Sonic The Hedgehog Games

[Newcomer 42]

He also claims he likes working alone better, which is frankly ridiculous.

Games Sonic hates responsability, he'll say whatever to avoid work, unlike SATAM Sonic.

 

[Cave Fisher]

Literally what can they do with Belle, anyway, other than have her be all sad that Eggman probably doesn't give two fucks about her and prefers Sage? At least Whisper vaguely had the goal of "kill Mimic" even while being a crying lesbian, and her sniper aesthetic is kinda cool before she starts talking, but Robot Pinocchio doesn't really have anything interesting going for her.

He also claims he likes working alone better, which is frankly ridiculous.

I can only just kinda guess that was just him not wanting to specifically join the resistance, considering how a huge part of his character is working with his friends.

 

[MugolEx]

Literally what can they do with Belle, anyway, other than have her be all sad that Eggman probably doesn't give two fucks about her and prefers Sage?

Simple.

BASED SAGE!?

 

[NerdShamer]

Literally what can they do with Belle, anyway, other than have her be all sad that Eggman probably doesn't give two fucks about her and prefers Sage? At least Whisper vaguely had the goal of "kill Mimic" even while being a crying lesbian, and her sniper aesthetic is kinda cool before she starts talking, but Robot Pinocchio doesn't really have anything interesting going for her.

I can only just kinda guess that was just him not wanting to specifically join the resistance, considering how a huge part of his character is working with his friends.
View attachment 7689547

I love how Shadow the Hedgehog tries so hard at being an spiritual successor of Heroes when most of the side characters barely do much of any useful. Like Amy bitching at you for smashing the Badniks

 

[GoodWinSon]

Issue 3

Art:

Honestly don’t like the art that much in this issue. It’s flat looking, but I guess the action isn’t too bad



Summary:

Sonic runs towards yet another town in danger only to discover Knuckles has finished the job for him. Knuckles mentions he wants to head back to Angel Island soon, before stating that he’s here to investigate why shipments from this town have stopped.

They discover it’s under lockdown because two mercenaries took it over and are tyrannizing the local population. Sonic and Knuckles head off to confront the two rogue mercs and find out they’re two skunks named Rough and Tumble. I wish I could tell you which one is which.



A fight ensues with the black one using his skunk spray against knuckles, which was pretty amusing.



Rough and Tumble move to use their whispons (weapons powered by whips for those unaware), but Sonic remembers he’s friends with whisps (a callback to Sonic Colors) and convinces them to abandon the two skunks. The whisps oblige and Sonic and Knuckles finish them off.



Rough and Tumble are carted off, swearing revenge while our heroes celebrate with the liberated townsfolk. The issue ends with the mysterious figure spying on them and noting that Angel Island is free for the taking.

Final Note:

Just another character introduction issue. It’s serviceable, nothing special I’d say. Nothing really interesting in the letters either. Sorry I took so long in between this issue and the last one.

 

[Newcomer 42]

Rough and Tumble move to use their whispons (weapons powered by whips for those unaware

Have fun if you didn't play the necessary games, as it's not explained where those come from.

Sorry I took so long in between this issue and the last one.

I thought the excessive women talking scenes were too much for you.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Does it feel to anyone else like making fun of Shadow for being edgy and screaming "MARIA" all the time is relevant again now Sega has dredged it all back up? Maybe it never stopped being relevant but to me it seemed like he had accepted what happened on the ARK and come to terms with it. As a result all the Ow the Edge jokes felt old hat.

After Generations though it all seems funny again. I was just watching a years-old video making fun of Shadow's edgyness and it feels fresh again.

Pic related

I can only just kinda guess that was just him not wanting to specifically join the resistance, considering how a huge part of his character is working with his friends.

Shadow the Hedgehog was my first Sonic game. I did not know who Sonic was before it, it unironically was my intro to everything Sonic.
It was over the top but the 2 player Battle mode was the best part. Growing up a neighbor kid that lived down the street always invited me to come over and play either Melee or the Shadow with him.

The battle mode may be simple but with friends it was a blast and easily the best part of the game.
It was a lot like this.

 

[Cave Fisher]

whispons

Does anyone else find it annoying how hard Forces and IDW lean into using Wisps as guns? I already wasn't a fan of them showing up in places that made no sense like Lost World, but having them hang out in sniper rifles and bells and shit is just kinda worse.

