sonic and shadow games: July 2010

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Classic Sonic comics online for all to read!

Some recent developments in the Sonic fan community have lead to some rather brilliant content involving old Sonic comics. First off we have a website dedicated to bringing us translated scans of the rare Sonic Manga series that kicked off to advertise the first game and went on to feature lots of odd characters including early versions of Amy Rose and Charmy Bee, or all things.

A new page is being uploaded every day and while the translation can sometimes leave a bit to be desired (Did those badniks really just tell Sonic to f*ck off? MegaDora, really?), just the fact that someone has gone to the effort to hunt down these much sought after old Japanese comics and probably pay big money for them, and rather than keeping them to his greedy little self has scanned them for all to see with a translation too, is a rather honorable feat.The art in the comic is nice, and there are many things in it that originate from early Sonic concepts that got axed from the game, like the band of animals and the fact Sonic has fangs in some drawings amongst other things.

Next up is an even newer website that has popped up to give us a weekly dose of Sonic the Comic, the UK published series that was going from 1993 to 2001. You guys already know about my love for this comic seeing as i grew up with it, and there has been scans available online in the past of just about every issue (and fans have been keeping the comic going with the Online continuation), but this is a much more convenient way of just checking out the issues without having to download a torrent or something. An issue will be posted on the website every week and only one issue is up so far but especially if you have never read this comic before you should defiantly keep an eye on it every week.

What made Sonic the Comic so excellent in it's first few years was that it not only had stories about Sonic (which to be honest take about 10 issues to really get any good), but also stories about many other Sega games such as Shinobi, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Ecco and many, many more. Each issue also had news, previews, reviews and cheats for the latest Sega games at the time, so it was like a fortnightly mini-magazine as well. So make sure you check these two websites out on a regular basis if you want some Sonic and Sega comic strip goodness outside of the only still-running series that is the American Archie series.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Sonic Spinball @ Alton Towers

So this weekend me, my parents and my girlfriend spent the weekend up at Alton Towers, where we stayed in one of the hotels in the park, went out for some lovely pub dinners in the local village and larked about in the park and water park. But this is Sega Memories so let's get straight to the point: the Sonic Spinball ride. It opened this year, as did a Sonic themed hotel room (we didn't stay in that) and we had a go on it. Impressions and photos of the ride and the general Sonic-ness added to the park after the jump!

Now while the ride is technically 'new' it's actually just a new paint job of a ride that used to be called Pinball Whizzer so if you have been to Alton Towers before, this is the same exact ride as far as i know just with a new paint job, but this was the first time any of us had been to the park so that fact didn't really matter. There was some pinball machine things scattered about the queue area that were clearly left un-changed, as they looked rather old and beat up. There was artwork of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Robotnik all over the place which is nice: fans of the other 526 characters be damed.

This statue was also adorning the front of the ride. I've actually seen this statue a few times before: once in a GAME store and again at Summer of Sonic last year, though this one looked shiner and less knocked about. But what is this? What have they done to him?

They have him held up with metal bars shoved up his arse! What kind of sick cruelty is this?

Inside he is crying..

Also there was this sign near him. That means YOU furries! maybe the bars are there to protect from yiffing.

While in the queue they played music on the speakers dotted about: mainly from what I could tell were Rooftop Run from from Sonic Unleashed and Station Square from Sonic Adventure, and you would also hear someone as Sonic (not the current official VA I don't think. EDIT: turns out this is probably the new Sonic VA who was just announced here.) talking about the ride and safety procedures etc. When we were queuing up for it the ride stopped for a bit and it voice came out with "uh oh! Dr. Eggman is up to his tricks again so the ride is temporarily on hold" or something of the sort. There was also the occasional sound effect from the games played out.

