Gather around children, it's time for another edition of Katie's Retro Corner. As I've delved into Sonic's past and looked back at his items, his voices and such. Today I was going to look back at Sonic's many TV shows.
At the height of his populairity Sonic had two cartoons on two separate networks. This one ran on Saturday mornings hence the nickname "SatAM" which stood for Saturday AM.
Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM)
When Sonic first debuted on TV, the only characters in the game at the time were Sonic, Tails and Robotnick and the series needed more characters to work so thus the Freedom Fighters were created to give Sonic some more pals. These friends consisted of Princess Sally, Rotor, Antoine, Bunnie Rabbot and later on, Dulcy the Dragon. Robotnick was given a sidekick in the form of Snively. For reasons unknown Robotnick was given a more "Evil overlord" look for the series compared to his balloon looking form in the games at the time. The premise of the show was that Robotnick had taken over Sonic's home planet of Mobius and turned many of the citizens into robots with his robotizer machine and it was up to Sonic and the Freedom Fighters to save their world and restore peace.
The show had very little in common with the games though Sonic did use power rings to run faster, but Tails had a very minor part in the series, usually staying home because he was "too young" while Sonic and Sally went off to save the day. This always bothered me. Tails deserved a better part in the series than he got though there were some episodes that gave him a more prominent role. Most of the time, though I passed up watching this because it shared the same timeslot as a show I liked even more "Garfield and Friends." WHAT? I like Garfield! (sings)Come on in. Come to the place where fun never ends. Come on in it's time to party with Garfield and Friends!
While Sally and the freedom fighters aren't really associated with the games, they did appear in Sonic Spinball in one of the between level mini games. It was the pinball one where you had to smash open containers and you see Tails, Sally, Rotor, Bunnie, Antoine and Flicky fly out of the containers.
Still SatAm for a kids show had decent writing even if the dialouge lacked at times and the story could be compelling if you get over the fact that it had little in common with the games. During its two year run, SatAM built up a strong cult following. At the end of season two, the show was cancelled but not before a cliffhanger season finale. In "The Doomsday Project" Sonic and pals defeat Robotnick who flees the kingdom however Snively emerges from the rubble of the robot factory saying "I'm back and I'm not alone!" Followed by a pair of mysterious eyes in the darkness. According to Wikipedia the creator of the show was planning to bring in a new villian for season three as well as bring Knuckles into the series had it not been cancelled.
Luckily for SatAm fans, the adventures of Sonic and the Freedom Fighters would live on in the Sonic comics which would later bring in characters such as Knuckles and Amy.
Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
For those who thought SatAM was too distant from the games, there was "Adventures" which stayed more lighthearted and more true to the games. This one I was able to watch more because it was on when I came home from school each weekday, oddly enough followed by Mario's cartoon. In this series, Sonic was more of a modern day Bugs Bunny. Robotnick was more of a bumbling goofy villian accompanied by his idiot robot henchmen Scratch, Grounder and Coconuts. It stayed more true to the games, Tails had his proper supporting role and it had plenty of zones, emeralds and rings. In it's final show, "Sonic's Christmas Blast" it was rumored that this was going to merge Adventures with SatAM due to the guest appearance by Sally, but this was not to be.
Sonic Underground
Now if you thought SatAM had little to do with Sonic games, "Sonic Underground" pretty much said "you know everything you liked in Satam and Adventures? Yeah. We got none of that." Upon seeing Underground it recycled art and concepts from SatAM. Robotnick took over the kingdom of Mobitropolis, turns people into robots, etc. However the premise here was Sonic is the son of the Queen, who was forced to flee the kingdom when Robotnick took over and to protect her children, she gave them up in hopes of reuniting one day to overthrow Robotnick. Sonic had siblings, Manic and Sonja who were basically Sonic recolored and given bad 80s clothes. Even weirder was the fact that Jaleel White voiced all three characters which was fine for Sonic and Manic but made Sonja sound weird. Really, they couldn't get a female voice actor?
While Sonic still had his speed and there were robots, instead of spin attacks, Sonic and his siblings had magical instruments in order to fight off Robotnick's army and escaping the grasp of two inept bounty hunters Robotnick hired to capture the Sonic kids. Only one SatAM character appeared in the series, Sonic's Uncle Chuck appeared briefly in the first episode and Tails never appears though Knuckles did appear in a couple episodes. SatAM fans were upset because there were no SatAM characters, Sonic game fans were upset because it had little to do with the games.
Looking back, this was during 1998 which was sort of a transistional period for Sonic. The Saturn was practically dead in the US. Sonic Xtreme would never see release and the Dreamcast was still a way off. I figured Sega needed money and the creators of the shows concept wanted a recognizable character and Sega got money from them using Sonic's liscence to help fund the Dreamcast.
Sonic X
We're all familiar with this one. Sonic X came the closest to being the happy medium between SatAM and Adventures. It was drawn well, stayed true to the games and featured characters from the games. The premise here even tried to fill in the "Mobius" gap. In the first episode Eggman used Chaos Emeralds to blast Sonic and pals into our world where Sonic is befriended by a young boy named Chris Thorndyke and once more sets out to stop Eggman.
Of course the series suffered from two major flaws. One, while it was popular as an anime, when 4Kids TV obtained rights to it, fans cringed knowning that 4Kids was known for bad dub work (see Pokemon) thus the characters had different voices from those in the games and these TV voices eventually replaced the game voice actors much to the dismay of fans and there was Chris, who nobody liked. He was whiny and obnoxious and once again we found ourselves with a character who was taking over a role that was supposed to be filled by Tails (what do these TV show creators have against Tails anyway?) What I never understood was Chris was rich. His mom was an actress and his dad was a CEO so they were never around and he hung out wiht his grandfather the scientist and his ethnic sterotype servants and yet Chris went to public school. Chris's parents had enough money to either hire a private tutor or go to some preppy boarding schoo. Guess his parents wanted him to have a "normal" childhood but Chris was the kind of kid if you saw him in school would've been stuck up bragging about how his parents bought him a PS3 on ebay at launch for $12,000. Of course when people saw the company he kept, I figured his cla$$mates probably thought he was a furry. HA! Shall we continue to mock Chris?
Still as well all know, Sega put out this series after the fallout of the Dreamcast in order to make money off marketing Sonic to kids in order to pay off the Dreamcast debt and thus we see the current divide in fans. Old school Sonic fans who long for the old days of more simplistic stories and gameplay and the modern fans who thought "Sonic Next Gen" was the best game ever.
All these shows live on in DVD form and youtube of course and everyone has the series they like. I wonder if Sonic will ever had another TV show, but only time will tell.
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