Interview, Merchandise

A Quick Sonic Music News Roundup

If there’s one universal aspect people can agree upon when it comes to the Sonic the Hedgehog series, it’s that the music has always been pretty darn good. This is true even for Sonic 2006, a game which has become the punching bag for the series since…well, 2006. For many, one of the highlights to that soundtrack is Silver’s theme, “Dreams of an Absolution.” The man who sung his heart out on that track all those years ago, Bentley Jones, revisited the track just in time for Sonic’s 28th anniversary. And he made a music video to go with it!

That’s one tall building.

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Fan Works, Interview

Retro Spotlight: SRB2Kart and the Kart Krew – Part One

Sonic Robo Blast 2 has been around for twenty long, eventful years and despite this long development, the community has thrived throughout it all. Mods of all sizes have been the backbone of the project and one of the biggest, most recent mods is none other than SRB2 Kart, which changes the game from a platformer to a kart racer, similar to the Team Sonic Racing game released last month. We had a lengthy correspondence with the team behind the mod, Kart Krew, and like their project, their answers were massive!  After working for ages to compile their answers, we’ve decided to split this particular Spotlight into three separate articles, which will be released in the following weeks. So enjoy part one of this three part series from the Kart Krew and the development of SRB2Kart!

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Reviews

Team Sonic Racing – The Retro Review

In November of 2012, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed dropped to a positive critical and fan reception. Some considered it a contender with Mario Kart, while others would argue that, at the time, it may even have surpassed it. Transformed, unfortunately, had its fair share of bugs, some of which were sorted but many that, to this day, haven’t been. Fast forward to today, and after a healthy delay, we now have Team Sonic Racing. Gone are the transforming vehicles and colorful SEGA cast, instead replaced with Sonic mainstays and a focus on cooperative gameplay. And while in a few areas, Team Sonic Racing feels like a step or two towards improvement, it takes several flights worth of stairs tumbling backwards. Continue Reading

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Game News, Game Secrets

David Javelosa Sonic and SEGA Music Demo Tracks Surface Online

You’ve probably seen this tweet making the rounds online of unused Sonic 2 music being shown off to a classroom.

It turns out this student’s professor is David Javelosa who, if you aren’t familiar with him, is a freelance composer who used to be an Audio Director at SEGA of America. These days you’ll find him as a professor at Santa Monica College. You will typically find his name on western productions of SEGA titles including Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, Ecco – The Tides of Time, Spider-Man VS. The Kingpin and even was part of the SEGA Multimedia Studio to help with SEGA CD development.

After the tweet gained massive popularity the poster agreed to try to convince David to put his works online somewhere. Luckily he agreed to it and now you can find this online. A SEGA Genesis GEMS Test Module. GEMS of course was the sound driver used in many western Genesis games including Sonic Spinball. But in the video below it seems to center around Sonic 2. You can find more demo reels and music tracks from this channel after the jump.

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Miscellaneous, Opinion

A Look At Sonic the Hedgehog Bootleg Games

As we’ve had documented in the wiki for a long time, Sonic has seen his fair share of bootleg games across the last three decades. On a personal level, I’ve found these knock offs fascinating but the plethora of ‘Tubers out there who would rather make unfunny jokes about fan games and hacks (arguably our bread and butter) than properly cover them. So I’m here on my own little channel to take a look at the mystifying under belly of video games, starting with our most favoritist blue video game guy from 1991. Enjoy!

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Reviews

Sonic Forces – The Retro Review

So, Sonic Forces. It’s tough to know what to say about it. The game has been out for a while now and admittedly this review is coming a little late, but if Forces shows us anything it’s that the franchise itself needs to slow down and take time for a bit of reflection. Having had longer to digest the game, perhaps we can have a better idea of what went wrong, what went right and just how we got here.

The first trailer for the game in 2016 could be described as confusing. Announced as Project Sonic 2017, many fans (myself included) really didn’t know how to parse what they had just seen. After what had then been years of light, fluffy, Saturday morning cartoon-esque stories, we had a trailer showcasing a seemingly ruined world, overrun by Eggman’s giant Death Egg Robots destroying everything – and wait, Classic Sonic’s here too? Just what is happening? That question, along with the fact that this was being developed by the team behind Colors and Generations, was enough to raise eyebrows and generate significant interest in the title, even alongside the also-announced Sonic Mania. It’s fair to say that expectations were tempered (especially after Lost World) but many fans were expecting a return to the ‘boost gameplay’ that, love it or hate it, has probably been one of Sega’s more successful attempts at doing Sonic gameplay in 3D yet.

So is that what we got? Well, kind of.

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