With the 2015 iteration of the Sonic Hacking Contest now in the rear view mirror, those who missed the chance to enter can instead opt to enter the Sonic Amateur Games Expo.
Billed as a platform for amateur game developers to showcase their projects, the event offers an open invitation for anyone developing a game to register and give it exposure, even if it has nothing to do with Sonic or Sega.
Historically, SAGE focused on a week-long celebration and exposition of these games, and has featured guests such as MAGfest maestro Dominic “Andross Guy” Cerquetti and Mike Pollock. Events include entertaining activities such as Bad Fanfic Readings or a Dr. Eggman Voice Contest as judged by the good doctor himself. In between, people are invited to run a radio station or to stream shows to the community.
For a fully detailed list of guidelines for registration to stream or to submit a game, hit up this link. The last day to register is Dec. 11.
Browsing Category
Fan Works
[UPDATE: The SHC site seems to be overloaded! For now, hang out in the IRC channel provided below for as-they-happen updates.]
Rise and shine, Retro. Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re already groaning that another work week has come in this hamster wheel called life. But that’s fine, because there are several new hacks waiting for you to get your digits all over.
If you swing on by the Sonic Hacking Contest 2015’s website, you now have a selection of titles from some of the Sonic Scene’s more technically inclined to try out and evaluate. While you can play the games without restriction, voting does require a Sonic Retro or an SSRG account, so try to snag one by Saturday if you want to guarantee your vote.
If you’re not about that, you can enjoy a week of streams, with one kicking off in a less than 20 minutes. These streams will let you see some of the community’s finest play the games for you to watch and just hang out with fellow fans. Fan-favorites MegaGWolf and SomecallmeJohnny also return, with a music workshop hosted by DalekSam Saturday, if you’re interested in learning how to create songs for games. The schedule is as follows:
5pm BST / 12pm EDT to 7pm BST / 2pm EDT – Monday to Friday: Donnie
7pm BST / 2pm EDT to 9pm BST / 4pm EDT – Monday, Wednesday and Friday: Spanner
9pm BST / 4pm EDT to 12am BST / 7pm EDT – Monday to Friday: MegaGWolf
12am BST / 7pm EDT to 3am EDT / 10pm BST – Monday to Friday: SomecallmeJohnny
5pm BST / 12pm EDT to 7pm BST / 2pm EDT on Saturday: DalekSam Music Workshop
7pm BST / 2pm EDT to 11pm BST / 6pm EDT on Saturday: Nova
7pm GMT / 3pm EDT to 9pm GMT / 5pm EDT (clock change on Sunday): Results Show
So come on by and relax in the Sonic Hacking Contest’s IRC. Just point your favorite client (or mibbit) to irc.badnik.net #shc2015.
As sure as the air gets crisp and the leaves turn brown (or green if you’re upside down in the world), the Sonic Hacking Contest is live once more for the next generation of game hackers and homebrewers. We’re partnering with SSRG once again to see what the more creative of you can do given a digital game jam of sorts.
To start, you’ll need a forum account for either here or SSRG (the rules are a little more relaxed if you’re actually entering.) Participants will have until Oct. 4 to submit a playable build of their game or hack, and then a further week to work on their projects should the entrant deem it necessary. Voting will then go live on Oct. 19, and also requires an account to either site.
Much like last year, everyone can download and play the entries, but streams will be held that showcase the games for those more interested in hanging out and talking with others.
Don’t be shy if you feel you’ll be swept up by more veteran groups. It’s not unusual for someone to come out of left field and stun the competition, such as with the likes of Robotnik’s Revenge, which in a roundabout way inspired the boss rush mode in Sonic 2 Mobile (2013)/Egg Gauntlet Zone. Practice the craft and have fun with it. Joke hacks are certainly welcome too, but not joke submissions. Basically, you can make something funny, but don’t submit something that’s clearly just stupid (see: Sonic 1337.) If you’re going to swing for worst hack, do it with some grace.
