Willard Scott at the 1995 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade describing Sonic the Hedgehog as a "very cool teenager" while a remix of the Sonic Spinball title theme is playing is the most important video you will see today

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I just wish his long overdue return hadn't been in the form of a horrible, finicky, interminable boss fight.

But there's always next time (I hope!)

And that was the last we saw of Fang for 27 years. Higashi suggests Yūji Naka is to blame, as he refused to allow Fang into the official canon.

To be fair, an utterly incompetent screwball whose machines blow up on him doesn't make for a very compelling villain when you're trying to tell a story.

When Fang was added to Sonic the Fighters, he was originally depicted as a badass, and both Higashi and Ihoroi had to tell the AM2 team that no, this guy’s just a nutjob.

Higashi again pointed to Tensai Bakabon, advising that Fang's gun attack should look like Tensai Bakabon's crazy cop character.

The “Sniper” part came from the dev team, though of course that hits different in the current sociopolitical climate than it did in 1994, clearly causing some headaches for the lore council.

But bottom line, you can see how people starting perceiving Fang as a cool type character.

Even within Sega

So for 30 years, we just had to accept the uncomfortable reality that at some point somewhere in the Sonic universe, a wolf and a jerboa got very close.

Anyway, in the Oct. 14, 1994 issue of Famitsū, two winners were announced in the naming contest, both evidently having submitted the name “Fang.”

Higashi recalls: “I added that bit in later. I remember telling my boss the idea was that even though [Fang] was a jerboa, he just kind of proclaimed himself to be half wolf (as a silly character who says crazy things).”

That bit of lore, tho, was never properly conveyed in any official materials.

And here’s where things start getting weird: the ad specifically describes the new character as a “jerboa-wolf hybrid” who “lives in subspace” and has a “cunning personality.” Furthermore, they are specifically asking for “cool” names.

There's no hint of his comicality, and wait—jerboa/wolf HYBRID?

Which is fair considering that’s what everyone in Japan had, and I assume Sega’s probably very expensive multipage ads were an effort to get some mainstream publicity.

But anyway, since early in 1994 Sega had been using that ad space almost exclusively to peddle Game Gear for whatever reason.

Just for some context, Sega had for several years been running large, multipage advertisements in Famitsū, the kind of ads that are sneakily made to look like they’re normal magazine articles.

Famitsū in those days, while technically a multiplatform magazine, had a very strong Super Famicom tilt.

This introduced a new problem. “Nack” sounds an awful lot like “Knuckles,” especially when you moosh the two names into the Japanese syllabary. One had to change, and we know who won that battle.

So, Sega ran a contest soliciting name ideas in the August 5, 1994 issue of Famitsū.

BUT! While Higashi and the Game Gear team were working on Sonic & Tails 2 in Japan, the Sonic 3 team over in the states came up with their own original character, Knuckles.

Now, there was absolutely no reason for Knuckles to be in S&T2, but the GG team must’ve felt pressured to squeeze him in.

Higashi first named his new character “ナック”—usually romanized as Nack, but of course that’s not actually a word, so I’ve always wondered if it should actually be “Knack” with a K? Whatev, it’s moot

In this preview from the July 1, 1994 issue of Famitsū, he’s introduced as “Nack the treasure hunter”

In this concept sketch, you can see a very squat early version of Fang with a small doodle of Tensai Bakabon character Rerere no Ojisan doing the series’ trademark scramble walk. The word next to the character reads “movement,” so it's probably how Higashi imagined Fang's walking animation.

Fang was conceived by S&T2 planner Tadashi Ihoroi and designed—with Naoto Ōshima’s blessing—by artist Shin’ichi Higashi, both of whom had joined Sega about a year earlier in 1993.

Higashi was inspired by the compact design of Opa-Opa and the wackiness of long-running gag manga Tensai Bakabon.

But hey, we ended up getting Pinobee instead! I’m sure someone must be happy about that.

Original quote from: note.com/beep21/n/na7...

Also, full disclosure: I have never seen the Matrix

“I got into a fight with my boss and quit.”

So there you have it. A little more tenuous than Kojima’s claim maybe, but no less juicy. No mention of who this “boss” was or what the fight was about, and no details about this mysterious Matrix-esque game.