What exactly IS 'Samsung Sonic'?

[@Frankston88]

I think the answer is as simple as "hey can you redraw the Sonic 3 title screen for a magazine advert" and whoever did it just messed up the nose a bit. No mystery here.

[@dekugh64]

ssshhh they have to make a dumb 20 min video about everything

[@EzekielWuzHear]

But then yet again, he has blue arms and a white chest…

[@Nieveria]

@@EzekielWuzHear a lot of early sonic art (by sega or not) gives him blue arms. it's an extremely common misconception

[@EzekielWuzHear]

@@Nieveria but why does he have a white chest?

[@frag0912]

And arms, oh god the blarms

[@CosmicSponge2004]

To clear any confusion, the Korean Sega Mark III is an SG-1000 Computer The Japanese Sega Mark III is the Master System

[@heitorsant1759]

That sure isn't confusing!

[@leap123_]

And the Japanese Master System is... well, the Master System, but with an FM sound chip.

[@CosmicSponge2004]

@@leap123_ I never knew about that

[@OM19_MO79]

Did you know? The Korean Gam*Boy is actually the Japanese Master System, it even has the “Space Harrier” no-cart demo on the BIOS... except, they didn’t get the Yamaha FM chips and the games that use them don’t sound properly as a result, including the demo.

[@davin6957]

​@@OM19_MO79Why did you censor gameboy

[@mrcello7861]

Korea’s video game history is super interesting! Windboy Sonic makes sense, though I’d say 바람돌이 소닉 translates a little more like “fast as the wind, Sonic” in essence. I’m glad you touched on the earlier history too as a lot of people are unaware of how significant it is. Great video!

[@VBrancoPT]

14:37 - 14:41 That Bubsy design looks pretty neat. And adorable!

[@noaht2005]

The history of korean gaming is pretty interesting. There's an article on it on Hardcore Gaming 101

[@JaxCoolKartunes]

Oddly that website uses the cartoon character Tinker the Kangaroo as a Mascot.

[@deegeemin]

16:27 Funny thing is that my father actually worked for Samsung back in the day (in the late 90s) but I'm sure he had never heard of Sonic then (in fact, he always mispronounces the name as Sonic the HedgeDOG every time he tries to remember lol). I work on the Sonic franchise (mostly on the idw comics) so it's wonderful to know that there is some level of connection between my father's work as well as my own. I lived and visited Korea in times where Sonic as well as console gaming had a little more prominence (mid 2000s and onwards) so I didn't even know about a lot of the material in this video! Thank you for the lesson!

[@vittosphonecollection57289]

OMG what do you do there?!

[@yoshisreal]

The only Korean Sonic fan I know is a chiptune artist on KZbin named JX. He makes impressive Genesis arrangements of music and I highly suggest checking him out.

[@razernexus2717]

God tier music honestly

[@randomcommentog]

Yeah I commissioned JX once He makes great Genesis arrangements for sure!

[@123Bralvin]

So cool

[@Armatoondo]

He was the one who made this banger kzbin.info/www/bejne/b2eaop-gn92an6Msi=JP11eRzywJsJ2S_e

[@woomicky]

drop the term chiptune

[@icestorm2909]

This video reminds me of good ol’ days, when I had to import a japanese copy of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle since there was no official release in South Korea. With few exceptions like Rush Adventure and Olympic games, Sonic games on Nintendo consoles never hit the Korean store shelves until Sonic Forces got released.

[@cosmicisland75]

Hello! I got some more fun facts about South Korean Sonic the Hedgehog. 1. AOSTH (The Cartoon) also features Korean Sonic's nickname (바람돌이 소닉) and it has its own unique intro song. 2. The Korean (Samsung) version of Sonic and Knuckles can lock on with any versions of Sonic 3. (So you can plug in a US copy of Sonic 3 to your Korean copy of Sonic and Knuckles and it will still give you the full Sonic 3 & Knuckles experience. ) 3. Since the Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure were never released in Korea, Sonic Adventure (DX) was first released as a PC game. 4. Heroes is technically one of the first (if not THE first) 3D outing for Sonic in Korea.

[@pgj1997]

The Korean version of Sonic & Knuckles not being region locked doesn't surprise me. Considering that the Genesis wasn't region locked at all. Neat coincidence that it works, though.

[@adultmoshifan87]

Although not Sonic, I can tell you that PSone game Digimon World was released in Korea as a PC game! (Kinda like how PC Engine Super CD game Snatcher was brought to the West as a Mega CD game!)

