Browsing Tag
Sonic Generations
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Retro News
- Dario put up a video of Cool Edge in Sonic Generations, also more details on when the Unleashed mod is going to be released. [Youtube] [ModDB]
- Tiddles showed some new stuff for his Sonic 3 Complete hack, also this happened 2-3 weeks ago. Oops. [Sonic 3 Complete]
- Pelikan13 has teased that The 90’s Arcade Racer could be coming to the Wii U. [Kickstarter]
- David is still doing his Mobius 25 Years Later thing. [Part 12]
Sonic/SEGA News
- SEGA bought Relic Entertainment, the developer of the Warhammer 40.000 and Company of Heroes game. Here’s some PR stuff about that. [SEGA Blog]
- A behind the scenes video of Bayonetta 2 was shown during the latest Nintendo Direct. [Youtube]
- Pix ‘N Love’s History of Sonic book is getting a collectors edition. [Sonic Stadium]
- SEGA of Japan is doing a 24 hour long live stream on February 2nd/3rd featuring Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F, Phantasy Star Online 2, Yakuza 5, Rusty Hearts, Puyo Puyo and Sonic Team. [SEGAbits]
- Sumo Digital has gotten approval to make one of the DLC characters for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed that fans requested. [SEGA Forums]
- Another Aliens: Colonial Marines has been released, this one features cheesy lines that are supposed to sound bad-ass. [Youtube]
Animation, Community, Fan Works, Game News, Miscellaneous, Sega Retro, Site News
Monday Links: Suddenly Fingers Edition
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
- Missed the community stream we did last Friday? It’s fully archived on Youtube along with a first look stream we did a while back. [Youtube]
- Dario released a new version of SonicGMI for Sonic Generations. [SonicGMI]
- Something that I missed last week, Mercury is working on a Sonic engine for in Game Maker called AeStHete (An excellent Sonic the Hedgehog engine that’s editable). [AeStHete Engine Thread]
Sonic/SEGA News
- The first details on the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed got revealed and the game is up for pre-purchased on services like Steam. [ASRT PC]
- Planning on getting Aliens: Colonial Marines for PC? You’ll probably want to know the system requirements. Also like All-Stars Racing Transformed, it can now be pre-purchased from Steam. [AVPGalaxy]
- SEGA also released a TV Commercial for Aliens: CM. [Youtube]
- The Conduit is coming to Android and will be optimized for Nvidia’s Project Shield. [Polygon]
Other Stuff
- Want another Jurassic Park movie? No? Well you’re probably going to watch this new sequel that’s in production anyway. [Coming Soon]
- CD Projekt, makers of the The Witcher games showed the first teaser trailer for their upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077. [Youtube]
- Joe Biden talked to some video game industry people because apparently people still blame school shootings on games, because I’m certain that other things like the media have no affect on things like that. [Youtube]
Video of the Week
- The best dubstep singer yet
Community, Fan Works, Hacking, Site News
Retro Stream at 4PM Central Featuring the Unleashed-to-Generations Mod
Watch live video from vidyaretro on www.twitch.tv
We’ve got one more surprise stream for you all before the end of the new year. We will be joined by Chimera of the Unleashed to Generations conversion team checking out one of the levels and will be able to take your questions.
Check back at 4PM Central (That’s less than an hour if you’re just reading this!) and come join us!
UPDATE: The stream is over, if you missed it you can still watch it archived (cut into lots of parts due to connection problems) here on our Twitch channel.
