I know I'm late with this...

[P.P.A.]

It was not until today that I finally realised the deeper philosophical meaning of Sonic (1, CD, 2 maybe). The games weren't just based on a blue little hedgehog fighting against some evil old man trying to enslave the world. No, they represent nature's struggle against the threat of human technology. Sonic, the healthy, nature-loving, naked animal, fighting with only his body against Dr. Robotnik, the ruthless, degenerated human with his army of machines, striving to make the world his own technological utopia. Just like we humans continue to develop new technologies without actually being able to handle them and only get weaker and weaker from not living like God/nature created us to, instead becoming lazy, developing allergies and the likes because we're not used to living any more. Today's civilisation even encourages this lazy/unhealthy way of life, with most well-paid jobs nowadays not really requiring physical work and the little effort we'd have to put in out everyday lives being taken away by machines. And thus we only continue to destroy the environment (ab)using our superior intelligence to destroy (just like the villainous doctor) and create our own sterile world. To the point where we all become little Eggmen, fat, degenerated, constantly sitting in some vehicle and not actually doing anything ourselves any more. (I'm ignoring the fact here that Dr. Robotnik can run just as fast as Sonic. >_>)
Technology is developing too fast for humans to keep up with it and use it wisely. Sonic however is fast. He, the nature, keeps up with the technology and stops it from taking over and destroying the Earth.
But there is no Sonic in real life. :/

However this deep aspect of Sonic has unfortunately completely disappeared nowadays. All of the old developers are gone, and it seems none of the people who make the new Sonic games have gotten this true point of the Sonic/Robotnik battle. Instead stories just as big and complex as meaningless and shallow are created, filled with soulless characters and villains with Eggman having long lost his role as the main enemy.


Sorry if I'm extremely late to realise this and I'm only stating the obvious.

[Hulkshmash]

Is it just me, or are most games/movies/books/story lines based off of that premise of "Oh no, technology is screwing us over, because we're idiots." To list a few, the terminator series, 2001: A Space Odyssey (HAL), Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken), i Robot (good...?), and I'm too lazy to list anymore.
That being said, I noticed this the first time I played Sonic 3 and Knuckles, because I thought it was fairly obvious based on the opening scene for Knuckles.

[Zeta]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceIsBad
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... sVengeance

[Dasher]

No, its true P.P.A! Ive also thought about that point, with Oshima now gone this point seems to be forgotten. Inside all of us there is Sonic as well, a being that wants to be free of Lies, free of materialism and into the supernatural (like the rings, emeralds, warp zones) is up to us to choose who will that be.

Technology is neither bad or good, it is how you use it that determines the outcome. In Sonic CD it showed how Eggman's future was all destroyed and ugly where as Sonic's future was clean, still both had 1 thing in common, Technology.

Mankind can use Technology to HELP nature, those who use technology to destroy/exploit nature and gain only what they want are selfish "Eggmen" as P.P.A said.

I miss Oshima.

[P.P.A.]

No, its true P.P.A! Ive also thought about that point, with Oshima now gone this point seems to be forgotten. Inside all of us there is Sonic as well, a being that wants to be free of Lies, free of materialism and into the supernatural (like the rings, emeralds, warp zones) is up to us to choose who will that be.

Technology is neither bad or good, it is how you use it that determines the outcome. In Sonic CD it showed how Eggman's future was all destroyed and ugly where as Sonic's future was clean, still both had 1 thing in common, Technology.

Mankind can use Technology to HELP nature, those who use technology to destroy/exploit nature and gain only what they want are selfish "Eggmen" as P.P.A said.

I miss Oshima.

You're not alone there. :(
Also you're right. I completely forgot about Good Future, heh.

[Hulkshmash]

Also, the whole Biolizard aspect of SA2 involves mankind's creations somehow biting them in the ass, so I wouldn't say that this is totally lost from the later sonic games. or does that not count because it wasn't the Biolizard itself who decided to crash?

Anyways, SA2's underlying theme seemed to be that man is the biggest threat to earth and it's inhabitants, hinted by the thwacking of Space Colony Ark, as well as Gerald.

Or I could be totally wrong because I haven't played through that game in about 3 years.

