TOTALLY STOAKED = VERY HAPPY!
April 24, 2017 2:14 AM   Subscribe

Remember awesome Mario miscellany Tumblr Supper Mario Broth? (Previously) Here's some equal time for the other side of the console war: Sonic the Hedgeblog! SPECIAL STAGE: Sonic Retro's epic list of romhacks.

Some interesting/entertaining posts:
posted by JHarris (12 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
So... not sure why... maybe I'm turning into a prude... maybe its because he's clearly wearing sneakers...maybe its the flesh color of his tummy.... but... PUT ON SOME PANTS SONIC!
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:31 AM on April 24, 2017


I had Art Alive. It was... not a worthy alternative to Mario Paint.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:56 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Sonic Mania is an upcoming Sonic game based heavily upon the 16-bit Genesis games, notable in that it is being worked on by romhackers extremely knowledgeable of the original engine's workings

If Sonic Mania turns out to be as good as it's looking, this just baffles me more. Why did it take independent fans to go back and reverse engineer the original physics systems?
posted by lucidium at 8:39 AM on April 24, 2017


Sargnarg the Hardge Harg
posted by msbutah at 8:47 AM on April 24, 2017


If Sonic Mania turns out to be as good as it's looking, this just baffles me more. Why did it take independent fans to go back and reverse engineer the original physics systems?

I too wonder about this sometimes. There is one aspect of the original physics in particular that stands out that I hear Sonic Mania nails but no other non-Genesis Sonic game does, and that has to do with bounce height. In a Genesis Sonic game, if you roll into a ball and land on an enemy from a height, Sonic always bounces back up to the height he fell from, no matter how far that is. This meant that sometimes enemies could be used as navigational tools, although in practice it was only really useful to experience players since to bounce up to high places you'd have to know exactly where an enemy would be, far below you, so that you could precisely hit it. Still, it was touches like this that made the Sonic games what they were.

As for the blog... oddly, although it's full of the same kind of weird miscellany as Supper Mario Broth, it doesn't seem as interesting to me? There's just as much Sonic the Hedgehog weirdness out there, at least as many bizarre nooks and crannies to explore in the Sonic Universe, but oddly it's not as accessible to an outsider? Part of it might be that there's at least three entirely separate Sonic universes that were once approved by Sega but don't seem to be recognized as official now. (I count the two different cartoon shows and the Archie Comics series, which even some of the subgames like Spinball and Mean Bean Machine drew from. Although you could also add in weird pre-release Sonic-has-a-girlfriend continuity, though it never went anywhere. Then there's the weird anime-ish Sonic from the Sonic CD cutscenes and other odd places. And then there's... um, where was I again? Let's stick to the point.)

My point here is, Sega has apparently taken some effort to separate Sonic the Hedgehog apocrypha from the holy canon. Princess Sally, weird bag-like black-eyed Robotnik, the very name Robotnik instead of Eggman, these things were the creations of US licensees, of which apparently Sega of America itself is now considered one. Nintendo on the other hand has adopted some of Nintendo of America's contributions back into core continuity*, like the name Mario (but not the full name Mario Mario, which seems to come from the movie). While the name Bowser for his opponent is not the official Japanese name for the character (which is "Koopa"), they haven't attempted to retcon it like they did with Dr. Eggman, and at least that character's total redesign happened with Super Mario World, still pretty early, instead of waiting for the Dreamcast era.
  • Yes, I'm a grown adult talking about the continuity of video game character storylines. Yes, I know how silly this is. My only excuse is, this stuff is in my head and I've got to find some use for it. This is obviously srs bsns.
The result is, there's more of a sense of play in the construction of the Mario universe. Some of the Mario universe's most beloved frenemies started as weird offshoots created by semi-rebellious internal development teams. I hear a non-Miyamoto-led team chafed a little at having to keep making games about a character they didn't create, and so they made their own alternate version of him, Wario, to star in games, and Nintendo allowed it. And once Wario was around it was only a matter of time before they completed the square and made a Waluigi, even though he's never had a starring role in a major game. (I think he's the baddie in Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix, which would be the closest he's come.)

