flamepanther wrote:
According to an interview I read quite some time ago, an "Eggman" character was thought of even before the first Sonic game started development. SoA simply decided to change his name to Ivo Robotnik in the game manuals for whatever reason, and have since changed their minds about it for whatever other reason. However, the Sonic Adventure games seem to have retconned him into "Ivo 'Eggman' Robotnik" with the "Eggman" alias being the preferred name. Either would be correct at this point.
Like I said before Sonic's main goal was to sell consoles and most of the story details were never cemented down by the game's designers. The guy who created sonic obviously had an idea for his backstory and stuff and some of that stuff ended up being part of his Japanese storyline. Although some major things (like sonic being in a band) were removed totally since if they made it into the game they'd effect the American marketing side's ability to create a new story for a vague character. These were the days when you could take an entire Japanese game and turn it into something completely different for American audiences (Mario Bros 2, Decap Attack). But nowadays the game's storyline makes it into the actual game and not just the manual so there has to be more cohesion between different versions. So when Sonic Adventure came along with a whole complicated story they started pushing the Eggman name. In the first SA sonic just calls him Eggman sort of as a joke. In SA2 he pretty much goes by eggman the entire time but his grandfather is named "Robotnik" so I think that was the first time the Robotnik name actual made it to Japan. Since then they've pretty much eliminated the Robotnik name for the most part, which sucks.
So truthfully, if a Sonic movie was made and it attempted to stay as close as possible to Sonic's roots, he would have a human girlfriend, play in a rockband, and have fangs.
IMO Sonic's entire character is based on the marketing, multiple cartoons, and games that featured him. That's what he is, and 20 years of selling millions of games even when those games were horrible is a testament to his design and one dimensional relatability. He needs a birthing scene about as much as Mickey Mouse needs an explanation about how a failed experiment suddenly gave him pupils.