COVER

Same as the Team Sonic cover, but with Team Rose as the focus (obviously). Those game images of the characters were new at this point and I hadn’t even played or completed the game I think when I did these comics, relying on my own stories based on what I knew about the game and then, alter when I got the game and finished it, splicing in the game aspects.

1

Again with the slightly different opening monologue, just to have each story start the same and then go from there in separate directions. We open with Cream and her Mother, as she demonstrates how she can now master her flying technique, a vague reference to her inability to do it in TTSS. That background was also made by me and it would take me a while to actually get that blue Flicky out of the tree (which is from Sonic CD), because I accidentally left it in and it doesn’t ever move. Cream is now with Cheese, who sometimes says “Chao” but not very often because it’s a tricky word bubble to put in, and with Vanilla is a hastily re-coloured Cheese sprite to be Chocola-Chao, something I did on the fly, and it’s good enough to be what it is. Vanilla is a hard sprite to edit and customise and she has very few animations, so I try to limit how often characters interact with her. In the first panel, on the left, you can briefly see Spikes walking off frame, his cameo for this Part done. This mimetic polyalloy (taken from terminator 2, it’s what the T-1000 was) ability of Metal gave me a good excuse to use various sprites from the Chaos Battle sheet that I didn’t think I’d ever use (that soon changed) to help with his watery form, which is just like it is in the game. He really clobbers ream here and then we see the only custom metal Sonic prime sprite I made at the time, the booster rush, as he snags up Vanilla with one arm and, you can just see, Chocola-Chao in his free hand.

2

Incase you missed that hard-to-see Chao, I put Metal in again here so you can get a clearer view of what’s happened. It is here that we are introduced to Cream’s new child-like personality, a big development for her considering her often generic character in TTSS and it is now closer to her game personality, as she is feisty and determined and naïve at the same time. Then we switch to this great shot in another background made by me to show a little pond in Emerald Hill, of the excellent Samurai sprite of Big fishing with Froggy and showcasing his new “dumbed down” speech which brings him closer to his game character and gives him more personality.

3

Lol, he starts dozing, I love that, then his rod snags something and he says his little catchphrase from Sonic Adventure. I always see in forums and On-Line how people always moan about Big’s levels being boring and his Emblems being really hard to get, but I find Big’s levels to be the easiest ones in Sonic Adventure and I had no trouble completing all his levels and all his Emblems in a few hours, it was very easy, I mean come on, he has ONE BOSS, that’s damn easy. I liked Big’s levels, they were a change of pace and Big was new and odd and quirky. He was still tolerable, if a little out of place, in Sonic Heroes. Anyway, Metal smacks him one and grabs Froggy, flying off. Why? Well, ever heard of bait? I love that line from Sonic Adventure “polliwog pal”, makes me laugh every time :D

4

So they both run to Amy for help, I guess largely because Sonic has already left the Island. In the original script, they actually ran to get Sonic and arrived just in time to see him and the others leave for Egg island, back when I was going to have all the comics inter-tie like in TTSS, but I took that out and let each team have it’s own story so they all have equal time to shine. That’s my first use of a Sonic Battle Story Mode sprite, against that lovely dreamy insert shot of Sonic, Amy and all those hearts, showing that she’s really, really infatuated with Sonic now and determined to prove she is as capable as anyone else (although her capturing Eggman in Perfect Chaos should have already done this, but Sonic’s a bit fickle like that). So she rallies them all together and they head off. An interesting thing I did with Cheese is to always have him react accordingly to what’s happening around him, similar to how I have a different pose in every single panel, to make things more realistic and more professional (there’s a lot of sprite comics where the characters don’t move for four frames at a time. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s lazy).

5

Of course they’re faced with the same trouble they had in TTSS; the bridge is out. But Cream, who gets special detached speed-motion around her ears when she flies so it looks like her ears have moved (similar to how I sometimes put in little helicopter effects around Tails’s tails to show he is flying and not just hanging in the air), decides to give them all a lift across, taking the ridiculousness of Cream being able to carry both Amy and Big right out of the games. However, smartly, I only have her do this once and she looks wiped out afterwards (check out Cheese helping with flying Big across, lol). But they recover and head into the Speedway backgrounds I got and Amy notes how the Island looks a lot different from her previous visit. This isn’t just because they’re in a new area of Robotropolis, but also because the Bomb from TCRS created a whole new-look Egg Island, meaning I never used the exact same backgrounds from BFTCE and TTSS afterwards.

