Check out the archive of the livestream available now! We take a look back at Summer of Sonic 2016 and talk more on Sonic Mania! I’m joined with Retro staff Overlord, Cinossu, Orengefox and Jen along with Becky(JennyTablina), Neowl and TrackerTD.
Tune in today for talk on Summer of Sonic, more Sonic Mania and more with Sonic Retro, SEGAbits and guests!
Browsing Tag
Crush 40
With Summer of Sonic drawn to a close, the staff at Sonic Retro and SEGAbits will band together for one more run to share their thoughts on Sonic Mania and more on this week’s SEGA Channel Retro livestream on YouTube starting this Saturday at 9PM UTC+1.
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.
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.
Los Angeles, San Diego, St. Louis. Next stop: Empire City itself, New York City. Sega of America’s official blog confirmed that the East Coast now gets its chance to show the West Coast what kind of Sonic fans they are (sane, we hope.) Sonic Boom 2014 will be taking place in the evening of Oct. 4 from the Grand Ballroom at the Manhattan Center. It’s safe to expect Sonic Boom (the game) to be at the event, along with a Crush 40 musical performance and a Q&A with Takashi Iizuka.
After last year’s Q&A, let’s just hope we get some better questions going so Iizuka, as entertaining as it was to watch, doesn’t go full troll mode. For example:
Fan: “Where’s Froggy?”
Iizuka: “He’s with Big.”
Fan: “…so, where’s Big?”
Iizuka: “He’s with Froggy.”
Priceless.
In the heart of San Diego as the blood from the San Diego ComicCon pumps through the city, the House of Blues was bumping last night with the ’80s Hair Guitar stylings of Crush 40 belting out fan favourites and all new tracks, and a grand outpouring of love for the spiky Blue Blur from all 800 or so in attendance.
And Sonic Retro was there in force to experience it.
After a little meetup at a nearby Yard House with some of our older members and a few other fans, we made our way to House of Blues to discover that the line was already stretching around three corners of a block with people eager to attend Sega of America’s Second Annual celebration of all things Sonic. And while those of us in line joked about the stranger sides of the fandom, we ran into a familiar face frantically scurrying around the block to make sure the line was moving: Sega of America’s Sonic Generations Brand Manager Aaron “Ruby Eclipse” Webber. After some small talk, we left him on his way to continue making sure the line was moving at a steady pace.
As a little bit of a game after letting him go, a few of us wagered on a social experiment: if the six of us belted out loudly the first four lines of Live and Learn, how many people would join in? The result was far greater than expected and can only be truly enjoyed by the video captured of it. Keep an eye out here as we’ll post it once I’m able to get on an Internet service that can handle video uploading.
With that, we went inside the club.
After much fan demand, Sega has begun releasing several of their Sonic series soundtracks on to Apple’s iTunes service. Most of these albums, though recently released, aren’t too easy to track down and import for those looking to legally own the music, never mind worrying about bootlegs.
The albums now available are the 20th Anniversary editions of Sonic CD, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes, as well as “The Best of Crush 40: Super Sonic Songs”, “The Works” (Jun Senoue‘s standalone album featuring several original songs and some Sonic music), and Sonic Colors ViViD SOUND × HYBRiD COLORS, the last one lovingly divided into three volumes for all three discs (Disc 2 and Disc 3 can be found at those links.) Sega further states that the soundtrack to Sonic The Hedgehog 4‘s episodes will also be touching down on iTunes in the future.
It should be noted that the 20th Anniversary album for the two Adventure titles aren’t as all encompassing as their original releases, which may turn some fans off. However, this is the best chance short of importing to show support for the musicians that worked hard to keep series’ reputation for good music alive and well.
Crush 40, the band that performed the theme songs for past Sonic games such as both Sonic Adventure titles and Sonic Heroes, has put samples of three of their songs that will be on their upcoming EP. While none of the songs are tied to a new Sonic game, one of them is related to the franchise.
The first of these songs, Sonic Youth, heavily references past songs they made or remixed for the Sonic franchise such as Open Your Heart, Live and Learn, His World and Sonic Boom. The as of yet untitled EP will be available on iTunes sometime in the future. The full versions will be performed in Tokyo later this week.
Over at Sonic Boom, a small concert was thrown for the club’s goers by none other than Crush 40’s Jun Senoue and Johnny Gioeli, singing songs like Open Your Heart, His World, In The Wind, and Live and Learn to name a few. However, Alex Maklouhf from Cash Cash joined them on stage to also perform Sonic Colors’ Credits Theme, Speak With Your Heart.
So imagine some people’s reactions when they all got together and did new versions of Sonic R’s Super Sonic Racing and Sonic CD’s Sonic Boom, which were apparently one time performances for Sonic Boom attendees. Well, we got you covered.