If you’re not into the whole Sonic theme, you can also submit SEGA-themed fangames too. Golden Axe, Shinobi, Jet Set Radio, Puyo Puyo… any of those brands are ripe for the picking. Going off the hip, I can say a Mighty Switchforce 2 styled Burning Rangers may be a neat idea, but you didn’t hear it from me.
And yes, this isn’t just limited to the Mega Drive games. The 3D games like Sonic Adventure, Sonic 2006, and Sonic Generations are encouraged.
The Dreamcast era was a special moment for many a SEGA fan. At the time, it was the company’s last great hope, but soon transformed into its swan song. For fans of the SEGA brand, even if the system had no hope on tackling the PlayStation behemoth, it was an unbridled time for ingenuity and creativity. One of the draws for the company had always been its lack of fear when it came to innovation, and games like Jet Set Radio and Phantasy Star Online were offerings other players at the time just couldn’t provide.
Of course, the return of Sonic the Hedgehog as a full-fledged icon was more than welcomed. It was the hedgehog that drew many people to the system in the first place. How many would have played through Streets of Rage or Ecco the Dolphin if they had not first bought a Genesis to run through the one video game that could take on Mario? That’s what made the unexpected arrival of Sonic Dreams Collection all that more alluring. The website in which the unassuming program was released sets the stage: that during the prime of SEGA’s developmental creativity, a small, previously unheard of studio within the halls of the company wanted to use the Sonic brand in all sorts of wild, new, game-changing directions.
SEGA’s mascot had already been in numerous platformers, a handful of racers, a fighting game, a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. The idea that he could have been the face of numerous off-the-wall concepts is not all that far fetched, especially considering the time and place. Loading up the Arcane Kids offering was nearly irresistible, and once going through it, well…
Sonic Dreams Collection might be the greatest Sonic the Hedgehog game of the past decade.
Fan Works, Miscellaneous, Music
Something For The Weekend: Sonic After The Sequel Weekend Extravaganza
So the weekend rolls around again and finally (at least if you’re a 9-5 worker in the UK), you can afford to put your feet up, crack open a beverage of choice and enjoy yourself for a couple of days.
After the success we enjoyed last week with the Sonic Generations stream – well, popularity-wise, anyway; gameplay-wise, I wasn’t particularly successful but hey, I’m out of practice and it’s something to work on – we’ve decided another stream might be a good idea for a weekend event again. In lieu of this, and combined with the fact that the creator behind popular fangames Sonic BTS and ATS LakeFeperd has announced a kickstarter for his new, original project named Spark The Electric Jester, we decided a stream of Sonic After The Sequel could be a great idea.
Don’t panic – it’s not tonight, so you have time to plan ahead if you were particularly interested in seeing the game played. We’re going to kick things off tomorrow (Saturday 1st August) at 8pm BST/3pm EST/12pm PST.
The stream will be hosted over at http://twitch.tv/NovaRetro.
Of course, I don’t want to leave you high and dry for your Friday night so have some tunes directly from the game, neatly featured in a soundtrack playlist for your listening pleasure.
Here it is again, folks – after skipping out last week (how irresponsible of me!), I return again with a project that I think deserves a bit of time in the spotlight of our front page.
This short film was animated by Sonicpox along with several other names within the community, all of which can be seen in the credits at the end of the piece. It’s particularly well-done for something made in SFM and the first part of it really gives a more ‘real’ sense of how Sonic must have felt floating in space after the destruction of the Death Egg at the end of Sonic 2. It is of course a fully-realised, animated version of the pre-credits ending sequence from that game and while similar things have been done before, this is done extremely well and really holds up.
Hell, even the official Sonic YouTube account decided to comment on it! (I wonder who could have been responsible for that…)
I know it’s not a remix album or something along those lines, but I felt that in keeping with the promotion of creative talent in these collumns, this was deserving of a mention. As usual, enjoy your weekend whatever you’re doing and I don’t know, maybe come hang out in IRC or something.