6

Here come the new Gamma Robots, they’re great to use, they have all these decent frames and poses that are fun to play with. They all run (we’ve seen Flight, here’s the Speed and Big’s Strength is scattered throughout) with Amy in the lead, closely followed by Cream and Big straggling. Big has very few blurred motions when he runs because he’s not fast on his feet, but he gets fast motions when he fights because he’s got fast fighting skills. This gives me another excuse to show off my new explosion techniques, though each one was put together by me and it got very tedious after a while, I also now use regular writing instead of Word Art for most sound effects now, because it looks just as good. Cream gets to use her Chao-flinging powers from Sonic Advance 2, showing off how kamikaze like Cheese really is, and most of Big’s fighting attacks (the shoulder barge and uppercut) were edited by me. That guard Robot is a re-coloured sprite from a game based on some bad anime I forget the name of, Medabots or something. It looked the part for this obstacle I wanted in front of them.

7

Amy gets annoyed and does a Matrix-like back flip to take out the remaining Gamma Robots and the Guard Robot attacks (note that Cheese pulls Cream out of the line of fire lol), prompting Big’s line from Sonic Heroes (originally spoken to Team Chaotix) as he bashes the Robot, and then Amy finishes it off. Tad easy, perhaps, but not only is Team Rose the easiest team to play as in the game, but it is all a trap so, you know, that’s my explanation.

8

They also run through the same backgrounds of the interior, further the mystery of that odd looking room, and then meet up with Vanilla, Froggy and Chocola-Chao, allowing for a nice little moment of happiness, before they get the same “be careful/get out while you can” speech that Team Sonic received, but they also have courage and determination and head off to face Eggman.

9

Eggman’s ready with another sprite/character I wanted to use but couldn’t until Sonic Advance 2 was released, the ever persistent Zero. Though Big acts all brave and Cream is all nervous, Amy has no qualms about tackling the Robot head on. But what’s this? According to Eggman, Team Sonic haven’t arrived yet, but what did we just see in Part One? Find out later.

10

Right now it’s time for a classic fight inspired by Sonic Adventure, as the cumbersome, limited Robot Zero tries to plough through Amy, resorting to the tried and tested but easily countered technique of trying to run her down (as we’ve seen in Sonic 1 MS/GG, Sonic 2 Genesis and many, many other Boss fights in the games). Amy’s nimble and has all these new ariel attacks from Sonic Battle, so she keeps hammering away, although Zero has energy bolts and stuff, but a whirlwind-like hammer attack delivers the damage to Zero and it starts burning up, but, despite an upwards blur of hammer, Zero uses that bitching fireball to take the fight out of Amy and get ready for the kill.

11

However, Cream, Cheese and Big interfere, proving that Team Rose have to all work together to overcome the odds (as seen when they fought that Guard Robot, but reinforced here), unlike Team Sonic, where Sonic could handle things himself, as can Knuckles and, to a lesser extent, Tails. But, they get the job done following a neat little pink whirlwind attack by Amy, which blows Zero up and reduces it to a charred mess, that remains in the frame and they even interact with it, drawing your attention to it(like Metal’s remains in Perfect Chaos). Eggman waves it off as a design flaw and again says it’s all his plan, as Metal rises up behind him, leaving them all confused and us with another cliff hanger. Now, first of all, n the script, after they totally Zero, it was going to morph into Metal Sonic, but I left that out because Zero is quite big, so it’s inconceivable that metal can shape shift into it, and it takes up a lot of room, they would have noticed it transforming and I didn’t want that, so I just left Zero there and put Metal in behind Eggman, with a mysterious intent.

Overall

Very fun, very innocent and very gung-ho, as Team Rose is all spirited and full of childish naivety and the belief that their heart and desire can conquer all. It works well, similar to the Amy/Cream team up in TTSS, but taken to a new, more formidable level, as they not only raced to face Eggman, but carved an impressive path there, working together and overcoming his defences, which is a big thing even if it’s all a trap for them. Now, why is it that Mighty and the others and Eggman all acted like Team Sonic hadn’t passed through? Well, the idea in this comic is that each Team gets there first, they all go their own path and have their own separate adventure and don’t meet until the Last story, which is a new way of presenting the branching storylines (like the six character format of Sonic Adventure and the four Team format of Sonic heroes, in that they did cross paths but each character had their own path to take and they didn’t all get together until right at the end. It’s also like in Sonic Adventure 2, when you complete each side’s story and it is left with an odd cliffhanger that is only understood when they all get together for the final story). So, from each Team’s point of view, they DID get there first, and that’s how it’s presented.