Neo Hazard takes over the livestream with the Sonic Level pack for LEGO Dimensions. Featuring Bartman3010, InstantSonic and Kat. Check out Neo Hazard’s personal YouTube channel, Neo Reviews!
Wii U
So I’m sure that a lot of you are excited for whatever Sonic 25th anniversary stuff might happen, but I’m here to remind you of that Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games will be out on Wii U this week.
Okay I’m sure none of you actually care about yet another Mario & Sonic mini-game collection but you need to at least see this: it has Wario dancing to Reach For The Stars:
Anyway you can buy Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for Wii U starting June 24th, but really there’s no reason to since you’ve just seen the best thing you’d be getting out of the game anyway. Well, aside from maybe Eggman dancing to Reach for the Stars, but I’m sure there’ll be a video of that soon enough anyway.
Actually Metal Sonic dancing to the Super Bell Hill music from Super Mario 3D World is pretty great as well.
The Japanese Nintendo Youtube account recently uploaded this new overview trailer for the 3DS version of Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, showing plenty of gameplay of the new modes. There are also new characters Sega managed to scrape off the bottom of the barrel like Eggman Nega and Shitty BowserZavok from the Deadly Six.
One of the more noteworthy new modes is Champions Road, which seems to be the game’s main story mode. In this mode you play as your Mii, which you can dress up with various costumes. Some of which can be unlocked through amiibo. There also seems to be a decent amount of new Dream Events, which are basically the normal olympic events mixed up with elements from both the Mario and Sonic series. Those have always been the best thing about these games outside of the music, so this entry in the series having more of those definitely isn’t a bad thing.
But at the very least, we can probably expect the game to have a great soundtrack. Sega’s Sound Team has always done a fantastic job remixing Mario and Sonic music for these games, and we look forward to what they’ll be doing this time. The 3DS version will be released on February 18th, 2016 in Japan. It isn’t known yet when the game will be released elsewhere, or when the Wii U version will come out.
It’s always great to see people on our forums get so far as to work on commercial games. One example of this is Poncho by Delve Entertainment, which was released today on PC and PlayStation 4. Matthew Weekes, a member of our forums who worked on Freedom Planet, was the lead pixel artist for this game. Aside from him, it was designed by Danny Hayes and Jack Odell, who also did the programming and music respectively.
The game’s main twist is it’s an open world where you can choose your own path, and switch between multiple layers like in Mutant Mudds. Originally the game was going to be funded through Kickstarter, but after the crowdfunding campaign failed they still managed get funding from publisher Rising Star Games.
You can buy it now on Steam for PC, or on PlayStation Network for PS4 for $14.99/€14.99/£10.99. The game will also be released on Wii U and PlayStation Vita sometime in the future.
That Sonic amiibo you own isn’t useless just yet, as the upcoming Yoshi’s Woolly World for Wii U will be compatible with it. Using it will let you play as Sonic the Hedgehog Yoshi, who has Sonic’s colours and shoes. He even has green eyes!
Pretty much every amiibo, aside from Pokémon amiibo for some reason, will be compatible with the game. Each of which unlocks a new Yoshi skin based on the character. Even the original Yoshi amiibo for Super Smash Bros. will let you unlock a skin that looks like a more normal, non-yarn Yoshi.
Surprise! SEGA is still making sequels to their best selling Sonic spin-off that likely nobody here cares about. Nintendo announced Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games for Wii U and 3DS on Nintendo Direct earlier today. The gameplay footage showed two new sports: Rugby sevens and Golf. The former of which will be exclusive to the Wii U version, while the latter will only be on the 3DS version. Also it has Eggman going faster than Sonic by fabulously spinning around.
Various new playable characters can also spotted, including Rouge, Zazz, Jet the Hawk, Nabbit, Diddy Kong, and Birdo. And as usual with these Mario & Sonic games, we can probably at least expect some good remixes of music from both franchises.
But more importantly: Nintendo is making a new Chibi Robo game! And there’s gonna be a Chibi Robo amiibo! Chibi Robo!!!
Tamaki, writer for Unseen64, has made a video that sheds light on what went wrong during the development of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. And if you assumed that Big Red Button had to put up with a lot of crap that made it unreasonable to expect them to put out a good game, you’d be right.
The video explains various things that went wrong like how the studio had to switch from developing for next-gen hardware to the Wii U (which is why early footage looks better than the final game), bad working conditions and more. Be sure to give it a watch, especially if you thought that the game being so bad was just because of the developers being incompetent.
By the way, something I noticed while looking up the reveal trailer: SEGA made the video on their official Youtube page private. I wonder why…
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’s pretty clear that the development of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric was troubled to say the least, and nothing shows this quite as well as seeing what the game used to look like. While we don’t know how much work was done on this version of the game, it’s pretty clear that the game was originally going to look a lot better graphically.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this unused hub(?) world, but this is the first footage of the characters interacting with the environment. Which shows that it was playable at some point. This footage was found in the demo reel of character animator Tuan Nguyen, who was a junior animator on the project.
So while you can use quite a few amiibo with various games, so far it’s only been possible to use the Sonic amiibo with the latest Super Smash Bros. However, soon you’ll also be able to use it with Mario Kart 8 as well, as Nintendo is adding compatibility for more amiibo (including Sonic) in an upcoming update.
After this update you’ll be able to unlock a Sonic racing suit and helmet for your Mii by using your Sonic amiibo with the game. Meaning that you can finally race against Mario while pretending that you’re playing as Sonic. This is what fans have been waiting for since Sonic started driving a car in Sonic Drift.
Other new compatible amiibo include Mega Man, Bowser, Toad, Olimar, Rosalina, Villager, Pac-Man, and of course Wario. The update, which also includes a new 200cc mode with appropriately faster gameplay, will be released on April 23rd.