The GHZ Forum

A recent Sega press release celebrating Sonic’s 15th anniversary listed some of the hedgehog’s achievements over the years:


• Sonic the Hedgehog was released fifteen years ago on June 23, 1991 for the Sega Genesis.
• The Sonic franchise has sold over 44 million games since then.
• Sonic has starred in more than 30 games.
• Over 8,000 Sonic games are sold worldwide every day.
• Gamers have spent over 500 million hours and collected over 66 billion gold rings playing Sonic The Hedgehog games.
• Sonic has had two animated TV shows, an animated movie, several comic books, a theme park, and was the first and only video game character ever featured in the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade.

Sega’s list, however, contains two mistakes. The first is that Sonic franchise has lent its name to four animated spin-offs. The second is that Pikachu also appeared in the Macy parade. It also isn’t clear how Sega worked out the total number of rings amassed over the years or the hours spent playing Sonic games.

(Source: Games are Fun).

Sonic has had two animated TV shows, an animated movie, several comic books, a theme park, and was the first and only video game character ever featured in the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade.

What, did their research consist of playing Sonic Jam?

If so they forgot that they named a gene after him!

Two animated TV shows? I wonder which two they're referring to out of the obvious four that really exist.

Sonic Ecks (Oh yes... I went there.) and Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (The one where they turned Sonic into Bugs Bunny) my bet.

Oh, you mean the two good ones.

Sonic X is good? I thought the only people who liked it were those with low expectations for an anime adapation of Sonic. The OVAs weren't much better, but they least they actually reminded me of Sonic, not Sunday morning video game anime #4,397.

I liked SatAM, except several of the characters bugged me.

Satam was good on its own, but not as Sonic material.

Sonic X was a decent show in the original japanese. At least until they did the game adaptions. Each game should of had at least 13 episodes. It was too rushed otherwise. The Super Sonic / Perfect Chaos battle was a massive disappointment. The Final Hazard was slightly better because they had Live & Learn.

big smile wrote: It also isn’t clear how Sega worked out the total number of rings amassed over the years or the hours spent playing Sonic games.

I'm guessing they pulled that number out of their asses.

Well if everyone spent at least 5 hours with each copy of the every game that was sold, you'd hit that number easy. There is no way they can guarentee that, but I am guessing several people spent more time than that, it isn't a bad guess. It is totally a guess though based off some rudimentary information. The rings is just retarded. I guess I've probably collected a million or so rings over the last 15 years, but I kinda just picked that number outa my ass.

One Classy Bloke wrote:Sonic X was a decent show in the original japanese. At least until they did the game adaptions. Each game should of had at least 13 episodes. It was too rushed otherwise. The Super Sonic / Perfect Chaos battle was a massive disappointment. The Final Hazard was slightly better because they had Live & Learn.

Japanese Sonic X rocked of course, 4KIDS can rot in HELL.

The game adaptions were dumb and boring, it currupted the game's storyline, mainly replacing characters with Chris.

It always pissed me off that there was never a actual cartoon based on the games with badnicks etc mario got closer to the games than sonic ever did

AoSTH was pretty funny sometimes. Eggman ruled that cartoon.

Would someone mind clarifying just what exactly makes the Japanese Sonic X better than the English version? I can't imagine that terribly much had been changed, and as far as I'm concerned, the show would had to have been revamped entirely for it to be even remotely enjoyable.

SatAM ftw, btw

The soundtrack, probably. We'd be talking the difference between Sonic CD soundtracks, to use an allegory, except in this case, the US one is utter crap and doesn't add the feelings it should have. At least Nilsen's work was quite good in its own right; anyone wanting a CD of 4Kids' music is probably insane.

Other than that, I never watched the anime all the way through to care enough. I just bloody like that music.

