My Sonic Collection is Morbidly Obese.

I got bored yesterday and decided to climb back into the loft and shuffle amongst all the Sonic stuff that is stored up there, and somehow it led to me dragging it all down to take photos of it all together, just to see how much of it I've ended up hoarding onto. There's a few things missing: mainly all the clothing, a bunch of badges and obviously the games, but you'll get the idea that I generally have a feck load of Sonic junk, ranging from toys and books to odd junk like shampoo bottles and an air freshener. I took quite a few photos because this lot took bloody ages to set up. Click to see them in big ol' detail.

Most of this stuff was purchased back when it came out, and after time stored away so it didn't clutter up the place. There is some of the modern Sonic stuff but I don't generally touch any of that mostly ugly Sonic X stuff. A lot of this stuff is nigh on impossible to find now, so I'm glad I kept a lot of it. When I got a lot of this stuff I bought two sets so I could have one packed away brand new and one set to play with. I'm such a geek. =D

Many more photos after the jump.

I even have a bunch of old Sonic Promo posters and cardboard things, which were sitting in the loft so long that I almost forgot they were up there. I can't really remember how I got those but I know the Sonic R one came out of the window of Burger King with a little persistence to the staff. You can't just buy things like that, you have to offer to take it away when they don't need it anymore. It was only going to be thrown away anyway..

I have three of those Sonic 2 patches in total, and a big blue jacket that also has one on the back. I'm not sure how I ended up with that many, but Sonic the Comic sent me one once when I sent them some artwork. I'll have to take some photos of the jackets I've got up in the loft somewhere, they're amazing.

I keep searching for old Sonic stuff like this on Ebay but don't have a whole lot of luck finding any, which is pretty strange as Sonic was pretty darn popular in the UK. Hell, I haven't seen most of this stuff since it came out. But wait, there's more!

For starters, books! They made a lot of books back in the day, including story books, adventure game books, annuals, a sticker album, game guides and even some Where's Waldo style books. There's also some Sonic comic specials and the complete Sega Super Play Trading Card set there.

Next, the comics. Every pile there has 10 issues in it. I have almost every issue except most of the later ones when they had no new stories in them around 2000, just before it was canceled. I did start collecting the American comics soon after that, although I don't have so many of those, probably about 40. I recently ended up selling a bunch of those as I was getting about a tenner each for them from American collectors, and I'm not really that mad on them anyway. The British comics don't seem to be worth anything in comparison, but I like those a lot more.

Finally some other Sega related bits, including all my Sega Saturn and Dreamcast magazines (sadly I didn't keep my Mega Drive era ones), promo videos and...holy crap, SONIC POGS.

Oh, and I almost forgot this set of House of the Dead figures.

Now do you see why I started up this blog?

NEW Classic Sonic Plush toys! Whoo!

For the last year or so, you may of noticed a bunch of retro style Sonic merchandise being sold in GameStation, including T-Shirts, key rings, wrist bands, badges etc. Well just a couple days ago I was browsing in my local GAME, which being so close to Christmas was naturally packed with people running around like headless chickens because they leave their shopping till the very last minute, and I came across these new retro Sonic plush toys, one of Sonic and one of Tails. According to the back of the box there is also Knuckles and Dr. Eggman ones, but they didn't have these in stock. Best thing was they were only a tenner each, which isn't bad because there not too small and look the part.

Anyway, the queue was about a mile long so I didn't buy them then, but this morning I had another look and most of them had already sold, they only had 2 Sonics and about 5 tails' left, so that convinced me to grab one of each. While I have barely touched any of the modern Sonic X style stuff they have made over the last few years, I'm a sucker for anything that looks like the Sonic I grew up with.

More after the jump.

They're both about 12 inches tall and quite nicely designed despite using simple materials, far more appealing then any of those wonky ugly Sonic X plushes. The eyes on pupils on Sonic soft toys are normally plastic, but these ones are knitted in, which is nice as they don't stick out of the eyes and go wonky over time. Both even have cute buckles on on their shoes.

