Sega held a party for Sonic’s 25th anniversary at one of their Joypolis parks in Japan earlier today, which they live streamed online. There they showed new gameplay of Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice and announced that the next main Sonic game will be released in 2017.
But the coolest thing that was shown was the original concept art of various Sonic characters. While a bunch of it has been shown before (and can be found on our wiki), we also get to see never before seen design sketches of characters like Shadow the Hedgehog, E-102 Gamma and Big the Cat for the first time. You can see all of the concept art that was shown above.
[Source: The Video Game Art Archive]
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Its existence has been around the rumor mill for a bit of time, but SEGA today officially confirmed Sonic Runners as a 2015 title. But rather than being the next main line Sonic title from Japan, Sonic Runners was also confirmed as a mobile title.
No other details of the game were shown at the recent event at SEGA Joypolis. Media of the game floating around right now is false as SEGA have not released any sort of promotional assets, but we’ll no doubt see them in time and mock that it may very well be a touched up Sonic Dash/Sonic Storybook title hybrid.
Not the most exciting bit of news, but it’s a little something to kick off your Sunday morning and wind down 2014.
[Source: SegaDriven]
Do you live in Tokyo and want to see Sonic’s ass in front of you while you run on a treadmill? Well soon you can in a new arcade game called Sonic Athletics. In this game you will need to run as fast as possible on a treadmill to get the highest score. While you do this you will also see a Sonic character run on a screen in front of you. The faster you run, the faster Sonic or a different character runs as well. This game can be played with up to eight players, each as a different character. The playable characters are Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, Metal Sonic, Silver and Blaze.
This glorified treadmill will be open for all starting from April 25th at SEGA’s Joypolis in Tokyo and will cost 500 yen per game. It also seems like this will be the only place where it can be played, everywhere else people will probably have to stick to boring ordinary treadmills.
[Source: The Sonic Stadium]
So America got Sonic Boom during E3, and the U.K. is getting Summer of Sonic this weekend. But what about Japan, the country where the original Sonic the Hedgehog was conceptualized and produced? Well, this past weekend the Sega Joypolis arcade in Tokyo, Japan held their “Sonic the Hedgehog 20th Birthday Party Anniversary Exhibition.” While the Sonic display connected to it opened on the 11th of June, last Saturday was the big celebration, going full out for the 100 invited guests along with whoever else could fit through the door at the last minute. These diehard Japanese fans were not disappointed, able to see Naka, Ohshima and Iizuka live on stage. Sure, there wasn’t a 40 minute Crush 40 extravaganza, but Senoue was more then willing to show his smiling mug, and the Director of Sonic Generations was also on hand. After all, wasn’t the announcement of Sonic’s latest game that got this whole 20th celebration rolling?