Sally Acorn a official Sega character?

[Blue Blood]

That still has nothing to do with anything in this topic :/

Edited August 17, 2011 by Blue Blood

[Aquaslash]

How is it relevant to them? Especially when they all note that she dropped off when Sonic Adventure came.

[Kuzu]

I, for one, don't see why it's necessary for you to be so completely and utterly dickish about this character. "More important than she actually is"? Who gave you the call to just completely slag on a character for no real reason and add nothing to the topic by doing so? character "importance", if it even exists, is completely and totally irrelevant to the subject at hand, which is a simple canon status.

[Smock]

@topictitle: Sally Acorn is an officially liscensed Sonic character.

See the little shegga logo there?

She just lives 'in a world far and beyond what we know from the SEGA games!'

[Vertekins]

I, for one, don't see why it's necessary for you to be so completely and utterly dickish about this character. "More important than she actually is"? Who gave you the call to just completely slag on a character for no real reason and add nothing to the topic by doing so? character "importance", if it even exists, is completely and totally irrelevant to the subject at hand, which is a simple canon status.

I think what Verte was trying to say is that people want Sally to be a more important character to the entire franchise than she actually is. In reality, she's one of the key and most important characters in the Archie comics. Elsewhere, she's nothing.

^ There's your answer. How can you possibly misinterpret what I said and turn it into some kind of terrible attack on a character? Sally Acorn is not important beyond Archie and SatAM. And people should not be delegating her more importance beyond those continuities into other continuities because she is not entitled to it. Simple as.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Verte

[Aquaslash]

^ There's your answer. How can you possibly misinterpret what I said and turn it into some kind of terrible attack on a character? Sally Acorn is not important beyond Archie and SatAM. And people should not be delegating her more importance beyond those continuities into other continuities because she is not entitled to it. Simple as.

I still don't see why you need to declare this character's "importance" if it even has any. Just sounds like you have some horrible superiority complex. "Not entitled to it?" It's just a video game character, take a damn chill pill already.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Aquaslash

[Vertekins]

I still don't see why you need to declare this character's "importance" if it even has any. Just sounds like you have some horrible superiority complex. "Not entitled to it?" It's just a video game character, take a damn chill pill already.

And I don't see why this discussion has gone on 8 pages because it can't be accepted that Sally Acorn has never been a part of the games and that she isn't Ricky and that Ricky isn't her. Really, the only reason I see why this discussion has gone on as long as it has is because some people can't seem to accept the indisputable fact that Sally isn't as senior or as important in the game series as they seem to believe she is or as they want her to be. So they're clutching at straws in order to reinforce their false beliefs.

Me debunking it and bringing forth my thoughts on why people are so eager to keep maintaining that Sally Acorn is Ricky has nothing to do with having a "superiority complex" or having so-called 'downer' on Sally Acorn and/or the American continuities.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Verte

[batson]

I for one dont see why we shouldt count Sonic Spinball as canon to the western game continuity. Except for Eggman being king-sized, there is nothing in it that explicitly contradicts other games in the series (and if you are going to disregard the game for the giant Eggman alone, then you should probably consider Mario Sunshine non-canon to the marioverse as well, since Bowser suffered from a similar odd size-change in that game...).

Sonic Spinball was created by Sega of America, and im pretty sure everyone who worked on it naturally assumed that it took place in the same universe as the other games, even if it did incorporate elements from the two cartoon series as well. And its not like anyone over at Sega of America seemed interested in keeping the Sonic continuities appart anyway...

[-Mark-]

How about the fact there are sixteen Chaos Emeralds, all of which are blue and hexagonal? I'd say that contradicts the rest of the general game canon pretty badly, myself.

[HunterTSF]

I for one dont see why we shouldt count Sonic Spinball as canon to the western game continuity. Except for Eggman being king-sized, there is nothing in it that explicitly contradicts other games in the series (and if you are going to disregard the game for the giant Eggman alone, then you should probably consider Mario Sunshine non-canon to the marioverse as well, since Bowser suffered from a similar odd size-change in that game...).

Sonic Spinball was created by Sega of America, and im pretty sure everyone who worked on it naturally assumed that it took place in the same universe as the other games, even if it did incorporate elements from the two cartoon series as well. And its not like anyone over at Sega of America seemed interested in keeping the Sonic continuities appart anyway...

There's like, sixteen blue Chaos Emeralds in that game. Not even the American translations of the Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3 manuals implied that so many existed.