 

[MugolEx]

Does anyone else find it annoying how hard Forces and IDW lean into using Wisps as guns? I already wasn't a fan of them showing up in places that made no sense like Lost World, but having them hang out in sniper rifles and bells and shit is just kinda worse.

I would figure it's some kind of world building and to explain how certain characters can have powers that otherwise normally wouldn't. You'd think they would just use the rings as an excuse for all of that though. I'm leaning towards it being more half baked world building.

 

[Newcomer 42]

Wisp guns are an all ages approved equivalent of guns, so those characters with no superpowers will use them, like civvies. The issue is when there are way too many characters whose special ability is "gun", of which there's three at least.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Wisp guns are an all ages approved equivalent of guns, so those characters with no superpowers will use them, like civvies.

What ever happened to just using their talent and skills?

The Freedom Fighters were always using things like martial arts (Sally), science (Rotor), strength (Bunny), etc...why are guns even an option to begin with?

Even with the enemies, only time any of them were using guns were the swatbots, snively, and robotnik himself, which makes sense. Otherwise whether it was Mammoth Mogul or Ixis, they faced the cast in other ways. Even the low-level grunts like the other dimension Sonic gang didn't use guns and they were the "evil" versions.

 

[Newcomer 42]

What ever happened to just using their talent and skills?

That's not enough when compared to literal superheroes.

science (Rotor), strength (Bunny),

These two used guns and/or have cybernetic limbs, they don't count as normal.

why are guns even an option to begin with?

Because there are characters like "nameless half-dressed fox guy n. 1241st who has no name or superhuman abilities of any kind" so he needs an edge, plus others like a bounty hunter called Fang, a sniper wolf whose sthick is being a sniper, and an annoying sheep lady who has no special abilities but she has an unique design, so she gets a gun.

Otherwise whether it was Mammoth Mogul or Ixis, they faced the cast in other ways. Even the low-level grunts like the other dimension Sonic gang didn't use guns and they were the "evil" versions.

Mogul was large and strong and had magic, same with Ixis. IDW Sonic doesn't even have a central authority of any sort (or ANY authority) for Eggman to gloat to, don't expect little things like sense or consistency. Can't have that when it's essentially a glorified ad for the games, and the newest game isn't coming anytime soon.

 

[Pixy]

Wisp guns are an all ages approved equivalent of guns, so those characters with no superpowers will use them, like civvies. The issue is when there are way too many characters whose special ability is "gun", of which there's three at least.

Forces did give variety in the wispons, most of them weren't guns. Unfortunately, outside of unique characters, the writers and artists haven't made much use of that.

 

[AbduluCthuluZulu]

Wisp guns are an all ages approved equivalent of guns, so those characters with no superpowers will use them, like civvies. The issue is when there are way too many characters whose special ability is "gun", of which there's three at least.

I miss when good guys were allowed to have proper guns in Sonic. Now only le heckin evil villains can have them, and any good guy who wants a ranged weapon has to use some magical "it's not really a gun, but it still works like one" bullshit.

 

[NerdShamer]

The battle mode may be simple but with friends it was a blast and easily the best part of the game.

I can't be the only one who thought that the grenade launcher was shit in this one, right?

 

[Newcomer 42]

I miss when good guys were allowed to have proper guns in Sonic. Now only le heckin evil villains can have them, and any good guy who wants a ranged weapon has to use some magical "it's not really a gun, but it still works like one" bullshit.

Blame the weakening of society, the rise of political correctness, the softening of Sonic and other IPs, or all three at once. Shadow used guns from that game that the company tries very hard to pretend it doesn't exist... But Shadow used a gun in the third movie (even if it was a generic sci-fi one), and the human soldiers and robots of course use regular guns. I have no idea why this comic went for the Wispon idea instead of regular guns. If it's to be a safer alternative for children, why does the second arc start with a jarring, edgy, and over-the-top zombie apocalypse stand-in NOT meant for children? Or the occasional child mistreatment bits? I blame IDW for wanting to have the cake and eat it.
In Archie Sonic, heroes don't use guns, or so they said, because Penders hated guns IIRC... Which was inane because Rotor used cannons and bazookas. Bows and crossbows were acceptable substitutes for the real deal, but I dunno if IDW has even that.