Seasons greetings, dear Retro readers! Last night, jolly old Santa Claus visited the Retro HQ, ate all our cookies and milk, and didn’t leave us a damn thing. Fortunately, we managed to pull his bag off his sleigh as he tried to escape from our armed pursuit, and in his wonderful bag of gifts, we found a hundred pounds of solid gold ingots. We promptly sold all the gold, and I’m happy to report that all of the Retro staff slept on mattresses made entirely out of cash last night. In the spirit of the Christmas season, we thought we’d pass our frankly tremendous fortunes on to you, so today we’re holding a giveaway for a Sonic Franchise Steam Bundle. This bundle includes every single Sonic game available on Steam (see complete list below), and only one lucky reader is going to walk away with the whole thing. To enter, simply leave a comment on this post before 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time on December 31st, 2012, and include an email address we can contact you at in case you win. Make sure to read the rules below as well. Good luck, and may you enjoy these games as much as we are enjoying our endless pits of money.
Complete List of Games Included:
- Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
- Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing
- Sonic 3D Blast
- Sonic Adventure DX
- Sonic Adventure 2 (with Battle DLC)
- Sonic CD
- Sonic Generations (with Casino Night DLC)
- Sonic Spinball
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- Sonic 3 & Knuckles
- Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode I
- Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II
Contest Rules
- Sonic Retro staff are barred from entering. Yes, me, that means you.
- You must not already own more than three of the games on Steam. We will need permission to view your Steam profile to verify that you meet this requirement. This is so that people who don’t already own these titles have a chance to get them.
- Entries must be submitted by 11:59 PM EST on December 31, 2012, and must have supplied a valid email address.
- Only one entry per person. Trying to skirt this rule may result in all of your entries being disqualified, not just the additional entries.
- The winner will be chosen
whenever we feel like itbetween January 1st and January 7th, 2013.
Clarifications:
- You do NOT need to put your email address in the text of the comment, just use the email field provided for you.
- You do not need to put your Steam profile in your comment. We will email you and request that information when and if you are picked as the winner.
- DLC, such as the Adventure 2 Battle DLC or Generations Casino Night, does not count against the three game limit from rule two. Games will be considered as listed above.
UPDATE (AGAIN): It looks as if Amazon.com in the US is also providing a couple of collections for digital PC download for sale on Sega games. However only one of the packages activate on Steam. That being the Dreamcast Pack containing Dreamcast Collection Volume 1 (Which contains Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5 Part 2 and Sega Bass Fishing) and Jet Set Radio for $4.99. The Genesis pack is still on sale for $4.99 as well, however those do not activate on Steam, but that’s still 50 Genesis games that also sell for $7.50 a pack currently.
While this is not really a deal, they also sell Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg for digital download PC. (This also does NOT activate on Steam) Still noteworthy.
UPDATE (12/3/2012): Sonic Generations is 75% off again on Steam until December 10th as part of a sale celebrating the official release of Big Picture Mode. Another Sega game, Hell Yeah! is 75% off as well. You can check out all of the other deals here. Amazon is also having a sale on downloadable Sega games, with various bundles. This includes the Sonic Action Pack for $25, which includes every downloadable Sonic game besides Sonic Adventure 2. These deals are good until December 8th and can be seen here in this NeoGAF thread.
Those who have used Steam for at least half a year know that their sales are usually pretty darn good, with lots of games usually being 50% or 75% off. Like now Sonic Generations is 75% off until November 27th, which is a great deal if you don’t have the game yet. All other Sega games on the service besides those that came out during the last month or so are 50% off as well. Other good games on sale are Dishonored for 50% off, Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition for 75% off and Deus Ex: Human Revolution for 75% off.
Also, if you missed out on the Starbucks deal for Sonic 4: Episode II you can get Episode I for $2.99 and Episode II for $3.74 on Amazon. Both episodes use Steamworks so you’ll have to activate them on Steam in order to play them. The Sega Genesis Classic Game Pack is also priced off to $4.99 and includes 50 Genesis games.
A while back, you’ll remember we made a post showing how a small group of fans on our forums were tearing into the very fabric of the PC version of Sonic Generations to recreate the daytime stages of Sonic Unleashed within the game. On last check, they had managed to get the Hedgehog Engine’s Global Illumination Ambiance working, a rather impressive task of its own right. So how are things coming along now?
Quite fantastically, if these three projects all based off Generations are anything to go by.
