Recently revealed is the trailer for this year’s Sonic Hacking Contest of 2022 by BlueVivacity as seen on Twitter. The event goes live next week from October 10th to the 16th. Many ROM hacks, mods and add-ons for your favorite Sonic games will be up for grabs. If you’re not sure what to play, you’ll have a chance to see them in action from streamers as the week goes on. Of course vote for your favorite entries to earn one of several awards. After the jump you’ll be able to see what trophy awards are up for grabs this year and of course what will even show up at this year’s contest.
Sonic Adventure 2
Good news, soundtrack fans and vinyl collectors! Limited Run Games have announced vinyl releases of both the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 soundtracks and pre-orders are going live tomorrow! Read on to find out more!
From the moment the Kickstarter was announced, my UK-based Retro compatriates and I knew this was going to be a special occasion. The Sonic Adventure Music Experience was headed to our shores courtesy of Sonic Stadium patriarchs and event organizing extraordinaires, Adam “T-Bird” Tuff and Svend “Dreadknux” Joscelyne. Excitement was instantly at fever-pitch. To top it all off, it was in December, which lined up perfectly with the latest Sonic Retro UK Winter Barcade – the timing was impeccable. So, how was the show and the events surrounding it I hear you eagerly ask? Hit the jump to find out!
The week has drawn to a close as does another year of the Sonic Hacking Contest. The results have arrived and you can watch judge commentary from the above video as the trophies are awarded one by one. The video is hosted by both TailsChannel and MegaGWolf For a summary of the contest results, you can read them along with notes from contest judge Spanner after the jump.
Discuss the results on our board in this thread.
Check out the official website here. (sonichacking.org)
Let the team know what you think! Be sure to fill out the feedback form here.
EDIT: Updated the article to embed the trailer hosted by TailsChannel.
The deadline for entries has passed and the community has provided a helping of hacks and mods for both the Expo and the Hacking Contest, including entries for both Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania for the contest. Since its nearly Turkey Day its time for me to bust out some food adjectives. You can also expect savory helpings of mods for Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Adventure 2, a drizzle of SEGA Mega Drive and Genesis ROM hacks and more. Hit the jump to check out whats on the menu this year. In the meantime there is one entry made available early to the public, Sonic 3 & Knuckles Battle Race. Check out this page for download information and more before the smorgasbord later this month!
The contest week is set for Monday through Sunday, 26th of November to the 2nd of December. To learn more about the rules and trophy guidelines you can check out the contest’s new website by visiting sonichacking.org.
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]
So a week has gone by since we streamed the Hero Story of Sonic Adventure 2 – and what a stream it was! Many ups, many downs, and we somehow miraculously managed to start at 20:00 and finish at 22:00 with the credits ending. Exactly two hours!
Whether that will happen again this time is totally up in the air, as we’ll be playing the Dark Story this weekend – and most likely the Final Story, too. Somehow I don’t think Cannon’s Core can carry a stream by itself.
If you want to tune in, chat with some of the staff – and Sam and Spanner – and just spend your Saturday night with some Sonic goodness/badness (14 years on and the jury’s still out on that one), tune in to NovaRetro on Twitch tomorrow at 20:00 BST/15:00 EST/12:00 PST.
See you there!
So, there it is. Sonic Adventure 2. We’ve done a few streams recently, from speeding through the brilliant Unleashed Project and Sonic Generations to a playthrough of LakeFeperd’s absolutely stellar Sonic After The Sequel, so we’re starting to get a bit of a feel for the core ‘stream team’.
I was trying to think of what to play this weekend – I knew we needed something but I struggled with what that should be most of this week. Then this idea hit me. I didn’t want to do the original Sonic Adventure for a couple of specific reasons – first of all, I don’t think it’s as consitently interesting. There’s not as much to riff on. Then you have the fact that the Grumps are playing it currently and I think everyone’s a bit tired of seeing it right now. So this led us to Sonic Adventure 2.
We’re aiming to play at least the Hero story tonight, with the Dark story to follow next week if there’s enough interest. We’ll be watching the often-horrendous cut-scenes too, so it should be a fun packed stream that should neatly carry us to that 2 hour mark or even beyond.
So if you fancy joining us tonight, head on over to NovaRetro on Twitch at 8pm BST/3pm EST/12pm PST.

You’ll find a heavy representation of Sonic at this year’s event with such hits as Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Sonic Generations, Sonic Heroes, Sonic 2, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic Advance and Sonic Advance 2. You’ll also find a number of SEGA favorites including World of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck, Rocket Knight Adventures, Ristar, Dynamite Headdy, Streets of Rage 2, Crazy Taxi, F-Zero GX, Super Monkey Ball Deluxe, Pocket Monster II, (Yes, really.) Taz-Mania and Shinobi III; Return of the Ninja Master.
Be sure to check out their Twitch channel and see how you can contribute to a good cause. (P.S. Bid all money on all Big the Cat, as much as possible.)
Yup, after half a year it’s been decided to make Monday Links a thing again. Many board meetings at the Sonic Retro HQ were held to discuss the return of this beloved (?) weekly (???) feature, and we finally decided that it’s probably not worth our time. Then we realized that handling a Sonic news fansite in this day and age isn’t really worth our time either, and that there really hasn’t been any point to anything we’ve put up on this front page for years now. So with that taken into consideration, Monday Links has returned after all, cause really it’s not any less pointless than anything else on the front page.
Retro News
- Josh released the first part of his retrospective video series about Sonic spin-offs [Sonic Jam Spinball: Flickies’ Island]
- Matwek is doing the art for this neat looking game called Poncho on Kickstarter [An open-world puzzle platformer]
SEGAbits News
- Barry is doing a 9 hour Dreamcast marathon tomorrow for the 15th anniversary of the Dreamcast [The Dreamroom Dreamcast Marathon returns]
- SEGAbits is holding an event on November 22nd called the Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam [All of the info about it can be found here]
- Nuckles87 shares his impressions of the Japan-exclusive game Cool Cool Toon for Dreamcast [SEGA Import Guide]
- It’s time for another one of these round tables [What Dreamcast game defined the console?]
- My Life with SEGA takes a look at the SEGA CD games made by Digital Pictures [The magic of FMV games]
Sonic/SEGA News
- Sonic XG still exists and looks awesome [Giant Crabmeat!]
- A new album called Passion & Pride with songs from Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 is being released, containing instrumental versions and a new remix of It Doesn’t Matter [Coming September 10th]
- This new Persona 5 trailer reveals the game’s protagonist and that the game is coming to the Playstation 4 as well as Playstation 3 [I want it I want it I want it]
- The first trailer of Yakuza Zero, which will be coming to Playstation 3 and Playstation 4, was released [*Put Zero chance of coming out of Japan joke here*]
- The latest Nintendo Direct has half an hour of Bayonetta 2 goodness to make you excited about the game [Controls that meld with your mind]
- It looks like Persona 4 Arena Ultimax will be published by SEGA in Europe [Maybe we won’t have to wait forever for it to be released here]
- SEGA points fingers at Gearbox for the Aliens: Colonial Marines marketing mess [As if Randy Pitchford didn’t look bad enough already]
- Hi Score Girl gets copyright complaints from SEGA [Remember kids: using SEGA properties in commercial stuff will probably get you in legal trouble]
- Dawn of War II now uses dedicated servers instead of Games for Windows Live [Because Games for Windows Live is terrible and also almost dead]
- Super Monkey Ball Bounce is now out on iOS and Google Play [Also known as Not Peggle]
- Sadly there will probably never be a cure for liking Sonic the Hedgehog [Guess we’ll just have to continue living with our condition]