The Legacy of Sonic CD’s Opening — I

12 min readMar 21, 2024

“𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘊𝘋 𝘪𝘴 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤’𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘨𝘢 𝘊𝘋, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘺-𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘚𝘦𝘨𝘢, 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘦𝘨𝘢 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦. 𝘍𝘰𝘳 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 𝘊𝘋, 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘴 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘳, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘥𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘴𝘰 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘫𝘰𝘺 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦. 𝘞𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤 1 𝘢𝘯𝘥 2 — 𝘪𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 “𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘚𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘤… 𝘰𝘯 𝘊𝘋!” 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘢𝘥.” — 𝘕𝘢𝘰𝘵𝘰 𝘖𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘮𝘢, 10/93 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘉𝘌𝘌𝘗 𝘔𝘦𝘨𝘢 𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦

Fans of the blue blur should already know why Sonic CD is considered a beloved installment by many, seeing as how the game introduced two of the most recognizable characters within the franchise who have become mainstays since then, how it spawned some of the series’ wackiest zones owing to its Time Travel Mechanic, and the fact that it bolstered a blueprint for the hedgehog’s visual evolution going forward. Personally, I’m a huge fan of this entry. Quality of the game aside- one can’t deny there’s a real charm behind it that makes it stand out from the rest of the games in the Classic Sonic lineup.

Back when SEGA still made consoles, a consistent focus was placed on pushing the hardware to its utmost limit with each new entry in the series. From the Special Stages in the original Sonic the Hedgehog meant to show off the SEGA Genesis’ fancy rotation capabilities, to the Parallax Scrolling on display in Sonic CD’s Special Stages, to the Genesis’ impressive Scaling effects found in Sonic 3’s Special Stages, it’s clear an element of spectacle has long been integral to Sonic’s identity as a high-speed platformer. With the technological boon that was the CD-ROM storage promising quality audio offered by the Mega CD, SEGA was quick to bank on the feature, and the results were nothing short of colorful. Sonic 1 and 2 may have had great OSTs by Mega Drive standards (with many of the compositions still holding up well to this day) but Sonic CD unquestionably surpasses them by a mile and a half, and might as well have been the game that first set us on track with the tradition of Sonic games having banger music. With the developers having fully realized their ambitions in sound design, the calm acoustic solos of Naofumi Hataya compounded upon by the faster improvised sequences of Masafumi Ogata were essential to capturing the atmosphere and aesthetic that the game had going for it, with the style having become a trademark among those in the remix space seeking to replicate the authentic Sonic CD flair. Give the OST a listen sometime and it becomes increasingly apparent the two drew a lot of inspiration from house/club and techno influences of the time.

━━ A Glimpse into an Animated Sonic Verse ━━

Most importantly however, the soundtrack and animatics work together to convey a distinct audio-visual narrative. The OST did well to hint at Robotnik’s destructive endeavors within the stages themselves, while the FMVs aimed to adopt a much more conventional approach to showcasing traditional Sonic action. For the first time ever, a Sonic game was set to feature fully animated opening and ending cutscenes. These cutscenes were handled by Toei Animation who subcontracted Studio Junio, and work on these animatics started early on in development, which explains why a portion of the ending animatic mysteriously showcases the infamous ‘R2’ that was cut from the final game due to time constraints back when it was originally pushed from Spring ’93 for a Fall ’93 release. Admittedly, these cutscenes had to be compressed when brought on to actual hardware, but this drastic compromise ensured the animations could be streamed in real-time from the CD. Even with the resolution and color restrictions in place, the FMVs and the OST took up most of the space on the disc, which pushed developers to use the Mega CD’s ‘Ricoh’ audio chip in an attempt to reflect the more primitive sounding instrumentation of the Past tracks. It’s common knowledge within the Sonic fanbase, but I may or may not have glossed over how an entirely new American score was composed within an incredibly short period of seven weeks, since the influence of the Japanese Soundtrack is more notable to this discussion.