[@ashthedragon]

@@pgj1997 yeah, all sonic & knuckles are region free, it even makes the locked games region free! I have japanese, european and american carts of the main sonic games (1,2,3 and knuckles) and you can put any cart on any sonic & knuckles cart, and it will bypass the console region and run.

[@CRCR0201]

Fun fact about the Korean translation of the SADX PC port : they mistranslated the Heart Fruit as a "Pigeon fruit" because the English word "heart" in Japanese is spelled "hāto" (ハート) while pigeon in Japanese is "hato" (ハト)

[@thestripedmenace]

​@@pgj1997 The Genesis is, technically, region-locked, but in a weird way that's dependent on both the games' region encoding and the console's hardware itself... It's actually really fascinating IMO

[@rainyusername6216]

15:39 I think it's also worth noting that below the main title on the KR MBM cover art, they opted to transcribe the Japanese title (Puyo Puyo) in parentheses. Later Puyo Puyo games were translated (although a few voice samples weren't dubbed for whatever reason) and released in Korea by a branch of Compile (on Windows only, to my knowledge) up until they went bankrupt.

[@PuppyFromTheAlt]

14:36 "is that Bubsy" cue me popping off three seconds later

[@Dom_Maretti]

I'm guessing that the Sonic "redesign" was literally someone being commissioned to draw the character from a photo, and Sonic's nose, plus the shadow of said nose, were interpreted as having no delineation.

[@joshwinnnnnn]

Very insightful history lesson on (South) Korean gaming. As someone who knows quite a bit about the Sonic speedrunning community, there are actually quite a few Korean speedrunners of Sonic games, despite its supposed lack of popularity. Two were actually part of a Sonic 3 & Knuckles race on the GDQ Twitch channel as part of the annual "Sonic and the..." event, with one of them commentating and providing language support (this year's theme was "Sonic and the Sidekicks", which featured runs with characters other than Sonic, for the most part).

[@ChomuOmu]

As a huge Korean fan of Nintendo and Sega, I didn’t even know that Sega Genesis and N64 was released in Korea! Fascinating video. Also your attempt at Korean was not bad lol.

[@Lemke6669]

7:50 the mark III did release in the west, just not under that name. that's the japanese equivalent of the master system. you may have gotten confused on this point either because sega released a redesigned mark III in japan in 1987 and called it the master system or because you may have confused it with its predecessor, the SG-1000 (which was primarily a japan-only system, though even that technically had a release in new zealand)

[@MegaManNeo]

South Korean videogame history seems to be one of the more obscure and yet interesting pieces of history that often slips under the radar.

[@samproctor6826]

This is actually a fascinating topic I did not expect to learn about. Great video!

[@ImSquiggs]

Love that you called out Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine as a personal fave, haha. That was one of my definitive childhood games and I feel like it didn’t get nearly the attention it deserved back in the day. Still addicted to Puyo Puyo to this day, haha

[@seraxnoir]

That commercial (8:20) with DBZ, SF, and Nintendo characters all dancing looks like a fever dream!

[@sinewavy]

I imagine that they tried to recreate the Sonic 3 model from scratch from whatever reason, and although they got it quite accurately, there might have been details they couldn't figure out on time, such as the eye whites being the wrong shape (extending all the way to the nose) and the nose being slightly disproportional. the hand might also have been impossible to model in time, so they compromised by hand painting it. The result is definitely interesting I know next to nothing about the process of game advertising though, this is just what I imagine.

[@bradriley9777]

Potential reason to redraw: Print ads need a lot more pixels than TVs to look good. They could've resized the original 320x224 image with chunky pixel edges if they had a frame buffer capture of it. But tons of print ads at the time only had off-screen shots to work with. A camera pointed at a CRT. Blowing this up would look smudged, not crisp.

[@bigpompano1659]

‘Did you serve?’ ‘Yessir I was part of Operation Destroy the Beans’

[@maxtoncooke1726]

OMG YOU’RE BACK! A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

[@Peskyhooligan]

This hedgehog can smell my fears

[@Kogotom123]

He represents your fears

[@Digiflower5]

This has been in my feed for a month, that commercial was wild. Nice video!

[@Jelly_shy_guy_man]

This video is amazing, and thx for uploading so much.

[@Brianna-eo8nu]

Babe! Wake up! New Jonny Vector video dropped!!

