Posts Tagged Sonic

James Fry recently brought up some things concerning Mina The Mongoose's development on the Archie Mailing list in reference to a letter in response to Dan Drazen. An excerpt from the responsive letter is below:

Mina was always intended to be a mongoose, hence my remark wondering whether or not we made her species clear from the beginning. In point of fact, she was a mongoose before she was named Mina. The character was originally named Chloe, and changed to Mina at the 11th hour because so many of this book's female characters' names end in that "long-e" sound: Sally, Bunnie, Rosie, Amy... you get the idea. But the mongoose thing (clearly labeled on the character-design sheet Spaz sent me), the super-speed and the maybe = girlfriend thing have all been part of the plan for ages. I'm not saying stuff never gets made up on the fly, just that this certainly isn't one of them.

I wont reprint the full one. But check out the mailing list for more of the discussion. :)

Source: Archie Sonic Mailing List

Well - some are saying Sonic Shuffle is pretty good - some however are damning it to the lowest bowels of Sonicdom. Gamefan is one of the latter following echos of reviews from fans and VG pages alike as they've graced it with a whopping 42. :P Here's an excerpt from thier review:

One of the things that made Mario Party such a success were its fantastic mini-games, they were quick and easy to understand, and you were involved in one at least every turn. Sonic Shuffle’s mini-games really aren’t that swell--while a few are mindless and fun (like the wooden labyrinth game), most are either unnecessarily complex, banal, or just plain stupid. For example, in Sonicooking, one player flips a giant frying pan while the others try to stay inside and collect rings. There’s zero challenge to stay in the pan because the flipper cannot move it fast enough to knock you out. A safe cracking mini-game has you turning a knob ad as soon as the other player sees a “!”, they open the door. Whichever team can do this faster wins. Lame. And here’s the real kicker. You really don’t play that many mini-games during the course of play because you have to land on specific spaces to activate them, and there are really very few of them on the board. You don’t even get to complete in a free-for-all mini-game at the end of everybody’s turn like in Mario Party.

'Taint funny Sega! If you wish to read the entire review check out the Source Link below. Its not pretty....

Source: Gamefan's Shuffle Review

Ron cleaned out his mailbox yesterday and graced us with Sonic Mailing List potpourri from Ken Penders (in red and the actual letters in cyan)! I wont reproduce everything here (Go to Kens board or subscribe to the list ya lazy twit!) But I thought the Robo-Robotnik news was interesting enough to post here. ^__^

What I'm wondering is, if you wrote all of #51-present (with Mike Gallagher possibly doing the issue #3 reference story with Al and Cal like he did with "Opposites DETRACT") Would we be seeing Robo-Robotnik right now?

Yes, but as for how different than Karl has done, it's hard to say. Initially, when we killed off Robotnik in #50, Sega allowed us to do so with the provision he be brought back six to eight months later. We just kept pushing it off for as long as possible for a variety of reasons -- storyline, marketing and even production considerations. The only major difference is that I wouldn't have used the name Robo-Robotnik after explaining where he initially came from. I had planned to use Robotnik Mark 2 and avoid any confusion over the mattter.

Subscribe: Archie Sonic Mailing List

Here's something interesting...In recent days, it has been no secret that Dreamcast has been enormously benefiting from Sony's blunders in launching the PlayStation 2, with even Sega of America's President speaking on the matter.

Recently however, Sega X says that theyve been receiving word that something is not right in the World of Gaming... at least in America, anyway.

Barnes & Noble, owners of Babbage's Etc., Software Etc., Funcoland, Gamestop, and more, appear to be involved in what could be seen as blackmail. So what do they have to back this? Well, according to them theyve had numerous employees from stores owned by Barnes & Noble, reporting the news that the stores have been told to remove all X-Box advertising, and stop pushing Dreamcast as much. The rest from Sega X's article:

Sound rather unlikely? Well, we've went as far as to quote an employee of Software Etc. on the situation:

When I asked my district manager (about the situation), she said: "It is a company-wide mandate that we are to take down X-Box promotion materials." When I asked her why, she said that "we have obligations to other companies right now and we don't need to be pushing the X-Box." When I asked her if it was because of Sony, she said "That's possible but I'm not totally sure."

We've been hearing from other sources that Sony have indeed contacted Barnes & Noble regarding the situation.

So, is this Sony showing Microsoft-like bully boy tactics? We'd be surprised if this wasn't true, after hearing it from so many sources, there has to be one common link. It would be interesting to see if the law comes into play, but until then, we can't say any of this is concrete.

A good way to find out is to call your local store, or if you go in and see that most X-Box materials have been removed, then it is more than likely the case of Sony. As of this moment, Gamestop.com is still advertising X-box -KP

Source: Sega X