The Sonic 1 (1991) Iceberg Explained

hey folks welcome to my fourth and final sonic the hedgehog iceberg video for this finale i've decided to go back to where it all began and explore all of the secrets lore glitches and paraphernalia surrounding sonic's first game sonic the hedgehog from 1991. for those who need a brief introduction for over a year now people have been making videos exploring these iceberg images which are populated with facts and conspiracy theories about a piece of media that get more obscure and lesser known the deeper the iceberg goes the trend was kicked off back in the summer of 2020 with mish cause's awesome super mario 64 iceberg video which is still the gold standard in my opinion if you've missed them i've already done sonic 3 knuckles and sonic adventure 1 and 2. for this iceberg i've tried to be as comprehensive as possible so i think it's the longest of the four videos hopefully there'll be at least a few things you've never heard before in here without further ado let's get started with the first layer of the iceberg [Music] splats flats is a rabbit like badnik that was cut from the game for unknown reasons before its release splats has a little spring on his rear and bounces around so doesn't appear to pose much of a threat to sonic splats was originally found in 2002 in the game's rom files though a functional version of splats can be accessed and placed in debug mode in marble zone in earlier prototype builds of the game that were found post 2002 splats has since gone on to appear in debug mode in the game's 2013 mobile remake and would also appear a handful of times in sonic mania the curious thing about splats is that despite being cut from the game it appeared in sonic merchandise and comic books back in the 1990s splats was even one of the minifigures released by toy company tomy in 1994 which is one of the few pieces of sonic merch that i actually own this is even more curious because the merch was associated with sonic and knuckles to add one extra layer to the mystery of splats the 1990s merch always depicted splats as being gray with blue highlights but its in-game appearance has a totally different colour scheme cope spring yard zone has a number of seemingly random messages sparkling in the background in bold lettering you can see on up cpu and cope in the background the cope sign in particular has confused fans since 1991 but unfortunately we have no idea why this particular message was inserted most theories online suggest that the japanese development team might have just thought it was a cool english word to use i guess if we take it literally the sign is an encouraging message like cope get on with it if you will gba port sonic the hedgehog genesis a us exclusive gba port of the original game was released in 2006 to commemorate the original's 15th anniversary unfortunately the gba port was a disaster and is widely regarded as one of sonic's worst games the gameplay of this particular port is slow and clunky it has absolutely awful music and compressed screen crunch graphics it's one of the absolute worst ways to play the original game apparently the port was rushed and i've even seen reports that suggest it was made in only a single month which is insane the game was ported using sonic advance's engine which didn't suit the original particularly well and led to horrible uncomfortable physics and movements that didn't accurately represent the mega drive original mr needle mouse sonic was the result of sega's desire to create a mascot who could compete with super mario sega's previous efforts alex kidd didn't quite cut the mustard in their quest for a mascot sega of japan held an internal competition encouraging employees to submit their own ideas they received 200 initial submissions the dream team of programmer yuji naka and designers naoto oshima and hirokazu yasuhara cycled through a number of ideas before landing on a shortlist of an old man with a mustache a dog and a spiny blue hedgehog after some market research in new york city the hedgehog emerged as the character of choice the character was given the internal nickname of mr harry nezumi or mr hedgehog it's commonly accepted knowledge that sonic was also nicknamed mr needlemouse at this stage as hari nezumi means needle mouse when split into two different words but yuji naka of all people has actually denied the claim that this was ever a nickname for sonic naka has explained that mr needle mouse is simply a mistranslation by western fans here's a few other early names mr hedgehog had before sonic was decided upon one is kosoku which means speed of light in japanese there was also recipe and simply ls i would put forward the theory that popular youtuber ls mark got the ls in his name from here he's a notoriously big sonic fan after all it wouldn't be a sonic iceberg without a little bit of michael jackson talk would it one often repeated factoid about sonic's design is that his iconic red and white shoes were inspired by michael jackson specifically they were inspired by jackson's bad album this admission comes from oshima sonic's original designer this factoid has spun a little bit out of control over the years with plenty of places stating sonic's shoes were inspired by those worn by jackson in the bad music video i've even heard rumors that sonic's buckles were inspired by said bad shoes but sonic sneakers were simply inspired by the striking red and white colour scheme of the bad album cover rather than any specific piece of footwear here's one final connection between jackson and sonic the very earliest sonic footage known to exist is from a japanese news program from february of 1990 in a section discussing michael jackson's moonwalker a screen is visible which shows some incredibly early sonic footage yujinaka posted this particular clip online and confirmed that it shows some ground collision testing feels the rabbit before a hedgehog was landed on as the ideal animal for a fast-paced platformer game the team originally wanted to create a game based around a rabbit which they felt embodied the idea of speed the best this rabbit character was also planned to use his big ears offensively to pick up and throw objects at enemies this concept would result in an overly complicated style of gameplay with too many buttons so the team moved away from the rabbit idea the idea was actually resurrected years later by sega in 1994 when they began work on a game reusing the rabbit character it was a project simply called feel the basis for what would later become ristar feel does look kind of like a rabbit albeit a strange alien one and would use elongated arms offensively rather than his ears phil would later