found where there is possible rebound chains just like in the example video shown.
A guide for a 15% run on Metroid Zero Mission. There is 15% runs for this game but I don’t think there is any guides for it so I want to make one with own my personal way on how I complete.
Going over the designs of Pokemon from the first two generations. I loved how Ken Sugimori drew pokemon in a watercolor style in the earlier games. I will also go over the sprites and how odd they looked especially in Pokemon Green. Some pokemon designs themselves also changed over time with the chubbier Pikachu being just one example.
Castelian on the Gameboy. A game I found through a pirate multi game in one cartridge. I personally found it kind of frustrating when I was younger so I want to talk about it.
Go over and reminisce over movies (I’m aware this one’s more of a broad topic for now)
Make a debunking compilation. I have found that some videos online are being perpetuated as true even though they have already been debunked. I want to find as many of these videos and go over how there fake and put all that information into one video.
Discuss old Youtubers who either no longer exist or fell down into obscurity. I additionally want to discuss on just any old Youtube videos I came across from a long time ago.
Make a comparison between the Youtube mobile app and the Android internet browser app. I don’t know if there are many people who use the browser app for Android but I have found it to have a better video player than Youtube’s own mobile app. One reason is that in the browser I can download videos for offline viewing unlike Youtube which requires the Premium upgrade. Another reason is that it has a better playback system where I can go forward or backward as much as I want whereas Youtube is only restricted to 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, and 60 second intervals. I have more reasons but my explanation is too long.
This is just a few of the ideas I have for the future. For now I’ll probably just write about these things and then they could act as the foundation and/or script for there respective videos that I’ll make. I have also decided to make a Blogger to see which site I will prefer to use or to just keep both.
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Zed's Writings 
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