...and ain't you glad it wasn't? Just look at those awful supporting characters! 'Princess Acorn', presumbibly a early design for who later became Princess sally in the 'SATAM' cartoon, looks far too much like a slutty Princess Toadstool from the Mario Bros cartoons (also developed by DIC), Poker Lewis has been turned into some kind of punk, and Johnny Lightfoot also has shades, for some reason, and I don't even know what they were thinking with the others. A walrus called Joe Sushi? Tex the Penguin? A Flicky in some kind of white suit? Even Sonic himself doesn't look quite right, and where's Tails? More after the jump..I Scanned this from the news section of an early issue of S.T.C, which was reporting on the release of 'Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog' on TV that following week on Channel 4, yet this image isn't from that cartoon at all: it's an original pitch image by DIC for Sega, who obviously made them change the cast entirely into the lot we found in SATAM.
What's quite interesting is that while none of the cartoons featured Poker Lewis and Johnny Lightfoot, Sonic the Comic adapted them characters into part of the Freedom Fighters from their original game designs seen in the first 10 or so issues (small cuddly animals) to anthropomorphic characters in denim jackets without anyone even noticing.Here's some more images of this early pitch art on some sales cards I found on a rather useful website about SATAM, again with the rubbish Princess Acorn character and a very mis-coloured Dr.Robotnik. If anyone has any insight into this early Sonic cartoon concept, I would love to hear it!