 

[Pixy]

The framing for the IDW comic was that it picks up post-Forces, hence the wispons to make it canon-accurate. Whenever SEGA will let them reintroduce the human world to the comics, I would assume that's when firearms might be able to sneak their way back in outside of the few panels of Eggman holding a pistol.

 

[Captain Syrup]

I miss when good guys were allowed to have proper guns in Sonic. Now only le heckin evil villains can have them, and any good guy who wants a ranged weapon has to use some magical "it's not really a gun, but it still works like one" bullshit.

 

[Mr. 0]

Interview with Sonic 2 artist Craig Stitt:

https://segaretro.org/Interview:%20Craig%20Stitt%20(2025-08-02)%20by%20Alexander%20Rojas

highlights include:

He talks hidden palace

Spoiler

CS: I remember it being very positive. The one I do remember that was negative, and I had to agree, was actually both in Hidden Palace and Oil Ocean, the distant background, that independent layer in the background. I had a really hard time with those. I think that was also coming down to really limited memory. Those number of little squares, little tiles you had was very limited. I know on Oil Ocean, I wish I had a picture of what I did because I do not remember what it looked like at all. But Yamaguchi was definitely not happy with it. So the background that's in Oil Ocean in the game is actually Yamaguchi's. I remember at the time being frustrated a little bit. That it wasn't mine, that I couldn't do the background. The background wasn't mine. But I also know that mine sucked. But I don't remember what it looked like.

Hidden Palace Zone is the background that's there I'm not happy with. It was a tricky thing to do. That [background] was the hardest part. That's the only time I remember any negative comments was specifically the background on Oil Ocean. I know there's an original background I did for Hidden Palace that I think shows up in some of the magazine screenshots.

AR: Right, yes. The cave-y stalagmites and stalactites look.

CS: Yeah, the more cave-shaped looks. That got replaced with whatever is there now. So yeah, that's mine. But even that, I'm still not happy with it. The favorite artwork I've ever done on any video game is Hidden Palace Zone. I'm the most proud of that work. But not the background.

Kid Chameleon

Spoiler

AR: Kid Chameleon was following Dick Tracy, which was Disney's, Touchstone's thing. It seems like Kid Chameleon was the first chance that STIs artists and staff got to really flex their creativity.

CS: Yeah, yeah. At the time, Sega was looking for a mascot. Nintendo had Mario and Sega didn't have anything. Mark… one of the things on Kid Chameleon was… we wanted to be Sega's mascot. Cause there was no Sonic yet. So we're doing it and it was loosely based… There was another… who was the "Kid"? There was another "Kid" game that was in Japan on the Genesis, and it was strange.

AR: Alex Kidd.

CS: Alex Kidd, yeah. So I can't remember what the relationship was there. There is one, I don't know what it was. So we were hoping… There were a couple things. One, Mark wanted to make the biggest game ever made, the longest game ever made on the Genesis. So it's like 1,800… You used to measure the side-scrollers by screens. So it's 1,800 screens, if I remember the number right, so it was huge. Kid Chameleon was an enormous game with no saves and no battery backup. Part of that was money. It was cheaper to not have a battery cartridge, but also Mark didn't want to have a save. He wanted people to have to play through.

yuji naka is a piece of shit

Spoiler

AR: What was working with Yuji Naka like?

CS: [reticent] Hmm.

AR: You can be honest.

CS: He didn't like Americans. He didn't like speaking English. He was a dick. Yeah, I really have nothing nice to say about Naka. On the other hand, Yasuhara I love and would… There's very few things that would get me back into the game industry. If Yasuhara called. If Mark called or Yasuhara called and said, "Hey, I've got something I'd want to do with you." I'd say, "Yes." Naka didn't like Americans, he didn't like Americans on his team. I'm particularly pissed at him because at the end of Sonic 2, Roger Hector, who was the head of STI at that time, told me that I was going to be a lead artist on Sonic 3 and was very excited about that. But Naka being Naka- cause the way Naka got what he wanted is he threatened everyone. If he didn't get what he wanted, he threatened to quit. So he was going to quit. He wasn't going to do Sonic 3 unless he got his own all-Japanese team in their own office with separate key cards. That was all Japanese. So Sonic 3 was done across the hall behind locked doors. Which pissed me off cause I was supposed to be one of the lead artists on it.

AR: You're not the only one.

CS: Yeah. I look at it… Am I the only American that ended up with environment art in Sonic 2? I think I am. Cause all of Brenda's stuff got cut, and all of Tom's stuff. I'm the only American that had finished art in the game.

