History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.

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MasenkoHA
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by MasenkoHA » Wed Feb 27, 2019 2:12 pm

Zephyr wrote:Mark Menza, the man responsible for Dragon Ball GT's beloved American English dub replacement musical score, .

I genuinely can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by NewKakarot » Wed Feb 27, 2019 2:28 pm

Don't think I've ever found someone who actually likes Menza's score lol

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by RandomGuy96 » Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:29 pm

Zephyr wrote: Moreover, brand loyalty is a thing, and people will continue to purchase the games on the "merit" of everything besides the gameplay (which itself continues to drift farther and farther away from the core tenants that made the original games novel and innovative platformers in the first place), essentially rewarding the blind and thoughtless experimentation and backwards priorities held by the studios working on the IP (and incentivizing more of it), simply because, well, "it's the next entry!" The irony is that, despite the constant blind experimentation, Sonic Team has also been making explicit efforts to "return to the series' roots", regularly, since at least as far back as 2003, making the last decade and a half feel like a hilarious "worst of both worlds" scenario. Sonic Mania, the first actual successful attempt at returning to said roots (helmed largely by fans who'd been collectively reverse engineering the original games since as far back as Sonic Adventure's release in the late 90's), only just came out in 2017.
I get brand loyalty; it's not like I've never fallen into the trap of paying for something bad or mediocre because I thought previous entries were good (cf. Chappie, Mass Effect Andromeda, GoT season 5 onward, Prometheus, every single ASOIAF book outside of the main series, and so on). What I don't get is still having brand loyalty for a franchise this old. As far as I know, Sonic's peak consists of a few good simple games in the 1990s. My main sticking point is how the hell that turned into a franchise that survives until today; a franchise that hasn't produced anything worthwhile for literal decades now.
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RandomGuy96 wrote:
dbgtFO wrote: Please elaborate as I do not know what you mean by "pushing Vegeta's destruction"
He's probably referring to the Bardock special. Zarbon was the one who first recommended destroying Planet Vegeta because the saiyans were rapidly growing in strength.
It was actually Beerus disguised as Zarbon #StayWoke
Herms wrote:The fact that the ridiculous power inflation is presented so earnestly makes me just roll my eyes and snicker. Like with Freeza, where he starts off over 10 times stronger than all his henchmen except Ginyu (because...well, just because), then we find out he can transform and get even more powerful, and then he reveals he can transform two more times, before finally coming out with the fact that he hasn't even been using anywhere near 50% of his power. Oh, and he can survive in the vacuum of space. All this stuff is just presented as the way Freeza is, without even an attempt at rationalizing it, yet the tone dictates we're supposed to take all this silly grasping at straws as thrilling danger. So I guess I don't really take the power inflation in the Boo arc seriously, but I don't take the power inflation in earlier arcs seriously either, so there's no net loss of seriousness. I think a silly story presented as serious is harder to accept than a silly story presented as silly.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Young-Jah » Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:35 pm

Zephyr wrote:Mark Menza, the man responsible for Dragon Ball GT's beloved American English dub replacement musical score, is the cousin of the father of Nick Menza. Nick Menza is notable as being the drummer of American Thrash Metal band Megadeth, from the years 1989 to 1998. His first recorded album with the band, 1990's Rust in Peace, featured Hangar 18 as its second track, a fan favorite song that describes a government conspiracy to hide the existence of aliens in Area 51. Son Goku, Dragon Ball's protagonist is also an alien. But the connections don't stop there!

