News

Believe it or not - Gamecube was the name that was supposed to have been Dreamcast! ;)

Yuji Naka posts a column to Sonic Team's web page every now and then (see previous and below articles), and the latest entry contains an interesting revelation. Apparently, when Sega was deciding upon the name for its new 128-bit console, Sonic Team looked at the shape of the system and suggested "G-Cube." If Sega had taken Sonic Team's advice, we may just have ended up with the Sega G-Cube instead of the Sega Dreamcast. Hmm… perhaps Nintendo would have then opted to release the Nintendo Dreamcast?

Source: IGN DC

Yuki Naka has put some interesting material on the Sonic Team website. ^_^ One of which is new pictures of the Sonic Store in Nagoya, Japan. :)

I've managed to find a way to translate some of the stuff he has on the page. (Yes, I've found a way to reliably translate some Japanese now. YAY! ^__^) And one of the other entries from his "web diary" (see article above) talks about the recording session for Sonic Adventure 2. One of things said is that a new character has been confirmed! ^__^ He talks about something that was called a "Volume of Post Recording" on Sonic Adventure 2. The translation is a bit wacky in areas and _VERY_ hard to follow (I believe its due to errors in grammar during translation), but here's what it got translated to:

[It] had gone to the studio of a Touhoku new company in Akasaka for the audition of a new character etc. of 'Sonic adventure 2'on this day. It is anxious because [it] thinks as going, and it is not done to SCE separately that it is bad whenever the studio in this Akasaka is in the vicinity of SCE whenever [it] goes. (^_^;) Video production for the Tokyo game show of '(*fantashestaronrain*)'was the vicinity of SCE. ‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚?‚? ?[ has been reconsidered in the studio because there was no audition recently.

I said the thing was wacky - I didn't say it was legible :P

Remember these pictures below? I've managed to get a lot of different stuff translated and its REALLY cool. ^^ One of the things (concerning an article that was posted a few months ago) was concerning the "Pokemon Train" where people were wondering why Mr. Naka had pictures of Pokemon on the ST website. It turns out that this entry of the diary was comparing Pokemon's train advertisements to the Sonic Adventure train advertisements before its launch. And he mentioned how the SA advertisement campaign was much smaller than how Pokemon is being advertised.

I'll be going through my translator pretty much half the day. So if I find anything interesting, I'll be sure to post it here! Later! ^___^

Source: Sonic Team

Sonic Team has updated thier website - and located on it are new wallpapers featuring the "Sonic The Skateboard" theme! ^__^ The picture is available in:

1280 x 1024:BMP file(1339KB)
800 x 600:BMP file(699KB)

Each file is available as a zip! ^_^

Source: Sonic Team

This has been posted on SUML, so listen up: Sonic the Movie comes on Starz October 1st at 3:35 P.M.

Source: Sonic Underground Mailing List

It's here, and it has SAGE coverage...in fact, most of the SHQ RA News this time around focuses on the expo. You can either stream it, or download it all. I'll be back Monday with a news update.

Well, folks, we have some Sonic E-Bay related auctions to pass your way, including yet another offer of all 26 eps of SatAM.

First up, here is an auction for Sonic 26.

Next, another auction here has Sonic 31 on sale.

To wrap up the comics, here is one for Sonic 24. The one selling all three of these ships worldwide, so don't let being outside of the US bother you here.

Here, we have all 26 eps of SatAM. This dude ships to US and Canada.

Finally, here, we have a book of how to Draw Sonic and company. Unfortunely, this person only ships to the US. :(

Well, there you have it for now, folks...

Thought I forgot - DIDNTCHA ^___^ !

Well the Poll Position is back for the New School Year, and for the month of September we open up with the results of our 3 previous polls! And the responses were EXCELLENT! ^__^ In June we polled you all with 3 questions concerning Sonic and Sega. We got some REALLY good response (most of which you can probably attest to them being up for so long). The questions are as follows:

Some serious news involving the whole piracy of Sega Dreamcast games has been brought up.

Sega is taking no prisoners this time, and has now officially shut down one of the largest Dreamcast sites out there that contains the most information on how to copy your own DC games and everything. The site? www.dcisos.com.

This site was totally into the whole "DC Scene," as the whole Dreamcast piracy business was called. This site explained on how to burn your own DC games, contained the files to make your Dreamcast work with copies. It also contained covers to the DC games for those that wanted their copies nice and neat. They even contained manuals in Adobe format, not to mention a forum where people could discuss things that were going well, or things that screwed up and warn people not to obtain certain things. All to keep the scene going.

Yet, since it didn't contain any files that illegally distributed any actual DC games, there was no way Sega could touch them, seeing as all they did was give out information. Apparently, something caught Sega's eyes and soon hacked down on their site, which will truly slow down the distribution, however, not by a long shot. There are other websites out there that focus on the whole DC Scene, basically replicas of DC ISOS, and this won't stop broadband users with CD Burner's from getting more games. In other news, last week, Kalisto, a major online distributor of the DC games released their latest, and final, DC game to the public, and with it, they had this to say:

"Sega has offered us stock options to stop releasing DC, so this will be it, our last release."

Sega had found a new piracy protection code for it all to end. Kalisto, however, found their way around it and ripped their last few games to the public.

Rumor's have it that Sega was devistated that no matter what, Kalisto would always get through the protection code, and it scared Sega. So, they offered them a way to "shut their mouths" and basically bribed them. Another rumor is that they were caught and arrested, and that they used that bit to cover up what really happened.

It seems Sega's finally gaining the upperhand on the piracy business, but with more groups showing up to distribute games online, there's no telling when it will all end. One thing's for sure, Sega's much more ordered than Sony when it comes to piracy.

S.A.G.E, The Sonic Ameture Game Expodition has opened today!

The S.A.G.E is to Sonic Fan Games as Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is to Video Games. A whole heaps of online "booths" have been created by different teams of creators to show their stuff to the adoring public.

Sage will be taken place from the 9th (today) to the 11th of September, with new goodies popping up everyday!

Go now to Now!