Because SEGA decided that they’re no longer releasing new Sonic games annually to give developers more time to properly finish the games, there hasn’t been a big new Sonic game in the past year. The Sonic fanbase doesn’t seem to be used to not having a new game to complain about play for longer than a year, meaning that they’re desperate for news. So desperate that they’d even look for info at the Toy Fair.
That being said: we’re part of that Sonic fanbase, and we also happen to be just as desperate, so time to look for new info at the Toy Fair. Thanks to the Flickr of Paul Nicholasi of Idle Hands, we know all the new details from the Tomy booth at the event. And it turns out that there’s quite a bit of new stuff to know about, though nothing about the new big 25th anniversary game everyone wants to know about.
Browsing Category
Game News
Arcade Games, Game News
SegaSonic Bros., an Unreleased Sonic Arcade Game by Puzzle Bobble Designer, Discovered
With the Sonic series getting older, it’s also becoming harder to find copies of prototypes of both released and unreleased games in the series. Aside from old video game companies not having put enough effort into archiving their work, game cartridges and arcade boards don’t last forever and will probably start to decay in a decade or two. Meaning that the sooner they’re found and archived the better.
So it’s a good thing that arcade board collector ShouTime found a copy of a long lost unreleased Sonic arcade game that none of us even knew about. The game in question here is SegaSonic Bros., a puzzle game similar to Cleopatra Fortune which would have been the last game for which Fukio Mitsuji would have been credited as designer. Mitsuji was most famous for designing the classic Puzzle Bobble. (also known as Bust-A-Move in North America.)
While most of you have probably never heard about the game until the past few days, it turns out that details about it were actually already posted online two years ago. Back in December of 2013, Kohji Kenjoh (who happens to be the mind behind Custom Robo) wrote about playing the game on SEGA’s own social media website it-tells. And half a year later he asked SEGA producer Yosuke Okunari about the game on Twitter, who responded and even posted a photo of the game.
I’m sure a lot of you will probably want to try the game out. Thankfully ShouTime isn’t one of those collectors who wants to keep their collection precious and special by not sharing any of it with the world. He’s helped dump both released and unreleased arcade games in the past. This includes SegaSonic Popcorn Shop, which he helped dump in the October of last year. So he’ll probably share SegaSonic Bros. online as well at some point, meaning that you’ll be able to play the game using MAME.
We have no idea when the game will be dumped, but in the meantime you should keep an eye on ShouTime’s Tumblr as he has been updating it with photos of the game as well as of other arcade games that he’s been collecting. You can also read Kohji Kenjoh’s description of the game, translated by forum member RyogaMasaki, below.
In part of a presentation highlighting the company’s strongest performers, Sonic Runners is ranked as a failure. The game generates a little between ¥30 million [$256,563 USD] to ¥50 million [$427,588 USD] a month.
It should come as little surprise to anyone following industry news that the mobile market is a veritable shark tank, fighting with many others for a limited pool of money and attention spans. SEGA is part of those never ending digital meat grinding, and is touting their successes in the market. Sonic Runners isn’t so fortunate.
These numbers appear under the Domestic Market section, likely indicating they are Japan specific, but the fact Runners fails to even show up in the Overseas section doesn’t bode well. In fact, the game is no longer available for download on the U.S. Google Play Store and hasn’t been since Nov. 2015.
This shouldn’t come as a shock given the negative reception that surrounded Runners. Since officially going global Summer 2015, the game was constantly criticized for performance issues, glitches, and microtransaction practices that for all intents and purposes amount to under-aged gambling for new characters. If anything, it was a fine endless runner at its core drowned by countless terrible design decisions.
Most of these came to a head with the recent 2.0 update that added death walls to runs, offered more performance issues and overheating devices, and did little to improve the character unlock structure to make it less like a gamble.
One thing to note though is Sonic Dash 2 (referred to as Sonic Dash Boom and Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom) is expected to meet continued successes overseas with pushes to continue expanding its market presence.
In the Sonic Internet community, there have been few stories that have captured the imagination like the tale of Sonic the Hedgehog 3‘s music. With a feel unique from the previous two entries in the series, the discussion of just who composed what have filled untold pages of conversation for well over a decade.
The reason behind that infatuation? Michael Jackson, one of the biggest pop stars of all time. A man who not only defined a decade with the release of Thriller, but also unknowingly inspired the belt buckle of Sonic’s shoes. The idea that a musical icon that large was connected to the gaming sensation of the 90’s in any way was incredibly tantalizing. It wouldn’t be long before audio files, YouTube videos, and snippets of interviews would fill in the gaps. From Qjimbo to GameTrailers, everyone sought to find the answer to what seemed the impossible – confirmation that the King of Pop had been involved in the soundtrack of Sonic 3 at some point, as SEGA’s official line to this day has been to deny or leave no comment.
While it has been almost certainly determined that Michael Jackson was not only involved but that some of his contributions made it to the cartridge, the Huffington Post’s Test Kitchen released today a brand new look at the entire Sonic 3 Jackson story. From what happened behind the scenes to the fandom’s unending interest in the truth, “The Michael Jackson Video Game Conspiracy” by Todd Van Luling covers it all.
With new interviews from Roger Hector, Doug Grigsby III, Brad Buxer, Cirocco Jones and Matt Forger, to comments from Ben Mallison and Steven Nipper that illuminate the community’s part in the story, the article is definitely worth a read for those with even a passing interest in the subject matter.