Though Classic Sonic was famous for having two uniquely distinct American and Japanese designs, the FMVs managed to capture the hearts of fans in the US and Japan alike. After having been spoiled with the sleeker, animation-friendly re-imagining of the Japanese design originally sketched by Oshima and first showcased on Box Art thanks to the efforts of Watanabe among other cover artists, Greg Wray’s iconic American design featuring the mohawk quickly became a thing of the past for many of us. For a while the look was famously credited as “Toei Sonic” and made prominent appearances within rom hacks and mods for other classic titles. However, perhaps in a move that signified its lasting impact, 2020 saw Hisashi Eguchi, the chief key animator himself address the matter and requested the design be referred to as “Junio Sonic” as a tribute to the staff at Studio Junio who had worked under minimal pay to make the FMVs a reality.

━━━ Sonic the Original Video Animation ━━━

This design would later go on to act as the basis for Sonic’s Design in the OVA. As previously discussed in my retrospective on the film, thinner proportions and a more elongated design allowed for a more expressive and fluid style of animation at the animators’ leisure. But that’s not all, there’s one more thing from the Sonic CD Opening which directly carried over to this series.

As far back as the original Sonic 1 on the Genesis, simple things such as the idle animations went a long way in establishing a sense of character for the blue blur. Although Sonic had always been an impatient little fellow who wasn’t opposed to the idea of visibly emoting his frustration at the player during moments of inactivity, CD’s opening marked the first time audiences would truly see Sonic in his element, where he was portrayed as cool, confident and a true force of nature. The OVA also drew inspiration from the opening’s visual style for its setting, which is reflected in its obsession with having everything float in the air.

While the OVA did not explore the concept of Time Travel directly, it’s clear Sonic CD had laid the groundwork for such storytelling elements, with Planet Freedom being a Post-Apocalyptic Earth and introducing warp zones as means of travel. The intricate topography of the Land of the Sky is far too massive in scale to have been man-made, leaving room for speculation about its origins. The Sonic wiki states it was originally a series of mountains on Planet Freedom, but I couldn’t find any citations to support this claim. “𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘶𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳.” What people? The Land of Darkness is a total wasteland.

Notice how many of the continents are separated by thousands of kilometers necessitating the use of air travel? It’s possible that the Land of the Sky is nothing but the remnants of a celestial body colliding with Earth at some point in the distant past, which was Planet Freedom in the present. Maybe this is what led to the apocalypse that wiped out the humans in the first place (Well except for Robotnik who’s kinda just there). The resulting ash and fallout must’ve initiated a nuclear winter that led to the formation of the massive intercontinental glacier, and abnormally high levels of background radiation could explain why life that would ultimately come to thrive years later was anthropomorphic in nature. It’s unclear if more humans were intended to be introduced down the line, effectively making it so that the Land of the Sky was inhabited by anthropomorphic creatures while the Land of Darkness remained under human control, that is- if any of them even managed to survive. If so, would the residents there have held resentment toward anthropomorphic beings for possibly abandoning them in a desolate wasteland? Given that Robotnik is a human, this speculation raises a couple of intriguing questions about the existence of humans in this continuity.

I would’ve loved to see these questions be answered had OVA turned into a full-fledged anime, but for whatever reason that regrettably never ended up happening. Nonetheless, it’s a testament to the richness of Sonic’s lore and the potential for expansive storytelling within the franchise.

Yet again in 2020, we were treated to a surprising revelation that shed new light on the OVA’s production. Thanks to the efforts of ‘illuminor’, a demo recording uncovered for the movie revealed that the instrumentation for most of the tracks in the movie was somewhat similar to the soundtrack of Sonic CD, specifically in how it used a variety of real and synthetic instruments to create a unique and memorable musical backdrop for the film, which sadly never saw an official release. Though the trademark “CD Sampling” was entirely absent, this discovery further deepened the connection between the game and the OVA, while also providing us a glimpse into the creative process behind the movie’s soundtrack. Utilizing a similar musical style to that of Sonic CD evoked a sense of familiarity for fans of the franchise, emphasizing the enduring influence of this Mega CD game.

━━━━━━ A Nostalgic Revival ━━━━━━

Eventually, the series would have to make its transition into 3D with Sonic Adventure on the SEGA Dreamcast. Yuji Uekawa would work closely with art director Kazuyuki Hoshino to put forth fresh new looks for each of the characters moving forward. Uekawa’s art is yet another benchmark that future projects would continually refer to, such as the Advance and Rush series of handheld titles, and more notably Sonic X which simplified its highlights to make the designs feasible for a full-scale production. Over the years, this design underwent a plethora of revisions until it gradually mutated into what we know today as “Modern Sonic”.