Nick's first songwriting credits with the band come into the fold with 1992's Countdown to Extinction. One year later, Dragon Ball Z Side Story: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans was released. Its plot is a riveting tale, wherein the Tsufruian scientist, Dr. Lychee, wants to eradicate the Saiyans, out of revenge for what their people did to his. Extinction. Eradication. It's like pottery: it rhymes! Now, this plot point would later be repurposed in Dragon Ball's own 1996 television anime sequel, Dragon Ball GT, where Baby, an artificial lifeform created by the Tsufruians, has the same bitter vengeance that Lychee did before him. And who composed the iconic soundtrack to Dragon Ball GT's American musical score? Mark Menza, of course!
RandomGuy96 wrote:The DB fandom's inexplicable love for Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the most confusing pop culture phenomenons in the world to me, right up there with Sonic the Hedgehog being an extant franchise in the first place.
ABED wrote:For the life of me, I'll NEVER understand why the Sonic fandom is what it is. Why? it's a video game franchise, with only the most basic of storylines. While I don't condone the actions of toxic fans, I get why for instance Star Wars fans are so protective about it. Stories are inherently personal. Some take it too far, but I can understand the logic. I'm at a loss for what is about Sonic that engenders this kind of reaction.
Sonic has had cartoons and comic books since the early 90's. Starting with Sonic Adventure in 1998, the games started to put more emphasis on the story, with full cutscenes, voice acting, etc. The characters are largely all one dimensional, and the stories are lowest common denominator "Saturday Morning Cartoon"/"Shonen manga/anime" type junkfood, but a lot of people (particularly children) have next to no standards for this kind of stuff. Furry fandom, as well as people on the autism spectrum (neither of which are being invoked here disparagingly), also play an important role. As does general nostalgia, from those not already fitting any of the aforementioned descriptions.

Moreover, brand loyalty is a thing, and people will continue to purchase the games on the "merit" of everything besides the gameplay (which itself continues to drift farther and farther away from the core tenants that made the original games novel and innovative platformers in the first place), essentially rewarding the blind and thoughtless experimentation and backwards priorities held by the studios working on the IP (and incentivizing more of it), simply because, well, "it's the next entry!" The irony is that, despite the constant blind experimentation, Sonic Team has also been making explicit efforts to "return to the series' roots", regularly, since at least as far back as 2003, making the last decade and a half feel like a hilarious "worst of both worlds" scenario. Sonic Mania, the first actual successful attempt at returning to said roots (helmed largely by fans who'd been collectively reverse engineering the original games since as far back as Sonic Adventure's release in the late 90's), only just came out in 2017.

It's particularly amusing with the new live action Hollywood Sonic film that is coming out later this year. It's shaping up to be trash (shocker), and the Sonic fandom has been having a collective meltdown over it, worrying that this will be the thing that destroys the brand. Not only is that practically demonstrably impossible at this point, but it would be a well deserved comeuppance for those who have been unconditionally supporting a fucking corporate brand, even at its lowest. The chickens have come home to roost. The bed has been made, and it's time to sleep in it. Not that it'll actually happen; the film will come out, be panned, and the brand will resume its regularly scheduled program of "industry punching bag". There's no "reputation" left to tarnish. Mania, "the first good one since forever", is constantly described in every review and discussion as "...a thing made by the fans", so any and all goodwill it fosters is directed at the reputation of the specific team behind it, rather than the IP proper.

As far as being "protective", a lot of that comes from the fracturing that embodies the fandom. Due to Sonic Team's constant experimentation, they've made a bunch of different styles of games, and each one was somebody's first. A lot of peoples' first. So, people largely bicker about which approach is the best. In the gameplay department, the original games were pinball platformers that had some nice spectacle held together by a lot of substance; the 00's approach was largely a failure to approximate said platforming substance into the third dimension and punching up the spectacle as a crutch; the 10's approach has largely been a potentially solid racing game being held back by frequent, intrusive, bland and sloppy platforming. In the story department, the 90's had the approach of "hey, it's a video game, this shit belongs in the background and as a footnote"; the 00's largely had a lot of faux "deep and dark" pretensions; the 10's have largely actively made fun of the 00's approach (much to the chagrin of fans of said approach). Exceptions exist for all of these, but they're are the broad strokes. Disagreement about this stuff can get really hostile sometimes.