AR: Right. Yes, yeah.

CS: Yeah Naka. "I'm going to take my ball and go home" was his go-to plan on everything. So you'd give him a big bag of money and give him what he wanted and he'd stay. But he was the exception. The other guys, Yasuhara and… Yamaguchi.

roger hector is a piece of shit (which tracks with what brenda ross had to say about him)

Spoiler

There was another programmer, a woman. I do not remember her name at all… Once again, she had her own thing going, had projects that she wanted to do. So when she came in, it was you could feel things shift. Her and Dean were there at the same time. I was also butting heads with Roger Hector, because morale at this point was low. They had Spinny & Spike, Steve Woita's game. Segapede, my game. Spinball, which was Peter's game. The Ooze was going on also. They were trying to do Sonic on for the Mars, 32X, or whatever that chaotic transitional crazy thing that Sega screwed everything up on.

AR: Yeah [laughs].

CS: You had least five games going simultaneously in a company that really, at best, could do two or three, as far as manpower. So the morale was in the crapper. And I remember going into [the office of] Roger Hector, who had taken over after Mark left, and saying, "Hey, morale is just really crap right now. Everybody is just miserable." And I spent probably an hour in his office. I remember I got about three steps out his door and realized I spent the last half hour or 45 minutes apologizing to him because the morale was 'my problem'. It wasn't the company's. I got about three steps out and I went, "What the fuck?" Because that was Roger's superpower. He's a nice guy, very charismatic. His nickname was Teflon Don. Nothing stuck to him. If anything bad happened, it was never his fault.

I guess that followed him from his time at Disney. He was really good at avoiding blame. He had to add this power of when you're with him, of… he just had incredible charisma or something. At that point, I literally walked to my desk and called Mark Cerny. "Sayy, Mark, I understand you're looking for someone, you're putting a new team together." I mean, that was the transition. Like, "Oh, crap, it is time to get out of here," and called Mark.

Although when Sega didn't get a Sonic for the 32X Mars slash Saturn… that bullet, even Roger couldn't avoid that one. So he ended up leaving Sega shortly thereafter because I think he finally couldn't dodge that bullet. So that's how I ended up in L.A. with Mark was "OK, it's finally time for me to get out of here."

he made spyro the dragon

Spoiler

CS: Yeah, I don't know. My memory is just of drawing pictures and doing the animations and "writhing dramatic death" for the boss… No, that was Kid Chameleon. The writhing dramatic death was Kid Chameleon. It wasn't really a boss. It was this snake creature that didn't end up being used. No, that was Kid Chameleon. I remember having a lot of fun doing the artwork [for Dark Empires]. I remember really enjoying working with Bill, and that art style was very natural for me.

AR: Yeah, I feel like you naturally gravitate towards creatures and particularly I've noticed a theme of dragons that continued on later in your career.

CS: Yeah. It's interesting because Spyro… the idea for Spyro, was one of mine. I'm the one that pitched the idea for a dragon. It's interesting that once we got the go-ahead on that, it was an art style that was outside… the actual environment there, outside of what I would normally do. It's much prettier, it's much softer, much more painterly. It was one of the other artists, Kirsten, can't remember her last name. [Kirsten Van Schreven‑Butler] It's hyphenated, the last name. She's another environment artist and her texture work was this very loose, very painterly look in these pastel colors. That was it. I was, "Okay, that's Spyro. That's the look we want."

Spoiler

So that's when we did another rework and we ended up with this little dragon named… once again, never his real name. People always think it's his real name. His working title name was Pete because it was a play off Pete's Dragon. It just drives me nuts, where people say, "If you named him that Disney would sue you." It's like, "No, the dragon in Pete's Dragon is named Elliot. That's the little boy named Pete. That's the joke here, people. We're not going to name him Pete." But by the end of it, I really did want to name him Pete, cause after 18 months… once again, that naming thing, it took forever to find a real name. By the time we got around to it, I liked Pete.

