Sonic HQ

2021 will be a big year for Sonic, as the character and the franchise as a whole will be turning 30 years old. According to Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka, the team wants to take on a new kind of challenge for the the series’ big milestone.

Iizuka shared that news in a recent interview with 4Gamer. During the same discussion, he was also asked about the possibility of Sonic crossing over into eSports territory. Given the nature of the main games, Iizuka believes it’s unlikely. Other genres may be a better fit for the idea, however.

Here’s the full exchange between 4Gamer and Iizuka:

Well, after 7 years, we finally got a new Sonic kart racer. But how's it stack up to the previous game? Find out in the review~

PS4 owners who subscribe to PlayStation Plus now are able to download Sonic Mania at no additional cost. 

The likelyhood of anyone who visits this site and hasn’t already played this game is probably close to zero but if you have friends who may not have been convinced to buy it and have PS+, now’s the time to tell them to download it. 

And if you haven’t tried it and are reading this and subscribe, what are you waiting for?

Sega tweeted out the last 12(!) games for the Genesis Mini. No Sonic games this time around. That means no S3&K, which I sort of predicted. But it also means no 3D Blast... take that as you will.

Third party highlights on the western side include Strider, Road Rash II, and the particularly rare hidden gem Alisia Dragoon. One odd choice is often-overlooked Light Crusader, the black sheep of Treasure's Genesis output. Another nice surprise is the excellent Monster World IV, which got its first English release (worked on by M2) on the Wii Virtual Console in 2012.

But the big left-field surprises come from two additional games. One is a port of the classic Taito shmup Darius. The sequel got a release back in the day, but this port of the first game is... brand new?! The second game is... Tetris! This port of Sega's arcade version was slated to be released for the Genesis/Mega Drive, but a whole mess of rights issues held it back. It's rumored that only around 10 copies of the game made it out the door, making this probably the rarest game on the console.

Japan had another livestream with the team behind the project. As usual, their lineup differs quite a bit from the western one. They got a few RPGs and shooters, many of which never got an western release to begin with. They also showed off the menu with all 42 games. It looks pretty clean, though I'm sure that tiny Fanatsy Zone box will annoy some (lol).

The stream also revealed the bizarre and hilarious "Mega Drive Tower Mini" accessory set, including a miniature Mega CD, 32X, Sonic & Knuckles, and Sonic 1 cartridges. Build the tower of your dreams.

With all 42 games revealed, I'm sure everyone will have a few games they're disappointed to see omitted. I thought for sure Rocket Knight Adventures and Ristar would be shoe-ins. But the lineups are pretty solid all around (though personally I find the western selection a little underwhelming in comparison to the Japanese). It's certainly an eclectic selection of games, and Sega really went above and beyond what anybody expected with this thing.

Official websites: US | JP

The results are in for Team Sonic Racing in the UK and it has surpassed Sonic and Sega All Stars Transformed by more than double after seven years in the garage! According to the UK Boxed Charts report for the week ending May 25th, Team Sonic Racing toped the All Formats Chart, more than doubling the launch week sales of its predecessor, 2012's Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. In fact, this is the first time a Sonic the Hedgehog game has topped the charts since Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games managed that feat in 2008.

Remember, as of now we only have physical data in the UK so with digital there's no doubt it's way higher as digital has significantly risen since 2012.

Source

Director Jeff Fowler just announced the news on Twitter. Fowler says the team is taking time “to make Sonic just right.” The new release date is February 14, 2020. That’s a little more than three months after the original release date. It also means that Sonic will no longer hit theaters during the lucrative holiday season. However, it will probably have less competition in its new February slot.

Many fans had wondered if they could fix the CGI that quickly and the answer was no. Reception was mostly negative when the original trailer was released. Even the creators of Sonic, Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima weren't happy with the designs. Now we can have assurance that they are really going to take the time necessary to fix the design of Sonic. It won't get that sweet holiday slot anymore, however it's likely to do better in February with less competition for cinema dollars.