As far as being "protective" of the brand in general? I honestly don't see too much of that, outside of fans who take issue with the official Sonic social media accounts actively making fun of the brand's countless blunders. Between the piss takes, and the outrage over it, I'm not sure which makes me laugh more.
You did left out Sonic X.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by ABED » Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:37 pm

RandomGuy96 wrote:
Zephyr wrote: Moreover, brand loyalty is a thing, and people will continue to purchase the games on the "merit" of everything besides the gameplay (which itself continues to drift farther and farther away from the core tenants that made the original games novel and innovative platformers in the first place), essentially rewarding the blind and thoughtless experimentation and backwards priorities held by the studios working on the IP (and incentivizing more of it), simply because, well, "it's the next entry!" The irony is that, despite the constant blind experimentation, Sonic Team has also been making explicit efforts to "return to the series' roots", regularly, since at least as far back as 2003, making the last decade and a half feel like a hilarious "worst of both worlds" scenario. Sonic Mania, the first actual successful attempt at returning to said roots (helmed largely by fans who'd been collectively reverse engineering the original games since as far back as Sonic Adventure's release in the late 90's), only just came out in 2017.
I get brand loyalty; it's not like I've never fallen into the trap of paying for something bad or mediocre because I thought previous entries were good (cf. Chappie, Mass Effect Andromeda, GoT season 5 onward, Prometheus, every single ASOIAF book outside of the main series, and so on). What I don't get is still having brand loyalty for a franchise this old. As far as I know, Sonic's peak consists of a few good simple games in the 1990s. My main sticking point is how the hell that turned into a franchise that survives until today; a franchise that hasn't produced anything worthwhile for literal decades now.
Brands are all about reputation, so I get sticking with something even through a rough patch, but if the reputation turns sour, then it's no longer loyalty, it's blind loyalty.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by RandomGuy96 » Wed Feb 27, 2019 4:48 pm

ABED wrote:
RandomGuy96 wrote:
Zephyr wrote: Moreover, brand loyalty is a thing, and people will continue to purchase the games on the "merit" of everything besides the gameplay (which itself continues to drift farther and farther away from the core tenants that made the original games novel and innovative platformers in the first place), essentially rewarding the blind and thoughtless experimentation and backwards priorities held by the studios working on the IP (and incentivizing more of it), simply because, well, "it's the next entry!" The irony is that, despite the constant blind experimentation, Sonic Team has also been making explicit efforts to "return to the series' roots", regularly, since at least as far back as 2003, making the last decade and a half feel like a hilarious "worst of both worlds" scenario. Sonic Mania, the first actual successful attempt at returning to said roots (helmed largely by fans who'd been collectively reverse engineering the original games since as far back as Sonic Adventure's release in the late 90's), only just came out in 2017.
I get brand loyalty; it's not like I've never fallen into the trap of paying for something bad or mediocre because I thought previous entries were good (cf. Chappie, Mass Effect Andromeda, GoT season 5 onward, Prometheus, every single ASOIAF book outside of the main series, and so on). What I don't get is still having brand loyalty for a franchise this old. As far as I know, Sonic's peak consists of a few good simple games in the 1990s. My main sticking point is how the hell that turned into a franchise that survives until today; a franchise that hasn't produced anything worthwhile for literal decades now.
Brands are all about reputation, so I get sticking with something even through a rough patch, but if the reputation turns sour, then it's no longer loyalty, it's blind loyalty.
That's the gist of what I was getting at. Sonic is nothing but a rough patch.
The Monkey King wrote:
RandomGuy96 wrote:
dbgtFO wrote: Please elaborate as I do not know what you mean by "pushing Vegeta's destruction"
He's probably referring to the Bardock special. Zarbon was the one who first recommended destroying Planet Vegeta because the saiyans were rapidly growing in strength.
It was actually Beerus disguised as Zarbon #StayWoke
Herms wrote:The fact that the ridiculous power inflation is presented so earnestly makes me just roll my eyes and snicker. Like with Freeza, where he starts off over 10 times stronger than all his henchmen except Ginyu (because...well, just because), then we find out he can transform and get even more powerful, and then he reveals he can transform two more times, before finally coming out with the fact that he hasn't even been using anywhere near 50% of his power. Oh, and he can survive in the vacuum of space. All this stuff is just presented as the way Freeza is, without even an attempt at rationalizing it, yet the tone dictates we're supposed to take all this silly grasping at straws as thrilling danger. So I guess I don't really take the power inflation in the Boo arc seriously, but I don't take the power inflation in earlier arcs seriously either, so there's no net loss of seriousness. I think a silly story presented as serious is harder to accept than a silly story presented as silly.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Shaddy » Wed Feb 27, 2019 5:30 pm

