Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: Attack on Pinball Fortress
Written by Bob Forward
Reviewed by Chaos Theory T. Echidna.
Well...where to start. I guess I'll start by summing up my overall reaction to this cartoon--YES it is as stupid as everyone says it is. And yes, I assume that SaTAM is much better--though I've never seen that one yet. But on the other hand, I enjoyed getting to hear Sonic and Tails speak English finally (I've seen some of the cinematic bits from the JAPANESE version of Sonic Adventure) and parts of it were actually funny, so...
The theme song is a good place to start. It's mainly the little ditty you hear at the beginning of Sonic 1 and Sonic 2--on the title screen--mixed with that "Big Bad Wolf" classical piece to represent Robotnik. That's the TUNE; the images show Sonic repeatedly bashing Robotnik, Scratch, and Grounders' heads in in lots of different mean ways, grinning like a loon and showing off all over the place, while his name, "Sonic", keeps showing up in ALL kinds of strange places--carved in rock, blown up as a balloon, bits of debris from an explosion just HAPPEN to fall the right way in order to spell it out, etc. At the very end, Sonic and Tails both pose with his name written in the "proper" SegaSonic blue with yellow trim way, and do their little poses just like from the title screen of Sonic 2 again. In fact, this cartoon was SO similar to Sonic 2 it almost made me want to go play it again...
Now for the actual episode itself. We start off with Sonic and Tails having fun in the desert while Robotnik--running around with his SHIRT OFF (eew!) due to the heat tries to stir up trouble with Scratch and Grounder. In case you've heard those last two names around the Internet before but don't know what they look like; Scratch is an ostrich-bot and Grounder is a tank-bot with a pointy drill nose. I'm not sure exactly where Scratch would be from, but Grounder looks a LOT like those robots that pop out of the walls at EXACTLY the wrong times in the Acquatic Ruin Zone--just with different colours. (And both characters appear in the game "Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine".) Robotnik tries repeatedly to zap Sonic but of course fails 'cos he's too fast for him. He accidentally hits different people with it--including a reluctant soldier who doesn't want to cross a swamp, who then thinks it's the BEST idea he's EVER heard of, greatly pleasing his superior officer--a hugely muscular canine character with a giant upper body and a tiny lower one, as is steotypical for a cartoon muscle-man, named "Sgt. Doberman". Although I might have gotten the rank wrong, I should go look at it again. He also whacks a customer who does NOT want to buy a blank encyclopedia from a crooked (and very very ANNOYING) salesman, who then thinks a blank encyclopedia sounds WONDERFUL. This pleases the salesman, too, to no end.
Robotnik even hits Scratch with it, but Scratch is ALREADY so stupid that it has no effect on him--as the good Doctor snidely remarks. Anyway, Sonic then somehow captures it (hey, I only saw the episode once, I can't remember exactly all that happens when) and, while Robotnik, Sgt. Doberman, and the salesman all fight over posession of it, he SMASHES it into a gazillion bits.
Robotnik, of course, is down but not out when this happens, and comes back with an even NASTIER idea--he's going to make a GIANT Stupidity Cannon and use it to TAKE OVER THE WORLD, BWAHAHAHAH!! (Can't you just hear the evil laughter there? By the way, Robotnik is drawn pretty much the way he appears in the instruction booklets, and he has a deep voice with an "uppah-clahss" British accent that seems to come and go at random.)
Anyway, Robotnik then taunts Sonic over his (Sonic's) convenient walkie-talkie, which somehow also lets the user see a PICTURE of the talker hanging in the air, and even get poked by their finger). He tells Sonic that he is building the cannon in his impenetrable Pinball Fortress, so Sonic decides to get in there somehow and destroy it. INSTANTLY, the greedy salesman and Sgt. Doberman offer to come along with him in the guise of "helping" so they can use the cannon for their own gains. The Doberman guy says that his military expertise will be needed; the salesman says that his company sold Robotnik all the traps in the fortress so he knows how to get through. (But what they're THINKING is: "With that cannon, I can make an entire planet full of MY kind of soldiers!"/"With that cannon, I can make an entire planet full of suckers!") Sonic does not like this idea but he shrugs and, like an idiot, allows them to come along...