[Isuka]

And this is why the Sonic universe and Final Fantasy VII have so much in common.
Also wow, Dasher <3 Ohshima.

[Majestic Joey]

Star light zone was also an example of how technology could be good instead of bad. And the fact that they had scrap brain zone right after it was a good parallel of what could happen if technology got out of hand.

[Oompa Star]

I guess Casino Night Zone can be considered a bad place, even though was pretty.

[Crazy Penguin]

Casino Night Zone ruined real casinos for me. No springs, no bumpers, no floating glowy platforms, no bears.

[j-man]

You just haven't been to the right casinos.

[Locit]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScienceIsBad
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... sVengeance

Is there a Tv Tropes about linking to Tv Tropes?

[G.Silver]

I know when Sonic 1 came out my friends and I took it to have a strong environmental message (and so did other people, see the obviously-Sonic inspired game Awesome Possom), mainly with the contrast between the Green Hill Zone and the obviously polluted Scrap Brain. A friend of mine, for a class assignment ("make an environmental poster") made a pretty cool poster on that exact point. But then at the same time, we had cartoons on TV like Captain Planet and Widget the World Watcher, and Raffi had just released "Evergreen Everblue," so in general the media was pushing environmental concern on younger people. I was used to interpreting things that way.

I'm no longer the target of that sort of thing, but I don't think people are pushing the environmental message so strongly anymore, so it makes sense if people aren't making the connection so easily.

But back to the Japanese! The original Japanese storyline for Sonic 1 doesn't really even have the light environmental message that the US one does, and it's really vague as far as just how remote a place South Island is--Spring Yard and Star Light Zone could actually be heavily populated areas. If you take the setting of Sonic 1 and then speed forward to Sonic Adventure and keep it "consistent," you have to figure that there were always humans around, they just were never shown until then. Sonic 1 does give off a certain austere vibe, so it's easy to get the feeling that those urban areas are totally abandoned, but there's really no telling what the developers intended.

There's an issue of scale at work too. You've got Scrap Brain, it's like miles and miles of industrial wasteland, and somehow we're to think that Eggman built all that himself? It's curious! You don't really see anything you could even call a wasteland as a metaphor in other Sonic games (are there even smokestacks?), you never see the outdoors of the other factory stages, which gives me the impression that they are smaller. You've still got your "technology is bad" trope, but it doesn't have much to do with environmentalism. Oil Ocean is a good exception but since Sonic 2 was developed in the US, I don't think it's a stage that Sonic's core developers would have considered including otherwise.

There's also the differing attitudes about technology and urbanization between the west and Japan. In Japan, an urban area can be thought of as just as beautiful as a rural one, there's a greater tendency to think of man (and what he creates) as a part of nature, rather than something apart from it. So I can't help thinking maybe it was never really about the environment.

It's especially interesting if you contrast the "worlds" created in the older cartoons, SatAM (and to a degree AoStH) with the Sonic OAV. On the American side, you have this natural, furry world, encroached upon by a fat man and his deformed assistant, obvious intruders, and those are the only humans you'll ever find. On the Japanese side, we've got a moderately optimistic angle in that although apparently man has abandoned the earth itself (you can see nature reclaiming the bits he messed up), he's learned his lesson and on the top level the cities (what little we see of them) appear clean and beautiful. Eggman still supports the trope by continuing his dark science in giant factories on the world below, continuing what mankind as a whole abandoned, but overall it feels more like interesting SF than guilt-trip environmentalism.

[P.P.A.]

But back to the Japanese! The original Japanese storyline for Sonic 1 doesn't really even have the light environmental message that the US one does, and it's really vague as far as just how remote a place South Island is--Spring Yard and Star Light Zone could actually be heavily populated areas. If you take the setting of Sonic 1 and then speed forward to Sonic Adventure and keep it "consistent," you have to figure that there were always humans around, they just were never shown until then. Sonic 1 does give off a certain austere vibe, so it's easy to get the feeling that those urban areas are totally abandoned, but there's really no telling what the developers intended.