You're baffled at how people are sticking with something that's been consistently bad for so long? Easy answer: it hasn't been consistent. If you think it's just all the same then simply put, you're not paying close enough attention. If it were all terrible all the time people wouldn't have stuck with it. That's why the answer is more complicated than that.

I feel the old rigamarole of talking about the Advance and Rush games, Colors, Generations, different versions of Lost World, Fire and Ice, Mania, the good and bad parts of Forces etc. is such an overdone rhetoric that if you honestly think you have no resources for determining which games are good or not at this point, then I can't help but think you're not actually interested in being informed on the series in the first place. On top of all this, the reasons people still like the series isn't even limited to the games themselves anymore.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by 90sDBZ » Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:27 pm

The Planet M2 episodes from GT always reminded me of Sonic. You have Dr Myuu's "machine mutants", similar to Dr Robotnik/Eggman's machine animals, Pan fighting her way through a metallic base and having to keep restarting in a tedious videogame fashion, and a planet where everythings been turned to metal similar to several Sonic stages. And Robotnik and Myuu both have orange moustaches.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by MasenkoHA » Wed Feb 27, 2019 6:40 pm

Brand loyalty is how you get Toei half assing their animation on shows like Dragon Ball Super and Sailor Moon Crystal.

Just saying.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by ABED » Wed Feb 27, 2019 7:16 pm

MasenkoHA wrote:Brand loyalty is how you get Toei half assing their animation on shows like Dragon Ball Super and Sailor Moon Crystal.

Just saying.
I don't know about that. Toei's strategy seems to have always been quantity over quality.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Zephyr » Wed Feb 27, 2019 8:01 pm

MasenkoHA wrote:I genuinely can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not.
It is.
NewKakarot wrote:Don't think I've ever found someone who actually likes Menza's score lol
May your search continue.
RandomGuy96 wrote:What I don't get is still having brand loyalty for a franchise this old. As far as I know, Sonic's peak consists of a few good simple games in the 1990s. My main sticking point is how the hell that turned into a franchise that survives until today; a franchise that hasn't produced anything worthwhile for literal decades now.
The simple fact is that not everyone thought this stuff was worthless. Or, at least, not consistently worthless enough to discard entirely. While I presently believe that there was largely nothing of value done with the brand between 1994 and 2011, I certainly didn't think that was the case back then. I was a kid. I wasn't critically evaluating my interests to the extent that I do now. For a lot of people, it's familiar comfort food. For a lot of people, friendships are forged through a common interest in something, even if it's bad with the hindsight of adulthood and critical thinking. You don't generally up and choose what's psychologically and emotionally special to you. Hell, as someone who was genuinely hyped for Sonic 06, saved up to purchase an Xbox 360 so I could play it, and beat the game after I got my hands on it, I couldn't tell you at what point I started to think "holy crap this is terrible". It wasn't until I replayed the Genesis games and Sonic 4 was coming out that I really dove deep and explored what made the Genesis games so great in the first place (and thus everything that followed them so paltry in comparison).

