Dr. K's Waiting Room

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Developed alongside the blockbuster Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA Technical Institute, 1992), Sonic the Hedgehog CD (Sonic Team, 1993) released on this day back in 1993 and introduced Metal Sonic (one of Sonic’s most popular and enduring rivals).

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Quick Facts:
After Sonic the Hedgehog became a mainstream success, SEGA quickly capitalised with a slew of ancillary merchandise, like “Britain’s Official SEGA Comic”, Sonic the Comic (StC). StC quickly veered from the source material while still featuring loose adaptations of the videogames. When StC adapted Sonic CD, they reimagined Metal Sonic as “Metallix”, a robotic doppelgänger who reappeared alongside a “brotherhood” of the Badniks and tangled with the likes of Sonic, Knuckles, and the Chaotix in numerous time travel plots.

The Review:
Although Sonic has every reason to frequently return to Never Lake since the last time he was there, his childhood friend and fellow Freedom Fighter, Porker Lewis, was trapped on the tiny planetoid known as the Miracle Planet when it disappeared from Mobius as it does every month. Instead, Sonic seems surprised when the Miracle Planet reappears, anchored to Mobius by a giant chain, and wary when some “dude” comes down that same chain. It’s an odd start considering I would’ve expected Sonic to be eagerly waiting the Miracle Planet’s return since Porker’s was trapped there after helping defeat the Brotherhood of Metallix and their gigantic emperor, though that’s largely inconsequential compared to Porker’s odd demeanour when Sonic rushes to meet him. Nearby, the Chaotix Crew – leader Vector the Crocodile, muscle Mighty the Armadillo, stealthy Espio the Chameleon, and aggravating Charmy Bee – make a rough landing at Never Lake courtesy of the Omni-Viewer, a sentient computer monitor capable of travelling across dimensions. As soon as they recover, the Chaotix Crew are attacked by Doctor Ivo Robotnik’s Troopers, including a formidable tank-like variant from the Special Badnik Service (SBS). Although the tank shrugs off Mighty’s hefty haymaker, Espio trashes a Trooper with his patented spinning top attack. Mighty then reduces the tank to scrap metal and the remaining Troopers are trashed by Sonic, whom the Chaotix Crew highly regard after hearing tales of him from the Omni-Viewer. Vector reveals that they’ve travelled from the Special Zone under the belief that the Brotherhood of Metallix are up to no good on the Miracle Planet, a suspicion the Omni-Viewer soon proves to be true, despite Sonic’s claims, when he reveals the usually lush and fertile planetoid has been conquered by the Metallix!

Although Porker claims ignorance of this drastic transformation, Sonic eagerly leads the Chaotix Crew to investigate, dismissing Mighty’s hopes for a plan. However, Sonic’s stunned when Porker turns out to be a Metallix variant! The Porkertallix knocks Sonic from the chain with its piston-like arm (though he’s saved by Charmy Bee), headbutts Mighty when he tries to wrestle with it, and gets a kick in the head when Espio sneaks up behind it. Taking to the sky, the Porkertallix charges a “death ray” only to be damaged by Sonic’s Spin Attack. With only seconds to spare before the robot blows up, Mighty and Vector bust out their “Link-Rings” and knock the Porkertallix away so it can explode harmlessly in the sky. Though aggravated by Sonic’s ego, the Chaotix Crew venture onto the polluted, mechanised hellscape of the Miracle Planet and discover the real Porker tied up as bait. While saving his friend, Sonic is confronted by the Emperor Metallix, its army, and its corrupted version of the Omni-Viewer and is horrified to see that the Metallix have travelled into the past and turned Mobius into an equally mechanical hellhole! Realising they’re outnumbered and outgunned, Vector urges the Chaotix Crew to escape via the Omni-Viewer with a reluctant Sonic, who’s so mad he initially tries to take on the entire Metallix army by himself. Teleporting to “Planet Metallix”, the team arrives in a world overrun by machinery and Metallixes, one very unlikely to have any organic life. Once again, Vector must stop Sonic when he tries to take his anger out on an army of nearby Metallix, though they’re led straight into a dead end by the foolish Charmy Bee. Luckily, a mysterious, hooded individual urges them to follow them into the sewers, fooling the Metallix with a holographic projection and then blowing them to smithereens with a bomb. Though grateful, Sonic’s eager to know who’s saved them and discovers that Mobius’s few survivors have taken refuge in the sewers under the leadership of Doctor Ovi Kintobor, the kindly scientist who was transformed into Dr. Robotnik by a laboratory accident!