be renamed dextar and finally ristar at which point most rabid influences would be ironed out of his design after two unsuccessful attempts feels the rabbit has yet to star in a sega game but has been kept alive by fans in fan games like sonic overture of all pre-sonic designs feels has captured the fan's imagination more than any other environmentalism yujinaka has admitted that sonic was designed with environmentalist sentiments in mind the early 90s was a time period in which kids media was beginning to see more characters that were overtly inspired by newly raised environmentalist concerns characters like captain planet sonic's narrative structure fits the environmentalist tone of the nantes perfectly in sonic 1 and subsequent 2d sonic games the first zone is a leafy green paradise as the game progresses robotnik's disastrous effect on the environment becomes clearer and more heinous robotnik is an allegory for the environmental damage of modern society contrast green hill zone and scrap brain zone for example the theme is even more overt in the sega master system version in which sonic uses the chaos emeralds to clean up robotnik's pollution off south island the kind of narrative that's told through sonic's levels is replicated in plenty of later 90s games like donkey kong country and crash bandicoot as well as the game's structure the omnipresent badniks and capturals all of which contain little animals that need freeing also positioned sonic as an environmentalist warrior and something of an anti-imperialist spike bug in the original version of the game the behavior of the spikes is a little bit different to later installments usually when sonic is damaged by an enemy or obstacle he flashes and enjoys a short period of invincibility when landing on spikes after having taken damage however no invincibility is granted making them lethal whether this behavior is a burg or a feature is a long debated topic amongst fans the behavior was removed in some later iterations of sonic 1 and was changed for sonic 2 and all following games but the actual coding that controls how the spikes interact with sonic is different so the code used by every other object that damages sonic suggesting that this behavior was intentional it certainly makes the game a little harder madonna originally sonic was planned to have a human love interest called madonna partially inspired by the pop star of the same name madonna was a tall blonde human character wearing a red dress who would chase around sonic and express her love for him a role that amy rose would come to fulfill madonna was eventually removed during development though exactly why she was removed is another mystery madeleine schroeder the sonic project manager for sega of america claims to have removed madonna to better appeal to western audiences feeling the animal human romance to be a little odd on the contrary yujinaka has claimed that madonna never got out of the concept art stage and was removed because a damsel in distressed character might be too similar to princess peach in super mario brothers i'm tempted to believe that schroeder was responsible for madonna's removal because madonna did make it out of the concept art stage and onto sega hardware there exists an advertising demo that was designed to be played in japanese retailers to advertise the mega drive the demo shows a pixel art version of madonna and sonic the demo is from 1990 so madonna was probably cut quite early on but she certainly made it out of the concept art phase of development sonic's banned one dropped concept that appears in concept art for the game shows sonic as the leader and vocalist of a band of musicians which included max the monkey on bass mac the rabbit on drums sharps the parakeet on guitar and vector the crocodile on keyboard the band were going to play a rather central role in the game at one point with the idea that sonic would be tasked with rescuing different members of the band in each stage the band were also going to appear in the title sequence and in the game's sound test mode where they'd play their instruments while sonic danced and moon walked ultimately the band were dropped entirely according to yujinaka because of time and game memory constraints interestingly sprites of the band were made and appear in the game's files in sega sonic brothers the arcade game that only enjoyed a limited test release in japan in that puzzle game the band appeared to be imprisoned and can be freed by sonic though they didn't make it into the final version of that game either after that the majority of the band would be dropped completely with the exception of vector who re-emerged in knuckles chaotix and has been a fixture of the series ever since the band did at least make an appearance in the sonic the hedgehog's storybook manga in 1991 and appeared a few times in the archie comic books too remnants of sonic's legacy as a vocalist can still be found throughout the series of course there's sonic underground plenty of concept art that shows sonic playing music in one form or another and at the end of sonic on the sega master system sonic also has a microphone demon world once sega had landed on the idea of sonic as their mascot they went to work creating a world for sonic to inhabit the original idea according to naoto oshima was for the game to take place in a weird nightmare world this very well-known piece of concept art depicts what the nightmare world might have looked like robotnik is present but he's wearing a bumblebee style outfit he's flanked by a bunch of strange enemies and a demonic presence in the background this is interesting because one of the earliest builds of the game from 1990 which we'll discuss in more detail later actually featured one of the enemies pictured here another well-known piece of concept art also depicts an early robotnik dressed in pajamas leading more credence to the early consideration of a dream nightmare themed game you could draw a comparison between these original plans and the sega saturn game knights into dreams also spearheaded by yuji naka [Music] for roughly 15 years fans in the sonic hacking community have been trying to find a prototype of sonic 1. over the course of the past decade and a half prototypes of sonic 2 and sonic 3 have surfaced but until 2020 sonic 1 eluded internet enthusiast despite the fact that the cutting room floor and other sites have compiled a comprehensive list of prototype versions of the game that appeared at conventions magazine previews and magazine reviews suddenly seemingly out of nowhere at the tail end of 2020 a prototype version of sonic 1 was found by someone named buckaroo and the rom was subsequently