Sonic is a lighter blue than expected, but it's a nice shade of blue none the less.He's fluffier than the Tails toy, especially his nose and quite a smaller body than Tails. It's a decent likeness to the Mega Drive era Sonic we all know and love, before he went all freaky looking with lanky limbs and that menacing toothy grin.

Tails is, quite simply, adorable. He looks a lot like he did in the old Japanese artwork with a small mouth and shiny big pupils. His Tails (which you can't see in the photos) are much smaller than in older toys, and he more close to a shade of yellow than orange. Unlike Sonic's nose, Tails' nose is a piece of plastic. My only small niggle with the design is the bright yellow colour of his fringe, but it's not that big a deal when the design is a good as it is.

Compare them to these older plush toys I still own:

These toys are developed by Impact Innovations, a toy company who also make all those Mario Kart toys you see about. According to their website, there are going to be many more toys in the "Classic Sonic the Hedgehog" in 2008, including beanies, radio control and track sets. Sadly they have no photos of any of this stuff yet. If you want to buy these Sonic plushes, the only place that seems to stock them so far is GAME. Sonic here and Tails here, they don't seem to have listing for the Knuckles and Eggman ones yet, which is a shame because these are the ones I'm most intrested in, as I don't own any soft toys of those characters at all (I refuse to own the ugly Sonic X ones). I'm going to make sure I find them , though, and when I do you'll be the first to see photos!

Streets of what? Streets of RAGE!

What, an article that isn’t about Sonic? No, I’m not high, I just felt like being different. Variety is the proverbial spice of life. When I think of the good old days of Sega, one of the first things that comes to mind (once that blue hedgehog gets out the way) is Streets of Rage – or Bare Knuckle if you live in Japan. Which you probably don’t. Now you could argue that SoR was a bit of a copy of Capcom’s Final Fight (which presumably to Sega's dismay, got ported to the SNES). Well, actually you’d be right. But what a glorious copy it was! 

^ And what happens when you fuse these two together? Street Fighter... see what I did there?

More after the jump.



 

Like Final Fight, you wonder around the streets (…of rage!), beating up various scum in an assortment of different styles. Sick of just using your fists? No problem – just smash a phone box and you’ll be presented with an item! Be it food or a drain pipe, you’ll be able to make good use of it. Found an empty bottle? Crack it over your enemy’s head! Found an enemy? Throw him at another enemy! The fun never ends.

^ There are no screenshots of this game in 2 player on the internet - but the mode does exist!

Where Streets really shined was on the two player mode. Essentially it was the same as the one player mode, but with two merry violence-spewing protagonists as opposed to the one. You and your friend / sibling / neighbour / hostage would go on an epic brawl through 8 rounds of 2D madness. The sense of group accomplishment you’d get from double-teaming some denim-clad punk with a lead pipe and a baseball bat is second to nothing. And the best part? If there’s a disagreement between you and your partner, you can duke it out Street Fighter style. Not like some of these shoddy games where you can’t harm people on your own team, Streets of Rage allows you to beat seven shades out of your accomplice. Smack them round the e-face if they get out of line.

One of the best things about Streets of Rage was the hilarious special move. Picture this; you’re surrounded by a circle of thugs, each one increasingly seething, several with broken bottles, knives and various other goods for stabbery, who are slowly but surely closing in on you. You, however, are armed with nothing but some rather 80s clothing and a will to live. What do you do? You call the police… to fire a rocket at them. Yes, that’s right. By pressing the A button, you can use your special, which results in a police car driving on to the scene, its sun roof opening, and a police officer coming out with a rocket launcher. The rocket then gets fired in your area and burns your enemies to oblivion. Remarkably, you remain completely unharmed despite the fact in reality, it would have been a slightly suicidal move. And by ‘slightly suicidal’, I mean ‘irreversibly fatal’.