Although Sonic’s overwhelmed at the state of the survivors and at seeing his old friend again, Vector boots up the Omni-Viewer to track the “chronotron trails” left behind by the Metallix’s time travelling and they hop into the screen for a jaunt to the past, taking Dr. Kintobor’s “Anti-Metallix” device with them. This comes in handy when the heroes are jumped by a group of Metallix guarding the timeline as even the combined abilities of Sonic and the Chaotix Crew struggle against the hedgehog’s dangerous doubles. Instead, Sonic slaps the device onto a Metallix and sends it haywire, causing it to attack its “brothers” and allowing our heroes to jump back into the Omni-Viewer, but not before Sonic finds that one of the Metallix was holding a strangely familiar rotten egg. Naturally, this means that the chronotron trail ends in a place Sonic’s all-to familiar with: Dr. Kintobor’s underground lab, back when he was helping a distinctly brown and far less cool-looking Sonic master his super speed. Watching from a doorway, the group witnesses past Sonic breaking the sound barrier, destroying the kinetic gyratoscope used to measure his speed and turning him into his cool, blue self. After reliving this literal blast from the past, Sonic realises with dread how the Metallix changed the past. Sure enough, Dr. Kintobor’s fridge is empty, meaning the rotten egg he found was taken by the robots. Although the Chaotix Crew are baffled as to why this is so important or why Sonic’s so reluctant to put a rotten egg into a fridge, a quick jump to twenty-four hours later clues them in as they watch Dr. Kintobor retrieve the egg for a light snack. Wanting to be absolutely sure, Sonic yanks on a nearby cable and forces his kindly friend to trip into the Retro-Orbital Chaos Compressor (R.O.C.C.), thus causing the accident that birthed Dr. Robotnik! Although devastated at having created the world’s most ruthless dictator, Sonic takes some comfort in Porker’s belief that Dr. Robotnik is obviously important to the Metallix’s survival.

When the Omni-Viewer returns them to the present, they’re relieved to see the Mobius has been restored. However, since the Miracle Planet is still corrupted by his robotic doppelgängers, Sonic has the Omni-Viewer transport them to Citadel Robotnik, though Dr. Robotnik dismisses their story as hogwash. Porker rightly questions why the Metallix would want to erase Dr. Robotnik from history as this would surely destroy them, since he created them. However, it turns out they were the brainchild of Dr. Robotnik’s long-suffering assistant, Grimer (though it’s not clear why he would create them without Dr. Robotnik’s influence…) When Grimer reveals that Dr. Robotnik installed a self-destruct mechanism into the machines, Sonic is livid since the tyrant risked his life sending him after the Metallixes about ten issues ago in the hopes the two would destroy each other. Sonic’s only stopped from bashing Dr. Robotnik by the fact that they need that self-destruct device to win and the approach of a swarm of Metallix so vast that they block out the sky! The Emperor Metallix and its thousand-strong hoard crash into the citadel and wreak havoc, easily overwhelming the heroes and leaving Porker a distraught, cowering mess from all the violence and stress. Just as Dr. Robotnik retrieves the self-destruct device, he’s snagged by the Emperor Metallix, who begins to crush it ahead of doing the same to its former master’s neck! Luckily, Sonic swipes the self-destruct device, deactivating the Metallix army. Sonic’s somewhat perplexed by this anti-climactic end, though Vector’s just grateful for it to be over since they barely survived the onslaught. Although Sonic tries to lecture Dr. Robotnik on his heinous actions, he gives up and leaves, clearly still rattled by the adventure. Still, Dr. Robotnik is left ruminating on how close they all came to death, but Grimer gleefully lifts his spirits by unveiling his plans for a new, more stable Metallix…one based on Knuckles the Echidna!