You also have to remember the circumstances of Sonic's creation, and his design as a cartoon character. He was forged in a competition to create a mascot, one who could rival Nintendo's Mario. He was practically engineered from the ground up to be universally appealing, specifically cool. Broadly speaking, he's Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat, with Sega's logo giving him the blue; he's got the shoes of Michael Jackson, colored like Santa Clause. And he's basically an asshole. Sega's American marketing department in particular was fucking aggressive. Sonic 2 gave Sega 50% of the console market share. Those early games fostered a lot of good will, particularly in Europe, where he's been the most popular, and imprinted on a lot of impressionable kids. That's why he started getting animated TV shows and comic books. This also created immense thirst for a real new Sonic game. Between Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure, there were no real new Sonic games made by Sonic Team, and the arms race had moved into the third dimension; this meant that Adventure was very strongly anticipated by the fandom.

Nowadays I'd hesitate to call either Adventure game "good" (though the first made some admirable efforts to translate the physics of the original games into the third dimension; does that sound like "damning with faint praise"?), but for a lot of kids back then it stuck the landing on style points alone. Ultimately, neither two Sonic Adventure games were able to save Sega from bowing out of the console market, but they were then just about immediately ported to the Nintendo Gamecube, where a lot of younger Nintendo kids (I'd wager raised on the N64, a largely Sonic-less era) got to see Sonic for the first time, imprinting on a new generation of impressionable kids. While I find the "style" of these games' stories, characters, aesthetics, and presentation to be very cringe-inducing nowadays, it scratched a certain itch; part "Shonen anime", part cheesy Saturday Morning Action Cartoon, part cheesy Power Metal, part Nu Metal. Now, if we want to really get at what makes so many people associate Sonic with Dragon Ball, my personal theory is that the way both IPs were handled in the US during the early to mid 00's exuded, as the kids say nowadays, "the same energy". Look at the general vibe collectively given off by the Funimation dub, the Faulconer Productions score, the Budokai games, and Yamamoto's Stratovarius-ripped power metal soundtrack. At the same time (mid 00's), Sonic was doing a lot of the same shit, existing in a weird crossroads between "Japanese kids' stories poorly acted out by Americans", "scored with really cheesy and anthemic heavy metal songs", and "available on the Nintendo Gamecube". One might argue this all to be an unholy amalgamation, and I wouldn't disagree, but for a lot of kids (apparently; myself included) it scratched a very specific blend of aesthetic itches at the time. And, thus, the good will was renewed.
Both Adventure games did feature a variety of different musical styles, but the main theme song for each game, which recieved a plethora of motifs throughout the menus, cutscenes, and boss fights, pervade all of it.

Of course, fans of the older games were, by and large, I'd imagine, not really having this shit. The games were now set in the real world, the Chaos Emeralds were plot devices acquired in cutscenes rather than bonus games, and there was too much story focus. But it didn't matter. A new market was effectively created. And so they ate up the likes of Sonic Heroes (which restored some goodwill with the prior market, by returning to surreal environments, Chaos Emeralds being acquired via bonus games, and very few cutscenes), Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic 06, the latter of which is a well-known colossal disaster, but all of which featured the style of soundtracks and stories and character acting that fans of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the Nintendo Gamecube had come to expect, and had come to see as the main attraction (Heroes and Sonic 06, in fairness, had more musical variety than Shadow, and unlike the two Adventure games, didn't have cheesy power metal anthems as the main theme song of menu motifs). While the gaming press after this point was essentially in "Sonic is just fucking bad" mode, the fans weren't. Sonic 06 was shitty, but it was a shitty fluke, right? The next game will be great! And, honestly, 2008's Sonic Unleashed was better than Heroes, Shadow, and 06 (does that sound like "damning with faint praise"?); it even featured 2D gameplay, for the first time in a mainline Sonic game since 1994 (in both gameplay and presentation; ironically, the game was panned by critics, seemingly on principle, because of the bad will fostered by 06; there were even some instances of it getting worse scores than 06, if I remember correctly). In 2010, Sonic Colors completely overhauled the presentation; the dialog was now written by Ken Pontac and Warren Graff (of Happy Tree Friends "fame"), and it was very self-referential and self-depreciating. In a way, this was a breath of fresh air for older fans who hated how seriously the games took themselves. 2011's Sonic Generations actually brought back Classic Sonic's design! Good will being incrementally restored? Most definitely.