Returning to your regular weekly scheduling, my counterpart TimmiT graced the front page with a new Monday Links and it is with great pleasure that I bring you the return of Something For The Weekend! And there was much rejoicing.
Now, I wanted to feature a bit of music again this weekend and this time, the tunes are courtesy of Retro member Sean Evans. Coming from his album ‘Sonic Tempo’, Sean has created a soundtrack reminiscent of Sonic CD in both instrumentation and theme. An excerpt from his description of the album goes “When Sonic wakes, he discovers he’s on the Miracle Planet, but what’s more is that he appears to be in the Miracle Planet’s galaxy! In the distance Sonic can see a black hole, slowly sucking the planet in. The only explanation is that someone has been tampering with the flow of time, and if Sonic doesn’t hurry, Miracle Planet might just fade away, and him along with it!”
I highly recommend giving these tracks a listen as it’s clear Sean has put some serious love into them and they would sound right at home in a classic Sonic game. Check the bottom of this article for a playlist or click here to go straight to the album’s SoundCloud page.
In other news, community regular HelenBaby has transferred the running of the Sonic London meets to new organizer, ForeverSonic of RadioSEGA fame! In celebration of this, he will be hosting a comeback meet on Sunday 26th July 2015 at Regents Park in London. The event is an open invitation and you can sign up here or express your interest and ask questions in HelenBaby’s forum thread here.
And with all that said, I leave you with this weekend’s tunes. Enjoy!
When news of a new Sonic fan film hit from out of the blue, I must admit, I got way more excited than any normal human being should. Sure, we’ve had some recent projects come out of the pipeline like the yearly Christmas tradition of Sonic and the gang doing holiday-type-things, the Sonic Prologue animated short (that I’ll sadly admit to not having watched) and more than one Sonic.exe film (which I’ll gladly admit to not having watched), but they didn’t capture my imagination like that one magical moment a few years back. When Jim Sass, Richard Kuta, and Eddie Lebron all threw their hat in the ring at once, trying to create Sonic fan films with very different goals in mind.
Their legacies, only history will know for sure. But ever since that triple knuckled punch, I’ve remained pretty quiet on the subject, at least when it comes to writing about fanfilms on the front page of Retro. But when I was linked The Hedgehog, and saw that initial poster of an awkward teenager sitting upon a merry-go-round dressed as Sonic, I knew I had to watch it posthaste. And moreso, talk about it. Did that enthusiasm last after I watched the short? Well, not in the same way, I can safely say. But before you read what I thought, go ahead and watch it for yourself. A brief warning, even though there’s nothing violent or sexual in it, the film is definitely not targeted towards kids, so hide them away for seven minutes.
The Hedgehog from Chris Lee & Paul Storrie on Vimeo.
Yep. That was nominated for best UK Short Film at the 2015 London Short Film Festival.
Last week my ‘Something for the Weekend’ feature was on the subject of GameChops’ awesome new ‘Spindash’ album, full of dance remixes of classic Sonic tracks. Hopefully if you enjoyed that taste you looked a little more into GameChops and what else they’ve done.
PROTIP: There’s some mighty fine stuff there.
But I’m not here to link another playlist or album, not exactly. Today I actually wanted to talk about why GameChops, as a concept, is actually really cool and why you should be following them closely.
Founed by Dj CUTMAN, all of the music GameChops produces is video game-related. You could have probably guessed that – but did you also guess that supporting GameChops financially actually puts money in several pockets? This comes from the way in which the label operates through their partners at Loudr.fm. According to their website, ‘Loudr.fm is an incredible new platform for musicians who create cover songs, like our game remixes. In the past, acquiring mechanical licenses was an expensive and time consuming process. Loudr has revolutionized this by providing a distribution platform with built-in licensing.’
What this effectively means is that when an artist remixes a piece of video game music, be it Sonic, Mega Man, whatever you like; when you support that artist, you are actually supporting them and also the rights-holders of the original track. This effectively means that GameChops remixes are all officially licensed, after a fashion.
So go check them out, you (probably) won’t be disappointed.
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.)