Although this Metallix variant and the original machine did appear again in StC, “The Return of Chaotix” effectively ended the comic’s ongoing adaptation of Sonic CD and Knuckles’ Chaotix (SEGA, 1995) save for one final epilogue a couple of months later, which I may as well include here. “Return to the Miracle Planet” sees Sonic and fellow Freedom Fighters Amy Rose and Johnny Lightfoot…return to the Miracle Planet (shocker!) in its first reappearance since “The Return of Chaotix”. Despite toppling the Brotherhood of Metallix, the Miracle Planet still bares their visage and is still a mechanised hellscape thanks to the Alpha Device, now a gigantic mechanical tower rather than a simple staff. Guided by the Kintobor Computer (a sentient artificial intelligence that’s essentially a copy of Dr. Kintobor’s personality), Johnny Lightfoot scales the Alpha Device tower looking for a port to plug in a cable, with the hope being that the Kintobor Computer can reverse the damage caused by the Alpha Device. Frustrated by the “techno babble”, Sonic races off to investigate some nearby movement, scrambling through the mechanised landscape until spotting the source of the movement: a red-tinted Metallix! Amazed that one of his robotic doppelgänger’s survived, Sonic immediately attacks, surprised when the machine flees rather than fighting. Naturally, Sonic quickly catches up to it and knocks it down, ready to impale the robot with a piece of scrap metal. However, Amy’s horrified when the Metallix blasts Sonic with its chest ray, only for Sonic to be relatively unscathed since the machine had its weapon on the lowest setting. The Metallix then reveals that it was a bird-like Mobian in disguise all along, a captive of the Brotherhood who disguised himself as one of them after escaping his cell and has been searching for a way home ever since. After quickly snatching Amy’s misguided crossbow bolt from the air, Sonic taunts his friend’s aim and offers to take the Mobian home, confident that the Miracle Planet will be back to normal when it returns in a month.

Final Thoughts: 
Although I naturally have more bias towards Sonic the Comic since I grew up reading it, I generally find that their art and storytelling was overall much better than those in the Archie Comics in the United States. Sonic the Comic had more variety and personality, being fun but also quite dark right from the start, whereas Archie’s Sonic comics took a while to drop the inane slapstick. Neither of them have a great track record when it comes to adapting specific videogames, however, and these two stories continue that trend as, rather than using this opportunity to showcase new areas of the Miracle Planet, both limit the planetoid-based action to a single, indistinct, mechanical area. This would’ve been a great opportunity to bring the Bad Futures of Stardust Speedway or Metallic Madness to life but, instead, there’s little to distinguish the mechanised Miracle Planet from any of Dr. Robotnik’s other facilities. Similarly, “The Return of Chaotix” features the only adaptation of Knuckles’ Chaotix’s “Combine Ring” mechanic and, like in Archie’s Sonic comics, it’s simply used to swing a character into a robot and never used again. On the plus side, “The Return of Chaotix” boasts gorgeous artwork from the unmatched Richard Elson, who masterfully renders Sonic and the Chaotix Crew in ways Archie’s Art Mawhinney and Ken Penders can only dream of. The Metallix especially benefits from this, with the story giving a few subtle background variants (which recall Silver Sonic and the Mecha-Metallix) and an all-new Porkertallix that’s both fearsome and formidable. I liked how rattled Sonic was by this robot and how dangerous a single Metallix was to the combined force of Sonic and the Chaotix Crew. Since his emotions are so high in this story, Sonic almost blunders into an unwinnable situation more than once, forcing Vector to restrain him and pull him away from getting himself killed, which leads to some interesting interactions between Sonic and the team.