In short, I guess it's less "people just blindly eating shit up for 20 years", and more "every colossal fuck up is made up for with brief honeymoon periods". Moreover, with each fuck up, the bar for "this isn't so bad, honestly" gets lower and lower. So, less a drug addiction, and more a harem of abusive relationships, with new generations of victims being brought into the fold every step of the way to replace those who manage to escape. Hell, I thought I escaped after Sonic Lost World appeared to not be following what Generations was doing, and then they fucking got me, by giving me exactly what I'd been asking for since as soon as I outgrew that specific blend of aesthetic itches described two paragraphs ago. That doesn't mean I'll go back to checking stuff out and supporting it financially "just because it's got Sonic in it" as I'd done as a child, but if they continue to release games like Sonic Mania, I obviously won't exactly be boycotting the brand or anything. Rather, it shows that they've done so much different shit with the brand that at this point, they could do practically anything, and somebody will crawl out of the woodwork to exclaim "I've been waiting for them to do this again!" But as Shaddy said, it hasn't been consistently bottom of the barrel stuff. Even if you think every game between 3K and Mania pale in comparison to either (as I do), it's not all (and in fact rarely is) as bad as Sonic 06 was. Only Sonic 06 was that bad. Everything else, for me personally, at the present, with all of my hindsight and self reflection and analysis of the gameplay components, falls somewhere between "honestly pretty solid all things considered, but I don't really want more" and "aggressively mediocre". Does that sound like "damning with faint praise"?

---

This is all just part of it. As mentioned in my previous post, though, the furry fandom as well as people on the autism spectrum also play a huge role in the brand's longevity. Since I fall into neither category, neither were a component of my own fandom, so I left them out of this analysis. Individuals for whom they are relevant, however, make up a very large portion of the fandom, and have for a long time.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Chuquita » Wed Feb 27, 2019 9:38 pm

I never understood the mushing together of Sonic and Dragon Ball, or at least it's never something I did. In my brain they each belong to a completely different era of my life and just didn't overlap in that way. Even so they're each too different for me; it's mayonnaise in my peanut butter; just no.

Outside of Mania which I really enjoyed, there's nothing going on for Sonic anymore that I care about. A Mania 2 I would welcome, but I don't know if it'll happen. A good chunk of the old Sonic music I have nostalgia for is caught up in lawsuits because of course it is. Lawsuits actually killed any chances of me ever spending any more money on Sonic outside of the idea of a Mania 2. There's a second lawsuit out there that vanished a lot of the characters from the Archie Sonic comics back when that was a thing; like any chance of mining nostalgia from me for that is gone. I think it's a good thing through, that lawsuit, because it ensures I'll never be pulled back in. I actually only got into them in the first place because, get this, they sent out free samples of the comic in the mail. That was bizarre. I remember not thinking that highly about it at the time, but I must've changed my mind at some point. I think I got up to issue 50 and then after that I was only on again off again with the comic because the art on more days than not was becoming really grotesque, like somebody there was drawing the characters too tall and spindly and human-like where I was there for cartoony classic Sonic art style and was most often not getting it anymore and it turned me away real fast. I forget when I finally stopped following it, but it was long ago enough for me to not remember.

The cartoons....I remember liking SatAM more, but I'd still watch the goofier one if it was on because I used to care about getting to watch TV back then. I was gone by the time the musical third cartoon came around and only in the past couple months learned what it was even about or that Knuckles was in it at some point. I know I didn't miss anything with that one though after finding out more about it. I'm amazed they had the same voice actor voice both brothers and the sister. I have the 96 OVA, but I haven't seen it in so long I couldn't tell you much about what I recall from that. Knuckles wore a hat and there was a human girl named Sara who also had a hat, but hers had cat ears? (Or it was a bow?) and Robotnik (Eggman) kidnapped her at some point.