dumped and released on hidden palace the prototype seems to correspond to the so-called mid pre-release build from spring 1991 the same version of the game that appeared in season one of nick arcade how did buckaroo get their hands on this coveted sonic 1 prototype cart well from ebay bought in a job lot for 30 pounds who the seller was and how they got hold of the prototype cart is something i'm not sure of how different is this prototype from the final version of the game the answer is very different so consider the following list of some of the differences an extremely abridged rundown green hill zone has differently coloured flowers for example there are also a couple of checkered balls like the one robotnik uses in the boss fight laying around marble zone's background contains the ominous ufo objects mentioned earlier there are no cater killers here but plenty of spikes badniks from spring yard zone and there are horizontal spike crushers too spring yard zone or sparkling zone has a seizure inducingly busy background full of neon signs it's pretty hard to look at labyrinth zone is dramatically different act one has an open cavernous background that's kind of ambient none of the acts contain any water and a few corners of the zone also have this brick background too starlight zone looks largely the same though it has a dramatically different layout scrap brain zone or clockwork zone is pretty unfinished but act one takes place inside lacking the finished game's cool background sally acorn there are seven little animals or critters that pop out of badniks and capsules when destroyed they are cookie yes cookie flicky pecky picky pokey ricky and rocky these are the japanese names for the animals when the game made its way to the west the animals were given new names with ricky being renamed sally acorn so there you have it sally appeared in sonnet one picky and pocky were renamed pork lewis and johnny lightfoot sally porker johnny and the other animals chirps tux and joe sushi were originally going to appear in a cartoon alongside sonic a cartoon that later morphed into one of sonic's other 90s cartoons of course sally would go on to appear in satan and the archie comics series while poker lewis and johnny lightfoot resurfaced as freedom fighters in the uk's fleetway comic sally acorn even makes a couple of appearances in a fleetway comic too though she bears little resemblance to her more well-known archie appearance knuckles in sonic 1. one big question i always had after the release of sonic and knuckles in 94 was why isn't knuckles playable in sonic 1. with lock-on technology knuckles could be chosen to play through sonic 3 and even sonic 2 but connecting a sonic 1 car to sonic and knuckles merely lets you play through the blue sphere special stages on sonic retro it suggested that knuckles couldn't appear in sonic 1 due to some serious colour palette issues in the rom hacking community adding knuckles into sonic 1 successfully was once considered the holy grail of hacking but the feat was achieved by itself stealth would eventually be hired by sega and would work on the 2013 mobile port of the game one interesting thing is the october 1994 issue of australia's sega megazone magazine which featured a little screenshot of knuckles in green hill zone in their sonic knuckles article a screenshot that was later revealed to just be a mere mock-up of what knuckles would have looked like in sonic 1 but of course in the 90s it caused a lot of confusion and speculation it was hard to know exactly what things appearing in magazines were true and what were false press start button did you know that sonic 1 contains a glitch in its opening few seconds the title screen is meant to display some text reading press start button but doesn't as the ram entry for the previously displayed sonic team presents text isn't cleared curiously the bug was fixed in a brazilian compilation game called mega games 10 which featured sonic as one of the 10 included games it released for the mega drive in 1997. this is the first recorded version of the game that has the fixed title screen as previously released compilations still had the same issue invincible robotnik during the game's final boss battle in final zone if the player hits dr robotnik two times when he only has one hit left it will give robotnik an additional 255 hit points it's impossible to hit robotnik 255 times in the given time limit effectively making robotnik invincible this is a coding oversight 255 is the maximum value representable by an eight-digit binary number if you get that one extra hit on robotnik after already defeating him his hit point value of zero rolls over to the maximum number possible illegal instruction on the topic of glitches here's an interesting one in labyrinth zone 1 and 2 it's possible to break the game so badly that an error message actually pops up on screen if you complete the zone and then duck forcing the screen down you'll see a message that reads illegal instruction this error is more likely to occur on actual hardware as opposed to on an emulator pushing c can sometimes resolve the issue but most of the time a reset is necessary scrap zone act 3. an aspect of sonic 1 that i always disliked was the fact that scrap brainzone act 3 is effectively just labyrinth zone acts 4. it always felt a little lazy and disheartening considering labyrinth zone can be a bit of a slog in the sonic jam strategy guide yuji naka explained that the team wanted to evoke the feeling in the player that they'd been dropped into the lower levels of scrap brainzone and had to fight their way back up for the final boss ideally scrap brain zone act 3 would have had its own assets but because of time constraints labyrinth zone assets were reused this does kind of make narrative sense though if you think about it it evokes the idea that scrap brain zone was literally built right on top of a portion of the ancient ruins of labyrinth zone which further feeds into the environmental themes one extra thing to note is that air bubbles spawn at a slightly slower rate in scrap brain zone act 3 making it hypothetically a little more difficult than labyrinth zoom unused monitors there are a few unused monitors that are actually viewable in debug mode if you fly over the goal at the end of an act the first of these depicts dr robotnik it would presumably have hurt sonic like it does in later games the second is a monitor depicting a pair of goggles for which there's also a series of sprites in the game files that fit over sonic's eyes we can only guess that the goggles were some kind of power up but exactly what they did we don't know the third is a monitor with static on it again we