Sonic Generations, released as a celebration of Sonic’s 20th Anniversary, would be the first time each of these styles were officially identified as such. Here, the franchise’s history would be split into three eras: Classic, Dreamcast, and Modern. Initial plans involved three different Sonics to represent each era, with vocal talents of both Jaleel White and Ryan Drummond respectively considered for the roles of Classic and Dreamcast Sonics. For whatever reason, SEGA was unable to secure their participation in the project, and plans ended up falling apart. Ultimately, it was decided the game would stick with only two Sonics, and Classic Sonic would end up being weirdly portrayed as mute, owing to the fact that Sonic never uttered a word in the original Genesis trilogy. I reckon they must’ve overlooked Sonic CD’s iconic “I’m outta here” line, or tried to pretend it didn’t exist, because in 2022 a collection “Sonic Origins” compiling all of the games then went ahead and removed all of his voice lines from the game, successfully gaslighting society into believing Classic Sonic has been mute all along.

In 3D, you constantly run the risk of Sonic looking completely off from certain camera angles, a by-product of the asymmetric facial features of certain Sonic characters. This necessitated a makeover for Classic Sonic in Generations to ensure there was no funny stuff happening with the quills, though the mouth remained the same. The developers have ingeniously tried circumventing this by moving Sonic’s mouth whenever he’s off-screen to whichever side is facing the camera during cutscenes, akin to how both Junio and X Sonic’s quills are set to constantly face away from the camera. On a related note, Sonic’s quill count infamously went down to 3 in Sonic X due to the complexity of shading involved in rendering his spines when viewed from behind. Not to say it’s impossible, (The semi-animated cutscenes in Black Knight clearly showed it was possible to simulate depth amongst Sonic’s assortment of quills in 2D with the right shading) it’s more so a matter of it being hella painful for the animators to work with, given the three-tone shading style the show was going for.

When depicted in 3D Classic Sonic would adopt a chunkier design that incorporated elements of both the American and Japanese designs. First appearing in Generations and later in Forces, the design was a drastic departure from the Junio look and sticks much more closely to Sonic’s in-game appearance. This is because Junio Sonic was created to accentuate qualities unique to the 2D medium, which don’t translate particularly well when making the jump to 3D. Here it gets difficult to manage his quills due to complications that third axis brings where a set of inconsistencies become fully apparent, specifically those pertaining to Sonic’s quills and mouth. Luckily, the title screens of both Sonic CD and Sonic 3&K gave the artists involved a good starting point they could work off of.

In a 1993 pre-release interview with Kazuyuki Hoshino as well as Naoto Oshima (otherwise known as the father of Sonic the Hedgehog) an ingenious approach to handling the sprite work for Sonic turning to face the player in Sonic CD’s title screen was revealed. The process involved a sculpture, one meticulously crafted by Taku Makino, who was in fact the man responsible for Sonic’s very first physical model. The sculpture was then rotated through a wide range of angles and had its photos captured through use of a polaroid camera, which were consequently scanned to be used as a base for sprite design in SEGA’s own proprietary digitizer software. Hoshino-san would later recount his elation at the sight of working with a Macintosh IIci for the first time. The sprite would be overlaid atop a gold emblem boasting a metallic sheen to fake the impression of CG visuals. The prospect of replicating CG visuals within the gaming landscape was far from prevalent at this point, and I personally feel Hoshino-san’s efforts are underrated for their time.

With several title screens in mind, not to mention the intros for 3D Blast and promotional illustrations featured within various old-school magazines of the time, the team had a pretty good idea of what they wanted to achieve with the in-game model. Generations did well to adapt Classic’s design in 3D, maintaining a consistent appearance across all camera angles while leaning on the cutesy aspect of it all.

Despite appearing aesthetically pleasing (as far as 2D was concerned), the Junio look would be denied the spotlight of your mainstream Sonic affair. It seemed as if that smugness, and adornment for its qualities remained largely confined to the hearts of a select few.

Until next time, where we take an unhurried look at the man who single-handedly revitalized everyone’s love for the Junio design with a unique spin of his own, whilst congratulating the efforts of dedicated fans who have helped cement its status as yet another iconic iteration of the world’s most famous hedgehog.

━━━━━━ Acknowledgements (By Order of Appearance) ━━━━━━