Sonic Heroes
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.
After a turnaround from last year’s showing, the Sonic Hacking Contest 2017 draws to a close with the winners of this year’s showing for trophies rewarded by both Hacking Contest judges and the community. The contest celebrated big this year for it’s 15th anniversary with a brand new website, a public showing at this year’s Fan Jam and featured a game industry participant, Jon Burton of Traveller’s Tales, with Sonic 3D Blast Director’s Cut. There’s plenty to be excited for this year’s showing of ROM hacks and mods for Sonic R, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Mania and Sonic Lost World. You can discuss the results of the hacking contest after the jump or via the forum here. You can also watch the first part of the results show from MegaGWolf’s Twitch channel at the top of this post. You can then watch part 2 of the show here.
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.)
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!
Sonic is 21 today and as we’ve already seen, he’s wasted very little time in letting the world know it. And while Sonic’s fans may be a very divergent group of varying ages, opinions and levels of sanity, we can all agree on one thing: the music for the games is usually quite good, if not the strongest point across the series.
With that, to celebrate Sonic’s 21st Birthday and to give you an exciting inside look at how video game music is developed gradually, Sonic Retro is proud to bring you not one but two tasty delicacies of Sonic Heroes prototype soundtracks.
Both soundtracks contain songs in development, including the demo track of Crush 40’s “What I’m Made Of,” pure synth versions of Ocean Palace‘s stage, and a completely different Lost Jungle track among others.
I’m sure you’re all just itching to grab these soundtracks, so let’s cut to the chase. You can grab the soundtracks here for an early Xbox proto, and here for the Oct. 8, 2003 proto.
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.
Sonic Heroes, one of the games that according to some started the wave of bad games in the Sonic franchise, is now available on the Playstation Store in Europe for £7.99/€9.99 for the Playstation 3. This was released along with other PS2 games under the PS2 Classics label on SEN. Note that these games (Including Sonic Heroes) didn’t get the HD treatment certain other “classics” like the God of War or Sly Cooper franchises got. These are exactly the same as the original versions, with the resolution being upscaled to what you have in your PS3 settings.
So yes, this means it’s the worst version of Sonic Heroes. And no, this does not mean that Sonic Adventure 2: Battle will be getting a re-release. Also, the file size is 4.5 GB, so if for some reason you actually want to buy this game make sure you have enough space on your PS3’s hard drive.
[Via Playstation Blog]
We’ve all played Sonic Heroes at one point. I’m sure at that same point we all heard the music in the game too! What you may have not known is that more than one Sonic Heroes prototype has surfaced to the net at some point. The differences ranged from minor to relatively major, but one part of the game in particular that recieved some interesting changes were the music. Now if you know me, you know this is totally my thing, and I was pretty excited by some of the changes I heard. Here are three of the tracks I found the most interesting of them all.