don't know what these monitors were intended for the final monitor has an s on it this particular monitor also appears in a prototype version of sonic cd where it grants sonic invincibility and a speed boost simultaneously the s monitor was repurposed in the mobile port where it instantly grants sonic his super form unused death sprites so there's also a number of unused sprites to be found in the game's files there's a few unused spin dash looking sprites a sprite of sonic gulping for air a sprite of sonic holding his breath a duo of sprites showing sonic doing a victorious pose that was originally going to be used when finishing an act the sliding sprite and finally two really interesting death sprites one shows sonic shrinking though i would guess that this is more like sonic falling down a pit or a ravine the second death sprite is black and white possibly to have been used when sonic dies from falling in marble zone's lava this scrapped idea of different environmental death animations was a concept that more comedic mascots like bubsy and crash bandicoot would later become well known for labyrinth shortcuts who built labyrinth zone is a question we'll try and address later but whoever it was built themselves a handy little shortcut that skips almost all of act 1. early on in the acts there's an underwater switch when presti it opens a nearby door but it also serves a dual function if you head back up and out of the water you'll see a small platform jump on it and it'll carry you pretty much to the end of the stage skipping most of act 1. [Music] asian zones during the development process it appears as if sonic was going to have a bit of a round the world theme taking a look at the early concept art and notes produced by naoto oshima reveals ideas for a gold-plated level based on southeast asia a mountainous zone based on china and a zone with a japanese cityscape in the background these real-life inspired locations appear to have been mostly dropped though there are still hints of that design philosophy scattered throughout the game for example green hill zone was designed with american audiences in mind and its dramatic blues and greens were inspired by california the next pawn in the iceberg is kind of related to super mario i'm not very good at talking about mario so i want to hand over to mish coles [Music] samari samari is a d-make of sonic the hedgehog starring super mario released for the nes in 1994. samari is probably one of the most famous bootleg games to ever receive a commercial release it was developed by hummer technology a company based out of taiwan formed by ex-employees of legitimate gaming company cnd the game has a cult following partly because it received more coverage in the 90s than just about any other bootleg samari was featured in tv shows and publications from hong kong japan russia south korea the uk and probably elsewhere too hummer even successfully filed for a samari trademark back in 1994 in taiwan samari wasn't really a d-make the levels featured familiar sprites and backgrounds but with new layouts all the sonic 1 zones are there except for scrap brain zone samari isn't a great game it's glitchy and the music is terrible but the graphics are decent and samari even has the spin dash move samari would go on to be re-released multiple times with different tweaks being introduced in subsequent releases there are still people out there that are convinced they own a legitimate copy of sonic on the nes it's more likely that they own samari or one of its descendants greg ray sega of america were initially nervous about sonic being perceived negatively by american audiences so they went about redesigning the character and introducing a schism in terms of sonic the hedgehog's design backstory and lore in terms of character design a lot of people are familiar with greg martin's early 1990s work on sonic martin's version of sonic was tailored to appeal to american kids stressing sonic's cool attitude and giving him a more notable metallic sheen and mohawk style spines in truth though greg martin isn't responsible for sonic's us redesign michael patrick partners with a design company who handled sonic's western transition and they credit another designer by the name of greg ray as the original individual actually responsible for creating this americanized look it appears as if rey was responsible for the design found on the american box art of the game and martin was responsible for pretty much every other piece of 1990s american sonic art of the period long spring a series of tv ads for the game ran in european countries like france and finland that show graphical effects not found in the final version of the game one effect shows robotnik's green hill zone wrecking ball with a dynamic rotating sheen applied and another shows an incredibly elongated spring in marble zone often tv ads would alter game footage or add their own assets or effects in post-production so whether these particular features were originally planned or just a result of post-production are unknown the long spring and dynamic wrecking ball aren't found in any beta versions of the game so we can only assume they were added for some reason to these commercials japanese credits a secret code input at the title screen allows you to view a list of japanese credits this particular code only works on japanese hardware with the japanese mega drive and japanese copy of the game input the code ccc ccc up down down down left right during the title sequence and then during the auto demo hold down a b and c when the title sequence starts up again the credits will be visible after the sega logo this was a bit of a taboo at the time generally developers designers and others were credited with silly nicknames during the end credit sequence of the game the rumor being that this was a way of ensuring that they weren't poached by rival video game studios these hidden japanese credits since site 1 were inserted in an act of defiance by yujinaka christmas island sonic was originally debuted to japanese audiences in the sega newsletter magazine sega players enjoy club or spec in a fictional interview intended to introduce sonic and announce the dreams come true music collaboration sonic introduces his birthplace as christmas island where he lives with his companions note that christmas island has not actually been depicted in any game but it cements the fact that in japanese lore the sonic games always took place on a fictionalized version of our own earth as opposed to an entirely different planet called mobius yujinaka has since said in interviews that he chose christmas island because it was the site of nuclear testing in real life