Shadow Hog wrote:Oh, by no means did <i>Sonic Adventure</i> ruin Sonic. If anything it's the crappy games released long since and all the horrid dialog that was contained therein that really dropped the ball.
Well, I did say in my original response...
Stylistically speaking, the evolution of the Sonic series has been pretty normal. Sega's just tried to keep Sonic up-to-date with current trends. Just because the music doesn't sound like the Genesis games doesn't mean it isn't cool; it just means this isn't 1993 anymore. (Gameplay on the other hand, has no such excuse)
Blaze wrote:It doesn't look edgy or extreme now, but 15 years ago? Yeah, it was. It's always been said that, both in terms of gameplay and personality, there was no videogame character like Sonic on the market because of his speed and his attitude.
Everything from his annoyed waiting animation to the simple finger-wag he does on the titlescreen gave him more attitude and personality than any videogame character ever made, pretty much. And jeeze, think of the Sonic CD FMV - how can you watch that and tell me Sonic didn't have attitude?
You just proved Frieza's previous point though.
Frieza2000 wrote:I don't know about you, but I never thought the short and round design made Sonic look cool. Oshima's designs tended more toward cute. It's the things Sonic did that made him cool.
Blaze wrote:It doesn't look edgy or extreme now, but 15 years ago? Yeah, it was. It's always been said that, both in terms of gameplay and personality, there was no videogame character like Sonic on the market because of his speed and his attitude.
Everything from his annoyed waiting animation to the simple finger-wag he does on the titlescreen gave him more attitude and personality than any videogame character ever made, pretty much. And jeeze, think of the Sonic CD FMV - how can you watch that and tell me Sonic didn't have attitude?
You just proved Frieza's previous point though.
Frieza2000 wrote:I don't know about you, but I never thought the short and round design made Sonic look cool. Oshima's designs tended more toward cute. It's the things Sonic did that made him cool.
Okay.... how about this:
Sonic is blue.
I actually read an article ages ago about how the color of each Sonic character closely ties to their personality. It was fascinating back when I first read it (like, 2000 or 2001), but probably not so much now. Though I seem to remember it going far more in depth than simply, "KNUCKLES IS RED 'CUZ HE'S ANGRY A LOT".
But yeah. Blue. What do you think of when you see blue? Water? Sky? How about cool? As in, cold. I mean, why else would Sonic be blue? Hedgehogs aren't normally blue; it has to say something about him as a character - and that is, that he's cool. He's not cute. Even before you see any of the actions he does, you see that he's blue, and because he's obviously not sad, it must mean he's cool.
Is it me, or does anyone else find it odd that Tails is the only one of the main cast with a color that matches his species? Almost makes him like a freak amongst freaks.
Well in anime a lot of the characters get blue hair because blue ink is cheaper than other colors. Could be related. It just doesn't grab me as a marketing strategy or symbolic choice. It could be as simple as blue contrasting well with the backgrounds of levels they were planning or the pallet limitation of the Genesis. When I was a kid, red was the cool color. Blood and anger, ya know. When I first heard "blue hedgehog" I thought they were going for something semi-wacky and fantastic, not cool. It's possible though; I'm just throwing ideas around.
His facial expression usually has attitude for sure, but if he softens his eyes he really does look kind of Mickey Mousy. The art from the screensaver has a lot of him like this. Pulling off cool and cute at the same time is quite a marketing strength, really. The prepubescent girl market is huge and I knew a few girls who would "Awwwww!" for Sonic back in the day.
lacks any kind of cuteness in OS Sonic is fooling themselves.
And Frieza, sadly the prepubescent girl market for Sonic these days usually hang out on Deviantart and go "OMG!! SONIC IZ HAWT!!" and draw awful pictures of him making out with their shitty fancharacters or getting porked by Shadow, "teh tortured bishie hedgie". =(
Frieza2000 wrote:Well in anime a lot of the characters get blue hair because blue ink is cheaper than other colors. Could be related.
Blue pixels are cheaper.
I always thought the multicolored hair was to take care of distinguishing characters in black and white manga. Since all Japanese usually have black hair, they used different colors, or shades of tones within the manga to tell characters apart.
Yup. And the only places where the characters were ever drawn in full colour was on the covers. So, a lot of the time they gave them outrageous bright hair colours to make the covers stand out more.
I was told another reason was because in the manga, it was also cheaper (and easier) to simply not fill in the hair at all, and because all Japanese people have very dark hair it was just assumed that the characters had black or very dark brown hair as well, just as a cultural thing. Once things get to the cover or to the anime version, they'd pick out different colors since it was never really set in the first place.
I always thought that it was because all manga characters "within their stories and authors" look alike, except for the hair. I mean, c'mon, if you see those stupid dragon ballers they are all the same, except for the hair.
And another thing, why doesn't Sonic ever wear pants? I mean, you know? It's like, get with the times, Sonic, I don't want your hippie bullshit. You know? Guys? Guys?
Black Rook wrote:Certainly doesn't help that he's sitting in the middle of the road.
Even more confusing is that he's waiting for a bus. Public transport doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd need when you can break the sound barrier.
That actually ISN'T eerily floating in mid-air; it's being suspended by a thin wire that's hard to make out from the ocean it's overlapping. Check the sides of the picture, where the sky meets the horizon, and you'll see the edges of the parabola the wires are making; from there, just kinda trace it with your eyes, and you'll see they're connected to the traffic light.