One thing that always disturbed me about this game as a child were some of the enemies. That Round 2 boss, with his Freddy Kruger / Vega styled claws was unnaturally tall. Actually, several of the bosses were. And they all looked generally disproportionate. What was the logic behind that? “Oh no, he looks like he’s been stretched by a French rack – now we’re in for it!”… yeah, not quite. But the main enemy I remember was the whipping women drones. Not because they were women with whips. No no. But because when you knocked them down, they released the most piercing and evil scream ever. It was like you had just thrown holy water on a banshee or something (I don’t know much about banshees or holy water, so I may have that combo wrong – the point was it was a horrible scream). Not so interesting tidbit; the Final Fight counterpart, if you like, of this generic woman thug, was not technically allowed to be a woman due to age-rating systems and anti-misogynist-violence laws. Capcom’s solution? She’s a he! Aptly named Poison, after the cross-dressing, hair-metal titans. So why didn’t Sega have this issue? Maybe they did, but the anecdote is assumedly less amusing.

I realise this wasn’t really a very well structured blog. It’s actually just me rambling about small bits of what I remember of one of my all time favourite games. If you’re bored and have a friend round, you should get your hands on SoR and get your 16-bit violence on. Or you could even check out Beats of Rage, the very well done home-made tribute game to SoR at http://www.senileteam.com/borinfo.php - you won’t regret it. Well, you might, but then that’d render your opinion invalid.

The Sonic cartoon that never was.

...and ain't you glad it wasn't? Just look at those awful supporting characters! 'Princess Acorn', presumbibly a early design for who later became Princess sally in the 'SATAM' cartoon, looks far too much like a slutty Princess Toadstool from the Mario Bros cartoons (also developed by DIC), Poker Lewis has been turned into some kind of punk, and Johnny Lightfoot also has shades, for some reason, and I don't even know what they were thinking with the others. A walrus called Joe Sushi? Tex the Penguin? A Flicky in some kind of white suit? Even Sonic himself doesn't look quite right, and where's Tails? More after the jump..



I Scanned this from the news section of an early issue of S.T.C, which was reporting on the release of 'Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog' on TV that following week on Channel 4, yet this image isn't from that cartoon at all: it's an original pitch image by DIC for Sega, who obviously made them change the cast entirely into the lot we found in SATAM.

What's quite interesting is that while none of the cartoons featured Poker Lewis and Johnny Lightfoot, Sonic the Comic adapted them characters into part of the Freedom Fighters from their original game designs seen in the first 10 or so issues (small cuddly animals) to anthropomorphic characters in denim jackets without anyone even noticing.

Here's some more images of this early pitch art on some sales cards I found on a rather useful website about SATAM, again with the rubbish Princess Acorn character and a very mis-coloured Dr.Robotnik. If anyone has any insight into this early Sonic cartoon concept, I would love to hear it!

I got me art in Sonic the Comic, I did!

I promised I would work on scanning as much interesting stuff out of my Sonic the Comic collection (in 300dpi) as I could, so I made a start tonight. This particular scan below more a personal thing than anything, because it's a scan of when, as a lad of twelve, I got a piece of artwork I drew into the pages of the British Sonic comic, in issue 130 released May 1998, to be exact!
You see the comic had a section every issue called the 'Graphic Zone' which is basically a fancy name for a fan art section. Getting an image in there would win you a little Sonic watch of some sort (worth a tenner). I always liked how one of the optional fields next to your name was what Sega consoles you had. I'd like to think stating you owned a Playstation would have S.T.C send shit through your mailbox. At the time I had a Mega Drive II, Mega CD II, Sega Saturn and a Game Gear. Oh how I miss that battery eating lump of plastic. Why did I sell it off so I could get a Game Boy Colour?

It's not just the fact they printed my art, but they also gave it an entire half-page of space, plus this was for the comic's 5th anniversary so the art is featured in a rather special issue. I'm surprised they didn't give that picture below it the bigger page space though, as it's much nicer. maybe all the white on mine saved on ink. Anyway, here's the watch I won from them, which in all honesty I never wore: it just got packed away with all the other Sonic junk I've got sitting in the loft, still in it's package!

This wasn't the first or only time that I had won something in S.T.C, mind. One time I sent in some Sonic comics I scribbled up (it was pretty much all I did draw at the time, hundreds upon hundreds of Sonic comics), and in return they sent me a Sonic 2 jacket patch...which I don't have a photo of right now, but I'll go get one later and edit it into this post. There was also something else I won from them, but I'll leave that topic for another time..

Sega World Videos!

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of love for the old SegaWorld Indoor Park that used to be in London (now just one floor of arcade games called 'FunLand'), but at least there is Arcade Heroes, who back in October got their hands on some juicy SegaWorld videos! The first video they managed to lay their hands on was is a promotional video showing off all the 3D concept planning of the place, and a bunch of footage of the rides that were there which bring back vague but fond memories. It also shows brief clips of what appears to be a Pirate Sega commercial for Virtua Racing on the Mega Drive!

Videos after the jump.






The next two are of some sort of meeting/get together of Segaworld's 'corporate hospitality'. Apparently these lot got unlimited go's on all the games in the place, the lucky bastards! Not a huge lot to see amongst all the prats with their drinks and crappy food (I'm just jealous really) apart from a few of the arcade games and a very ugly Sonic costume guy, who I met once! Well, I met the costume, I don't know about the guy in the costume...uh, you know what I mean.





Other than this though, there really is next to nothing on Youtube of good ol' Segaworld. hell, one of the results is of SEAworld with a typo! So remember in Part One of my article a while back, I showed screen shots of old home video footage from the first time I went there? Well this severe lack of videos online motivated me to finally rip that footage and upload it for all to see!

There isn't really a whole lot there to be honest: you'll get to see me and as a young tyke with a group of my mates as we're lifted up the escalator of joy and wonder (You'll be able to tell which one is me: just look for the one who is flapping about like a lunatic from excitement), along with the one non-virtual ride (which was crap as my vehicle just got stuck spinning around in circles) some odd props hanging from the ceiling, and a play ground area of some sort. Yeah, don't blame me for the lack of much footage, that was most likely mum mum filming that! Anyway, it's a small contribution to the Segaworld love. If you guys have anything, ANYTHING to show of this place be it video, photos, magazine junk, anything, please send it in!

Memorable Moments in Sega Gaming 2

Continuing from where I left off quite a while ago, here's five more installments of my personal most memorable moments in my Sega filled life of gaming. You can see the previous chapter HERE.

#6: Sega Rally - The Instructors

Sega seem to always do things in a way that's makes them more memorable to me than say, games by just about anyone else. Take rally games, or more specifically the voice that instructs you on which turns are coming up in Sega Rally

“Long medium left! Easy Right! CAUTION! Hairpin right! Long easy right, Maybe!“

Maybe? Some help you are. Then as you go around the track a second time, it’s still a “Long easy right! Maybe!”. Surely he can confirm now we’ve been round the track one lap what that part is. Moron. When you play the sequel with the female instructor, she sounds more like she’s saying “Long easy right! Baby!” Heh. Best part about this feature was making them shout “whoa!” every time you bump into the sides. That’ll teach them to be unsure about the next turn. Hang on, I’ve run out of time. Oh well. GAME OVER YEAHHHHHHHHHH!


More after the jump.

#7: Golden Axe - Those little Lemming Type Things

I’m fully aware Golden Axe was made quite a few years before the game Lemmings (the classic Amiga puzzle series in case you thought I meant the actual creatures), but as a kid I swore those little midgets that nick your magic potions and roasted chicken legs were Lemmings, as in those little guys with the green hair and blue tummy's. Their colour scheme is very similar and..I don’t know, they just reminded me of Lemmings. Whatever they are, they sure are fun to kick in the arse. Even more fun is kicking them in the arse over a cliff. Sometimes the goodies they drop will fall down said gaps too, though. Come back roasted chicken leg! There goes a wasted life I could of used being up that fat bloke with the hammer.

#8: Sonic 2 - The 2 Player Mode

Of all the games I have played with 2 players, this is the one I have played the most. There is so much that is memorable about it: The TV boxes that swap the players positions or accidentally give your rival an extra life, constantly jumping in the special stage to be in front of the two person queue for upcoming rings, the fact that someone can still win even if they were 2^nd place if they collected more rings and bopped more TVs, and of course THAT spike trap in Mystic Cave Act 2 which you always fall into.

It was here I got to playing Sonic 2 like an art form, executing dash attacks with a flick of the down and C buttons, and knowing the levels like the back of my hand. As a kid me and my sister would play this once every week on a Sunday afternoon just before we would sit to watch the Simpsons, followed by a bath, and getting our hair dried while Heartbeat was on before bed. We would almost always draw on the results, and the final special stage would be the decider. Ever since it has become a multiplayer staple in my house: if any of my mates pop over this is most likely to be pulled out first. It’s still a surprisingly deep, exciting multiplayer mode that I never tire of. Oh how tempted I am to get a X-Box 360 just for the online version of this mode on Live Arcade...

#9: ‘The Sega Drift'

Sega didn’t invent drifting, and they probably didn’t invent drifting in racing games either, but they certainly made an art form out of it. The first time I remember drifting in a game was in Daytona USA, and once you figured it out it felt so satisfying and rewarding, plus it prevented you from smashing into that mountain with Sonic carved into it. This trademark over the top drifting showed up in almost every Sega racing game since, such as Sega Rally, Sega Touring Car and Crazy Taxi. The Sega drift is taken to the Nth degree in Outrun 2, in which you could most likely drift forever if the track was a never ending turn, and you always feel in full control. It never, ever gets old. I love it.

#10: Alex Kidd - Rock Paper Scissors

I'll admit this now. I never owned a Master System, the Mega Drive was my introduction to Sega gaming and Enchanted Castle, his only 16 bit game, was my introduction to Alex Kidd. While the game was a mildly fun platformer, what really made it stand out was it's gambling aspect, which involved a game of Rock paper Scissors. Walking into any of the many little houses scattered around the levels will bring you to a stage being watched by a audience of fluffy animals and a rival who will ask you if you 'WANT TO RISK YOUR LIFE'.

You can flick through the three choices in a little thought bubble while the cute little build up music plays, and once that music is over, it's a case of either winning the item, which could be anything from a bike or a helicopter, or having a huge weight crushed on your head, leaving with nothing to do but waddle off in shame with your huge feet. You can even practice rock paper scissors against any of the games opponents in the options mode. Nice.

Today is Sega Saturn Day!

Why is today of all days Sega Saturn day? Because Father Krishna says so, that's why! His blog The Saturn Junkyard, has been up and running for a whole year today, and unlike this place it updates very often with great content like interviews with the creator of Radio Sega, and info all the latest remakes/ports of Saturn games to pop up in Japan a lot recently. He even has a little chat box thingy on the side of the blog, which is nice. I've drawn up a quick Segata Sanshiro in it's honor:

I still remember when I got my Saturn. I got it on my 10th Birthday in November 1996, if I remember correctly. This was probably the most Sega induced time of my life as soon after this Birthday me and some school mates went up to visit the newly opened SegaWorld (see the previous articles about that). It came from Argos and was £200 with a bunch of bundled games: Sega Rally, Manx TT Superbike, Sega Ages, Sonic Jam and Bubble Bobble Collection. I still remember soon after a mate telling me of a rumor that the Saturn could play Mega CD games, which I tried out and ended up having to get the system replaced! Doh!

Being a Sonic nut at the time (my birthday cake that year had Sonic Pogs sitting on it, for petes sake!), Sonic Jam was a dream come true: All 4 mega Drive titles, which had already given me hours upon hours of fun, all on one disc with lots of added options, modes, difficulty settings and best of all: a time attack feature. It was, and still is, the best collection of the original Sonic games ever made: far better than Mega Collection which was just a bunch of ROMs slapped on a disc.

Sega Ages also filled me with mountains of joy: finally I could play After Burner just like the cabinet they had down the theme park along the seaside at home. I didn't have any interest in the Playstation: as far as I was concerned it didn't have Sonic or any of Sega's arcade games which, living by a seafront full of arcades, were something I would alway want to blow my pocket money on, so owning them at home was just what I wanted.

This is my collection at the moment. Most of these games were bought back when the console was out, many of which were being flogged off as the Saturn was slowly fading from selves. Outside of Ebay the games are pretty hard to find now, but a few have popped up at Car Boot Sales from time to time, including Guardian Heroes, Street Fighter Collection and House of the Dead.