which is true a series of british nuclear tests were done in the region in the 1950s this is why according to mecca the island is inhabited by animals and robots i can't help but feel like is mixing up christmas island and south island where the game is set lost pc ports we've already talked about the disastrous gba port but there are a number of ports which didn't see the light of day sonic was originally going to be ported over to the sega cd but this port was dropped when development of sonic cd began so we're unsure how far sega got with this and if it would have been any different to the mega drive version a number of video game magazines also reported that company us gold was contracted to work on a pc port of the original game that would release on a variety of systems including the zx spectrum commodore 64 and many more none of these ports materialize but one italian magazine featured screenshots of a possible pc port it's never been determined whether these screenshots are just mock-ups or where they came from so there is potentially lost code of an early pc port of sonic the hedgehog out there in the world if i had to guess though i'd say that these are mere mockups who knows sonic did actually end up appearing on the amiga in the bizarre amiga music collection titled sonic attack made by the jewel crew shining collective the music program released in 1993 and featured sonic in the menus and dancing along to the music there's even a hidden endless runner-style amiga interpretation of green hill zone to play too i'm pretty sure they didn't get sega's permission to do this and it's kind of bizarre seeing sonic on the amiga enjoying since you've been gone by rainbow [Music] tokyo toy show 1990 probably the holy grail of sonic prototype builds is the tokyo toy show 1990 build that was showcased a full year before the game's eventual release this build shows a very limited gameplay experience you can see sonic running through an early version of green hill zone and encountering a gloved demonic enemy who we saw depicted in the concept art before at the end of this mini experience sonic runs past an english sign that reads you are welcome with the last word being obscured by sonic's head i can't really decipher exactly what it says but never seen or never green of the two leading guesses finally some japanese text that reads debut approaching pops up at the end sadly video footage of this particular build doesn't exist we only have a collection of magazine screenshots to piece together exactly what the tts build look like what's truly fascinating about this build is the legacy surrounding it most people including contemporary magazines have stated that this build was just an auto demo shown behind closed doors to industry insiders yujinaka has repeatedly stated though that this build was public and was playable naka has also expressed some confusion over the demonic enemy stating that he doesn't remember coding him at all which throws into question whether yuji naka is misremembering something or if some other team was responsible for this one further twist to the tts build mystery is that naka has also claimed the build was originally going to be included in sonic mega collection but it wasn't because sega has apparently lost the original binary code it seems that this build is sadly lost forever [Music] slow version if you played sonic 1 in the 90s in europe and then picked it up again later in life you might have had a strange experience returning to the game sonic 1 was always marketed based on sonic speed but in some regions the game was actually a little sluggish europe and a lot of the world outside japan and the us used the powell standard of encoding colour information for analog tvs while the us japan south korea and canada use the ntsc standard pal runs at 50 hertz resulting in 25 frames per second output as opposed to ntscs 30 frames per second output this meant that european gamers experienced a game that played significantly slower than their american and japanese counterparts subsequent games in the series also ran a little slower but were optimized at code level to run much better on pal systems so the slower speed was negligible and nowhere near as noticeable of course the slower output also affected the music too and i've still got a fondness for the slower green hill zone tune the nostalgia nerd has a phenomenal video covering this topic in more depth so check it out in the description if you want a more technical explanation next an interesting mario conspiracy theory i'll hand over to mich again for this one mario cameo sega were obviously inspired by mario during the development of sonic 1. yujinaka has said this of mario's influence on the game back then games didn't allow you to save your progress so when you wanted to play super mario bros you always had to start from world 1-1 doing this so eventually became kind of tedious so i always tried to get through the level as fast as i could and that inspired the initial concept for sonic the hedgehog designer naoto oshima also had mario on the mind when designing a sega mascot one character concept he created looked like a hybrid between bart simpson and super mario sega also weren't shy about directly comparing sonic with super mario world which they did at events and in advertisements mario was on sega's mind but did a mario reference sneak into the game at all some have suggested that there is a secret mario cameo hidden in plain sight in marble zone look carefully at this structure and you might just see the top half of mario's face it's either a mario relief or if you're not convinced two lions facing each other despite being revolutionary sonic didn't exist in a vacuum and was inspired by other sega properties as well as by mario marble zone with its ancient greek graveyard atmosphere and grain purple color scheme is reminiscent of altered beast which was the mega drive's most prominent game before it was supplanted by sonic there's more sega influences to be found too sonic's logo took some inspiration from the alex kidd franchise the totem poles in green hill zone might have been inspired by wonder boy sonic's stopping sound effect was taken from outrun and many other sound effects were originally created for michael jackson's moonwalker [Music] sonic bible the sonic bible was an internal document created by sega of america which gave guidelines as to sonic's personality and backstory the document was continually revised during development and explained sonic's origins in 2009 dean sitton a former sega of america employee joined sonic retro and mentioned he possessed a few drafts of this sonic bible the drafts were subsequently bought