Speaking of that was a wild, very early 90's thing wasn't it, renaming Eggman, an already English-sounding name, to a Russian-sounding Robotnik and calling the robots collectively badniks. Very Cold War.
Google says multiple European languages use the suffix, and only now do I find out it means "person associated with" so...person associated with robots.

I had (have, dunno if it still works or not) a Sega Genesis and played the Sonic 1 through 3 and Knuckles a lot as a kid. I have Spinball, but never beat it because it was frustrating (never been big on pinball video games). 3DBlast I rented at Blockbuster and didn't like so I never actually bought a copy. I didn't care for the redesigns back when Adventure was first advertised because to my kid eyes the "new" green-eyed Sonic looked mean and unfriendly instead of cute/cool and I didn't want any of that; it didn't matter because I picked the N64 anyway and didn't play another console Sonic game until Heroes on the PS2. Anything else is a blur. Like, I know I have the Rush games, and I recall kinda liking them, but it's like....I remember Cream the Rabbit was playable in those games, but I couldn't tell you if I liked playing as her or not. I know I bought Sonic 06 and never finished it. I forgot I even bought Sonic Colors and only know I did because I discovered it while searching for my PS2 games several months back (which I still haven't found). I have the Mega Collection, but don't know where that is and that's one I'd actually like to find because when I learned about the music lawsuit I was like "Oh no now I'm never gonna get to play Sonic 3 and Knuckles on Switch with the original soundtrack.". I do know where the discounted Game Gear I bought for cheap is though along with its games.


Interestingly enough, and I'm actually grateful for this, the brief period in childhood where I was at the height of my interest in the franchise came and went before we had a family PC, meaning I never actually got into the fandom for Sonic and I do think that was for the best because looking at it from the outside wow does it seem toxic. :shock:


Regarding stuff like Super Sonic.....man he's no fun to play as. Most classic Sonic stages aren't set up to really get your enjoyment out of that speed; all it does is make him tougher to handle where as when I go Super Saiyan in a Dragon Ball game I typically have a lot of fun because the character becomes so much stronger. The 7 chaos emeralds aren't at all like the dragon balls; chaos emeralds are like big gemstone-looking batteries. They can't grant wishes. I never got far enough into Sonic 06 to meet Silver so I know barely anything about him outside of what you guys have posted already in this thread.


Yeah, Sonic and Dragon Ball are two wildly different things with wildly different characters imo. I think Mega Man's a better Sonic analogue than DB is.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by MainJPW » Thu Feb 28, 2019 8:17 am

There's kind of a similar thread on Sonic Retro right now. These are about the only things we know for sure are inspired by Dragon Ball when it comes to the Sonic series:

A 2005 interview from a French magazine appears to have some indirect confirmation on the Super Sonic/Super Saiyan connection:
Mag: Have you received comments from Akira Toriyama about Super Sonic? Why can he transform almost automatically?

Naka: Oh…(smile) we didn't receive comments from him. And if Sonic got this power, it's a question of mastery.
A 2001(?) interview has Naka confirm that 3K's Special Stages are based on Kaio's planet:
—Do you have any interesting stories about the Sonic sequels for the Megadrive?

Naka: The ball-shaped 3D special stage from Sonic 3/S&K was actually inspired by King Kai's little planet from Dragon Ball Z, which I am a fan of.
Silver's connection to Trunks was actually referenced in the Sonic '06 game script spreadsheet file:

https://youtu.be/iX_kJhd_8QE?t=102

Anything else is pure conjecture.

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Young-Jah » Thu Feb 28, 2019 4:38 pm

MainJPW wrote:There's kind of a similar thread on Sonic Retro right now. These are about the only things we know for sure are inspired by Dragon Ball when it comes to the Sonic series:

A 2005 interview from a French magazine appears to have some indirect confirmation on the Super Sonic/Super Saiyan connection:
Mag: Have you received comments from Akira Toriyama about Super Sonic? Why can he transform almost automatically?

