Sega held a party for Sonic’s 25th anniversary at one of their Joypolis parks in Japan earlier today, which they live streamed online. There they showed new gameplay of Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice and announced that the next main Sonic game will be released in 2017.
But the coolest thing that was shown was the original concept art of various Sonic characters. While a bunch of it has been shown before (and can be found on our wiki), we also get to see never before seen design sketches of characters like Shadow the Hedgehog, E-102 Gamma and Big the Cat for the first time. You can see all of the concept art that was shown above.
[Source: The Video Game Art Archive]
Monthly Archives
June 2016
You can check out the archived livestream split into several videos so you can check out which game and which compilation you’d like to see! Check out how you can continue to play the classics and highlighting the pros and cons of each collection showcased.
The past two decades have given us plenty of ways to play through the old classics. We’ll be taking a look at the different game compilations that celebrated the past two decades of the blue blur.
E3 is kind of like going to a wedding, they’re a pain to get to, your feet are destroyed by the end of it, and the whole thing is done and over with as quickly as it started. 2016 marks the first year of me being the E3 guy, which is exciting! Brand new games, some we might not see or hear from for years to come and since this is Sonic Retro, I’m only going to be talking about Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice.
Is your Sonic library on Steam lacking a few titles? Why wait for a Steam sale when you can set your own price and meet payment tiers in the latest Humble Bundle featuring a trove of Sonic games that can be redeemed on Steam which includes Sonic Lost World and an exclusive T-shirt for $35. Games such as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Generations all feature their DLC included as well, except for our good buddy Simon from Yogscast in Transformed. The SEGA Genesis and Mega Drive games also take advantage of the updated emulator that supports ROM hacks as well.
If you’re not familiar with how the Humble Bundle works, you can set the price on what you would pay for the games and receive a Steam validation code for each game covered by your payment. You can also pay above two different tiers with one being the average paid amongst different users on the Humble Bundle. Previous Humble Bundles included mobile Sonic titles and the Archie Sonic comic series. This marks the first time Sonic games on Steam appeared in a Humble Bundle set.
Be sure to check out the Humble Bundle page on more information. More games will be added to the bundle in the near future which do not require additional payment. Hit the jump to see what games are available in the bundle.
So I’m sure that a lot of you are excited for whatever Sonic 25th anniversary stuff might happen, but I’m here to remind you of that Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games will be out on Wii U this week.
Okay I’m sure none of you actually care about yet another Mario & Sonic mini-game collection but you need to at least see this: it has Wario dancing to Reach For The Stars:
Anyway you can buy Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for Wii U starting June 24th, but really there’s no reason to since you’ve just seen the best thing you’d be getting out of the game anyway. Well, aside from maybe Eggman dancing to Reach for the Stars, but I’m sure there’ll be a video of that soon enough anyway.
Actually Metal Sonic dancing to the Super Bell Hill music from Super Mario 3D World is pretty great as well.
In 13 days, Sonic the Hedgehog is turning 25 years old. That’s something crazy to think about – I still remember the first time I spotted the hedgehog, running wildly in the Marble Zone on a game kiosk in a department store that no longer exists, my parents probably silently hoping that it wouldn’t become yet another childhood obsession.
In the build up to this gaming milestone, we’ve been slowly getting a trickle of hedgehog-related news: the latest Fire & Ice trailer, Sonic in Lego form, Archie’s next Sonic Special. While we wait on baited breath for the next big Sonic game reveal, Jun Senoue and Wave Master have given us more information on the next soundtrack release regarding the fastest thing alive. On Jun’s “Believe in Myself” column over at Japan’s Sonic Channel, the official track list for the 2-CD, 1-DVD set has been revealed, celebrating the entire scope of the Sonic gaming franchise.
Check out the full listing after the jump.
Archie announced last February that they’d be releasing a one-shot classic Sonic comic called Sonic Mega Drive on July 6th, 2016. With the release date drawing closer we are now not only getting a closer look at the incredible art drawn for the comic, but also the announcement of a sequel!
The sequel is called Sonic Mega Drive – The Next Level, and will be released later this year. Not much is known about it, but it does again sport some fantastic cover art drawn by Tyson Hesse. Vincent Lovallo, the editor of the comic, said in an interview with IGN that the events of the comics will also feed into the regular Archie Sonic series.
IGN also asked if an ongoing Mega Drive comic series is possible, to which Lovallo answered “Absolutely. I think that if there is enough of a demand for it, there is a strong possibility that could come to light.” If you want to know more details, here’s the interview.
Be sure to take a look at the amazing work the team at Archie did with the previews of the first issue of Mega Drive and the cover art of The Next Level down below.
[Source: IGN]
There have rumors about his inclusion for some time now, but it’s finally confirmed: Sonic is joining Lego Dimensions. Warner Bros Games announced that a whole bunch of franchises are joining the game, which will feature Gremlins, Mission Impossible, Batman, Sonic and other franchises crossing over with eachother. If they were trying to knock Super Smash Bros off the “most ridiculous cross-over video game” throne, they’ve succeeded.
Not much is known about Sonic’s inclusion right now, but at the very least we should be getting a Lego figurine of Sonic the Hedgehog that can be used with the game. Also there’s been a world in Lego Dimensions for every franchise that’s been a part of it so far, so we’ll probably be seeing a Lego-fied version of Sonic’s world as well.
This isn’t the first time Traveller’s Tales has worked with the Sonic franchise, they also worked with Sonic Team back in the Saturn days to make Sonic 3D: Flickies’ Island and Sonic R. We don’t know if Richard Jacques will be composing the music again though.
2.5D might be one of the best ways to blend new with the old. Scenery, characters, objects, everything in a title can take advantage of modern day hardware while still feeling like the games of yesterday. The Sonic series began to take to 2.5D more and more starting with Sonic Unleashed, with the entire “boost trilogy” doing the brunt of the platforming in the 2.5D sections, with the high speed antics in 3D, almost racing-esque segments.
In 2013, a Retro user by the name of Ell678 began work on his own Sonic fan game, one that would be comprised almost entirely in 2.5D by utilizing SonicGDK. Since that point in time, Sonic Incursion has begun to take shape into the extraordinary title we see here today. A huge fan of the early Genesis games, Ell678 felt he could take what he adored about the level design the two games had and put it into something modern while still maintaining a “classic” presentation.
It’s been a pretty long time since Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice was last shown to the public. After it was delayed there was a bit of a drought with no new footage or info whatsoever. That’s changed now though as SEGA just released a new trailer for E3 2016 and we can finally confirm that, yup, it still looks like a Sonic Boom game.
It does look like there is some added variety with the new bosses and shoot-em-up sections, but aside from that the game looks like more of Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal. Which probably isn’t a good thing seeing how Shattered Crystal wasn’t that great. Still, the game will be playable at E3 next week so we’ll probably be able to see if Sanzaru has tried to make Fire & Ice much of an improvement over its prequel when new gameplay footage from the event gets put up online.
Fire & Ice will be released on September 27th, 2016 exclusively for Nintendo 3DS and will have a special Launch Edition in the US. The special edition will include a DVD with three episodes from the Sonic Boom TV show, which is surprisingly decent and worth taking a look at if you haven’t yet.
Update: The official Sonic Youtube account has uploaded the trailer to Youtube, and mentions in the description that “[a] number of notable improvements are being made to the game, including enhanced level designs built for speed, better functionality, and all-new Fire & Ice gameplay mechanics.”