on ebay by another user nemesis who scanned and uploaded them the first draft reveals sonic's real name to be sonny hedgehog who lives in hardy nebraska with his mother and five sisters while hibernating sonny is discovered by dr ovie kintavor who's on the hunt for the chaos emeralds which he intends to use to reverse the effects of pollution on the planet sonic joins kintabor on this quest to pass the time in kintobul's lab sonic uses a treadmill and eventually runs faster than the speed of light turning himself blue in the process in a moment of disaster a wave of radiation penetrates the earth's surface transforming kinsabor and a half-eaten egg into dr robotnik later drafts of the bible would make big changes like moving the setting from earth onto the fictional planet mobius there's two very interesting things to note about the bible first it fully informed the world of the uk's fleetway comics sonic's origin in fleetway matches the bible second the bible refers to a seventh gray chaos emerald which acts as a controller to all of the rest kind of like the master emerald this might explain why sonic only collects six emeralds in the game as this proto master emerald can't be found except one of the six emeralds in the game is grey it's all very confusing meg over in japan sonic team forged their own sonic backstory which hearkened back to sega's own history sega was originally founded as service games in 1946 operating as a company that manufactured and distributed slot machines and other amusements to u.s personnel stationed across asia after world war ii the japanese backstory for sonic starts us way back in 1947. marie granette an american created a children's book character based off her fighter pilot husband whose nickname happened to be sonic due to the way his hair would stick up when he took off his helmet marie's character would be a blue hedgehog and would also become the emblem on the back of her husband's pilot jacket marie's husband and another pilot called chuck yeager later took part in an experiment to break the speed of sound sadly marie's husband died in an explosion during the experiment decades later in the 1980s a photographer called meg happens upon a leather jacket with sonic on the back reminded of the childhood storybook character she buys the jacket later while photographing an air show two planes tragically crashed near meg trapping her in a ring of flames suddenly a gloved hand reached out and before she knew it meg was rushed to safety as she lost consciousness meg woke up in hospital days later and was shocked to find a photograph showing something wearing the familiar red shoes of beloved childhood book character sonic could it be that sonic was the one that saved meg's life that fateful day is sonic real this backstory made its way into a free promotional comic attached to japanese magazine mega drive fan there were actually three parts to this comic which is a great read by the way robotnik is faster one of sonic's greatest mysteries started in sonic 1. during the ending sequence of sonic 1 on both the mega drive and master system we get to see something that would become commonplace in later games robotnik easily outruns sonic despite being known for his speed sonic is consistently bested by robotnik when it comes to running this seems like a bit of a core contradiction that strikes at the heart of the games sega have only jokingly addressed this issue a couple of times in biggs big fishing adventure a flash game robotnik directly poses this fact to sonic who brushes it off then during one of the twitter takeover q a sessions posted on the sonic twitter account robotnik claims that he can outrun sonic because he works out soniku asks sonic if you truly are the fastest thing alive how come eggman always beats you in a foot race after you destroy his max you know that was a long time ago but yeah i'd like to know exactly how that happened too it's simple i work out it's one of those things that's best not to be taken too seriously but if you want my theory i'd suggest robotnik has some sort of device that allows him to travel at high speed over short distances after all sonic can be handily outrun by the roller badniks in sonic 1 2 so robotnik can engineer things faster than sonic communist robotnik one of the changes sega made when westernising the game was changing dr eggman's name to dr robotnik dr x dr bad vibes dr gloom and dr watt were all considered too what does robotnik's name tell us about his origins robotnik's full name is dr evo robotnik which i always thought was pronounced ivo robotnik robotnik is both a polish and slovak word that means worker and it's where we derive the english word of robot from it hints at an eastern european origin for robotnik as evo is also an uncommon but not unheard of first name in poland if you saw my sonic adventure 2 iceberg you'll have seen that i joked that robotnik can speak russian so i'd say robotnik is a multilingual pole of russian extraction maybe he's from biela stock sonic 1 released at a time when the world had just emerged from the cold war and many theories have pointed to robotnik's name and his red and yellow clothing to suggest he's an allusion to communist dictators robotnik was also the name of a long-running polish socialist newspaper which ran until 1939 so there are definitely some links there considering that sonic was based on an american can-do attitude and he spent his time accumulating wealth and collecting rings it's not too far-fetched to suggest that robotnik might have some sort of communist inspiration extended sonic universe sonic released in 1991 but features a character who had already made their video game debut years earlier flicky one of the animal friends and the only animal to retain the same name in both japan and the west was the star of their own arcade game back in 1984. flicky also cameoed in a bunch of other sega arcade and master system games before reappearing in sonic the hedgehog the question is do flicky and sonic take place in the same universe i believe the answer is yes they do fast forward to 1996 and the release of sonic 3d a game in which flickies have the capacity to travel between different dimensions via giant dimension rings similar to the ones in the sonic movie if flicky and sonic don't literally take place in the same world then we might assume flicky is capable of travelling between the world of sonic and the world of flicky via a dimension ring the same logic might apply for ben the duck one of the stars of sega's 1988 dynamite ducks who you'll know about if you've seen my being the dynamite video bane is literally bean's father so we can also assume that the world