Naturally, Sonic’s used to getting his own way with the Freedom Fighters and bossing them around, but the Chaotix Crew are a well-honed team who analyse situations and attack as a cohesive unit. This means they clash with Sonic’s more impulsive attitude but, ultimately, he begrudgingly agrees that discretion is better when faced with such a formidable foe. “The Return of Chaotix” largely re-treads much of and undoes the “Brotherhood of Metallix” story (Kitching, et al, 1995), with the Metallix dominating the Miracle Planet and Mobius thanks to time travel shenanigans. The sight of the Miracle Planet transformed into a giant Metallix head is harrowing, to say the least, but outdone when they do the same to Mobius and essentially turn it into Apokalips! It might’ve been fun to stretch this story out over a few more issues and backup stories, maybe spend a few weeks living on Planet Metallix and having Sonic reconnect with Dr. Kintobor, thereby making his decision to restore the timeline even more difficult. Instead, the story shifts to revisiting “The Origin of Sonic” (ibid, 1993) in the style of Back to the Future Part II (Zemeckis, 1989), with Sonic witnessing his origin as a bystander and manipulating events to cause Dr. Robotnik’s creation. As far as I remember, the guilt and self-loathing he feels about this are limited to this story, which is a shame as it adds an interesting dramatic wrinkle and extra personal beef to Sonic’s war against Dr. Robotnik. The time travel stuff does get a bit wonky here, though, as I alluded to. I guess we have to assume that Grimer was always destined to be a bad guy and create Metallix, which seems unlikely given his attitude towards Dr. Robotnik. Still, it’s fun revisiting Sonic’s past and seeing him so angered at having to birth his greatest enemy, and knowing that Dr. Robotnik could’ve stopped the Metallix at any time. However, it is also kind of strange that the Metallix never removed their self-destruct device, especially as they became autonomous and improved upon their original design.

“Return to the Miracle Planet” isn’t much of a coda to this story. It might’ve been better if we’d seen Sonic return alone to find the Miracle Planet restored, allowing him to explore somewhere like Tidal Tempest of Quartz Quadrant, or if the Metallix he encountered was the real deal, allowing for a recreation of their iconic Stardust Speedway race. Instead, it largely serves to tie up the loose end of returning the Miracle Planet to normal and leaves me wondering why the Metallix kidnapped and experimented on Mobians when they just wanted to exterminate all life in the most efficient (if convoluted) way possible (i.e. time travel). Still, “The Return of Chaotix” was an enjoyable end to this sprawling Metallix saga. I was disappointed that the Emperor Metallix didn’t do much, but it was shocking seeing it threaten to crush Dr. Robotnik’s neck and seeing how close its Brotherhood came to ultimate victory. I also liked how dangerous the Metallix were, with them easily holding their own against the Chaotix Crew, who were unexpectedly outmatched by the faster, deadlier machines. I love the idea of the Metallix being stationed across the timelines and manipulating the timestream to cheat their way to victory, so much so that I do think it would’ve been fun to marinate on this idea for a few weeks. “The Return of Chaotix” also led to a pivotal status quo change as Porker suffered a nervous breakdown and left the team, something Sonic initially struggled to deal with, and led to the creation of the Knuckles Metallix (though this wouldn’t be anywhere near as prevalent as its Sonic variants). While it is disappointing that StC never gave us a true Sonic CD adaptation or made the most of the source material and “Return to the Miracle Planet” is a largely forgettable coda, I really enjoyed the time travel plot in “The Return of Chaotix” and how it changes the perception of Sonic’s relationship with Dr. Robotnik.

Do you think “The Return of Chaotix” was a fitting end to StC’s loose adaptation of Sonic CD? How do you think StC’s Chaotix Crew compare to their Archie Comics counterparts? Did you enjoy the twist that Sonic created Dr. Robotnik? Were you also disappointed that we didn’t spend more time on Planet Metallix or see more areas from the game? Did you think “Return to the Miracle Planet” was a worthwhile story to tell? How are you celebrating Sonic CD’s anniversary today? Whatever your thoughts on Sonic CD, or StC in general, feel free to leave a comment below, support me on Ko-Fi, and check out my other Sonic content.