Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog

First broadcast in September 1993, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (or AoSTH for short) has been "running" in cartoon syndication ever since. It follows the escapades of world-known video game hero, Sonic, a speedy blue hedgehog and his best bud, Miles "Tails" Prower, a flying fox with two tails, as they stop the evil Dr. Ivo Robotnik and his array of vicious robots from taking over the planet Mobius.

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is a fast-paced cartoon with a lot of slapstick humor, akin to such shows as Ren and Stimpy or Tiny Toons. The show features very few characters, usually just Sonic, Tails, Robotnik and his two hench-bots Scratch and Grounder. The plots often loosely followed the storyline of the video game, although at the time the Sonic games were still quite new, and lacking much plot or character development, which was in turn filled in by the show's writers.

When the show ended, the new Sonic cartoon that replaced it (Sonic the Hedgehog, see below) took the characters in a far more serious direction. Most of the characters and settings established in Adventures never re-appeared in this new series. A vast array of comic books were in turn released based on the new Sonic show, making Adventures little more than a footnote to many die-hard Sonic fans today.

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog was created by DiC Entertainment, who produced a total of 65 episodes for its first season. The first episode was "Best Hedgehog" (shown Sept 6) and the last was "Hero of the Year" (shown Dec 3). DiC ceased production on this comical interpretation to spend more time on its darker interpretation, dubbed just "Sonic the Hedgehog" (commonly known as 'SatAm"), a series launched on ABC's Saturday morning line-up. A second season of "Sonic the Hedgehog" (commonly referred as the "Lost Season") had begin preliminary development, but it never got aired. Two other episodes in that season were in the works prior to the cancellations.

This wasn't to be the end of AoStH, however, for DiC created one more episode in the winter of 1996, "Sonic's Christmas Blast" - which ended up being a strange mix of AoStH and SatAM.

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog was most recently shown weekdays at 8:00am Central Time on Toon Disney (a digital cable/satellite channel). AoStH villains also appeared one weekend on "Chillin' with the Villains" program hour - Robotnik was even on their commercial for it.

AOSTH characters are seen in the 16-bit (for Sega Genesis and Sega Megadrive) and 8-bit (for Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System) versions of Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.

External links

• Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog at the Big Cartoon DataBase