That time of year is upon us once again – Summer of Sonic, the Sonic the Hedgehog fan convention in the UK, held its 6th show this weekend just gone; back in London again following a brief visit to Brighton last year. This year the event boasted as guests Takashi Iizuka, Jun Senoue, and Kazuyuki Hoshino; with a playable build of the upcoming new title Sonic Lost World available. So let’s dive in, shall we?
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I Forgot to do a Monday Links: Rated E10+ Edition
It’s the grand return of the not Monday Links! Seeing how some things happened (or are happening), I guess there’s reason enough to do one of these again. Also I’m bored and don’t want to do the things I should be doing. Anyway, here are some links:
Retro News
- Tomorrow is the last day you can add a new entry to the Sonic Hacking Contest 2013, so this is your last chance if you still have something you want to place in the contest! [SHC2013]
- Also tomorrow, an update to the Sonic Adventure Generations mod which adds 2 new levels. [Youtube]
Sonic/SEGA News
- A whole 15 minutes of gameplay of the Castle of Illusion re-imagining. [SEGAbits]
- The ESRB has put up the rating summary for Sonic Lost World explaining why it is rated E10+ revealing incredibly dark generic things villains usually say, obviously various fans overreact about it. [ESRB]
- Yuji Naka’s new game Rodea the Sky Soldier is still a thing. [Ferraris for everyone!]
- SEGA announced a new Sakura Wars game for Mobage while nobody wants it. [SEGAbits]
- A new Sonic game was announced and released. [Hurr hurr hurrrrrr]
Watch live video from vidyaretro on TwitchTV
Its free weekend for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on Steam. Which sounds like a prime opportunity to host a community stream for this very occasion. Granted, its quite last minute, but then again, we had no clue this was going to happen until yesterday. Come join in the fun with us, and if you want to play with us, we’ll give you the information on the air, or check with the stream’s chat by going to the Vidya Retro channel on Twitch.
Its over, but we’ve recorded all four hours of the free racing action with our Retro crew talking about…something? Also in the meantime, we’ve streamed something earlier that may catch your attention: Fan Game Frenzy II, hot off of Sonic Doom II, we look at more Sonic fan games from the yesteryear.
Rev up your disassemblies, it’s that time of the year where aspiring Sonic game hackers get their chance to show off new game ideas once more. Registration for the 2013 Sonic Hacking Contest is now open. In the past, the contest has seen magnificent entries such as the highly-praised Sonic Megamix or the blistering fast (and brutally difficult) Sonic Boom.
Novice hackers of course shouldn’t be so intimidated to enter after seeing names like those, since all it takes is a little creativity to strike gold. Robotnik’s Revenge, anyone?
This year is promised to be the biggest year for the contest according to contest judge SuperEgg.
Yes folks, this year all the stops have been pulled, and media coverage wasn’t an exception. For years, this contest had been only covered by MegaGWolf, but this year is going to be different. Through many hours of research and development, the judges realized that the need to bring attention to this community gem has been lacking, and something needed to be done about it.
I took the initiative and invited one of the ever popularly growing YouTube reveiwer, SomeCallMeJohnny, to play with us during this contest. He will be making a series of videos reviewing the hacks in the contest. Another incentive to make sure your hacks are tip top shape for contest, eh?
Johnny is a cool guy, so be nice. No promises that he won’t bite, cause you never know, the evil Sonic hat could easily possess him again……
With more eyes on the contest than ever before, it’s time to see what all the hackers out there, talented or otherwise, can really do. To submit an entry, vote and comment, you must have a Sonic Retro OR a Sonic Stuff Research Group account that has gone through the respective site’s trial period. Exceptions will be considered, so don’t let this be a deterrent.
Submissions must be done through the contest’s website, located here.
Another fine release by Lake Feperd (and his crew of musical co-horts) today as Sonic After the Sequel which is a fan-made sequel to Sonic Before the Sequel which was a prequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. You can visit this link here to grab the game for yourself. Pretty impressive considering the previous release was only a year ago, yet retains its own unique level themes, branching paths and more. In addition, Lake Feperd has announced a few months ago that he is working on a new Sonic fan game titled Sonic Chrono Adventure which takes inspiration from other titles such as Sonic CD and involves time travel and more open world gameplay.
