Tails, Knuckles and Amy are still present though. The literal most popular characters in the franchise barring Shadow.
Its the former three lack the baggage the latter has when he shows up.
You'd think at some point, they would have thrown in the towel and just focused on the American market but no...
You have any additional sources on this, I wanna read about it.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Sep 18th 2022 at 1:33:16 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Did Knuckles standing on Angel Island in the rain not interest you?
Did the "teaser" fail?
It worked for me, because Knuckles is only cool in the rain.
Edited by randomness4 on Sep 18th 2022 at 1:40:28 PM
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.I feel like it's more that Sega sees them as Sonic's sidekicks than anything. And yes, that includes Knuckles as well given he is often grouped with Tails and Amy as sidekicks.
So if you wanna have a Sonic focused story, it makes sense to focus on him and his closest sidekicks.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Sep 18th 2022 at 1:40:19 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.You have any additional sources on this, I wanna read about it.
I'm mainly going off of this interview with Yuji Naka. https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/megadrivecx/kibe2
It's all in Japanese, so I don't know how much that helps you though.
I'll try and quickly summarize the relevant points though. Naka and a team of 5 people got together to come up with a way to sell consoles and beat Nintendo. They came up with making a game that could advertise as "big hit in America!", reasoning that made a good hook for people to choose Mega Drive over Super Famicom. So they had to make a game that was popular in America first, but Naka says none of them had really been to America. So Naka says he gave some pretty vague orders to the designer like making Sonic have a "west coast-felling" and "look CG-ish", and they made Sonic a bright color because they thought Americans liked bright colors.
Also, apparently the games was harder at first, but late in development someone from Sega of America played the game and said it would be too for Americans and asked if they could make it so "you can win with just 1 ring", which lead to the current system of avoiding death if you have rings when you're hit and getting a change to pick some of them back up.
Naka then laments that even though they succeeded in making the game a hit in America and were able to use that "big in America" tagline, they failed to make it big in Japan.
That is such a big brained line of logic lmao. "Alright, so to beat Nintendo, we'll make a new mascot that's popular in America in order to sell him in Japan...how do we do that?" The more history I learn about Sonic's conception, the more it makes me feel like his entire success was just a happy accident lol.
"No, he wasn't supposed to be more popular in America!!"
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does."The game was harder at first, so they toned it down because they thought Americans would find it too hard."
This is the strangest thing in the world. Not that Japanese games were sometimes changed to make it easier for Americans, but the fact that sometimes other Japanese games were made harder for Americans.
"This game is too hard. Americans are terrible at video game and can't play it. Make it easier. But this game is too easy for Americans, who are really good at video games, so you need to make it harder."
Like, make up your mind. Pick a side instead of switching back and forth.
Edited by WillKeaton on Sep 18th 2022 at 12:26:44 PM
Honestly the more one dives into Sega in the 90s the more one realizes how remarkable it is that the company achieved any big success, let alone challenging Nintendo in the West. By the time 95/96 rolled around, So A & So J successfully working together on a bake sale would have been too much of an ask, let alone the roll out of a video game console.
Edited by BorneAgain on Sep 18th 2022 at 2:17:38 PM
I don't think I'll be able to find the source, but I also remember a different interview about the making of Sonic where the one being interviewed talked about how part of why they wanted to make Sonic seem more "American" was so he seemed more "mature". Like these kind of animal characters in Japanese media are only really in stuff aimed at super young kids that no one in even late elementary school or older would want to be associated with, but Western characters like Mickey Mouse are different. Mickey Mouse is "cool" and even adults would wear something with Mickey on it. They wanted Sonic to have that same cool energy as Mickey so he could be popular with all ages.
I think they may have mentioned Sonic's gloves being taken off of how characters like Mickey and Bugs Bunny wear gloves.
I don't think this any big reason Sonic isn't as popular, but I saw a couple different Japanese comments suggesting it so I guess it's food for thought. They suggested that maybe Sonic isn't as appealing to young boys in Japan because the popular shounen protagonists are more the ones that start off weak and relatable and grow stronger over the course of the story, unlike Sonic who's the coolest and strongest from the start.
One of the comments said that they went to an IRL Sonic event, and they felt like half the fans there were girls and wondered if Sonic's portrayal appealed more to them. Which did make me wonder, since I've seen things that suggested that a bigger percentage of Japanese Sonic fans are female. Out of curiosity, I did some searching to see if I could find anything more on that. I didn't find anything concrete, but I did find on Twitter a shocking number of Japanese girls declaring their (romantic) love of Sonic and Shadow...
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Yeah, Sonic 2 does indeed exist...
And it is a problem considering that game has the worst enemy placement of the 3 games.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.The thing about the Classic games is also that they're harder to get into if your muscle memory is more attuned to traditional platformers. I basically grew up with both 2D Mario and Sonic and was able to adjust to both, but if most of your experience is with titles in the former's mold, it can be tricky to adjust to the momentum based emphasis of the latter.
I find the complaints a bit silly because Sonic's ring system is SO much more generous than life point systems in most games in that it allows you to make plenty of mistakes you couldn't afford to otherwise, which balances the not being able to see 100 ft in front of you at high speeds. Only times when it's unfair is stuff like crush kills or wing fortress' pits.
I feel Sonic 2's difficult is backloaded with metropolis and wing fortress/death egg, and chemical plant 2's water section. Aside from that it's the easiest of the classic games save for CD.
Just want to say I enjoy Shadow, Big the Cat, Cream, Rouge, Blaze, and Silver.
But. Also. F-ck Big the Cat, Shadow, Cream, Rouge, Blaze, and Silver.
Edited by FOFD on Sep 18th 2022 at 5:35:54 AM

Fixed it. Sorry about that.