It's especially interesting if you contrast the "worlds" created in the older cartoons, SatAM (and to a degree AoStH) with the Sonic OAV. On the American side, you have this natural, furry world, encroached upon by a fat man and his deformed assistant, obvious intruders, and those are the only humans you'll ever find. On the Japanese side, we've got a moderately optimistic angle in that although apparently man has abandoned the earth itself (you can see nature reclaiming the bits he messed up), he's learned his lesson and on the top level the cities (what little we see of them) appear clean and beautiful. Eggman still supports the trope by continuing his dark science in giant factories on the world below, continuing what mankind as a whole abandoned, but overall it feels more like interesting SF than guilt-trip environmentalism.

I always thought the cities in the older Sonic games were populated, but just there were no humans around maybe because Sonic was in a rather quiet part of the city or simply because it was at night and they were all at home. However it seems the humans in the Sonic games are all environmental-friendly and Robotnik is the only one who negatively uses technology and as show in Good Future and, as G.Silver said, the OVA without his influence the Sonic humans would only develop nature-compatible technology.
Sonic 1's manual story doesn't contradict the nature theory. Less so, it even encourages it a little with Dr. Robotnik (or Dr. Eggman in this case) wanting the Chaos Emeralds to abuse their natural powers for his own destructive schemes.
Oh, and who wrote the stories for all the (Japanese) manuals? I'd assume the developers would hide their messages in the games rather than in the manual texts.

you never see the outdoors of the other factory stages, which gives me the impression that they are smaller.

Metallic Madness Past calls BS! Zone 2 also nicely demonstrates how the base was built (notice all the cranes in the far background). Mind that in Present, all of the backdrop is already covered in machinery. I'm pretty convinced he has a really huge army of robots for both fighting and building at his proposal and since he built that base on a floating small planet in a faraway desert I also doubt that he could have brought many workers or assistants.

Sonic 2 (and 3 and Knuckles), being made entirely without Naoto Oshima I doubt fully bear that message.

A thought that doesn't fit anywhere else in this post:
Assuming the theory is true, this would also explain why in (the Naoto Ohshima-directed) Sonic CD the badniks drop flower seeds on destruction rather than animals. Seeing a flower bloom personally gives me a more "nature" feeling (not sure how to put it) than seeing an animal hopping away (right into a lava pit sometimes, right Marble Zone?).

[Meat]

Seeing a flower bloom personally gives me a more "nature" feeling (not sure how to put it) than seeing an animal hopping away (right into a lava pit sometimes, right Marble Zone?).

Help control the pet population. Have your pets flamed and roasted.

[G.Silver]

Metallic Madness Past calls BS! Zone 2 also nicely demonstrates how the base was built

I forgot about that! But if the "intended" course of the stage is the Good Future, then although we do see a huge city under construction in the Past, is it actually supposed to be like the spacey garden paradise in the future? We don't really see what it looks like outside in the Present or Bad Future, do we? There's still no smokestacks like in Scrap Brain, the imegery isn't that powerful.

Sonic CD really is a big mess of unanswered questions. If we allow that there are humans on South Island and West Side Island, are there also humans on the Little Planet? Who built up all those cities (with time travel, Eggman could have done it all himself I suppose), and who made them nice in the future? Using seeds or flowers in the robots is just the tip of the icberg.

[Hulkshmash]

Sonic 2 (and 3 and Knuckles), being made entirely without Naoto Oshima I doubt fully bear that message.

Wait, did I miss something?

Maybe it was something in the manuals, because I was too young to care about those at the time. If not , I probably entirely misread this thread.

I always thought the scene where Knuckles was sitting peacefully, enjoying nature, then suddenly everything explodes, was pretty self explanatory. Knuckles to me seemed more angry about nature being destroyed than he was about his chillin' time being interrupted. Because of this, I always saw Knuckles as the defender of nature, who didn't want it to be destroyed (Even though he was ignorant and didn't realize technology was at fault.)

That being said, we're speaking about a video game where an anthropomorphic hedgehog (who can speak, and turn super, with a flying echidna and fox) is fighting a humanoid egg. It's scary to look into the story that much.

If I missed something, oops.

[G.Silver]

suddenly everything explodes

I think he was more upset about that than the destruction of any specific thing. I don't think it's so much the environment as it is his home.