Anyway, the ridiculous upshot of this ridiculous comment about ridiculous matters is, Nintendo tends to embrace weird offshoots of their property's continuity, while Sega tries to lock down, to some extent, the official history of their anthropomorphic cartoon animal, and that seems to affect how we (well, I) perceive their property, and while they've made some moves to counter that (like the wonderful Sonic the Hedgehog twitter feed, of which I could never imagine Nintendo approving a version for their characters), there's still a surprising amount of Sonic heresy out there, stricken from the records, punishable by excommunication. Or at least maybe a Twitter blocking.
posted by JHarris at 10:12 AM on April 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


Why did it take independent fans to go back and reverse engineer the original physics systems?

I'm guessing because Sonic fans as an whole (and there might be a lot of substancial differences between fans of STH to S3&K, post-Adventure, and comic and/or cartoon) likely won't agree on what a good Sonic game is, and SEGA is perfectly happy selling average-to-crappy games.
posted by lmfsilva at 10:31 AM on April 24, 2017


Nintendo tends to embrace weird offshoots of their property's continuity, while Sega tries to lock down, to some extent, the official history of their anthropomorphic cartoon animal

I have the reverse impression, weirdly. I'm really, really, really not a fan of tight continuities in what were originally very loosely related platformers/adventure games. By all means, play with a Zelda Timeline if you're having fun with it, but if you're gonna get all Jabu Jabu's Witnesses about it, then get the hell off my lawn. Nothing sucks enjoyment out of a thing like locking it down to a particular, nonsensical retconned "canon."

As much as I hate that kruft, it's really accrued more and more around Nintendo's series. I think they've done a good job on the whole of not letting that inhibit creativity too much, but at this point, there is a certain established aesthetic and thematic style for Mario. It doesn't matter what kind of game he's in or how much storytelling there actually is; there's a consistent flavor of Mario. There are far fewer oddball or experimental offshoots, and those in the past have either been folded-in to a mainline Mario style or left out in the cold.

Sonic? Who knows. Sometimes it's a bag of Skittles laced with MDMA. Sometimes it's a bunch of cheese dumped on a bag of raw flour. Sometimes Sonic is an alien on an alien planet. Sometimes Sonic is a dude on Earth I guess? I have no idea. There's no consistent flavor at all. I know Mario is a plumber who lives in the Mushroom Kingdom, and from that basic premise branch out dozens of completely different directions. I have no idea who Sonic is; I don't trust Sonic.

And I say this as someone who honestly kind of prefers Sonic games to Mario games a lot of the time. They frequently have more complex, melodic soundtracks that better lend themselves to really diverse remixes and covers; they often have superior art direction and phenomenal use of color; for all that they inevitably get compared to Mario, they've always really tried to do completely different things from Mario.

I think the lack of consistency has something to do with 1) trends in gaming shifting away from arcade-style structures where you can get away with a retail game that's relatively short but extremely dense (leading to lots of filler and wtf plots) and 2) an inherent lack of interest on Sega/Sonic Team's part. After Sonic 3 & Knuckles, they seemed to decide they were done with Sonic and moved on to Ristar, Chaotix, NiGHTS, Burning Rangers and all kinds of wonderfully out-of-control-creative titles that nobody played. Sonic Adventure felt like a reluctant return for the sake of brand recognition alone. It was never a Sonic game, exactly; it just stars Sonic. And that's been the M.O. ever since.
posted by byanyothername at 11:26 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also, everyone who loves 2D Sonic and Sonic Team/Treasure games really has to play Freedom Planet.
posted by byanyothername at 11:27 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Part of it might be that there's at least three entirely separate Sonic universes that were once approved by Sega but don't seem to be recognized as official now. (I count the two different cartoon shows and the Archie Comics series, which even some of the subgames like Spinball and Mean Bean Machine drew from.

Well, you're missing at least two more cartoon shows that I know of at least off the top of my head. Just looked it up, apparently there were five total, one of which I even forgot because it came after I stopped following the franchise obsessively. The two you're probably thinking of are from the early 90s: Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog from weekday afternoon syndication, and Sonic the Hedgehog from Saturday morning on ABC also known by its fan name of SatAM.

Then there was Sonic Underground from the late 90s, Sonic X which was an anime that got imported stateside in the early naughties and inexplicably had a second season that aired only in France, and most recently Sonic Boom, which came out in the mid-teens.

SatAM and the original batch of the Archie comics pretty much share a continuity, and apparently Sonic X fits in with the Sonic Adventure portion of the video game canon and had its own run of Archie comics issues. Sonic Boom also has games associated with it, and its own Archie comics as well, and as I understand it, there was an effort to tie all three forms of media together more closely than they had in the past, as a concerted effort to market the franchise to the next generation of Sonic fans, who have grown up in a world where there's always been an internet that had an active Sonic fandom (and in some cases fandumb) occupying one of its corners.

