#obscoorereference

I know some folks enjoy Sonic Underground and like, you’re allowed. But it’s just such a painful show. Everything about it makes it so obvious that it was designed by committee with no actual artistic vision behind it and cranked out as fast and cheap as possible, right down to the whole “Sonic is in a band” thing that was only done to cash in on music royalties

Actually, I’m not sure many people know about the story behind Underground, so here’s late SatAM writer Ben Hurst on that shitshow:

Sonic Underground was a sad, sad story. With the opportunity looming large for the third season of SatAm, DIC made a creative decision to trash that continuity and strike out in a new direction. The reason: because they could add songs with the whole Sonic, Sonia and Manic thing and collect extra residuals from ASCAP/BMI (the group that pays song royalties - DIC makes deals with songwriters to split or sign over the rights to their compositions - exactly the same way that they force the writers and story editors to sign over all rights to their stories.) 

[…]

Here’s how Sonic Underground happened. After SatAm was canned because of a change in leadership at ABC and low ratings caused by multiple pre-emptions caused by sporting events and finally - being placed up against the red-hot “Power Rangers,” (now there’s some genius programming strategy) - a new version of Sonic was created: Sonic Underground.

Did they ask me or Pat or Len Janson to develop the series? No. In fact, I never heard of the series before a DIC story editor called and asked me and Pat to come to a cattle call for Sonic Underground. I refused (we don’t do cattle calls - which, for those of you unfamiliar with the term - is where they bring in about 20 writers to learn about a series and pitch written premises (for free) in hopes of snagging an episode or two). The story editor got us there by guaranteeing us at least a few episodes. So, off we went to a conference room at DIC.

We got there and yep, twenty writers. They showed an episode of SatAm (first season) to “illustrate the background” of the characters. It wasn’t one of mine or Pat’s - it was one of the other episodes. After they described the marvelous new direction (Siblings, Music, Missing Mother, Stupid New Characters) they ended the meeting. We were taken into another room with the story editor who told us he wanted us to write the pilot episode. We did. SEGA read the script, then the story editor was fired and we were hired. They also hired another team of story editors - who survived through about 8 episodes before they left. We also got a few fledgling writers shoved down our throat by the producer (results: I had to rewrite their damned unusable scripts from page one - they still got paid for the script - I got nada)

yanfly has a pretty straightforward script i’m looking at that lets you set a variable to alter the encounter rate, and i could theoretically let players control that variable in a ton of different ways

rarity doesn't know how straight horses act so she overcompensates to try and get what she wants from a man

is the closest thing i could come up with to a joke/rationalization :v

hmu if you want your magneton evolved anytime soon btw cause the area it needs to level in to evolve is super-lategame :v

You’re so sweet to offer! Right now I’m fine with them in this form, but I’ll let you know if I change my mind later.

selective-yellow: replied to your post“My Mudbray evolved into a Mudsdale! She is so big and strong. My team...”

Mudbray/Mudsdale are SUPER good pokemon I wasn't expecting to take mine to the end but she was great!!

Naturally, they had to save That for the much-hyped 150th issue

I was going to say something about how Sonic was supposed to be cool and edgy and how cartoons were more afraid of sincerity in the ‘90s... but then I remembered that between all the Jaleel White catchphrases SatAM had a lot of moments where Sonic showed genuine emotion and was nice to his friends and even cried