Also on Sonic CD, the flowers suddenly clicked--if Eggman sends his robots back in time to build up his fortresses on the Little Planet while he's busy being not born yet, then the robots need a power source that will last longer than a chipmunk's life expectancy. Flowering plants don't normally last very long but I figure these ones must be special. It seems obvious now, but I guess this is the thread for being late about things.

[P.P.A.]

Yeah, that flower thing also hit me a while ago (I didn't think it was relevant so I didn't mention it yet). Normal animals would have died during all the centuries(?), I guess magic flower seeds were little more durable. :p
Maybe Dr. Robotnik doesn't put animals in his robots just to torture them (even though, as evident by the Metal Sonic holograms, he does have some hatred against little critters), he just goes with the closest/best possible solution. See the rings from Chaotix.
EDIT: I just had a thought. Maybe the meaning of the flowers is that no matter how long nature is being abused, it will always recover. These flower seeds were implanted into the evil badniks in the ancient past, but even centuries after in a ruined future, they would still bloom when being freed. - It's never too late to take action.

Metallic Madness Past calls BS! Zone 2 also nicely demonstrates how the base was built

I forgot about that! But if the "intended" course of the stage is the Good Future, then although we do see a huge city under construction in the Past, is it actually supposed to be like the spacey garden paradise in the future? We don't really see what it looks like outside in the Present or Bad Future, do we? There's still no smokestacks like in Scrap Brain, the imegery isn't that powerful.

My theory is that Dr. Robotnik build the whole thing in the first place (in the past), and when Sonic stopped him the population of the planet restructured the remainders of his base into what we see in Good Future. Only speculation though.

Sonic CD really is a big mess of unanswered questions. If we allow that there are humans on South Island and West Side Island, are there also humans on the Little Planet? Who built up all those cities (with time travel, Eggman could have done it all himself I suppose), and who made them nice in the future? Using seeds or flowers in the robots is just the tip of the icberg.

Yeah, that's also been puzzling me. There are a lot of indications of population on the planet: Aside from every Good Future having technological parts that obviously must have been built by someone, there are tower-like buildings in the background of Collision Chaos Present and GF, round huts or something in Quartz Quadrant and of course the city of Stardust Speedway (which looks a little Greece/Roman in the past and for some reason turns into a theme park in GF). Wacky Workbench might have been created by Robotnik, as its past form is far too advanced for that age.
By the way, where did Amy come from? The US and PAL manuals state her knowing Sonic and following him, but in the game she appears for the first time in Palmtree Panic, and I doubt she could/would follow Sonic up these giant chain up to the planet? Though the Japanese booklet (while it has no mention of her in the actual backstory) claims

A bright, energetic girl who likes fortunes and mystic things. She came to the Little Planet by "the order of the cards," but there she has a "destined" encounter with Sonic. And then...

, which sounds like she wasn't there before. Hm...
If she was however, that'd mean Sonic kidnapped her from her home planet. :o

That being said, we're speaking about a video game where an anthropomorphic hedgehog (who can speak, and turn super, with a flying echidna and fox) is fighting a humanoid egg. It's scary to look into the story that much.

If I missed something, oops.

I think you do. The whole super transformation thing, Knuckles and Miles were all creations of the part of Sonic Team that split off and went to develop Sonic 2, 3&K in America. While Naoto Ohshima, the creator of the characters Dr. Robotnik and Sonic and director of Sonic CD, stayed in Japan (long with some others). As for the anthropomorphic speaking hedgehog, lack of realism doesn't exclude the possibility that there still could be some deeper things to it than meet the eye, does it?
Eggman/Robotnik a humanoid egg? Don't see how. He's egg-shaped, but still obviously a human. That and his shape, as elaborated on in the first post, I see more as a sign of his degeneration, always sitting around in flying ships and stuff.
Otherwise, what G.Silver said.

[Hulkshmash]

You missed my point. I wasn't saying that Sonic couldn't have a deeper meaning, I was saying that often when fans look too much into a subject they find things that the author didn't originally intend to be there. By bringing up the fantasy, I was suggesting that they weren't taking it so seriously as to put attention into every little detail of the game, for several reasons.