But don’t get ahead of yourself, check out After the Sequel today! While you’re waiting, you can view the release trailer shown above.
Watch live video from vidyaretro on TwitchTV
Have you subscribed to our Twitch channel? We’ve been doing some streams to mess about while we prepare for the next Retro Community Day (Which is likely to happen soon!) When you subscribe, you’ll learn about when we do some unannounced streams. (That is, what we don’t announce on the front page.)
Last Friday, me and the Retro crew sat through the precursor of Sonic Robo Blast 2; Sonic Doom 2 – Bots on Mobius, a total conversion of Doom II: Hell on Earth that attempts to bring the aesthetics of the Sonic universe with guns. Well, sort of. We play through the mod to it’s completion, for better or worse as I jog my memory of this mod from over 10 years ago. Sonic fan games during the 90’s were certainly something else and somehow, I spent some time of my youth playing this. Probably more than I should have.
If you want to play the mod for yourself, SSNTails recently updated the mod to be compatible with zDoom and you can find it here.
Retro user Orengefox posted on the forums his discovery of two Japanese prototypes of Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 on Sega Dreamcast. Both of which have a potential source of content that are missing from the final builds with the Sonic Adventure Auto Demo showing some good promise.
The following was written by forum member Hinchy, who was a personal friend of Polygon Jim.
Cody “Rick ‘Polygon Jim’ ‘Pegleg Jimmy’ ‘Grand Master Jimmy’ ‘PeglegPolygonGrandmasterJimmyJimJimmy’ Fields” Lawrence
April 10, 1992 – May 18, 2013
This is the picture I took the last time I was ever with him. I’m still amazed that he managed to make that domino tower while drunk.
What can you say about Jimmy? He had a goofy sense of humor, hilarious to some, aggravating to others, but I don’t think anyone would deny that he was a man of charisma and fun. He was the most reckless guy I’ve ever met in my life, that’s for sure. He lived and died with the spirit of fucking around.
I’d known Jimmy for a good 5 years. During the lead-up to Sonic Unleashed, he was 50% of the reason I decided to check out Sonic Retro in the first place. Last fall, in the span of about 24 hours, he drove to Louisiana and became my roommate and hang-out buddy. There were ups and downs, but we had the time of our lives. Unfortunately, he couldn’t maintain the rent and moved back to his home in Pennsylvania. My chief concern about it a couple weeks ago was that he and I didn’t get to go see Iron Man 3 in theaters like we had planned… now that he’s dead, I have to get it through my head that I’ll never see him ever again.
Though he leaves this world today, he will live on in the Sonic community through the best hack ever and the phrase “assface Sonic”, which he coined.
Rest in peace, you magnificent bastard.
Read the local news report on the incident here.
The Sonic the Hedgehog comics, Archie and STC alike, have dedicated followings. One of the people responsible for the comics is Ian Flynn, the chief writer for the Archie series since #160. Recently, he sat down for an interview with the Super Power Flower Hour, a relatively new Sonic-related podcast. He gives his thoughts on the Sonic franchise, working on the comics, the Mega Man comics, and more. Check it out.
We all remember Sonic 2 HD and how it regrettably met its end not long after releasing a playable demo of Emerald Hill Zone due to internal controversy. Just because the door on that project closed though doesn’t mean that this was the end for them. Some of the team, now working under PagodaWest Games, put their talents toward a brand new IP for iOS systems called Major Magnet.
Retro Engine creator and the man behind the 2011 digital port of Sonic CD Christian “Taxman” Whitehead confirmed as much in a tweet to his followers earlier today congratulating the group on the successes the dev’s title has met, including an Editor’s Choice award from Apple itself.
While Sonic 2 HD may be resting eternally, definitely give these guys some love and pick up the game on your iOS device and hope that they can bring the game over to other platforms. Good job, PagodaWest!