Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, 1.00. Pilot

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, 1.00. Pilot
Original Air Date: Unaired

This journey does not begin in the place you might be expecting. Like most series, “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” was proceeded by a pilot. It was produced in-house in America, with Kent Butterworth and Milton Knight being the primary crew behind the storyboards and animation. Running all of seven minutes, this is probably the earliest animated iteration of Sonic and friends you're ever going to see...

Though you probably haven't seen it. Unlike the “SatAM” pilot, which aired at the end of that show's first season, the “Adventures” pilot was unreleased for many years. The pilot was a whispered-about bit of obscure, unseen “Sonic” lore until 2009. That's when Milton Knight posted it to Youtube. Me being the obsessive compulsive nerd I am, I naturally had to start here.

Since “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” was never a heavily plotted series, the short pilot is even more light on story than usual. We see a series of scenarios, in which Sonic defends the innocent citizens of the still unnamed Mobius from the villainous machinations of the buffoonish Dr. Robotnik. He attempts to drain a village's lake away, in addition to badgering a community of bunnies and a group of gorillas. In several separate incidents, the doctor attacks Sonic with a horde of robots, a cannon, a giant crushing weight, and by drilling under his beach.

Deciphering the plot of this pilot is even more difficult due to the rough quality it survives in. The version on Youtube has no music or sound effects. Some sequences are even without dialogue, being rendered entirely silent. The only cast member from the finished show is Jaleel White as Sonic. Jim Cummings plays Robotnik, before Long John Baldry stepped into this version of the role, and Gary Owens voices an omniscient narrator. The visuals are blurry and tracking lines appeared more than once.

That narrator and Cummings' presence are two of the more notable ways the pilot is different from the show that would follow. It seems Owens, functioning as an enthusiastic narrator, was originally intended to be a regular feature of the show. In many ways, the pilot has more in common with the video games than the show did. The environments resemble the video game's backgrounds more, with Sonic even racing through a Green Hill Zone-style loop at one point. Twice, Robotnik pilots his Egg-O-Matic, outfitted with a drill bit and that giant checkered wrecking ball. Several of the video game's Badniks, such as Chop Chop and Octus, appear briefly too. The pilot also emphasizes the freedom fighting more, which would perhaps be rolled into “SatAM.”

Despite the differences, the “Adventures” pilot is still pretty similar to the cartoon that would spawn from it. The sequence where Robotnik tries to drop a giant weight on Sonic, just to get smooshed himself, would be recycled as the end credits animation for the show. The other Mobians Sonic encounters are similarly weird looking. Aside from the lion king and his gorilla fighters – the type of subtle wordplay you should get use to – most of the civilians we see are weirdly defined creatures that resemble no specific animal. While a whole horde of robots show up, Scratch and Grounder still emerge as Robotnik's primary toadies. The episode even concludes with the first of many “Sonic Sez” segments, featured here with the more grammatically correct but less tubular spelling of “Says,” with Sonic instructing Tails to look both ways before crossing the street.

(The pilot also features the image of Sonic sitting in a beach chair under a parasol, wearing sunglasses and sipping a drink. That's an image that would appear in a lot of stock art in the franchise's early years.)

The biggest similarity of all is the sophomoric slapstick that occupies most of the pilot. Over the course of seven minutes, we see a lot of goofy gags. Robotnik fires a cactus at Sonic, only for the cactus to get tired and stop flying. After Sonic defaces a sign of Robotnik, it cries. Once the bad guy is flattened into a pancake, Scratch and Grounder simply re-inflate him with a bicycle pump. A bird lays an egg on Robotnik's head and Sonic frequently breaks the fourth wall, directing his raditude directly at the viewer. It's fun in its own goofy way but this is not especially cutting edge humor.

Mostly, the “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” pilot will be most interesting to longtime “Sonic” fans and historians like myself. It is interesting to see such a relic resurface, twenty years after it was created. From what I can recall, the pilot does give us a good preview of what is to come. [6/10]