1. People who were/are attracted to Sonic (usually children) were not attracted because of it's compelling storytelling.
2. Not many people would take it seriously, it was a video game which appeared to have nothing more than gameplay.
3. The developers were most likely concerned more for other aspects of the game.

As I said, suggesting. I have no idea whether or not these hints were put into the games on purpose. Would be cool if they were though, I never bothered to pay attention to it, see point 2. The flowers in particular would be extra special awesome; I love it when there's that much attention to detail in anything. However, there is a kind of counterpoint. Given his technology, he could easily create robots which would replace the animals within other robots, and seeking as how animals can reproduce, he could make a self sufficient supply of animals and robots. Furthermore, this is also assuming that the plants somehow don't die without light, water, or soil.

Also, I was referring to the sonic series as a whole, which I had begun to look into myself (in my other posts), so mentioning characters other than sonic isn't exactly a crime. I had started to scare myself, actually.

Oh, and by humanoid egg I was referring to his shape, I had a feeling I would be misunderstood on that.

[G.Silver]

1. People who were/are attracted to Sonic (usually children) were not attracted because of it's compelling storytelling.

Is that sarcasm? I don't think anyone would describe Sonic as having particularly compelling stories. We're obsessed anyway, though. Some of us..

Given his technology, he could easily create robots which would replace the animals within other robots, and seeking as how animals can reproduce, he could make a self sufficient supply of animals and robots. Furthermore, this is also assuming that the plants somehow don't die without light, water, or soil.

Of course, a major key to Eggman's plans is scaring away all the animals with holographic projectors, so there's no animals to replace them with!

I think the nature of these plants has more to do with the seeds. The idea is that a seed retains its energy source over a huge amount of time, waiting until conditions are right for it to bloom. These are not normal seeds that Eggman has found, so basically they are batteries with infinite storage capacity. (It could have something to do with being on the Little Planet, since time behaves strangely, the plants need that strangely infinite energy source to last for indeterminate amounts of time before they're dropped off over Never Lake.) That way he doesn't need the animals, and the batteries don't need changing.

[Frieza2000]

Strictly speaking, what falls out of the robots is a spark of light and a flower grows on the spot where it lands. It could be a ball of pure life energy that immediately stimulates the soil or something like that. It would probably have been drained from the planet by either Eggman's Machine (that kills all the enemies when you destroy it) or more likely the unique capsules that spew them at the end. Then again, the flowers sprout from metal and stone. That planet has some tenacious foliage.

[Crazy Penguin]

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall Eggman icons in Metallic Madness Past. Still, that doesn't explain who cleaned things up in the Good Futures. Perhaps all of the Rickies and Flickies and the rest, or is that too much of a stretch?

I'm still not entirely clear on the intention behind the Metal Sonic holograms. At first I thought they had something to do with the time travel theme, but upon further consideration they're probably just there to scare the animals aware. But still, what is the significance of using Metal Sonic's image? Perhaps so that the animals would also fear the real Sonic? And is there any significance to the fact that there aren't any Metal Sonic holograms in Metallic Madness, after the real Metal Sonic is destroyed?

The whole thing served no gameplay purpose. Perhaps it was just a way to maintain Metal Sonic's presence throughout the game and for players who enjoy easter egg hunting?

[FlashTHD]

And is there any significance to the fact that there aren't any Metal Sonic holograms in Metallic Madness, after the real Metal Sonic is destroyed?

X__x; Wish i'd known that sooner.

[Opa-Opa]

Perhaps so that the animals would also fear the real Sonic?

I always thought that was the thing about Metal Sonic. There are only two reasons for the evil doctor to create a robot with his sworn enemy's likeness. One would be to ruin his reputation: the fake hedgehog would run around kicking puppies so they would grow scared of Sonic, until no one else likes him any more. The other one would be just for sheer humiliation. How better could Eggman prove that machines are better than living beings than defeating nature's hero with an enhanced cybernetic version of Sonic? Just as there are some machines shaped like plants and stuff, hinting that Eggman wants to create an entire world out of iron and steel, he would love to see Sonic replaced by a robotic counterpart under his command.

Something kinda intrigues me here. If Eggman ever succeeded, replacing all living beings with robots, I wonder what would happen to him. Would he take his own life and replace himself with some Metal Eggman to rule the world he dreamt?