Comics, Site News

An introduction and a confession from Barry the Nomad

barry

Hello and welcome to my formal introduction to the Sonic Retro news page! My name is Barry, I’m an admin, writer and graphic designer for Sonic Retro sister site SEGAbits. Since our April 1st partnership, we’ve been making strides to bridge the sites, including bringing Sonic Retro writers on as SEGAbits writers. Now that I’m an official writer over here, consider the bridge built, but we still have improvements in the works.

To show that I have nothing to hide, I thought I’d be upfront about something. The letter to the left is my claim to fame in the Archie Sonic the Hedgehog comics, appearing in Sonic Super Special #15’s Sonic Grams. The issue itself was awful, featuring the worst art I have ever seen in a commercial comic book. But my contribution is arguably worse than the work of Many Hands. After gushing a bit too much over Archie’s Sonic Adventure adaptation, I noted my disapproval of a previous issue’s letter asking for the series to stop introducing new characters. It was then that I wrote what I’ll always regret writing: “I say the more characters, the better!”. Could I have unwittingly inspired Ken Penders to soldier ahead with his army of Knuckles clones? Was Mobius 25 Years Later my doing?

I should note that the original letter was edited down by Archie’s Sonic staff. I distinctly remember saying that I wanted more characters from the games, and I gave a specific shout out to the Chaotix. Still, the damage was done. So that’s my confession. At least they didn’t cut the part where I gave kudos to the awesome Patrick Spaziante.

Glad to be on the Sonic Retro writing staff and hopefully you all can forgive me.

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7 Comments

  • Reply

    Aww, I was hoping you would confess that you were secretly hoarding Sonic 1’s alpha build and in a moment of guilt and clarity you were going to release to the world creating world peace before flying back to your home planet.

    But this is just as cool too, wish my emails were printed by them, I think I’m on their ignore list at this point.

    You getting a Site Staff banner too Barry?

    • Reply

      I had better, otherwise I’m taking this place down with future articles like: “Amy Rose or my fanfic character Swirl the Bobcat – which is cuter?”, “Sonic Retro Reviews GTAV”, and “How I Achieved Even More Greatness on a Sonic the Hedgehog-Themed Bed”

  • Reply

    #The more characters, the merrier!

  • Reply

    In reference to your original letter, Barry, I too was disappointed that Gamma’s storyline wasn’t covered in Archie’s adaptation, as it is probably my favorite character arc in the entire franchise. It has a level of heartwarming you don’t see a lot in this series, and I found myself more attached to Gamma than to Sonic himself. That, and his completely dialogue-free, bittersweet ending exhibits a level of subtle heart you rarely see in Japanese games anymore, much less Sonic games.

    …Come to think of it, I’m kinda glad Archie didn’t touch it. They would’ve found a way to cheese it up and make me hate it the same way Sonic X did.

  • Reply

    They probably would have had Gamma be a reincarnation of Coconuts and when he busts open, Nate Morgan is inside or some nonsense. If Station Square can be inside a mountain then ANYTHING is possible in the world of Archie Sonic.

    I will say, I still have fond memories of the Sonic Adventure adaptation. As a fan of the game, I thought it was great that they devoted so many issues to it. I also loved the covers for the story arc and some of the ways they tied it in with the ongoing Archie story. Also, fleshing out the echidna’s backstory and adding a opposing race of cats from which Big is a descendent was kind of neat.

    • Reply

      Oh, definitely; for the most part, I loved the adaptation back in the day. Even though, looking back, you can clearly tell the writers were begrudgingly rewriting and retconning a lot of their established universe because they needed to stay true to the games. I’m not surprised they gave up trying to adapt the games once Sonic Adventure 2 came along; there’s no way they could have done that without effectively whitewashing the comics’ entire story up to that point.

  • Reply

    So you will replace Ken Penders,am I right?

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