The only question I’m left with is…who has ever called a Sonic fan a “Blue?”
Source: Huffington Post
Right, after Gene stole the glory of doing the last ever Monday Links, it’s time for me to start this Retro Digest thing.
So basically Retro Digest will be replacing Monday Links, the supposed-to-be-weekly summary of what’s been happening around the Sonic scene. Except it was almost never actually weekly and it often wasn’t done on Mondays either. So to stop people from making any more snarky responses pointing this out we’re renaming it to Retro Digest. This is our first step in removing all snarkiness on the internet, wish us luck!
Anyway, 2016 is already off to a pretty decent start when it comes to Sonic stuff, with the community doing cool stuff and Sega teasing the fanbase. So here’s a look at the neat stuff that’s been happening
So remember those nice looking 3D Classics collections with cover art by Ken Sugimori SEGA put out in Japan? Well, the second one of those is coming to North America as SEGA 3D Classics Collection, probably cause it’s the one that has Sonic in it. It is the better collection out of the two to release here anyway, cause it’s also the one with some 3D Classics that haven’t been released in the west. These ones to be exact:
The collection also includes these games, which are already available on the 3DS eShop:
The collection will be released in North America on April 26th for $29.99 exclusively on Nintendo 3DS. SEGA hasn’t announced a release for Europe yet.
P.S. Click on the image for the full box-art.
Update: Johnny has since deleted this post from Facebook.
It looks like we may get more of Crush 40’s amazingly dumb but also still amazingly great songs in the 25th anniversary game. While answering fan questions on Facebook, Johnny Gioeli said this when asked about their next album:
When will there be news about the Crush 40 album?
~We are planning a few performances for 2016 to commemorate the anniversary of Sonic. We “might” participate in writing new songs for the anniversary game…stay tuned…
Really at this point it’s probably already been decided if they’ll be doing new songs for the game, so it’s looking pretty likely that that will actually happen. Meaning that it’s 2016 and we’re probably still getting Crush 40 songs in Sonic games. Really there’s no better way to start the year than knowing this.
The Japanese Nintendo Youtube account recently uploaded this new overview trailer for the 3DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, showing plenty of gameplay of the new modes. There are also new characters Sega managed to scrape off the bottom of the barrel like Eggman Nega and Shitty BowserZavok from the Deadly Six.
One of the more noteworthy new modes is Champions Road, which seems to be the game’s main story mode. In this mode you play as your Mii, which you can dress up with various costumes. Some of which can be unlocked through amiibo. There also seems to be a decent amount of new Dream Events, which are basically the normal olympic events mixed up with elements from both the Mario and Sonic series. Those have always been the best thing about these games outside of the music, so this entry in the series having more of those definitely isn’t a bad thing.
But at the very least, we can probably expect the game to have a great soundtrack. Sega’s Sound Team has always done a fantastic job remixing Mario and Sonic music for these games, and we look forward to what they’ll be doing this time. The 3DS version will be released on February 18th, 2016 in Japan. It isn’t known yet when the game will be released elsewhere, or when the Wii U version will come out.
Turns out GalaxyTrail had a Christmas surprise in store, with them just having announced Freedom Planet 2. Several of our forum members are involved with the game’s development, with Stephen DiDuro (aka Strife) being the project lead again, Christian Whitehead (aka The Taxman) working on the game’s engine in Unity, and Falk Au Yeong consulting and mastering the game’s soundtrack.
Lilac, Carol and Milla return as the game’s protagonists, with each having a new look. And just like in the first game, there’ll be an adventure mode with a story and classic mode where all of the cutscenes are skipped. You can find a whole lot more info on the game’s official website, so be sure to check that out. And if you’re a member of our forums, you can discuss the game there as well.
If you haven’t played the original Freedom Planet, you can buy it for 35% off right now on Steam. It’s also available on the Wii U eShop, though there’s no discount on that version at the moment.
Short of piracy, YouTube channels, or paying some exuberant amount of money for what might be a bootleg, not every soundtrack is easily accessible. SEGA in the past has eased this and offering fans a way to actually support the musicians on iTunes and Amazon Music. Joining those two fronts now is Spotify, which in the past few days has seen quite a handful of soundtracks hit the freemium service.
If there is one thing this lovely splintered faction of fans can agree on, it is that the Sonic Series is nine times out of ten loaded with some great music. And why wouldn’t it? The folks at SEGA Sound Team are pretty great at their jobs and have some fun, like referencing the original Phantasy Star games in Phantasy Star Online tracks.
Almost every recent (within the last 10 years) set is available right now for your perusal. Sadly, some of these are not complete sets (Shadow’s OST alone is missing a handful of tracks), and regional blocks may forbid some tracks from even playing in your part of the world. That can’t be helped, unfortunately.
Joining the Sonic upload stream is Jet Set Radio Future‘s soundtrack, a game that criminally still resides as an original Xbox exclusive. While not a part of SEGA Sound Team, Hideki Naganuma no doubt has an infectious sound. Float like a butterfly, son. (That’s nice~)
The nice thing about Spotify is it’s available for free and makes a handy playlist generator for work. Though to get the most of the program, a monthly subscription is available and unlocks additional features on mobile devices.