The 4KIDS SONIC X got butchered to hell, nto only did it had different music that sounded like uber bullshit, but it was sliced and diced, they took out wine bottles and replaced it with a loaf of meat, they remove liquor on a bar and replaced it with french fries...on a BAR!!

they removed Signs that had stuff written on it, both Japanese and ENGLISH!!

they edited Rouges chest various times.

they removed the name G.U.N, completely rewrote the script with corny jokes and they sent the anime to hell.

this is the end of my Rant.

SegaSonic wrote:they took out wine bottles and replaced it with a loaf of meat, they remove liquor on a bar and replaced it with french fries...on a BAR!!

they removed Signs that had stuff written on it, both Japanese and ENGLISH!!

All viable reasons to dislike a show, I'm sure.

SegaSonic wrote:The 4KIDS SONIC X got butchered to hell, nto only did it had different music that sounded like uber bullshit, but it was sliced and diced, they took out wine bottles and replaced it with a loaf of meat, they remove liquor on a bar and replaced it with french fries...on a BAR!!

they removed Signs that had stuff written on it, both Japanese and ENGLISH!!

they edited Rouges chest various times.

they removed the name G.U.N, completely rewrote the script with corny jokes and they sent the anime to hell.

this is the end of my Rant.

None of that really matters, the show is still generic boring anime tripe even in its original format and I'd watch Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog over it any day.

Ritz wrote:

SegaSonic wrote:they took out wine bottles and replaced it with a loaf of meat, they remove liquor on a bar and replaced it with french fries...on a BAR!!

they removed Signs that had stuff written on it, both Japanese and ENGLISH!!

All viable reasons to dislike a show, I'm sure.

^However, rewriting a script poorly, changing the BGM to some awful all-purpose generic music that fails to fit any scenes, and bringing in poor voice direction are. One Piece anime fans got it much worse than the Sonic X fans though--much, much worse.

To tell the truth, Sonic X(JP version) and the Sonic OAV are the only Sonic feature-lenght cartoons I actually like. It's probably because they feel more 'Sonic-y' than SatAM and SU and they both have better art direction than AoStH. Though admittably, Sonic OAV is the only one I would watch at least twice.

The Sonic CD animations rules over all though and the Sonic Riders opening was also nifty. I demand Sega to commision for at least one 2D animated sequence for future Sonic games. I get more excited over that than the full CGI that seems to be a norm for current Sonic games.

To be honest, I wouldn't watch AoStH ANY day these days... the thing's just too corny. And what the hell is Sonic saying every five minutes? "Gotta speed, keeed"? Artistic license or not, that's just butchering of the English language and/or the word "kid".

Never mind that I instinctively wince every time somebody tries to drag up Mobius as canon. Granted, this isn't the games here so I should cut it some slack, but just the mention is enough to remind me of those "darker" times (and by "darker" I mean much happier and more simple, if only becuase Shadow the Hedgehog wasn't a game) where Sega would change the hell out of a game without much regard for it. Heck, just look at Sonic CD getting an uneeded (but still quite decent) extra soundtrack, or anything involving Streets of Rage III (Ash may have been terminated, but he will forever be in our hearts...).

The only thing AoStH is good for is Shmorky's Sonic cartoons. XD

Shmorky was one of the few people I saw actually acknowledge the death of Long John Baldry, which was quite depressing as everyone went nuts when Deem Bristow died and he couldn't have been more inferior to Baldry. Obviously they played very, very different versions of the character but Baldry was pretty much the shining point of the whole cartoon and his perfomance was genuinely fantastic. There's no one I would've wanted more as a replacement to Deem than him and I was absolutely gutted when he died.

Ritz: You obviously do not know much about 4Kids.

McGeachie: To be honest, I prefered Bristow's work over Baldry (slightly though) but Long John's performance as Captain Capacitor and Old Man Pearson in ReBoot made me moarn him. Both were excellent VAs in their own rights and it's an absolute shame the they both died. On a slight digression, Gary Chalk was probably the only great VA for Underground, not including Sean Connery's two-episode bit. It's odd how Robotnik managed to get great voices up until 4Kids decided to take over for the games.