I think that would kind of set off alarms right there.

EDIT: Ninja'd D:

Edited August 17, 2011 by HunterTSF

[batson]

How about the fact there are sixteen Chaos Emeralds, all of which are blue and hexagonal? I'd say that contradicts the rest of the general game canon pretty badly, myself.

I'll admit i forgot about that one. But the way i see it, Spinball can still be considered a part of the western canon since the western canon was such a clusterfuck of contradictions anyway, to the point where the word "canon" probably shouldnt be used at all. Like how in one game, the pink hedgehog in a tutu is called Princess Sally, and in the next shes called Amy. Or the question regarding whether Robotnik turned animals into robots or merely trapped them inside robots. Or the ambiguity regarding whether or not the games took place on a planet called Mobius. Or what, if any, personality traits of Sonic found in the spin-off cartoons also applied to the video game version (like the Chilli-dog thing. I know that it was never actually mentioned in a game manual that Sonic likes chilli-dogs, but this fact was nevertheless sometimes alluded to in official media such as ads and merchandise, and not just stuff that had anything to do with the spin-offs either, but also stuff related directly to the video games).

The fact of course is that Sega of America didnt really keep track of any actuall Sonic "canon" in the true sense of the word. So with this in mind, i think Sonic Spinball could be considered as "valid" a representation of Sega of Americas vision of Sonic as anything else.

In other words, i think it is fair to say that the brown chipmunk known as Princess Sally did indeed exist in the western version of the Sonic video game series (in the sense that the people who created this interpretation of the series thought of her as a character that existed in, and therefore could make apperances in, the video game universe). As for why there was another character, a certain pink hedgehog, who was also (sometimes) called by that exact name... well, i dont think the SoA gave it that much thought, nor expected anyone else to do so...

But umtimately, since there was never any conformed offical canon regarding the western version of Sonic, there is of course a billiion different ways to interpret it.

Edited August 17, 2011 by batson

[Aquaslash]

Am I the only one who doesn't take the number and color of the chaos emeralds in the game as being literal? After all, every emerald in Sonic Battle was green. If anything, there are still the seven emeralds, but split up for gameplay purposes. Gameplay comes before, and is more important than story after all.

[Vertekins]

I personally thought that Emeralds being green in Battle was a simple case of graphical laziness. Actually, come to think of it, my assumption is proven correct because in-game script actually states that you can only form Chaos Emeralds by combining shards of the same color. I don't think they mean 'different shades of green' either, because all of the emeralds in Battle are the exact shade of green. It's basically directly stating that the emeralds in Battle are distinct colors but the pixel arts of the Emeralds and shards themselves aren't. It seems a case of laziness, nothing more.

[Badnik Mechanic]

If you take Sonic Spinball as canon... then you also have to take in this as canon...

And doesn't that sound like a good idea?

*Sarcasm detector flickers*

[Aquaslash]

If you take Sonic Spinball as canon... then you also have to take in this as canon...

And doesn't that sound like a good idea?

*Sarcasm detector flickers*

Why not? Who's saying that Sonic, or some other character couldn't have jacked up a Robotnik Bean Factory on a random side story? That's what I always assumed when I was a kid. Hell, I still assume it now cause there's really no reason not to.

See, kids don't care about all this crap we're discussing here. I certainly didn't when I was a kid. Perhaps it's better to have a simple eye when dealing with this stuff.

[Diogenes]

See, kids don't care about all this crap we're discussing here.

Because kids are stupid. And that certainly doesn't make any of what they say or think correct.

[batson]

Why not? Who's saying that Sonic, or some other character couldn't have jacked up a Robotnik Bean Factory on a random side story? That's what I always assumed when I was a kid. Hell, I still assume it now cause there's really no reason not to.

See, kids don't care about all this crap we're discussing here. I certainly didn't when I was a kid. Perhaps it's better to have a simple eye when dealing with this stuff.

I agree that Bean Machine could very well be considered canon to the western version of Sonic. Sure it features a Robotnik design that was never used in a games before or since, but SoA did use it on a couple of other games boxart and in merchandise.

I think people need to accept that in the end, what constitutes as true canon in a series is what the company that owns/makes the series considers canon. And SoA was obviously fine with the idea that Robotnik somewhow sometimes looked like the original Japanese version and sometimes looked like he did in the cartoons. Just like they were fine with Sally Acorn being in the games (as well as the other Freedom Fighters and Scratch & Grounder). We as fans can choose to disregard certain aspects of this mess that we dont feel are fitting, but we shouldnt confuse our own interpretations with SoA's actuall intentions.

