Another year, another re-release of Sonic The Hedgehog. Ho-hum. No, you won’t find much different here if you’ve played this game at some point in the last 22 years, and it definitely isn’t a revolution like “Team Stealth-Tax”‘s Sonic 1 Mobile update on iOS and Android . Instead, let’s focus on what’s a little more interesting in this project: M2’s “GigaDrive” system running this bad boy. How does it handle Sonic 1 on your 3DS?
Variety has reported that actor Christopher Evan Welch, the voice of Miles “Tails” Prower in The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon series, has passed away at the age of 48*. Welch voiced Tails in all 65 episodes of the series alongside Jaleel White’s Sonic and Long John Baldry’s Robotnik (Baldry passed away in 2005).
Welch’s other TV credits include AMC’s Rubicon, The Sopranos, The Practice, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU and The Good Wife. Welch also appeared in several movies including Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and Lincoln, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
As a Sonic fan who tape recorded every single episode of the series as they aired, Welch’s death really is heartbreaking. His voice acting really shaped the character of Tails in those early days when he was a silent sidekick in the games, and was relegated to a smaller role in the Saturday morning Sonic series. All of us at Sonic Retro send our thoughts to Welch’s family and friends.
I wanted to add that the Seattle Times has a fantastic tribute to Welch’s stage acting career, featuring a great photo from 1993 which was around the same time he had worked on Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.
*Despite many entertainment outlets stating that Welch was likely 48, this doesn’t jive with his child-like voice in Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. At 48 now, Welch would be 28 in 1993. But given puberty has been the presumed cause for Welch not appearing in Sonic Christmas Blast in 1996, he would have been closer to 11 which matches with a 1983 birthdate floating around. And yet, the Seattle Times shows a photo from 1993 featuring a man much older than 11. So either Welch was much older and could do a great child voice, and did not appear in the Christmas special for other reasons, or something else is not matching up.
It’s pretty rare that we get to see Sega developers geek out and go into wonderful detail about the development process behind their games, so it’s always special when we see something published like Impress Watch‘s interview with M2 president Naoki Horii and Sega CS3 producer Yosuke Okunari about bringing the classic Mega Drive version of Sonic the Hedgehog to the Nintendo 3DS. Translated by Sega and published by Siliconera, the two men describe the technical challenges of emulating the Mega Drive on the 3DS, how they had to rewrite large portions of code in ARM assembly to optimize performance, how they designed a fictional hardware variation of the Mega Drive to support stereoscopic 3D, and even how they dug into the vaults and consulted Sonic Jam source code for assistance porting the Spin Dash to the original game. Be sure to check out the full interview at the source link below; it’s an excellent read if you’re interested in a detailed look at the programming and design work that goes into a project like this.
Source: Siliconera
UPDATE: [2013/12/03 05:13 PM EST] I’ve added a clarification for question #2 in response to some of the emails I have received: If you think you may have submitted an incorrect answer and this clarifies it for you, you may resend your answer for question #2. I’ll combine the emails for the final count.
The following is a guest post by long-time community member GerbilSoft.
Hello, I’m GerbilSoft. And today, I’m going to make history.
I’m putting up TWO Sonic games that says I know more than you.
So if you’re smart enough, fast enough, and if you’ve got the guts, you can Win GerbilSoft’s Sonic Games!
Two winners will get the opportunity to select one of these three games:
Official Rules:
Win GerbilSoft’s Sonic Games!
If you want to win GerbilSoft’s Sonic Games, you just have to answer these five trivia questions. Send your answers to [email protected], with subject: “Sonic Retro Thanksgiving Giveaway”. Entries must be received by 2013/12/08 11:59 PM EST.