[@vadim_65rus]

(I am alone)

[@SunBoytv5600]

Cry about it

[@15-Peter-20]

Hey babe ❤

[@imapirate368]

maybe Samsung Sonic was the friends and the journey we made along the way

[@L721-d5i]

its the opposite

[@Rafielo]

>WindBoy Sonic Oof, more hints towards the "Sonic is supposed to be Free like the Wind" argument thats been recently happening in the sonic fandom. 😅

[@LoneWolgon1991]

It’s been a long time since you uploaded. It’s good to see you back!

[@forthrightgambitia1032]

This also explains why Starcraft was such a stereotypically Korean thing back in the day.

[@yoshi18super]

History of gaming in Korea is so interesting, awesome video

[@mattyboy2024]

Interesting, liked the Star wars reference near the end ha

[@chantingmammal]

OMG You're back! This was a lovely deep dive into Sonic the Hedgehog in South Korea especially Sonic 3 for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.

[@SuperXzm]

14:37 Well Bubsy, obvs. But the drip is real 😆

[@tntgames-yf4ne]

I thought it was Blinx (that game for the original Xbox)

[@TonySpike]

the game gear in korea was called the Handy Gam Boy and i dont know how i feel about that 😂

[@noaht2005]

I mean, the legendary Touch Dic and Hand Dic are also korean

[@BlackBloodCombatClub]

TOTALLY GARNULAR

[@pingas6429]

@@noaht2005 TOUCH DI-

[@Poyostar]

That ain't Sonic The Hedgehog. That's Samsung The Sleep Paralysis Demon. 0.0 All jokes aside, this was a lovely deep dive into the history of video games in South Korea. Nice work on the video!

[@NorthSutherland]

14:37 When Korea (or any non-US country) makes a cooler Bubsy than the states, you know you screwed up.

[@ExtremeWreck]

Agreed. The original Bubsy design with that smile made him look creepy & unsettling, while the Korean design looks MUCH friendlier.

[@RafaelYum-rr8hm]

Oh your back I thought you were stop making videos! oh, well at least I don't have to worry any more ...

[@15-Peter-20]

Breast milk?

[@kyla_kylington]

i think some of the nose is actually a shadow, its still big but not as big as i thought another detail, they made the ears inside blue and the white even lower(the nose is on the white too) as if it was a fur pattern and not his eye

[@borederlands5387]

Wind boy sonic goes crazy

[@VHSStuff]

That Samsung Sonic reminds me of that one Tom and Jerry episode.

[@aortaplatinum]

Learning about Korea's game market and the impact of culture on it was far more interesting than the Sonic stuff here. It's interesting that in all this, Western systems weren't popular imports. You'd think if they couldn't import Super Famicoms and Mega Drives, they'd bring over ZX Spectrums and 3DOs, and if this ban continued into the 2000s, Xbox could have seen success in an Eastern territory.

[@cabbusses]

Hey, have you managed to find anything for the Think? That is Samsung's Korean Sega Pico successor, with no apparent relation to Sega Toys' Advanced Pico Beena.

[@quandaledingleofficial6]

samsung published sega consoles in south korea

[@bes03c]

I study the Korean language i will have to download some Gane Champs to practice reading.

[@rubyensor3007]

Awesome Video I'll be looking forward for more.

[@ShaknunicPT-BR]

Btw, I saw someone selling that in my country I even had screenshots of it... When I saw Samsung in the cartridge I was impressed by the discovery, but didn't know about it the history, thanks to this video now I know....

[@heitorsant1759]

The best sonic OC

[@3DperspectiveJS]

Its been a while. Always great seeing you post! Have a nice day.

[@jasperfox6821]

Really are crazy enough to look up some odd obscure sonic watermark 😂

[@Howlabunga]

Nice to see you again, man.

[@getmoresleepy]

Hey! @jhonnyvector, could you talk about the canceled fleetway jet set radio comic that was found some time ago?

[@keijijohnson9754]

THERE KZbin I clicked this blasted video you've kept on having stick around in my recommendation feed. HAPPY NOW?!🙄🙄

[@jazznuka276]

This is shockingly good insight. Yes AVGN is news channel to most of us Not nostalgia. Still very enjoyable!

[@ArachnidsGrip15]

When the world needed him most.. He returned

[@SP_1st]

Good to see you again!

[@alukardtheanalog]

Yeah

[@OM19_MO79]

High-un-die is one of my favorite companies, along with Teeleefanken, Volxwagene and Mitsu-by-shy.

