...About Marine's species?
According to the documentation, Marine is supposed to be a raccoon. I know she has a ring tail, but everything else is all wrong. The face markings are off, the ears are the wrong shape, and her fur is the wrong color. In fact, Marine resembles no RL animal so much as she does Ailurus fulgens, the red panda. And neither the red panda nor the raccoon are native to Australia, but she speaks like an Australian slango in the game, so what's up with that? 
Why is Sonic blue, with a cyclops eye, and freaking huge quills?
Why is Knuckles red, wear huge hammer like gloves, and have dread like quills, when technically, they should be the same as a hedgehog's quills.
Tails- yea.
Yeah, colour is no indication of accuracy in terms of most of these characters (purple cats and swallows, anyone?), so why should it apply to Marine? And aside from her accent not reflecting the species' native land... well, Knuckles doesn't have an Australian accent. Hell, he almost ended up with a Jamaican accent.
I think what happened with Marine's voice is that in Japan they were giving her some sort of accent for that, but of course it had to be translated, so I think they tried to do the equivalent of that.
Give me a bit to edit my post, and I'll find where I got that theory from.
She has an Osaka accent in Japanese.
Well, either way, I found what I was looking for:
Quote by Dubs:
Nerd moment:
I read somewhere that the Japanese version of Marine the Raccoon apparently spoke in Kansai-ben and that the localization writer decided to go with Australian as a form of making a connection english speakers could identify with. Paraphrasing here, the Japanese immediately recognize where a person who speaks Kansai-ben hails from, so he decided to go with Australian since we all know Aussie accents by ear apparently.
He went with 2 Australian speaking contacts for help writing Marine's dialogue. Localization guy claims that the character was also just as annoying in the Japanese version as she comes off as in the English version. Apparently if Marine is soul-injuringly annoying, then the man did his job.
Taken from here.
Spiner,
Thanks for clearing that up. Apparently in Japan using kansai for a character is like fitting out the Texas guy on the "Simpsons" with the appropriate accent: it reinforces the character. Of course, it can also be used against type: in "Azumanga Daioh" there's a character nicknamed "Osaka" who's a quiet daydreamer -- hardly anything like the loud, aggressive salespeople associated with Osakans and others who speak kansai.
And while I know that certain ... liberties ... have been taken with character design in the Sonic continuity, there's still too much of Marine that DOES resemble the RL red panda, so why not just say so?
I have a hunch that it's because most of their target audience doesn't know what one is.
~Tobe
How familiar was the target audience with "echidnas" before Knuckles came along?
They probably just intended for her to be a raccoon, though. That, and a lot of people would have probably been confused when they took "red panda" literally.
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Why would SEGA lie about Marine's species?
Because, and you didn't hear this from me if you follow, they're run by GLaDOS.
Shouldn't this be in South Island? Yeah, it should be. Let's move it from Knothole, then, yes.
Marine is a lie.
The cake is a lie.
Life is a lie!
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The cake is a lie.
~Tobe
Why are you people trying to find logic out of a raccoon that "looks like" a red panda when you have a **blue hedgehog** with googly looking spines, a red echidna with dreadlocks that doesn't look much like an echidna at all, and an oddly shaped human being man-thing with no neck and spindly lanky little beanpole legs?
Stop being silly. 
This from a guy that shops his face over Spiderman. XD
~Tobe
Red pandas are in the raccoon family 
Marine doesn't look like a raccoon any more than Sonic looks like a hedgehog, so I think the whole argument is kind of redundant. Mina didn't look much like a mongoose, either, and Big wasn't that recognizable as a cat. So it makes sense that Marine wouldn't be instantly recognizable as a raccoon. It's just how the Sonic universe works.
In the Sonic universe, the characters have a few physical points that identify them as a certain species, and once you know what that species is, it makes perfect sense. To me, anyway. =P Marine is a raccoon, end of story.
As for the accent thing, it does make a lot of sense that she spoke Osakan (I think I just totally made up a word) in the Japanese version, and it's reasonable that it would translate to Australian in the English version. She kept her gloriously annoying personality through it all, and I admire the creators for pulling that off. =D Even if she does grate on my nerves. That's what they were going for, and they succeeded.
On a slightly different note, is this the first time (aside from Amy in Sonic CD) that a new character hasn't been playable?
Vanilla the Rabbit has yet to be playable in any form or fashion, and she's appeared in some small form in at least 2 handheld games to date.
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Vanilla the Rabbit has yet to be playable in any form or fashion
Eggman disagrees. 
*now where did that bedroom picture of them go?*
See - I wasn't even gonna go there.
...granted, I probably should have. 
Wow, Ultra went somewhere Dubs wouldn't? Did I fall into Bizarro world again?
~Tobe
XDXD! Ewww...gross!
OK, I know that Sonic and Knuckles's designs are more stylized than nature would allow, and that Tails's design owes more to Japanese mythology than to fox physiology. But it kind of got to me that Marine should be called a "raccoon" when her coloration, face markings and tail are spot-on for a red panda; I don't know why they just didn't say so. Besides, "Red Marine" is kind of a kickin' pirate name. 
Ultra Sonic, if anyone might know it would be Vector. In the Japanese Sonic X dub, Vector had a big crush on Vanilla.
Dan, do you really have to nitpick everything? I mean, I think she looks like a Red Panda too, but it's not that big a deal.
It was ten years from his debut before Eggman was playable in any form.
Also, for those who complain about Sonic large, growing cast. What about Mario? He's got a TON of characters in his games. I mean, Waluigi? How lame is that?
Waluigi looks like Sir Richard Dasterly, and thus he is awesome.
Amen, sir.
Waluigi reminds me of the Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak.
Yah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah-tah, tah-tah-tah-tah! Cha!
Okay, the Dastardly argument won.
they probably intended her to be a red panda but figured people would look at it and say "she is neither red nor a panda!" SO they just made her the next best thing. Its different from being told that Knuckles is and echidna for the first time because a person may have NO freaking idea what it is so they look it up.
However people already have a preconceived notion of what red is and what a panda looks like.
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It was ten years from his debut before Eggman was playable in any form.
Sonic Drift disagrees.
Sonic R wasn't ten years later either
Sega lies because it likes stomping on our dreams.
I LIKE their style.