So we reworked it and brought in Charles Zembillas as a contract artist, just to do some character design, cause he also did all the character design for Naughty Dog. Crash Bandicoot and the other stuff for Naughty Dog. We brought him in and I think he was there just for an afternoon or morning, early afternoon. Then we couldn't decide… he did a whole bunch of drawings. He's incredible. He did a whole bunch of drawings, but no one liked any one drawing as our little dragon. We had pieces we liked. So I took the ones we liked, photocopied them, then I cut the head off of one and I either shrunk it down a little bit, or I blew it up bigger, and I used some Wite-Out and I taped these things all together. I took a photocopy of that and I brought that into the conference room and everyone went, "That's our dragon. That's our character." That's one of the scans I still have, that cut and paste Spyro.

He was originally green. I did the color comp and he's green. But we very quickly realized that he's green, and for a lot of the game, he's going to be running around on grass. So that's not going to work. Plus there was Gex and Croc and at least one other… Yoshi. There's all these other green reptile mascot characters. "Y'know, maybe not green." That's the one of the other things I still have is this 25 year old videotape of Spyro in all these different colors, trying to find what would look good. We ended up on purple, and that's how we ended up with a little purple dragon.

Spoiler

The worlds were fun to build, and I've got some favorite places and favorite things and had a lot of fun building the world. But the skies. I look back at those… I just recently here just came across this picture of a tattoo that's one of my skies. It's very clearly made to look like it's polygons and a vertex-lit tattoo of the sky, with a crystal dragon from Spyro 1 on top of it. This beautiful tattoo, it kinda freaked me out in a good way, because I've seen lots of tattoos of Spyro and different games I've worked on. I built the crystal dragon and I built the sky. So I'm looking at this person's tattoo. "That's my artwork on your body." That is cool. That is wild.

insomniac went to shit

Spoiler

CS: Yeah. I look at the few other people that I know had some diagnosed physical issues that made it very hard to work. Insomniac bent over backwards to keep them and make sure that they were happy and healthy and content. Chad's very talented. He was a good art director. So when he needed to leave the company and go back to family in North Carolina, they opened up another branch of Insomniac in North Carolina that he could work from there.

AR: Oh, geez.

CS: I'm like, "Okay?"

AR: "So you can't understand my position on this, but you can open up an entirely new branch in a different state?"

CS: Yeah. For the longest time, for the first number of years… Insomniac fired a couple of people, but nobody left Insomniac because where would you go that was better? We were making incredible gains. The coworkers were awesome, the perks and the food and everything in the office was awesome. There was literally nowhere else you could go. But then as the company got bigger, and they got more corporate, it turned into just another company. Ted kept saying, "We're never going to go corporate, we're always gonna stay the same." Then it got as corporate as it could be.

Spoiler

CS: That just got worse as time went by. If I had to do it all over again, I would have quit after Ratchet and Clank 1. I should have quit after Ratchet and Clank 1. Right in the middle of Ratchet… like, during Spyro, I remember, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night, I'm at my desk banging away on something on behind schedule, and Ted would call me into his office. "Hey, Craig, can I talk to you?" and I'm like, "Oh man, I am so busted." I'd into to his office and I'm getting ready to get chewed out, and Ted would go, "Hey, Craig, just want to thank you for being here. We couldn't do this without you. Here's the raise."

AR: Oh, that's nice!

CS: "Okay! Oh, okay." Then I'd go back to work. Then like a year later, another late night, I'm at my desk, I'm behind schedule, like everybody always is. And Ted says, Hey, "Can I see you at my desk?" And I'm like "Crap, I'm busted. I'm in so much trouble." And he goes, "Hey, Craig, couldn't do this without you. Thank you. Here's a raise." "Oh, okay."

And then jump ahead to… halfway through Ratchet and Clank, this time during the day. Ted says, "Hey, can I see you in my office?" "Yeah, sure." This time I'm not freaking out. like, "Hey, I'm getting a raise." I go in and Ted says, "If you're behind schedule again, we're gonna have to fire you."

AR: [shock] No.

CS: That was so asinine, it was such a bizarre statement, my brain didn't register it. I just went, "Oh, well, I'll work harder. I'll put some more hours in." And I went to lunch. And I'm sitting at lunch and all of a sudden I'm like, "What the fuck? Did he just threaten to fire me?" It didn't register until halfway through lunch. I go back into his office, and I go "Ted, did you…?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm surprised you didn't react." I'm like, "Yes, because it's asinine. Everybody's behind schedule!" At the time, I think I was writing the schedule. And so I said, "Okay."

 

[MirageKai]

One piece of sonic media that I hope comes up one day is the 1990 TGS proto of sonic 1. That still to this day has not been found.