Naka: Oh…(smile) we didn't receive comments from him. And if Sonic got this power, it's a question of mastery.
A 2001(?) interview has Naka confirm that 3K's Special Stages are based on Kaio's planet:
—Do you have any interesting stories about the Sonic sequels for the Megadrive?

Naka: The ball-shaped 3D special stage from Sonic 3/S&K was actually inspired by King Kai's little planet from Dragon Ball Z, which I am a fan of.
Silver's connection to Trunks was actually referenced in the Sonic '06 game script spreadsheet file:

https://youtu.be/iX_kJhd_8QE?t=102

Anything else is pure conjecture.
So why didn't Toriyama sued Naka early.
Plus, in episode 2 of Sonic X, Sonic has the infrared scouter, which is based off of the power scouter.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by The Patrolman » Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:29 am

Young-Jah wrote:
MainJPW wrote:There's kind of a similar thread on Sonic Retro right now. These are about the only things we know for sure are inspired by Dragon Ball when it comes to the Sonic series:

A 2005 interview from a French magazine appears to have some indirect confirmation on the Super Sonic/Super Saiyan connection:
Mag: Have you received comments from Akira Toriyama about Super Sonic? Why can he transform almost automatically?

Naka: Oh…(smile) we didn't receive comments from him. And if Sonic got this power, it's a question of mastery.
A 2001(?) interview has Naka confirm that 3K's Special Stages are based on Kaio's planet:
—Do you have any interesting stories about the Sonic sequels for the Megadrive?

Naka: The ball-shaped 3D special stage from Sonic 3/S&K was actually inspired by King Kai's little planet from Dragon Ball Z, which I am a fan of.
Silver's connection to Trunks was actually referenced in the Sonic '06 game script spreadsheet file:

https://youtu.be/iX_kJhd_8QE?t=102

Anything else is pure conjecture.
So why didn't Toriyama sued Naka early.
Plus, in episode 2 of Sonic X, Sonic has the infrared scouter, which is based off of the power scouter.
Because thats kinda just taking inspiration and not ripping off
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Young-Jah » Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:10 pm

The Patrolman wrote: Fri Mar 01, 2019 8:29 am
Young-Jah wrote:
MainJPW wrote:There's kind of a similar thread on Sonic Retro right now. These are about the only things we know for sure are inspired by Dragon Ball when it comes to the Sonic series:

A 2005 interview from a French magazine appears to have some indirect confirmation on the Super Sonic/Super Saiyan connection:



A 2001(?) interview has Naka confirm that 3K's Special Stages are based on Kaio's planet:



Silver's connection to Trunks was actually referenced in the Sonic '06 game script spreadsheet file:

https://youtu.be/iX_kJhd_8QE?t=102

Anything else is pure conjecture.
So why didn't Toriyama sued Naka early.
Plus, in episode 2 of Sonic X, Sonic has the infrared scouter, which is based off of the power scouter.
Because thats kinda just taking inspiration and not ripping off
Ok
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Gligarman » Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:44 pm

Y'all know Toriyama only made Super Saiyan hair blonde so that he wouldn't have to fill it with ink anymore right?

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Shaddy » Tue Mar 05, 2019 2:33 pm

Did you not...read the thread?

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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Young-Jah » Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:51 pm

Gligarman wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:44 pm Y'all know Toriyama only made Super Saiyan hair blonde so that he wouldn't have to fill it with ink anymore right?
But he also made walls, floors, and stuff be destructive in battle.
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Re: History of Sonic and Dragon Ball Z

Post by Polyphase Avatron » Tue Mar 05, 2019 11:35 pm

Young-Jah wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 4:51 pm
Gligarman wrote: Tue Mar 05, 2019 1:44 pm Y'all know Toriyama only made Super Saiyan hair blonde so that he wouldn't have to fill it with ink anymore right?
But he also made walls, floors, and stuff be destructive in battle.
What :|
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