[@nightygamer11x]

They were like ”He needs to smell more” and got to work

[@annigram]

the fact i got the bubsy thing right is equally impressive as it is repulsive

[@Burn_Angel]

Nah, bro. Bubsy may suck, but that redesign is lit.

[@SusiTerry]

I wonder what it'd be like if the ps2, gamecube, and og xbox got unofficial south Korean variants

[@Stuffy-Flower]

I love him, he's such a silly lil guy

[@SonicTheBlueFastBoi]

Samsung Sonic’s nose is the same size as this one Movie Sonic drawing I did when I was younger Edit: Wait, if Sonic games are produced by Samsung in North Korea and Sonic Dream Team is funded by Apple, how would that work?

[@Eyetrauma]

I was kinda hoping that maybe Jung Young Dug’s book was translated somewhere, he sounds like an interesting guy.

[@Min-ou8ti]

Now I may be a South Korean Sonic fan who has followed the "Windboy" since the early flash days of Sonic Flash. I'm not sure if I'm ready for your inquiries of obscure Sonic/video game history of my country even before Internet was a thing. My first official playthrough of Sonic was his crossover with Mario on the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Wii. On hindsight, I just didn't have many chances of legitimate purchases since hardly any Sonic games saw releases here. Consoles that were never released here of course like Wii U, but for even available ones like DS, Wii and 3DS. My last play before my collection on Steam was Sonic CD 2011 version on iOS. Otherwise I was stuck on various playthroughs on KZbin, which required English and unlikely interest on the platform since that too wasn't much of a thing here either since at least 2017. I also remember 2 stories from people I knew. I saw a classmate trying to beat captain Johnny from Sonic Rush Adventure on his DS. And heard from another on how he played Sonic Heroes when he was younger. Console games in general is more of a niche category here. Besides on your note on the image of PCs here, I remember reading articles on Korean's lack of interests on Console games with their Single player modes. Rather, they were all in on competitive(or social) online PC games. I distinctively remember how before the days of Nintendo Switch, I was the minority for ignoring online games like League of Legends and sticking to my Wii and 3DS.

[@TheDerpyDolphin]

No way, he’s back!

[@Jimmietruck28]

*_Yo guys Johnny Vector Uploaded! And its an obscure topic!!_*

[@triledink]

other than my sonic comic collection, I've also started to collect random comics that I buy for like nothing just because it has sonic advertisments on the back. I even have a donald duck comic from the 90s with a sonic 2 advertisment on the back of the issue. Where I live there even exist sonic music discs that has nothing to do with sonic despite being on the cover and the disc, its called Sonic Dance and there also exist a super mario version and as said, had nothing to do with the characters. It was just a music compilation.

[@greenlightning6803]

Great to have you back

[@바나나_찌꺼기]

The Nintendo DS was extremely popular as soon as it was released, Nintendo Korea was established and the game was released in Korean. The Nintendo Wii was so famous that there were a lot of knockoffs. And Sonic was extremely popular in Korea.

[@deathstinger13]

off topic of most of the video, but does anyone know what song that band, Right Said Fred, made to promote sonic 3?

[@iblistriggerX]

4:14 "Perfectly normal." Sure, man. Sure.

[@christinarawlings948]

well, you were meant to see the picture on well, a magazine. it'd look perfectly normal physically compared to how it is here

[@JezElectro13]

Let's go, new video :)

[@L721-d5i]

that thing can definetly smell me later 😭🙏

[@Alesiopdv]

8:24 that´s like cursed image material

[@ritaandrunt5767]

Acutally the footage of sonic 3 that was shown in that music video from the group right said fred The zone that was shown was Acutally Angel Island Zone specifically the second part of that level hence why there's water shown In that music video and to get rid of the water in that level there's a switch Hidden away that you have to jump down on to have the water drain out and be gone for that part of the level

[@Pirateyware]

Glad someone else noticed this. Though on further examination I think he's referring to the live-action parts of the music video, not the Sonic 3 footage.

[@ritaandrunt5767]

@@Pirateyware oh I thought at first he was actually talking about the footage of sonic 3 that was featured in the music video and now knowing that he was actually talking about the live action portions of it I should've know that was what he was actually talking about instead of what I actually thought he was talking about during that part in the video

[@RealmsCrossMyths]

Wasn't the "Samsung Mascot" mentioned at timestamp 3:21 was not only not created by Samsung, but rejected by Samsung? Maybe we're thinking of a different company and proposed mascot… Edits: • 2024\07\23 - removed "regected by" because: redundant, typo, wrong spot.