While I too, dislike the fact that the US-generated portion of the franchise seem to have been shoved deep down the knothole, many characters introduced in the latest incarnations of the franchise strongly resemble characters from the earlier continuities, serving as at least a callback for the longtime fans.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:32 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I did a little bit of further research, and found out that legal complications from one of Archie Comics's artists asserting creator's rights over many of the characters used in older storylines was responsible for a major continuity reboot, and some rather strict guidlines handed down by Sega to make sure that future legal hassles don't occur in the future.

Sounds like a lot of drama, and I'm glad I missed out by not following the franchise as closely as I used to.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:53 AM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: Sonic? Who knows. Sometimes it's a bag of Skittles laced with MDMA. Sometimes it's a bunch of cheese dumped on a bag of raw flour.

It's nice to know that there are people here geekier about this than I am, which is pretty damn geeky.

Mario does have a couple of prominent offshoot games/continuities, and every time you think something has been decided is definite and true and real they go and forget it ever existed.

Like Toadsworth, Peach's chief steward from Mario Sunshine. Remember Toadsworth? He was everywhere for a while, then just as suddenly it seems like he never existed.

Mario universe has multiple "tiers" of continuity, I think:
  1. Mainline. This is very little other than Mario and Luigi save the Mushroom Kingdom and Princess Peach from Bowser and his Koopa Troop. Things that were introduced in Super Mario Bros.
  2. Second-tier mainline. To the above, add most (but NOT ALL) things added in Super Marios 2 and 3, and Super Mario World. Primarily this brings in Yoshi, but a lot of other things from these games are only provisionally used, like Shy Guys. And plenty of things from these games only get used sporadically, like the Koopa Kids (originally Bowser's children, now we have no idea what they're supposed to be), or else have just vanished, like Wart from Mario 2, never heard from again in anything.
  3. Third-tier mainline. This level exists primary for Bowser Jr., a character that, like Toadsworth or Dr. Gadd, you'd expect would have been left behind in continuity, but inexplicably persists.
  4. First-tier sub-canon. These are characters who are of fluid canonicity, who are sometimes even treated as higher-level characters depending on how much the devs love them. Wario (who was playable in Mario 64 DS!) and Donkey Kong (has his own subseries with Mario!) are here. In the long run, Rosalina will probably end up here.
  5. Second-tier sub-canon. This is where the Mario sports games come in, and Mario Party. It is the basement of the Mario universe. Lots of popular classic characters keep showing up here but never anywhere else. Princess Daisy seems like she's a major part of the Mario universe to laypeople, but really this is her kingdom, forever in Peach's shadow. Waluigi is also here, although his surprising meme power might someday move him up a level. Also Birdo, Petey Piranha, Piantas, Toadsworth, Dr. Edwin Gadd and the like.
  6. Third-tier sub-canon. This is the world of Mario Kart, which is a series that has always played strangely with continuity. On one hand it's always a snapshot of the current state of the Marioverse, so Mario Kart 64 had the SM64 version of Peach's Castle in it, MK Double Dash!! had Piantas and Toadsworth, MK7 and 8 brought in gravity tricks from Galaxy and some space station stylings on Rainbow Road, etc. But then came 8's DLC, which is both obviously less canonical (Animal crossing and Link in the Mushroom Kingdom?? Racing on F-Zero tracks?!?!) and yet also somehow more (Super Bell Subway is the greatest official love letter to all things Mario there has ever been). And it even has its own internal continuity; some of DoubleDash's tracks can be seen in the distance from other tracks, and MK8's version of N64 Rainbow Road hovers in the air above what seems to be the Mushroom city from Super Bell Subway, and on whose streets you drive in another level.
  7. The Apocrypha. Super Smash Bros. territory, purposeful crossovers with other games, even from other companies. Also the Mario and Sonic Olympics games.
  8. Finally, there are the subseries. There are a few Mario series that, once they get settled in as their own thing, tend not to produce things that make it into more mainline series. Like the Mario & Luigi games, Paper Mario, the awesome style of Super Mario Strikers, and so on.
This... was rather more than I intended to write. tl;dr: Mario matters are complicated.
posted by JHarris at 8:17 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


ugh, I miss Toadsworth and all the goofy weirdos bursting with personality that Paper Mario introduced, then erased.
posted by byanyothername at 8:51 PM on April 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


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