of dynamite ducks and sonic are the same if this theory holds any water then sonic the hedgehog is technically the third game in a wider sonic sega multiverse series of games john lennon one of the most compelling theories about sonic is that eggman's name is inspired by the beatles song i am the walrus which has the line i am the eggman in it and was written by john lennon take a close look at eggman's japanese design with his mustache and the yellow fang-like details of his outfit eggman does look a lot like a walrus this beetle's inspiration is unconfirmed but it'd be a hell of a coincidence felix plagiarism sonic was inspired by a whole lot of different things michael jackson santa bill clinton mickey mouse and felix the cat the felix inspiration in particular is so strong that certain pieces of early sonic concept and promotional art look literally like traced felix the cat artwork this one pose in particular is really similar though in all honesty there isn't much evidence beyond this one strikingly similar piece so plagiarism is a bit of a strong term [Music] sega sonic one of the weird things about sonic over in japan is that almost immediately after the release of sonic 1 sonic was almost always referred to as sega sonic in tv ads merchandise and even a few games too i've always wondered why that was and the reason came to light in 2018 when manabu kasinoki a former member of sonic team discussed the arcade game sega sonic the hedgehog kusunoki claimed that sega lost the trademark for sonic hence the sega sonic name for the arcade game trademark history shows that sega filed a trademark for sonic in relation to all manner of merchandise on december 10th 1990. another gaming company taito filed the trademark for sonic in relation specifically to arcade games three days later presumably to trademark their sonic blast man arcade game ultimately the trademark dispute only covered arcade games but the fact that sega altered their japanese branding on a wide variety of merch shows they were evidently worried about the disputes how close were we to having sonic be rebranded as sega sonic worldwide i wonder it's certainly not a very catchy name by 1996 sega's trademark application was approved for arcade games which sorted things out completely the true sequel there was once a debate as to whether sonic 2 or sonic cd should be considered sonic 1's canonical sequel it's generally accepted that sonic cd is the sequel but i would put forward an alternate theory that the 8-bit game gear version of sonic 1 is the definitive sequel to the mega drive title the 8-bit game shares a lot of similarities with this 16-bit big brother but there's a few things to note about it first the chaos emeralds are scattered around and found on the floor rather than found in special stages which infers to me that they were successfully collected but then scattered across south island after the 16-bit game the 8-bit's ending is also a lot more definitive the 16-bit game offers a choice to the player to smack robotnik one last time or let him get away this doesn't affect the ending but the 8-bit game's ending definitively sees robotnik blow up and also see sonic use the emeralds to cleanse south island of robotnik's pollution there are also clues to support this theory in the levels too the waterslides in labyrinth zone are all green they look like they've been polluted since the events of the 16-bit game also the 8-bit version has a level after scrap brain zone called sky base a precursor to winged fortress and flying battery suggesting robotnik now has a base of operations beyond scrap brain until an official timeline is published we'll never truly know whether this theory holds any water or not owl civilization have you ever played through labyrinth zone stared at the decorative slabs and wondered what they depict i always thought they looked kind of like bird faces here's a possible explanation as to exactly what they are the sonic movie from 2020 features a protective mother figure for sonic called long claw who happens to be a large owl the movie also features a blink and you'll miss it reference to labyrinth zone with some of the blocks appearing in one scene the movie creates an interesting link with the first game all sonic fans know of the fabled echidna civilization of the floating island but perhaps south island the setting of sonic 1 was the home of a similarly ancient owl civilization that built the labyrinth zone the winged totem poles in green hill may be more evidence of some sort of former avian inhabitants it's worth mentioning that south island just like angel island has some mystical qualities the japanese instruction manual for the game mentions that south island moves around the ocean and the chaos emeralds exist in the distortions that the island creates alluding to the special stage perhaps the unpredictable nature of the island led to the loss of its former inhabitants or maybe as in the movie the ancient echidnas are to blame for their disappearance who knows but it's an intriguing mystery owls and birds crop up and play important roles in plenty of sonic games so there's probably even more to this theory i mean don't forget about old man owl from the sonic movie i've always wondered about that guy sonic 1's prequel on the topic of the japanese manual interestingly it makes it perfectly clear that the game is not the first time that sonic and robotnik have faced each other but it is the first time that robotnik has resorted to imprisoning animals in robots it does beg the question as to whether any following games act as prequels it's been pointed out that the most likely candidate for a prequel is the arcade game sega sonic the hedgehog it features robotic enemies without animals inside and shows robotnik capturing sonic and pals at the start of the game and imprisoning them on eggman island the general vibe of the game points to it potentially being sonic and robotnik's first on-screen interaction or perhaps their first interaction altogether what do you reckon it also explains why tails isn't present and gives an added importance to ray the squirrel and my to the armadillo are they sonic's oldest buddies i think so this would play sonic 1 as the second game chronologically as i can't see any other game taking place before it true first appearance sonic 1 wasn't actually sonic's first video game appearance a sonic air freshener appears in an arcade racing game called rad mobile which released a year earlier in 1990. sonic 1 wasn't even sonic's first home video game appearance sonic appeared in an amiga and atari st game called the adventures of quick and silver released in the uk sonic makes an unofficial appearance