The ride itself is quite neat and defiantly fits the theme. Four can sit in one of the carts (two on each side) and while it's flying about on the roller coaster the carts spins back and forth randomly, as if you've bouncing off the turns like a ball. It doesn't go upside down or anything but I wouldn't really say it's a ride for little kids either as it's fast and bumpy. It was fun though, and that's what matters. Somewhere while on the ride, like most of the rides at the park, your photo is taken so you can buy it later. For £6 you get your photo in this cardboard frame..

I was a bit disappointed in the total lack of exclusive merchandise for the ride at the park, though. The frame above is all there is. So not even a t-shirt with the logo on it. The souvenir store near the entrance only had stuff you can buy elsewhere from the 'classic' range of figures, bags, t-shirts etc. Would of been nice to bring back something unique to the park only but to be fair if there was anything else I would of thought we would have known about it from other fans that have been to the park by now. Oh well.

The only other merchandise you could find all over the place was these cheap PMS plush toys in claw machines of Sonic, Tails, Amy and Shadow. They're for the most part pretty ugly so not even worth the effort to try and win from these rip off machines. This machine mainly full of Tails was in the hotel's arcade, which also had After Burner Climax which is nice. One of those Amy's is flashing her knickers, the dirty girl! For those curious one of the arcades in the park had a deluxe Scud Race which I haven't seen in some time (only the basic ones in Southend).

Last but not least here's a quick video of the ride we took and yes, that is me and Stacey on it! Didn't really get the whole thing going around but you get the idea.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Classic Amy and co, all the way back from Vegas..

So my parents were in Las Vegas last month and visited the Gameworks arcade while there. Recently there was news that about half of these places were being shut down, but this is apparently not one of them, in fact they were building more stuff for it including a Sonic themed kids area. Alreday there was a Sega Shop full of Sonic goodies, they snapped a couple pics of the display (see above) Hit the jump for more...

They brought me back a couple bits including the Sonic & Knuckles all-star racing cars as well as three new plush toys of the classic kind that I've only previously seen on the odd Ebay auction. I take it these are only sold in the U.S at the moment, and for the most part they're rather nice.

Most importantly there was a Amy Rose amongst them. Excluding the old mega-expensive Japanese toys this is the first time Amy in her Sonic CD look has been released in plush form. If anything this looks better than the Sonic the Fighters Japanese ones and would cost you a whole lot less. It's a very good likeness and probably the best of the three I got. You can't see her in the display photos because they only had the one left there, though I doubt these are 'ULTRA RARE!!1!' by any means.

A few more close ups of the Amy plush just because. All round very solid and on model toy so if you're after an Amy you will probably wanna hunt this one down.

The Sonic is also pretty good. His trademark wagging hand is stitched onto his head so it stays upright which works for the pose I suppose. It does the job, nothing wrong with it but nothing amazing either. To be fair calling a Sonic plush toy 'amazing' would maybe be a bit sad mind.

Finally here's Knuckles. This one is merely ok, but his head is so huge and bulged out it looks a bit deformed, maybe it's because the facial features are huge. In fact I think I saw a toy identical to this once but with the purple eyes he has in the new games. It's not terrible but compared to the other two it's a bit wonky and lumpy. The Impact Innovations produced Knuckles from a couple years ago is a lot better. There was also a tails amongst them which looks ok (see photo at top of article).

Sunday, July 4, 2010

More of my Sonic collection!

Another trip to my parents house meant another chance to rummage through boxes for more of my Sonic collection! Just like last time, it's a whole assortment of goodies from the early 90's through to today. Let's look, shall we?

Above you can see a collection of bubble gum containers. Sonic, in his classic pose, pops off the back of his head to reveal... nothing! He used to hold a bunch of little Chiclet-like bubble gum pieces, but I chewed those up years ago. The Game Gear bubble gum cases are very cool. Inside each container was a few sheets of pink gum (long gone) as well as an assortment of Game Gear and Genesis tricks and tips cards. From what I can tell, there were three sets: two collections of Game Gear tips and one collection of Sonic 3 and Knuckles tips.

More stuff after the break!