Oh, and make sure you check out the latest issue of Retro Gamer, it featured an article on one of the saturn's defining games NiGHTS, as well as a great article on the Official Sega Saturn magazine, all the issues I bought of which I still own and is my all time favorite game magazine.

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog on DVD

The time around 1993 to 1995 was huge for Sonic fans, including myself as a wee lad. Not only did they release a truck load of games for the many Sega systems out at the time, but you could buy Sonic as almost anything, even spaghetti! One of the biggest things to push Sonic into stardom in these early years was the release of not one, but two completely different TV cartoons, which appeared on the scene no more than a week between each other. Named 'Sonic the Hedgehog' and 'The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog', the two cartoons have are affectionately known as 'SATAM' (Saturday morning) and 'AOSTH' so as not to confuse their similar titles.

This was an in-genius idea on Sega's half; instead of going for one particular style of cartoon, risking the chance of losing half an audience, they had two series' produced that would appeal to different audiences, so Sonic could potentially appeal to any kid. SATAM went for a deep continuing story with a dark edge to it much like other favorites of the time like Gargoyles and Batman, whereas AOSTH was a more slapstick Looney Tunes like cartoon with lots of daft animation and gags.Both were developed by the same studio - DIC, known best for Inspector Gadget, and they made yet another Sonic cartoon in 1999 (just before the Dreamcast released in the west) called Sonic Underground, although to be honest I didn't like that much.

While I have a soft spot for SATAM, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog is the cartoon I remember best from my childhood. This is mainly because in the UK most of the episodes were released on video, and I owned the lot of them. They also showed the two cartoons regulary on a channel called TCC (The Childrens Channel) where they would often get the intros and credits of teh cartoons muddled up sometimes, so you'd think they were about to air an episode of SATAM, but after the intro a AOSTH episode would pop up. Weird. This is the one Sonic cartoon that seems to keep springing up on TV as well. It was most recently screened on ITV2 and a kids channel called POP.

I have wrote about this cartoon a few times before at my personal blog, mainly because a guy who worked on the series, and designed this cartoon's cone headed version of Dr.Robotnik, Milton Knight, has posted some wonderful concept art he did for it as well as some early footage on YouTube.

Just this year both of these cartoons have been released on DVD, and this week I got my hands on the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog box set, which contains every single episode on 8 discs, a run time of 24 hours! The box set takes up the same space on a shelf of just one of the ten or more videos I had as a kid! Ain't technology wonderful?

The discs are packed in 4 extra thing DVD cases, 2 in each. One thing I can't congratulate them on is the lazy presentation. The box and discs use the same artwork of Sonic over and over again, and they haven't even drawn him well! For starters, his arms are blue rather than the skin tone they should be, and his shoes are all wonky looking at the bottom. Even the logo is squashed to buggery, and the back of the cases has artwork of the WRONG Robotink, it's the more menacing Robotink from SATAM rather than Milton Knight's crazy lard-arse. Compared to the wonderful presentation of the original videos this is just plain amateurish. There is a set of stickers in the box as well, again using artwork from the wrong cartoon. Doh!

The interactive menus on the discs themselves also leave a lot to be desired, with no extras and dull layouts. They also haven't really gone into any effort to re-master any of these cartoons, but these be honest it's hardly considered to be an important cartoon so it was obvious they were not going to bother. The company that has put this out have done the bare minimum but it's the content that counts in the end and there's a LOT of it. Some episodes are clearly better than others, but the cartoon is just as daft as I remember it, with it's surreal backdrops, occasionally great animation (again mainly thanks to Milton Knight's input) and plenty of laugh out load moments, wrapped up with a forced moral at the end of the episode. I'm sure you've all heard of the 'Sonic Sez' clip in which Sonic teaches kids about sexual harassment. In case you've never seen it, here is is!



The RRP of the set is about £35, and Play.com sells it for £28, but HMV.co.uk has this week been flogging the set off for just £13, so I naturally jumped at that bargain! It's still that price right now, so if you're interested now would be the time to go get it! They also do a DVD set in America that is only 4 discs of the 22 episodes, but has a few short extras that you can find on Youtube anyway. Oh, and it has nicer box art but that's about it.