as one of the game's enemies if this one doesn't count there is another official sega home release that stars both sonic and robotnik that released before sonic 1. puzzle construction a launch game for the sega terra drive a hybrid ibm computer slash sega mega drive puzzle construction contains menu graphics depicting sonic and robotnik and features a game similar to columns starring a blue yellow and red sonic reminiscent of the hedgehogs in the scrapped sega sonic brothers arcade game the terror drive and puzzle construction which was a launch game both released on 31st of may 1991 a month before the release of sonic 1 which makes this robotnik's debut and sonic's first official home console appearance though it's rarely talked about lost mobile ports the 2013 mobile port of sonic 1 was far from being the first mobile port of the game as far as i know there are actually five prior mobile ports of the game that get increasingly more obscure the further back in time you go in reverse chronological order the 2013 version was preceded by a 2009 port a simple emulated version of the game that ran rather poorly in comparison there was a 2007 ipod port of the game which suffered from having to use the ipod wheel to control sonic released in 2005 was a java mobile port originally released as part of the sega cafe mobile service in japan it's kind of impressive and a similar version was released the same year for panasonic phones in europe and japan though this version was split into a part 1 and part 2. this is where things get really interesting an incredibly primitive port of the game released on java phones for free way back in 2001 no footage of this super early mobile port can be found only screenshots showing green hill zone so the scope of this port is not currently known an even earlier version of the game also potentially existed released around the same time this version is lacking in colour and only a few screenshots exist of it online whether it was different to the color version or not is completely unknown file this one in the lost media cabinet because very little is known about it viz ads sega were quite well known for their provocative commercials in the 1990s sega and sonic came to be for more mature audiences than nintendo products sega directly derided mario in ads and advertised on platforms like howard stern's radio show over in the uk virgin were responsible for sega's european distribution they attempted to capture a mature audience by placing a series of print ads in viz a british magazine which was something of an adult comic book not all of these ants revolved around sonic but they're all similarly lewd there are two sonic ads from the summer of 1991. here they are for those not familiar with the uk in the ad on the left sonic is doing a gesture which is the equivalent of flipping the bird and the ad on the right requires no explanation if only sonic could be a good boy like mario 1999 beta in may 1999 a beta rom of sonic 1 appeared on simon wise sonic 2 beta page a website dedicated to the authentic sonic 2 beta rom found online by sonic y that is a story for another day but the mysterious sonic 1 rom was listed simply as sonic 1 beta being listed on a seemingly factual website the rom stirred up a lot of interest the 99 beta has only a few playable stages but those stages have tweaked color palettes different music and a few other minor changes the 99 beta got a lot of people talking and curious but it turned out to be a ruse and nothing more than a rom hack interestingly though the 99 beta wasn't just a mere rom hack it's widely regarded as the first ever sonic rom hack it was put together by cyan hellcarrax and while it looks primitive now it was a real feat in 1999 as there was zero documentation available for sonic 1 at the time it was a mere hoax but a very historically important one esoteric sonic it's been pointed out that sonic 1 contains a lot of strange esoteric symbolism the title screen logo for example bears some similarities with the zoastrian fravahar symbol an ancient iranian religious symbol note the wings and one hand pointing upwards on both the fravaha emblem also shows a ring being held another parallel with sonic the fravaha is meant to represent the human soul the similarities between the two can't be a mere coincidence hedgehogs were also considered sacred animals in ancient iran and they were kept as pets they kept the house free of insects by eating them kind of like sonic destroying all of the badniks in the zones you might think blue hedgehogs are unusual but not to the ancient egyptians who made blue hedgehog ornaments due to their spiny nature hedgehog ornaments were often placed in tombs to protect the deceased in the afterlife also note the extensive use of free mason imagery in the game the use of checkerboard patterns and the weird use of columns in promotional artwork the checkerboard pattern is a masonic reference to the ancient temple of solomon also note that sonic's blue colour is the favored colour of freemasonry associated with eternity and immortality what does all of this mean were sega sneaking weird esoteric imagery into the game on purpose is yujinaka a free mason if you ask me you can draw similar comparisons with just about any and every video game if you try hard enough so i don't think sonic embodied any esoteric ideas but it's worth keeping in mind you can't spell masonic without sonic and that just about wraps things up the sonic 1 iceberg fully explored thanks for watching all the way through massive thanks go out to mishkas for voicing a couple of bits if i missed anything out or got anything wrong feel free to drop a comment below one of the great things about doing these iceberg videos is all the great comments i get i get to find out new things about the sonic franchise so it's much appreciated if you want more i've got three other sonic iceberg videos and plenty of sonic character profile videos to sink your teeth into as well thanks for watching and hopefully i'll see you next time you

Channel: Johnny Vector

Views: 47,578

Rating: 4.9580574 out of 5

Keywords: sonic iceberg, sonic the hedgehog iceberg, the sonic iceberg, sonic iceberg explained, sonic the hedgehog iceberg explained, sonic, sonic the hedgehog, sonic 1991, sonic mega drive, sonic gamegear, sonic master system, feels the rabbit, sonic madonna, sonic band, the sonic the hedgehog band, iceberg, iceberg meme, iceberg format, sonic 1999, sonic beta, needlemouse, sonic 1 sally, sonic 1 sally acorn, sonic sally, sonic sally acorn, sally acorn, feels rabbit, sonic bible

Id: oLzXfi_6R6k

Length: 56min 33sec (3393 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021