They have to do some major rock-climbing to reach the fortress, which is up on a mountain, and Sonic gets to do something here that I, personally, have NEVER seen him do before except in fan artwork--wear CLOTHES! Okay, okay, so he's doing the Donald Duck thing of wearing a shirt but no pants, but still, for Sonic, it's positively overdressed! His "rock-climbing gear" consists of a yellow baggy sweatshirt with white trim, brown clunky shoes with cleats in place of his normal red-and-white smooth sneakers, and a red terrycloth headband. (It looked rather nice on him, actually. If you didn't know he had blue fur, it kinda looked like he was wearing a full coordinated outfit--yellow sweater, and blue jeans!) And speaking of clothes, Tails seems to have somehow ran off with Charmy's headgear, 'cos in this scene, as he zooms around the fortress playing the role of "Eye in the Sky", he is wearing an old-fashioned leather pilot's helmet and goggles on top of his head.
Switch back to Robotnik as he gloats over his machine and says it's almost done, then back to our heroes. Sonic ZOOMS straight INTO THE AIR with one end of a rope to tie it to something on the fortress walls, then zooms back to wrap the rope really quickly around a rock. (He moves like a Loony Toon style.) Sgt. Doberman then tries to zipline across it with a hand-held metal handle ALONE, but the salesman (if he had a name, I missed it) grabs onto his legs and, eventually, ends up pulling the Sgt.'s pants off as he falls lower and lower. Then the Sgt. pulls down HIS pants in revenge and they both arrive at the fortress in a less than dignified manner. Or, as Sonic says, "Oh, greeaaat, guys, just great. Nice heroic entrance!"
Then the salesman guy finally proves that he CAN be worth something--he recognises the type of door Robotnik is using on the fortress--it's got a super-complex lock that can take HOURS to get through. "However, there is a TINY flaw the company doesn't like to talk about"--and here he takes out his canteen and throws some kind of liquid (it sure didn't look like water) at the door. It INSTANTLY collapses into rubble. "It does have a SLIGHT rust problem." And they get inside--much to the annoyance of Robotnik, who, along with Scratch and Grounder, has been trying repeatedly to zap them with a laser beam before they made it in. Oh, well. Never mind that, now, he's got another trick up his sleeve--a giant scorpion bot. He sends it out after our heroes.
They enter the fortress and bounce and fly and bang and trip their way through a pinball-esque surrealistic atmosphere that wasn't anywhere NEAR as interesting as it could have been had it been well-drawn. It doesn't look anywhere near as cool as the "Veg-O-Matic" from Sonic Spinball, but then again, the way this cartoon is drawn, I guess I can't expect much...Anyway, after getting thrown around from bumper to bumper for a while, they fall through a trap door or something to land in an area that has tiny islands bobbing up and down on a lake of lava. Some fun, you bet.
And THEN the scorpion shows up. Mr. Macho Doberman pulls out a bandanna to wrap around his head (hee) and a HUGE machine gun with tons of bullets and shoots them ALL into the scorpion, with no effect, as Sonic and the salesman make fun of him behind his back.
Sonic them gets rid of the scorpion by NOT touching it at all--he zooms around in a spin-dash on the island the scorpion is standing on, cutting up the rock. This causes the scorpion to fall into the lava and melt.
The next scene is from Robotnik's point of view. Sonic walks quietly into the main room of his fortress--uh, shouldn't he have had some GUARDS or something there?!--hanging his head sadly, and says in subdued tones that he wants to surrender, and he apologises for being such a jerk all this time. Robotnik, being a MORON, actually believes this and when Sonic offers him a "treat" (a present tied up with a bow) he actually TAKES it. "Because of your change of heart, I may exterminate you somewhat painlessly--what kind of treat is it?"
