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!
Having raised over $1800 for Child’s Play back in August, members of The Sonic Center, along with some speedrunners from Speed Demos Archive and SpeedRunsLive, are again running about 50 hours of Sonic Team games. Proceeds from this year’s marathon will benefit the American Cancer Society, and your donations can determine what you see, such as Chaos Emerald collection, fishing for Froggy, or stage selection in Sonic Shuffle.
Join in for both speedruns and casual play of all of your favourite and least-favourite games, playthroughs of other Sonic Team IPs such as NiGHTS and Burning Rangers, as well the ever-popular Tails Skypatrol, as audience play for Puyo Pop and Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed for Xbox 360, and- wait, what do you mean you don’t know what Puyo Pop is? We didn’t work on Sega Retro for you to ignore it!
View the stream through the main site here: http://www.soniccenter.org/stream
Or you can view via Twitch.tv directly: http://www.twitch.tv/tsc_streams
We first reported on the Unleashed Project over a year ago, when Sonic Retro community members (and all-around beautiful people) Dario FF, Twilightzoney, and Chimera revealed the earliest footage of their experiments with porting stages from Sonic Unleashed into the PC version of Sonic Generations. Today, thanks to the incredible efforts of Dario and his team, they’ve released the first completed version of the project, including all eight major daytime stages from the original Unleashed ported to Generations, along with a redesigned hub world and reworked level progression.
Now you can play through all of the best parts of Unleashed without having to endure the suffering caused by Werehog fatigue and medal-hunting. Plus, you can enjoy the beautiful art direction of each stage in full 1080p at 60 frames per second (provided your computer can handle it – my Phenom II X4 cries during Jungle Joyride), and many of the game’s lower-resolution textures have been recreated in higher quality so you can get the most out of your PC’s graphics card. Of course, the stages also benefit from improvements and changes Generations made over its predecessor, such as tighter controls and the addition of customizable skills.
Be sure to check out the trailer after the break, complete with an orgasmic remix of the Unleashed final boss theme by Retro musician Falk, known for his work on fan games such as Sonic Before the Sequel and After the Sequel (and who also did the hub world remixes of the Unleashed stage themes for this project). You should also head to the project’s ModDB page, where you can find links to download the mod for yourself. Finally, a tremendous thanks to the Unleashed Project team for all the hard work they’ve put in over the past year to get this polished up and ready for release. This project is a stellar example of the kind of awesome stuff we love to see from the Retro community.
When it comes to games involving Sega in some capacity, it almost seems like the game itself isn’t the only thing players are paying for, but a whole new meta-game called, “Let’s improve the game through hacking through the game’s data.”
This new style of gameplay, which from here on we’ll call Tactical Debugging Action/Adventure™, has already drawn some talented programmers to sift through the game’s code on the PC version in an effort to enhance the game graphically and could potentially lead to repairing other issues such as enemy A.I. and other parameters.
Okay, even I wasn’t sure of what would happen on the release of Aliens: Colonial Marines when I wrote my initial preview of the game. If you’re a PC user, you could look over some fixes and patches a dedicated community is looking into. A real unfortunate turn out for a game that’s been in development for over six years. Either way, it’s a Monday Tuesday which we put off for a week, but word is still mum in the world of video games, which will change shortly. Until then, here are a few things that are worth your attention.
Retro News
Colonial Marines & SEGA News
Here in America, it’s Martin Luther King Jr’s Day. It’s also Inauguration Day for President Obama. If you’re a Fox Newscaster, today is probably the worst day of your life. But for everyone else, t’s an action packed day to let you guys know the up and up on whats been going on in today’s Monday Links. Oh man, whats that?
Retro News
Sonic & SEGA News
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, and by that I mean not go to Sonic-related websites in the past few days, you know that Eddie Lebron released his Sonic fan film last week. And if you’ve seen you’ll probably think that it’s impressive for a low-budget fan project or that it’s crap. Or you actually have a different opinion than the majority of the internet, but that’d just be silly. Anyway monday links.
Sonic Retro News
Sonic/SEGA News
Other Stuff
Video of the Week