So my final answer to the question that makes up the title of this thread would be: yes, Sally was indeed a character in Segas Sonic universe. Sega of Americas Sonic universe, that is. She obviosuly does not exist in the Japanese/modern Sonic video game universe.

Edited August 18, 2011 by batson

[-Mark-]

You know, that rasies another point, actually;

Considering Eggman was so heavily (twice) redesigned in the West, you almost think they'd have gone to the extent of editing his in-game sprites.

I mean, yeah, as a kid, I never really thought about it, but the fact they still used Japanese Eggman in-game, yet had his drastically different western incarnate in all other media make a pretty big clash. I mean hell, they modified the McDonald's Happy Meal toy of Eggman into AoStH Robotnik for the Western releases for that purpose. Surely that's gotta take more effort than changing a couple of sprites.

[Aquaslash]

That's actually a good point. I think the mappings would be slightly larger, but they still have room in the games for the Western Robotnik. Shoot, I could probably hack it in there.

[Dr. Mechano]

That's actually a good point. I think the mappings would be slightly larger, but they still have room in the games for the Western Robotnik. Shoot, I could probably hack it in there.

Problem is, there's no singular design for "western Robotnik."

First, we have "Eggman minus glasses with beady cartoon eyes:"

Next, we have "Eggman minus glasses with creepy black voids instead of eyes:"

Third, some games just used AoStH Robotnik on their boxart: (See the Gamegear version of Spinball, which edits Creepy Eyeless Eggman into AoStH Ivo)

Finally, some rare western art would actually be more-or-less consistent with Eggman's Japanese design, keeping his glasses and original outfit:

SatAM Robotnik, despite his popularity, was never used in any game boxart and thus cannot be considered part of "SoA" in any form.

What we're left with, though, is the fact that "SoA Robotnik" had four different box-art designs that wildly differed from each other and usually didn't match up with his in-game sprites; In some cases this was more obvious than others, such as when they used the AoStH design.

It begs the question, though- What was "SoA Robotnik" intended to look like in the "SoA canon" when applied to the games? Does he look exactly like the Japanese Eggman, or not? The sprites say he does, but the art usually says otherwise- Problem being the art was never really consistent with itself and changed his design back-and-forth as the series progressed.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Dr. Mechano

[Tornado]

It begs the question, though- What was "SoA Robotnik" intended to look like in the "SoA canon" when applied to the games? Does he look exactly like the Japanese Eggman, or not? The sprites say he does, but the art usually says otherwise- Problem being the art was never really consistent with itself and changed his design back-and-forth as the series progressed.

Eyeless Eggman was overwhelmingly the most consistent/common version used, though. Looking through my cartridges, it looks like the only game he wasn't used on was Sonic 1.

[Diogenes]

Weren't there some half-finished sprites of a western-style Robotnik in Spinball (maybe a beta or something, I dunno)?

edit: There is a very real chance that I am merely senile; if so, ignore.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Diogenes

[Kuzu]

Weren't there some half-finished sprites of a western-style Robotnik in Spinball (maybe a beta or something, I dunno)?

edit: There is a very real chance that I am merely senile; if so, ignore.

Nah, its the same one used in the game, minus the cape.

[-Mark-]

Well, considering AoStH Robotnik was the one featured most prominently outside of the games in the west (although maybe I'm just saying this as a Brit who grew up with Sonic the Comic, which used that design- I imagine his SatAM/ Archie design would seem more prolific in the US, perhaps?), I imagine if anything, they'd have edited him to that.

I mean, any and all western Robotnik merchandise was his AoStH design, including the aforementioned Happy Meal toy.

Really, it just makes me think that back in the early 90s, in regards to Sonic in the west, the left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing. I still find it totally weird how they went to all these lengths to redesign him, yet leave his game appearance untouched.

EDIT: Also, that Game Gear Sonic Spinball boxart is infinitely better than the Mega Drive/ Genesis version. The Sonic looks so much more on-model and actually has the correct number of fingers.

Edited August 19, 2011 by -Mark-

[Blue Blood]

EDIT: Also, that Game Gear Sonic Spinball boxart is infinitely better than the Mega Drive/ Genesis version. The Sonic looks so much more on-model and actually has the correct number of fingers.

They fixed on character, and made the other one worse.