And as always, stay tuned to Sonic HQ for all of the latest Sonic-related news!

The same people behind the Sea3on fan comics(Fans United For SATAM) who answer the question, "what if the story in SatAm didn't stop so abruptly?" are now working their hardest to make an animated version of "Sea3on." Sea3on tells the continuing struggle of the Freedom Fighters, now up against new enemies and on new adventures as if the story never ended! They have recently acquired lots of talent to help with this project. They have found an amazing story board artist for the project, a VA director,  past and current S3 staff, as well as a handful of industry professionals that have also expressed interest in getting an animated episode up and running ranging from background painters to music composers.

They have launched a patreon to help with funding for the animation(as it can be costly) as well as to provide a place where you will be getting updates, story boards, animation bits (Including a promo animation we pushed out) and much more.

Check out the press release on their site. They also have a Twitter account to follow updates. Let us know in the comments and/or forum if you would like to see this become a thing and also let us know if you've followed their fan comics.

Sega just revealed the next 10 games to be included in their new Genesis/Mega Drive Mini console.

Sonic Spinball is making its way to the English side. Not a game I personally would've selected, but I know it has its fans. That's four Sonic games for the English console, including Sonic 1, 2, and Mean Bean Machine.

Capcom has officially thrown their hat into the ring with Street Fighter II, Ghouls'n Ghosts and... Mega Man: The Wily Wars! The compilation of the first three Mega Man games (plus a cool original fourth game) was (in)famously a Sega Channel exclusive in the US, never receiving a physical release. Other highlights include the excellent Beyond Oasis and Phantasy Star IV. Nothing too surprising, overall.

Over in Japan, however, there was a livestream that did bring a few surprises. It turns out you can use a USB hub to get some 4-player action going! They announced a few 4P-compatible games, most definitely Japan-exclusives, the big one being... Yuu Yuu Hakusho: Makyou Toitsusesn!! An amazing fighting game from Treasure based on the famous anime/manga. It's been a highly requested game based on Japanese polls, and it's stupidly expensive to boot. It's one of my favorite games on the system and I'm a bit sad knowing there's probably no chance of it being included in our version.

The final 10 games will be announced on June 4th, so get ready for that.

[Official site - US | JP]

I decided to take a quick look at some early Sonic fangames made in Dreams. If you don't know what Dreams is, it's by the creators of LittleBigPlanet, and is essentially a tool that allows you to create games, art, music, movies and has almost no limitations unlike LittleBigPlanet. Dreams allows users to create their own physics as well assets, all with easy-to-use creation tools. Basically if you can dream it, you can make it!  I can see this opening up opportunties to make fangames for people who don't have the knowhow of making their own engines or modding existing engines.

The game hasn't fully launched yet and has been in early access less than a month so I was surprised so much content has been made with Sonic in it. I decided to capture a bit of footage from various projects. Not all of them are polished and some have a number of bugs but what they were able to accomplish in less than a month is quite impressive. Who knows what we'll have several years from now. Read on further for a look at all of the levels.

Lad Bible has done an interview with Sonic Team's Iizuka and it has just been published. We will highlight segments here but please go read the full interview.

When talking upcoming Sonic games:

Team Sonic Racing comes out for the expected platforms on 21 May, and might not be the only Sonic game we see in 2019. Perhaps it’s a quirk of translation – Iizuka-san speaks Japanese, I don’t, so we converse through a very helpful middleman – but he makes a reference to there being Sonic titles, plural, in development right now.

On the upcoming movie:

 “It’s not a SEGA movie – we’re not making it, or anything – and I’m only an advisor, really. But I do get shown things, and the [movie team] ask for my opinion. I’m also listening to what the fans are saying, and I’ll feed that back to the director – he, and the producers, are very interested in receiving that feedback. At the end of the day, it’s up to the team at Paramount to make something successful, but we’re all looking forward to seeing the finished movie.”