PICTURE: SPOOKY new cartoon idea "Sonic's Extra Lives"

Over the past few days, a new story for Mashed has been developing that we're all really enthusiastic about. Here are some early sketches for it!

Basically, the idea is called "Sonic's Extra Lives" for the time being. The concept is that Sonic the Hedgehog DIES one day, and is sent to an afterlife populated by all of his previous deaths. The idea is that, when you die and revive at a checkpoint in a video game, all those deaths actually occurred and had their lives cut short in order to allow a "Prime" Sonic to try again.

This was one idea that the Mashed producers have had for some time now, I remember it was brought up to me back before I worked on Floweratouille. I didn't think too much of it at the time, the basic idea was Sonic getting down to his last life and suddenly being way more cautious of his surroundings.

This time, however, when it was brought to me again, somehow it sort of spiraled into something all new. Ben had the idea that there would be a void filled with all of the previous Sonics, and from there I really liked the idea of going into a pretty dark depiction of it, having all the extra lives being gruesomely disfigured to really push how messed up it would be to discover that, throughout your entire life until then, you could have easily died hundreds of times.

Finally, I will share a meaty excerpt detailing the idea we had for the opening of this cartoon, partially written by my friend King who is pretty passionate about this idea:

First scene is 4:3 footage with a CRT filter. Shows Sonic at the top of a giant ramp with a skateboard, with Tails watching from below. Sonic hypes up the awesome trick he’s gonna do, flies off the ramp, and cheers that he’s invincible.

Cut to 16:9 regular footage, Sonic wakes up in a dark void with a bruised noggin and a headache. He wanders around, wondering where he’s ended up. He asks these strange looking figures for guidance.

The figures turn around. One of them has a spiked metal ball for a head, and the other’s face is shredded to the skull. Sonic flinches. The two figures nod and beckon Sonic to follow.

They take him to an area with a CRT TV with a Sega console plugged into it. It’s playing a "VHS recording" of sonic and tails. There are sudden cuts with no warning, and no backing music (it's like a home movie.) They're just going about their usual sorts of adventures for most of it. Sonic makes a comment about it being "weird that they recorded him" or something, but is otherwise clueless and smiling as he watches. Sonic on the TV is about to perform the trick seen in the opening, and he goes for it and doesn't make it, dying. This leaves Sonic in shock.

A new figure emerges, this one short in stature with the claw of a Motobug driven into his skull. He explains that the footage Sonic watched was “You, earlier today” and that he’s dead.

Sonic acts confused. “I can’t die. I never die!”

The short figure responds. “You already have; and it wouldn’t be the first time.”

The whole area begins to lighten up as Sonic puts together where he is. All of the figures around him are revealed to be different Sonics who have all suffered grizzly fates. As the visibility increases, we see more and more off in the distance fading into view. dozens, hundreds, THOUSANDS of sonic in this seemingly endless place.

What do you think of this idea? Like I said, everyone involved with it is really into it. It would be a pretty drastic departure from my previous work at Mashed, which I'm actually excited about. It'll be fun to do something that's like a fun horror-ish idea. There are so many directions to take this concept that I almost wish this could be a full half hour or something. Maybe it'll get 10 million views and prompt them to ask me to do a sequel, who knows!!!