"My favourite kind!" says Sonic devillishly. "A TRICK!" and with that, Sgt. Doberman and the salesman dude somehow pop OUT of the present, which they could not POSSIBLY have fit into (and how the heck was Sonic carrying them both, anyway?!) and surround Robotnik with their respective guns. They start fighting each other over the cannon, then Robotnik reminds them that it's not EITHER of theirs, it's his, "and you can't have it, nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!"
They say, "Okay, fine, we'll just blow YOU away first!" and Robotnik--now standing conveniently RIGHT in front of the cannon, says "Oh, shoot." When Scratch asks him to repeat that, you can of course imagine what happens next--ZAP!
The good Doctor, now even STUPIDER than he was before, then decides to pull the red "self-destruct lever" even though Scratch and Grounder, who are now ironically SMARTER than him, tell him not to, and the heroes scramble to get out as the Pinball Fortress goes BOOM straight into the sky. (Wasn't much of a destruct--other than the fact it ripped free of its foundation and flew through the air, it didn't explode at all--it just stayed in one piece.)
Meanwhile, our heroes are of course safe and sound--give or take a fall to their deaths or so (I loved when Tails tried to carry ALL THREE of them and then said, "You realise I can't carry you!"--but tried it ANYway) the two secondary characters realise that they didn't REALLY need the cannon, after all. "The best soldier is a smart one anyway./"If everyone was a sucker, it would take all the fun out of my job."
And back at what's left of the Pinball Fortress, Scratch and Grounder DESPERATELY try to keep Robotnik from pulling the lever again, and again, and again...as Robotnik's voice dorkily fades out, "Duuuuuh...I think I hate that hedgehog...but I don't know fer shurre....duhhhhh...."
ROLL CREDITS
Things of note:
1. SIMILARITES TO SaTAM: The infamous "chili dogs" in-joke ("Just TRY it!" yells Sonic to Dr. Robotnik upon hearing of his latest evil scheme. "I'm gonna be all over you like chili on a hot dog!" "And I'll be the mustard!" chirps Tails.), the fact that both cartoons call the planet "Mobius", and the fact that in both of them, Jaleel "Urkel" White does the voice of Sonic. Frankly I never understood why they picked him for that ONCE, let alone TWICE...however, his voice DOES oddly suit our dear hog...
2. Sonic does his "bored" thing from Sonic 2 when he's "WAAAAAIIIITTIINNNNGGG..."
3. Tails is, like in SaTAM, BROWN instead of orange! What's up with that?!
4. The Doberman dude strongly reminds me of General Stryker (or "Buzzcut" as Dan Drazen calls him) from the Knuckles comic books.
Now, the above plotline, give or take some gaping holes, doesn't sound THAT bad. You probably are kinda wanting to see the Pinball Fortress for yourself or some such, if you've never seen this cartoon. However, I did not include the STUPID problems with this cartoon. Bad writing, bad editing, bad drawing. The backgrounds were very fake and flat, the animation was jerky and primitive, and there were all kinds of little things to insult your intelligence, such as Sonic changing his clothes or getting the water out of his fur INSTANTLY, or things and people popping out of nowhere at all, and that really really CONVENIENT lake that the heroes landed in at the end (it wasn't there before). In general, they were trying for the slapstick/wacky atmosphere of the old-time Loony Toons--but they didn't quite succeed. This cartoon was made for YOUNGER kids, as compared to SaTAM, and it shows.
Still, I'm gonna give it a few more chances...just to say I did...
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curious tourists have stopped by to read Chaos Theory's review of "Attack on Pinball Fortress" since July 26, 1999. Of course, they were all chomped into little bits by the giant robotic scorpion or zapped by Dr. Robotnik's Stupidity Ray, but hey...Then again, if they dared to come to this site in the first place, after what happened to all the OTHER tourists, then they were already pretty darn stupid, now, weren't they?