Monthly Archives

February 2015

Game News

Sonic Runners assets uncovered, reveals new characters and upcoming events

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Sonic Retro forum member woun has been uncovering a plethora of data contained in the recently soft launched Sonic Runners. The new assets reveal upcoming characters and events that will take place in future episodes of the game. While several characters were shown off in the game’s latest trailer, new surprises include Metal Sonic and Big the Cat! Sorry, had to include an exclamation point, because c’mon… it’s Big the Cat!
Also revealed are upcoming events featuring characters and locations from Sonic and the Secret Rings, Shadow and Omega with creepy glowing purple eyes, and what appears to be Metal Espio and Metal Eggman. You can see woun’s findings as they come over at the Sonic Retro forums.

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Interview, Podcasts

SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show: Interview with Stealth, co-developer of Sonic the Hedgehog 1&2 Remastered


On this week’s SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show podcast, we’re joined by Stealth, who worked on the official recent remasterings of Sonic The Hedgehog CD, Sonic The Hedgehog, and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 alongside fellow developer The Taxman.
Stealth talks to us about how the remasters began development, the process of remaking classic Sonic titles, the much talked about the remastered Sonic The Hedgehog 3 proof of concept, and what fans can do to try and make Sonic 3 remastered a reality. Also featured is discussion of Sonic The Hedgehog 4 and the recent decisions SEGA has made with the franchise. If you love classic Sonic games and behind-the-scenes stories of game development, this is the show for you!
Also, Barry and George discuss the recently revealed ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove Kickstarter by Greg Johnson (who will be joining us next week) and Sonic Team’s mobile release Sonic Runners, which soft launched yesterday.
Support the Sonic 3 Remastered campaign: http://sonic3remastered.com/
[Download] [RSS] [iTunes] [Archive]

Fan Works, Miscellaneous, Music

Something For The Weekend: GameChops – Spindash


So another week draws to a close and just in case you missed it, here’s a link to my Monday counterpart TimmiT’s Monday Links from this week. While I won’t go over all of the news of the week here (otherwise what would be the point in reading anything other than this column?) I will briefly mention that a playable build of Sonic Xtreme was released for PC this week. Yes, I’m serious. Go see.
Now, bringing things swiftly back to where they should be on a Friday, here’s something for you to take a gander at – GameChops, a record label for video game remixes, have released a compilation of Sonic-themed remixes by several of their artists entitled ‘Spindash’. Do you like remixes? Do you like dance music? Do you like Sonic? Of course you bloody do. Featured above for your listening pleasure is the album’s teaser trailer, but here’s a link to a playlist consisting of the album in it’s entirety. However, if you want to give a little back to the incredible talent that produced these tracks, you can easily do so by purchasing the album for download from Loudr, iTunes or Google Play for $10 (links to each store to follow).
If this kind of pumping electronica doesn’t get your weekend off to a good start, well, I don’t know what will.
(Also, go check out GameChops in general because their stuff is consistently pretty damn good.)

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Game News

Sonic Runners Quietly Released on iOS and Android


[UPDATE 2: If you’re outside of Japan and want to play this on your Android device, you can download the APK file here.]
[UPDATE: Read below for a lovely write up by forum member Roybertito about the game and some of its nuances.]
As seems to be the case with mobile games and their oblong release dates, Sonic Runners bursts out of the warp zone and onto your friendly local digital shop. There are some caveats, however.
As of this time of writing, I am unable to download the title on any of my three Android devices (a Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 2013 running on the latest version of Licorice, and an Xperia X10 running on Gingerbread) on the Google Play Store but those on the Apple side of the digital world have already gotten the game running. Interestingly, the version released is marked as 1.0.0t, representing it’s a test build. Of course, the humor isn’t lost in the event that another Sonic related thing was leaked early, as has seemingly become a trend in some capacity.
Regardless, early reports show the game plays like an auto runner ala Rayman Jungle Run with you in control of Sonic and friends’ movements as they zip through the grassy knolls of Sonic Lost World’s Green Hill Recolor #29 Windy Hill Zone. And if that isn’t enough to tickle your free-to-play mobile game fancy, plenty of microtransactions are included! One such, as posted over on Sonic Stadium’s Twitter via H Hog, invites players to invite their friends to play the game for a bounty of red star rings and the chance to play as series fan girl and general annoyance, Amy Rose. But only if you get 10 friends to join the game!
Remember, we’re dealing with normal Amy here, not arguably better Boom Amy.
Regardless, with the game now on the shops and playable on the iOS side of things, it’ll only be a matter of time before Android users can join in on the fun and advertising.
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Opinion, Sega Retro

Hit Reset: Why Sonic 3D Blast deserves another chance


Everyone tends to think that Sonic has been dead for an undisclosed amount of time, and generally seem to miss out on or dismiss a lot of interesting games along the way. One of the first games to start the march of “Sonic hasn’t been good since…” was Sonic 3D Blast. So, on this episode of Hit Reset, will take a look at why this game was not the beginning of all our problems, and why you may actually be missing out on something pretty cool.
Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel.