Over the past 21 years, during good times and bad, one of the most consistently well-regarded aspects of the Sonic the Hedgehog series has been its sound design. While a multitude of composers and performers are responsible for this, the man who holds the most influence in the modern era is Jun Senoue, who in recent times has acted as sound director for Sonic Generations and composed the Sonic 4 music.
He’s a man who likes to keep himself busy – if a quick peek at his production history on Sega Retro doesn’t show you that, then consider that at Summer of Sonic he didn’t appear to have a moment of rest between backstage interviews, two signing sessions, Jam with Jun and the Crush 40 set! Thankfully, before the day took its toll I was able to sit down with him to chat about his start in the business, Sonic Generations and the process of making Sonic music in general. Take a look:
Retro: How did you get into writing music, and specifically how did you get into writing music for video games?
Senoue: Actually I was a big fan of Namco stuff, arcade stuff like Mappy from the mid-80s. After that I was a little bit away from video games. In the early 90s I was surprised by Sonic the Hedgehog for the Genesis, the Mega Drive. I joined Sega back in 1993. I just submitted my stuff to Sega and they accepted. I was totally surprised, those were my favourite games! It was a great opportunity to join Sega and luckily I had a chance to be part of Sonic 3’s music in the first year of my Sega life.
Retro: Were there any musicians that inspired you as you grew up?
Senoue: I was a big fan of a UK pop band called Duran Duran, and that was the reason I got a bass when I was 14. The bass player for them looked much cooler than the guitar player! Also I played the keyboard for a long time, but I found that the keyboard player and the drummer stayed at the back side of the stage. The people at the front of the stage were much more active and I just wanted to be a part of that. So I purchased a bass, because of John Taylor from Duran Duran. But after that I found that some guitar players had nice guitar solos in the middle of the songs, and I thought “Oh, that’s what I want to do!” so I switched from bass to guitar when I was 15, 16? So yes, Duran Duran was one of my favourite bands when I was young and also lots of hard rock and hair metal bands.
Hit “Read more” to learn which game spent a year in production without any sound direction and find out Jun’s favourite Sonic songs!
The team consisting of Dario FF, Chimera and TwilightZoney have released the first act of the first stage of Sonic Unleashed, Windmill Isle, for the PC version of Sonic Generations. The purpose of this release is to test the mod on as many systems as possible. If it works on enough systems they’ll start to convert all of Unleashed’s stages. More details can be found in the following video and in the link that follows.
Here is the forum thread with details where it can be downloaded along with instructions on how to install it. Other credits go to JoeTE for ripping the songs, Korama for making CPKREDIR (which makes developing and using mods more efficient and easier) and MainMemory for making Generations Archive Editor (which does what the name implies). Like it was mentioned earlier, the intent for this release is to test it on as much hardware as possible. Meaning that you can help the development of the mod by posting the results of how it works on your set-up on the forums. Also post results if you mess around with it by doing stuff like combining it with other mods like Classic Sonic Adventures or some model swap you found on Youtube.
Two months ago, we posted some very promising videos from a triad of gifted Retroites working to import Sonic Unleashed‘s stages into the PC version of Sonic Generations, because despite Sega’s apparent new-found love for all things computer, Unleashed never got the chance to pop up. And those videos? They were nothing short of impressive work.
The trio–Dario FF, Twilightzoney, and Chimera–are happy to show you the fruits of their labor since then as Sonic zips around locales like Mazuri, Empire City, Shamar, and the original Spagonia to name a few. The team not only managed to get collisions working on the stages, they’ve been able to successfully import breakable objects and even the Global Illumination Ambiance lighting effects of the original stages so that they look like their original selves.
Oh, and a much-requested golden streak of light makes his in-stage presence felt as well.
Check out the gallery for more photos and the trailer below to watch their efforts in motion. Of course, from the looks of things, the team is only getting warmed up with Unleashed levels and have set their sights to other areas…