Because SEGA decided that they’re no longer releasing new Sonic games annually to give developers more time to properly finish the games, there hasn’t been a big new Sonic game in the past year. The Sonic fanbase doesn’t seem to be used to not having a new game to complain about play for longer than a year, meaning that they’re desperate for news. So desperate that they’d even look for info at the Toy Fair.
That being said: we’re part of that Sonic fanbase, and we also happen to be just as desperate, so time to look for new info at the Toy Fair. Thanks to the Flickr of Paul Nicholasi of Idle Hands, we know all the new details from the Tomy booth at the event. And it turns out that there’s quite a bit of new stuff to know about, though nothing about the new big 25th anniversary game everyone wants to know about.
Sonic Boom (TV Series)
The second season of Sonic Boom (the TV show, not the SatAM episode) has gone into production, at least according to French website Mediakwest. This was announced today at the MIPCOM trade show by LER, the distributor of the series outside of the US and Asia (not including Japan). The amount of new episodes that are being produced is unknown, but if it’s the same amount as the first season we’ll be getting another 52 episodes.
The first season has already finished airing in France at this point, with the US only having to catch up to the last six episodes. The season finale will feature the first appearance of Shadow on the show, which I’m sure Mike Pollock is overjoyed about.
[Via TSSZ News]
SEGAbits and Sonic Retro team up to bring you a podcast focused on SEGA’s Sonic Boom franchise! Hosted by Barry the Nomad of SEGAbits.com and David the Lurker of SonicRetro.org, Boom Talkalaka features discussion of the many aspects of Sonic Boom – from comics and episodes of the cartoon, to the video games and toys.
In this episode, Barry and David discuss an early version of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric under the working title Sonic Synergy and take a look at concept art of elaborate in-store Sonic Boom displays. Also covered are the latest TV show episodes, the second comic book arc, the upcoming Worlds Unite comic book crossover, and we share our thoughts on the future of the new branch on the Sonic the Hedgehog tree.
[Download] [RSS]
It looks like we’ll be getting more of Sonic Boom, as a job ad that SEGA put up a couple of days ago confirms that the TV show continues production. The job listing is for a “Director of TV Series Production and Distribution” who’ll oversee the production and distribution of the show. This also involves helping the CCO “evaluate business models for new opportunities/subsequent seasons of Sonic Boom“.
When the show was first revealed, SEGA mentioned in their press release that the show had an initial order of 52 eleven-minute episodes. It could be that the new episodes that are being produced are still part of this initial order, though of course it’s also possible that they’ve started production on a new season. You can read the full job listing after the jump.
[Via: The Sonic Stadium]
I did it you guys. I got Monday Links to actually be a weekly thing for every Monday of a month. I checked and this is something that hasn’t been achieved since 2010 when Slingerland was doing this thing. This is something that I’ve tried very, very, veeeery hard to achieve since I did my first of these back in 2013. And really I probably wouldn’t have done it without Bartman3010 starting it up again. Speaking of which, why isn’t he doing Monday Links anymore? I bet he’s probably doing “more important stuff” and “chasing his dreams” like learning how to make games for the Nvidia Tegra. Pfft.
Now what was I supposed to be doing? Oh right, links.
Sonic Retro stuff
- UtopiaUK put up a video showing some WIP zones from his Sonic 3 Resort Island hack. [Watch the video here and take a look at the forum thread]
- Cinossu made a Blue Sphere hack and he assured us that it’s not a jump scare. [Also don’t look at the spoilers, it ruins the fun]
- Hez shows off his unlockable Wood Zone level in Sonic Classic 2. [Cause unlockables are fun]
- MainMemory has added support for Sonic CD in SonLVL. [Please don’t make more Wacky Workbench levels]
- Enemies can now be constrained to a 2D plane in Xaklse’s new release of SonicGDK. [Handy for those fancy 2.5D platformer]
- LakeFeperd gives an update on what’s going on with Spark the Electric Jester. [Making games can be kinda hard]
- flamewing has released the first new update for SMPS2ASM in years. [Less buggy song stuff]
- We have a new feature called “Something For The Weekend” by our new writer Nova, with fun and cool Sonic stuff. [So go take a look at last weekend’s cool Sonic thing]
Sonic stuff
- Jollyroger has gotten the Sonic X-treme prototype that was found to work on SEGA Saturn hardware. [Progress!]
- The first Sonic Runners gameplay trailers shows that the game is about running. [Now with a more classic but also still modern Sonic]
- Yuji Naka/Prope’s new game Rodea the Sky Soldier will be released in the west by NIS America. [You know, that game that was announced four years ago]
- The sequel to the Sonic and Mega Man Worlds Collide comic cross-over will feature cameos of other SEGA and Capcom characters. [Viewtiful Joe please]
- Enjoyed the latest Sonic Boom episode? If so, good cause we’re gonna see a lot more this year. [If not, stop hating fun you fun hating not-fun-haver]
- How many toys can SEGA still make out of Sonic Boom? [At least this many apparently]
Turns out that the Sonic Boom games being terrible didn’t completely ruin the series. Turner Broadcasting sent out a press release today that says the Sonic Boom TV show will be a returning series in Cartoon Network’s 2015-2016 series. Seeing how only a quarter of the show’s first season has aired though, this likely means that they’ll just keep on airing the rest of the episodes rather than a new season being produced.
Other notable non-Sonic related stuff coming up is a Powerpuff Girls reboot (seemingly in the same style as last year’s CGI special) and a direct-to-TV Regular Show movie.
Straight from Sonic Boom (the event, not the TV show), SEGA just announced that Sonic Boom (the TV show, not the event) will premier in the US on Cartoon Network on Saturday, November 8th. So we’ll be able to see the show before Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal are released. A sneak preview was shown as well, with the reaction to it being very positive.
As for Europe, the show won’t be appearing in most of that region until Autumn 2015. Well, unless you’re French, the show will air at an earlier unannounced date there. Apparently being in the country where the show is produced has its benefits. The rest of you Europeans can just sit and reflect on just how many more things called Sonic Boom we’re going to get.
Update: SEGA just released the sneak preview online for all to see, be sure to watch it above!
SDCC 2014: We See How the Sonic Boom TV Series is Made Along With a Bunch of New Characters
With the San Diego Comic Con coming up, SEGA is already showcasing some new Sonic Boom stuff. First up is this behind the scenes video about how the animated series is made. It shows various people who work on the series saying some stuff and we see some work in progress stuff. But more importantly, at one point in the video you can see concept art of Eggman playing volleyball with Orbot and Cubot in the background. We at Sonic Retro hope that there will be an entire episode dedicated to this piece of concept art, because there really needs to be one.
And now for something all Sonic fans like for sure: new characters! All of whom will appear in Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, with some also popping up in the animated series. Sadly only a couple of them are recolors of Sonic, but I’m sure that there will be a lot of fan-art of at least one of them. All of them can be seen in the gallery below, you can read SEGA’s blogpost about them if you want to know more about them.