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Comics

Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog May 2015 Solicitations – Worlds Unite begins!

Archie Comics have sent out the latest comic solicitations, highlighting what SEGA and Sonic fans can expect from the publisher in May! With the epic Sonic and Mega Man crossover incoming, Capcom’s Mega Man books will be a must read for those who want to follow the event, meaning throughout the crossover we’ll be highlighting the Mega Man titles that fall under the Worlds Unite umbrella. After the break, check out the covers, synopsis, and story details direct from our friends at Archie.
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Game News, Game Secrets

Playable Build of Sonic X-Treme Now Available

We all know the story. 19 years ago, everyone was getting super excited about the upcoming release of Sonic X-treme, which would mark Sonic’s first fully three dimensional adventure. Long story short, the game was never released, and the Sega Saturn always had a hole in its library, no main Sonic title ever being released.
While bits and pieces of what the game would have been have leaked/been released over the the years, last November JollyRodger showed up with a plethora of material from defunct gaming studio Point Of View, including the source code for a variety of Sonic X-treme builds on both the Saturn and the PC. Being as the code could only run natively on hardware very few people have access to, Jolly took it upon himself to begin the process of porting the code to modern PC’s. Earlier tonight, the first public release of this labor of love was been released, “version 037” of X-treme now fully operational.

Download links and more after the jump.
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Fan Works, Hacking, Humor, Miscellaneous

Monday Links: Weekly Edition

Sonic Boom needs more art like this

I did it you guys. I got Monday Links to actually be a weekly thing for every Monday of a month. I checked and this is something that hasn’t been achieved since 2010 when Slingerland was doing this thing. This is something that I’ve tried very, very, veeeery hard to achieve since I did my first of these back in 2013. And really I probably wouldn’t have done it without Bartman3010 starting it up again. Speaking of which, why isn’t he doing Monday Links anymore? I bet he’s probably doing “more important stuff” and “chasing his dreams” like learning how to make games for the Nvidia Tegra. Pfft.
Now what was I supposed to be doing? Oh right, links.
Sonic Retro stuff

Sonic stuff

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Game News

NIS America Bringing Yuji Naka/Prope’s “Rodea the Sky Soldier” to the West


Before we get to the announcement here, let’s go over the history of this game’s development cause chances are you might want to know whatever happened to it: So four years ago, Yuji Naka and Prope revealed a game called Rodea the Sky Soldier for the Wii and 3DS. Since then, it’s undergone some pretty big changes as their collaborator, Kadokawa Games, seemingly took their sweet time publishing and advertising the game. While Yuji Naka said that the Wii version was finished, Kadokawa hadn’t given any updates on when it’d come out aside from them giving more information “in the near future” and the 3DS version supposedly still being worked on.
It wasn’t until late last year when the game was re-revealed that we’d actually get more information. It turned out that Kadokawa and Prope had pretty much been making an entirely new game for Wii U and 3DS, with them also releasing the original Wii game in a bundle with the Wii U version. As for the differences between the new and old versions: it seems like the original game is more arcadey and score-based, while the new game has a bigger focus on adventure and story. Both versions will be released in Japan on April 2nd.
So now that we know that the game is still being made and coming out soon in Japan, the question was if western countries would get the game as well. This is where NIS America steps in, as they announced today that they’ll be bringing the Wii U and 3DS versions of game to the US and Europe this fall. As for the original Wii game, there’s no confirmation yet but an NISA representative did tell Nintendo World Report that they do want to release it as a pack-in with the Wii U game like how it’s being sold in Japan. So, you know, hopefully that happens.

Fan Works, Music

Something For The Weekend: Woofle’s Sonic 3 Alternates

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So it’s been a pretty okay week for news, with the Sonic Runners reveal yesterday (it’s looking fairly good by the way) and forum member Jollyroger managing to get the leaked POV version of Sonic Xtreme to run on Saturn hardware – and while Monday links was packed with cool things to get your teeth into and is always a great start to the week (thanks TimmiT!), I’ve taken it upon myself to give you something to end the week on as well. Usually, this will be something like a mash-up or remix, news of some event going on over the weekend or, you know, generally weekend-y things.

Today, in keeping with the Sonic 3 Remastered campaign (it was featured on the Daily Star website of all things!), here’s some fantastic musical work courtesy of Leila ‘Woofle’ Wilson. This is a fantastic playlist of alternate takes on famous Sonic 3 tracks, noticeably different from their counterparts in the original game, but still fitting with the mood of each stage. I’m getting some Death Egg vibes from the Launch Base Zone track – which, considering the background of the stage, is only appropriate I guess.

Anyway, to cut this short – if you’ve finished work or school for the week, put your feet up, unwind, crack open a favored beverage and have a listen. Enjoy your weekend.