Ryan Drummond
Ryan Drummond (born January 10, 1973), an actor/comedian, is best known as the character Smudge in the San Diego, California production of the comedy Forever Plaid. He was also well known as the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog in the popular Sega video game franchise. His youthful, energetic, yet realistic sounding voice was well known and very popular with fans of the series.
While Drummond was not the first English-speaking voice actor to play the part of Sonic the Hedgehog, he was one of the first English Sonic voice actors, with a fully speaking role, to be featured in much mainstream Sonic media, along with his spiritual predecessor, Jaleel White. Previous English voice actors included actors who only uttered short phrases, or were featured in more obscure or spin-off titles.
Ryan Drummond first played the role of Sonic the Hedgehog in the Dreamcast game, Sonic Adventure, and in Sega-related commercials. His voice was also used for various talking toys inspired by, and based off of Sonic Adventure. Drummond again played the role of Sonic, in the Dreamcast spin-off title, Sonic Shuffle. He also played the role of Knuckles the Echidna, exclusively for this title, because the actor cast for Sonic Adventure stepped down from the role, for unknown reasons.
Drummond, again, took on the role of Sonic the Hedgehog, in Sonic Adventure 2, for the Dreamcast, the spiritual successor to the original Sonic Adventure. Drummond also played a part in casting David Humphrey, his friend and fellow actor, as the role of Shadow the Hedgehog. Drummond was then cast to record the voice of Sonic for various Sonic commercials, advertising the inclusion of Sonic the Hedgehog toys in McDonald's Happy Meals.
Sonic Heroes, for the Xbox, Playstation 2, and Gamecube was the next game for which Drummond provided the voice of Sonic. By this time, there was an audible difference between the voice he used for Sonic Adventure, and the voice he was presently using. While they were both the same basic voice, Drummond's Sonic Heroes voice was noticably higher pitched than his Sonic Adventure voice. Drummond's next two roles as Sonic the Hedgehog were the handheld games Sonic Battle and Sonic Advance 3. While these games were not especially dialogue heavy, they contained several in game voice clips, mostly consisting of short phrases or shouts.
Ryan Drummond's next, and final role as Sonic the Hedgehog, was in a McDonald's commercial, called "Wipeout", advertising the return of Sonic toys to McDonald's Happy Meals.
In mid-2003, an animated Sonic the Hedgehog TV series, known as Sonic X, began airing in Japan. The original Japanese version of Sonic X shared much continuity with the game series, mostly in production values. The Japanese voice cast from the video game series was used for the show, with minor exceptions, as well as a few occasions of music tracks used originally in the game series being used as background music, or insert songs in the show.
When awareness of the series came to English speaking countries, questions immediately arose as to what company would secure the English language dubbing rights for Sonic X. As with many Japanese cartoons, it was very quickly considered that 4Kids Entertainment could possibly obtain these rights. This was seen as basically a worst-case scenario to many Sonic fans who were familiar in any way with 4Kid's common practices in adapting Japanese cartoons, and to an extent with other forms of media, not limited to Japanese cartoons. A common belief was that 4Kids took too much liberty in their adaption or representation of such properties, and "dumbed them down", to a more shallow level. They almost always would replace the original musical score of any Japanese cartoon with their own score, and were commonly criticized for their choice of voice acting.
While many Sonic fans disapproved of the idea of 4Kids acquiring the rights to Sonic X from the beginning, 4Kids eventually did acquire the rights to dub Sonic X. This rose several questions, and one was the question of whether or not the voice acting cast from the recent Sonic video games would be cast for Sonic X. Ryan Drummond received hundreds of emails asking about the matter. He attempted to get in contact with Sega, who recommended him to 4Kids. After a long series of what many thought to be very poor and unprofessional communication from 4Kids, Ryan was contacted by a 4Kids employee, Michael Haigney, who told him that he, in fact, could not have the part, apparently because he lived in California, while the 4Kids Headquarters was located in New York. While Drummond appreciated the honesty of Mr. Haigney, he replied, expressing his disgust at their lack of communication with him, stating that he would have gladly relocated to New York at his own expense for as long as he was needed. The role of Sonic the Hedgehog in Sonic X was given to Jason Griffith, an actor who used a similar voice in earlier episodes, but met with much less praise than Drummond. Nontheless, this did not change Drummond's status as Sega's official actor for Sonic the Hedgehog, throughout the following year.
Adding to the controversy, however, it was announced during production of Shadow the Hedgehog that the title, and all subsequent titles, would use the 4Kids actors instead of the already-established actors. This was allegedy done for continuity between the show and the games (despite the two not having any plot continuity beyond a few game adaptions in the anime). This announcement was delivered by Drummond himself, since Sega had not bothered to notify him or any of his former co-workers of this replacement until he did some digging into why he had yet to be contacted for work on the game. As of such, Drummond has no longer been considered the official voice of Sonic, instead being ousted by Griffith, who has voiced him ever since.
Since then, fans have sent Sega letters, phone calls, e-mails, and petitions demanding to give the role of Sonic back to Ryan Drummond. Besides that, fans want all the 4Kids voice actors fired, with the execption of Mike Pollock. Many fans consider Ryan Drummond as the true voice actor for Sonic. In fact, fans have been making forums suggesting to boycott the games if Ryan Drummond and the other voice actors weren't rehired, most notably Sonic Next-Gen. Sega has yet to comment on the fans' demands.