[@Ekraelum]

They actually used her for a couple ads in LATAM

[@RealmsCrossMyths]

@@Ekraelum We don't know what LATAM is. Still pretty sure Sam\Sammy wasn't created in-house, though.

[@Ekraelum]

@@RealmsCrossMyths Latin America

[@bart2865]

I'm just normal Korean guy Back in the 90s, I watched some anime like DBZ with some korean anime I just played NES or Famicom, SNES or Super Nintendo as-is maybe because my uncle owns game shop but rebranded 'made in Korea' consoles in this video were hard to see, and now it become very expensive btw for nickname of Sonic, I guess it was trend give some nickname to anime or game characters like 3 to 5 letters in Korean for example 우주소년 아톰 (Astro boy) 아톰(Atom) is name of character and 우주소년 means universe boy or space boy ( translate Astro boy )

[@Chancherpancher]

My background is South Korea: Nintendo is Hyundai, Sega is Samsung. (Korean Mario and Sonic)

[@Brozbluegamerz]

Question for you is there anything worthy to cover tails in the fleetway comics or was he interpreted like the sonic adventure shows of him being scared

[@PolygonAlchemist]

SEGA, at least their name, probably got a pass in Korea because they were originally founded by Americans as Standard Games, and later Service Games and sold slot machines and jukeboxes all over Asia after WW2, including in Korea. They later moved focus to Japan and ended up as a Japanese company in their arcade days. It's possible that the SEGA name was still "American enough" for the Korean market, at least at first.

[@Machironi_22]

what was the skating game in the background? that looks fun, I want to play it

[@2yoyoyo1Unplugged]

5:07 wait, is the car game a _North Korean_ game?

[@benjamingesinski9170]

I don't know if anyone else noticed, but the nose on the Korean Sonic render isn't on the same part as his mouth, it's on its EYES. It looks like an AI generated image except the hand isn't totally messed up.

[@boladedrac2000]

now that i've watched the video, it kinda makes sense why i've putted an classic mario sticker on the back of my samsung galaxy j7 prime cellphone.

[@kquote0364]

1:25 that looks more like angel island act 2 to me

[@Probably_Demo]

I dont know this dude but im subbing

[@cristibratu5616]

The guy is back.

[@ジュリアン-v5t]

Whats the BGM playing in the first 2 minutes?

[@russkisteel]

Back in the days, you had to be somewhat well off to be able to afford a black market ファミコン or even Korean knockoffs (e.g. Frog computer). And they use cartridges as opposed to easily copied (I forget but it probably would have been Yong San where you could have a game copied on a blank floppy), hence cheaper computer floppy (Apple 2+ clones were most popular for that purposes in the early days and also MSX 1 & 2, for which games came in cartridge and floppy forms). More affordable option for kids was the arcade for far superior quality beat'em up or shoot'em up (which, unfortunately meant missing out on adventure or RPG.

[@Mega_765]

Seeing brc in this vid is goated

[@janetno1fan]

12:09 that girl in the big ESTA poster reminds me of popstar janet from brawl stars

[@diiou]

Ha-Yun-Die cracked me up - never heard anyone butcher the company name that bad 😆

[@NinM64OfKianHope]

Short answer: Before the Mega Drive, South Korea Banned any electronics from Japan. Sega's Rival, Nintendo, Distributed it's SNES via Mitsubishi. Sega did the same but with Samsung. Fun Fact: The result of the marriage of Sega And Samsung is... The Super Aladdin boy!

[@somethingorsomeone-qe5jo]

I got a Samsung ad before watching this

[@osakanone]

We did get the mark III in the uk lol, but it wasnt in the retooled SG-1000 casing.

[@idkman-b8e]

Yay new video!

[@newguy371]

Cool vid. Just a minor correction: "Hyundai" is, at least in English, pronounced "Hun-dai" or "Hun-de." It's not a stressed y. They're actually a well known car manufacturer, so I'm a little surprised you've never heard the pronunciation before.

[@CaioBerkley]

3:21 is a Brazilian ad from Samsung, where did you got this?

[@Viddplexx]

Day 1 of asking for a Kitsunami video and if I fail I’ll marry my sonic plushie

[@romyblox1234]

when i look at this version of sonic he has i big nose his eyes look bigger like the nose is on the eyes and his belly is white and his arms are blue as well