Next up are a bunch of pencil toppers, no clue where I got these but they're from 1993. The set contained 8 different toppers and I managed to find 6. My favorite would have to be Robotnik, and with three of them I won't feel bad using one. In the middle are two Sonic pogs featuring Sonic and Boba F- I mean, Fang aka Nack. What ever happened to that weasel?

This goofy thing was given to me by a friend who took a trip to Japan. It is exactly what it looks like: an inflatable Sonic head that you wear on your wrist. Only in Japan!

Inside the head in a jingle bell. I guess one could play Christmas carols while shaking Sonic's jingle-head. Spindashing through the snow, in Eggman's open sleigh!

Sonic was a popular McDonald's Happy Meal star! Between '93 and '04, Sonic appeared in four Happy Meal collections. The first of these was a promotion for Sonic 3. The Robotnik wind-up had a variant of the Eggman design for Japan. This variant can be seen in the Sonic 10th Birthday booklet. The TV in the back, featuring a Genesis atop it, was in an end of the year collection commemorating all the Happy Meals of the year. The pieces combined to become a train. Of course I only picked up the Sonic car. The screen spins to reveal Tails and an Asterix-style Robotnik.

Sonic's next Happy Meal appearance was in this 2003 set. The set included simple LCD mini-games featuring SEGA characters. There was a Monkey Ball one as well, but I failed to pick that up. Guess I wasn't an Aiai fan back then.

In 2004 Sonic returned with more LCD mini-games. These were a bit more fun and had leanings towards sports. Shadow played hockey years before the Winter Olympic Games.

This assortment includes the Hot Wheels Crash & Smash, as Gagaman detailed a few months back. I have no idea where or when I got the Sonic patch, I don't even know if it's official, but it looks pretty cool.

The blue and gold skateboarding Sonic figures are said to be the first Sonic figures ever released (whether that is to the world or just America is unknown to me). The figures were given away in boxes of Cookie Crisp back in 1991, the same year the first game was released, so these could very well be the first figures.

The watch was both a cereal promotion as well as a part of a line of watches that I wrote about not too long ago. I'd still wear it if my wrists weren't too big. The final piece of the above photo, the pin, was won in a 10th Anniversary contest held by the website SEGAdojo. I had created a Sonic Adventure 2 commercial for the chance to win something much cooler than a pin. Still, it's a nice consolation prize and goes well with the Birthday box.

Four items to go, stay with me! These Tiger handhelds are poor representations of Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic 2. If you have ever played a Tiger game, you know that they have about 5 minutes of fun in them before you regret buying the thing. Despite that, Sonic 2 is quite fun in that you play Oil Ocean Zone the entire time and can even go through loops. Also, the Japanese art of Sonic and Tails is very cool. 3D Blast is from the Pocket Arcade line, which I plan to detail next week. If you thought NiGHTS was a great game, wait til you see it get butchered by the wizards from Tiger Electronics!

Why buy five Sonic X cars individually when you can get them all at once? This set is not as cool as the Hot Wheels SEGA set, but the idea of an Eggman pedovan makes me laugh.

Speaking of Eggman, lookie what I have:

An autograph of Mike Pollock, the current voice of Eggman! Coupled with my Milton Knight Robotnik painting and AoStH Robotnik cel, I've got quite a good Eggman collection going. I didn't meet Mike, instead I received this free autograph via his website. Do you want one? Request one here! Tell Mike that SEGA Memories says "Hello!".

That's all the Sonic items I have to show off for now! Hopefully I'll find more, including my old Sonic Genesis strategy guides and my Sonic the Hedgehog 2 plush toys. Until then, stay cool!

Friday, July 2, 2010

The top 5 best Mario and Sonic online games ever!

There are a great many Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog Flash online games on the web, most of which are pretty good fun to play, and a few of which are so good they actually rival the real console games that they are inspired by.

You can play over 150 of the best ones at my MarioSonicGames.com website for free.

Here are what are universally considered to be the "All-time Top 5" Mario and Sonic online games: