Alternate, Unreleased SatAM Theme Songs

I found these unreleased alternate title themes for SatAM Sonic over at Saturday Morning Sonic and I wanted to share them here so that more people could hear them.

I've set them to the footage from the normal title theme, just so you'll have something to look at while listening.

For more info and MP3 downloads, go here.

Thanks to Michael Tavera for donating these to the Sonic Community!

Note: The titles are of my own device, because none were listed.

"Seriously mondo". That is all. =P

Lyrics:

Sonic hits the ground, feet spinnin' around
Nobody can rocket as fast as he can

Supersonic guy, Sally by his side
Freedom Fighters, too - he's a Sonic hedgehog!

When Robotnik tries to catch him
Sonic just turns on his speed

Juice it to the top, never gonna stop
Way past cool - he's a Sonic hedgehog!

Sonic's havin' fun, Robotnik's on the run
Seriously mondo - a Sonic hedgehog!

Nobody can stop Sonic the Hedgehog!

This one's sung from Sonic's PoV, and the voice actually sort of fits him. I prefer it to the guy they got for Sonic Underground's music vids, at least. (shudder)

Lyrics:

Ah, yeah, yeah!

Gotta rocket, gotta juice it
I'm hypersonic, ultra-cool

Gotta blast off, gotta move it
I'm burnin' way past cool

Technotronic Freedom Fighter
Ultraphonic super-cool

I got talents, way amazing
I ain't nobody's fool

Gotta rocket, gotta juice it
I'm hypersonic, ultra-cool

Gotta blast off, keep on movin'
Keep on burnin' way past cool

You know I'm burnin' way past cool!

I think this one's my least favourite.

At around 0:20 the singer sounds like Weird Al. =)

The lyrics on this one are just about as ass as it's possible to get, but I do like the reference to "Final Zone".

Lyrics:

Listen, everybody
Gonna have a party
I'm the baddest dude around

Brother, let's get started
It's an all night, alright,
Super Sonic Jam!

Don't you know there's nobody faster
Baby, I'm the real master blaster
Goin' all the way to the final zone

Talking hotshot, too rad, I'm bad to the bone

Listen, everybody
Gonna have a party
I'm the baddest dude around

Brother, let's get started
We're Super Sonic Jammin' tonight

Super Sonic - Super Sonic Jam!

This is an alternate version of "Super Sonic Jam" that makes the music sound even more "surfy". Ugh.

This one matches the best with the footage (especially at the beginning). I wonder if the footage was final when this one was written?

This one is my personal favourite; it reminds me a little of the Sonic CD Japan soundtrack.

Lyrics:

Go, supersonic, way past the limit
Cruise supersonic speed, yeah
Faster and faster, supersonic speed

Zoomin' every place, never gonna lose the race
Come on, let's juice it, yeah

Blazin' through the air
You see, there's nothing to it

Sonic speed, no one can match it
Totally no one can catch it

Look out, everybody, here we go!

Go, supersonic, way past the limit
Cruise supersonic speed, yeah
Faster and faster, supersonic speed

Supersonic!

P.S. I think it's hilarious that YouTube chose Sally for the thumbnail frames, when SatAM detractors are always complaining that it's just the "Sally Acorn Show". =P

Aliens vs. God

At AlterNet, Greta Christina has outlined 6 (Unlikely) Developments That Could Convince [Her] To Believe in God, with the intent to show that atheists are willing to specifiy exactly what evidence would be sufficient to change their mind - something most religious folks are loath to do.

It's a great article, and I'm behind it all the way. There is, however, one thing that I think bears more thought: How would we know any given proof of God wasn't the work of godlike aliens?

Greta Christina writes,

If I saw an unambiguous message from God, I would be persuaded of his existence. If I saw writing suddenly appear in the sky, in letters a hundred feet high, saying "I Am God, I Exist, Here Is What I Want You To Do" -- and if that writing were seen by every human being, written in whatever language they understand, comprehended in the same way by everyone who saw it -- I would be persuaded that God existed. I'd be puzzled as to why he'd waited this long -- why he'd decided to do it in 2010 and not at any other time in human history -- but I'd still believe.

She then anticipates the heckler's gibe of, "Aliens!":

(And for the record: Yes, it's possible that this could happen without God. It could hypothetically, for instance, be accomplished by a highly technologically advanced alien species. But I don't think that would be the simplest explanation. If this phenomenon happened, "God" would, in my opinion, be a simpler explanation than "aliens" -- and unless I saw good evidence that the writing was done by aliens, God would be the provisional conclusion I would come to.)

She says that she thinks God would be a simpler explanation. I'm not so sure; it seems to me that aliens are a more parsimonious explanation, seeing as how - also according to the laws of parsimony* - we assume aliens extremely likely to exist, while God is extremely unlikely to exist.

*To maintain that aliens do not exist requires the extra assumption that either there is something special about Earth in particular, or that the origin of life is so unlikely that it only occured once in the universe - a proposition that is as of yet unsupported.

Think of it like this: If a human being from ancient Egypt saw a television set, they would assume it was magic. They would not know that such technology could even exist, and the idea of magic, which is commonplace to them, would seem like a much simpler explanation.

The real problem with God being a parsimonious explanation is this, as she touches on in the article:

I'd be puzzled as to why he'd waited this long -- why he'd decided to do it in 2010 and not at any other time in human history -- but I'd still believe.

This is the crux of the issue. In order for God to be a workable theory, we'd have to explain why he only seems to exist now, and not (as is claimed by believers) since the beginning of time. What could account for the absense of evidence of God up to this point? Explaining this would, it seems to me, require a bevy of assumptions and rationalisations that may equal, if not exceed, those necessary for the "aliens" hypothesis.

It's a safe bet that any aliens visiting us will be highly advanced. It's also a pretty safe bet that they would have studied humanity long enough to know that posing as God would be a great way to conquer humans, or at the very least get some yuks.

Yes, this assumes things about the aliens' intentions, but no more or less than the rationalisations of God's intentions for revealing himself suddenly. The old line, "we can't know the mind of God" can't be resorted to - that's not the kind of reasoning we infidels like to use. =P

If I see a fat man in a red suit fly overhead in a sleigh drawn by eight tiny reindeer, the first thing to assume as a proper sceptic isn't Santa Claus. I think the fact that concepts such as Santa Claus, or God, have been around a long time and are intuitive to people doesn't make them parsimonious at all. In fact, the exact opposite is true. The fact that they've existed for so long without confirmation makes them some of the most unlikely explanations possible.

And finally, their status as fiction is another - and devastating - hit against them. The likelihood of something someone came up with being real is as likely as me beginning to quote verbatim from a book I've never read - and that has yet to be written. In fact, the only way for these fictions (of God, Santa Claus, or anything else) to reflect reality at all is if there is some mechanism - such as revelation - that could relay the information of reality into the visions or writings of man. It can't just appear there - any more than monkeys can recreate Shakespeare by randomly beating on a typewriter for a trillion times the universe's age.

Of course, revelation can't be posited as the mechanism, because it can be shown - quite easily - to be bunk. If it wasn't, all religions would be the same (or at least agree on the basic facts). Of course, they don't - they can't even agree on the number of Gods there are.

With such good reasons to disbelieve the existence of God, seriously suggesting "aliens with the intent to deceive" isn't intellectually dishonest, or the shying away from proof of God by a dogmatic atheist. It would be the sound, sceptical, scientific thing to do.

Only when these other explanations were falsified would I accept God as the provisional explanation for such phenomenon as Greta Christina describes.