Wednesday, March 24, 2010

A Mystery Package From SEGA Arrives!

After having won a spontaneous contest involving speed drawing the complete cast of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, a month passed and my prizes have arrived! Sent from ArchangelUK of Sega Europe's Sonic blog, the package contained a number of items that I never thought I would own.

Any package with the Sega logo is a good package.

Carefully opening the bag (you always save a bag from Sega) I found a bright orange shirt wrapped around a number of tiny trinkets. Having read the spoilers on the front of the bag (aka the package contents for international customs purposes) I also knew that a game was inside. So what was inside?

Promo-mania!

Promo items I would usually have to take a flight to California or England for! Games represented were Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll, Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games and Sonic Classic Collection. Let's have a closer look at that odd shirt.


Thumbs up for child sized shirts in large! Or thumbs down for adult sized shirts in large being small for my American frame. Still, the shirt fits and makes me look like a monkey with a backpack on. I can tell you that I have already ran about the house in it and stole bananas from the kitchen.


FALL OUT!


The largest load came from M&SATWOG, and these are my favorite items. A pin set, a key chain set and a lanyard. My favorite icon out of all of them has to be the Eggman Empire logo pin. Gotta support the badniks!


If I wore all of these at once, would that make me a loser?


Finally, the most unexpected item of the package: the newly released Sonic Classic Collection! I was double bummed when I realized it was the PAL release and that I didn't own a DS, but then after a quick Wikipedia search I learned that the DS is region free, so I still have the ability to play it... someday. Still, it's my first DS game and looks nice behind the vinyl figures.


Overall a really cool surprise, lots of unique goodies and a package marked Sega. A good end to a Wednesday in my opinion.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Mario and Sonic Scene Creator and Character Designer online art games

These brilliant Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog Flash online art and design games (from MarioSonicGames.com) are amongst my favourite free web games, so I thought I'd put them all together in one place here to see if you like them too:

  Super Mario Brothers: Scene Creator

  Super Mario Brothers: Scene Creator 2

  Super Mario Brothers: Mario Dress Up

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Scene Creator

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Scene Creator 2

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Scene Creator 3

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Character Designer

  Sonic: Chao Character Designer

If you like the above games, then you'll hopefully also enjoy these other art and design games (from Dan-Dare.org):

  Transformers: Character Creator

  Cars: Ramone's Coloring Book

  Cars: Ramone's Painting

  Finding Nemo: Paper Toys

  Finding Nemo: Create-A-Scene

  Toy Story: Etch-A-Sketch

  Meet the Robinsons: Mural Mania

(See also here)

Mario and Sonic Scene Creator and Character Designer online art games

These brilliant Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog Flash online art and design games (from MarioSonicGames.com) are amongst my favourite free web games, so I thought I'd put them all together in one place here to see if you like them too:

  Super Mario Brothers: Scene Creator

  Super Mario Brothers: Scene Creator 2

  Super Mario Brothers: Mario Dress Up

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Scene Creator

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Scene Creator 2

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Scene Creator 3

  Sonic the Hedgehog: Character Designer

  Sonic: Chao Character Designer

If you like the above games, then you'll hopefully also enjoy these other art and design games (from Dan-Dare.org):

  Transformers: Character Creator

  Cars: Ramone's Coloring Book

  Cars: Ramone's Painting

  Finding Nemo: Paper Toys

  Finding Nemo: Create-A-Scene

  Toy Story: Etch-A-Sketch

  Meet the Robinsons: Mural Mania

(See also here)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Sonic Classic Collection SE Aussie/Spain Unboxing

The emulation may not be up to par for the recent re-re-re-release of Sonic's classic Mega Drive games, but the special edition treatment is impressive! A photo gallery, courtesy of Sega Europe, shows off the collectors box exclusive to Australia and Spain.

The set features the game, a collection of art cards and a mini Sonic figurine all housed in a tin box.



The cards, while not all representing the games included, are pretty awesome. Both American and Japanese art feature from games such as Sonic 3, Sonic the Screensaver and the Game Gear's Sonic & Tails aka Sonic Chaos.

The mini figure is a near match with the recently released Sonic vinyl figure, looking to be roughly half the size. While not as cool as the vinyl version, the Sonic-ness is well done and it would make for the perfect mini-me to the vinyl Sonic.

Check out the full photostream here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/segaeurope/4422421928/in/photostream/

And if you have the collection, let us know in the comments section!

Monday, March 8, 2010

Free Mario and Sonic game downloads

For those of you out there that like free game downloads, I've just added links to free downloads of all the Mario and Sonic Flash games that I've designed so far to a new index page in MarioSonicGames.com here:

Mario and Sonic Flash games exclusive to MarioSonicGames.com

Free Mario and Sonic game downloads

For those of you out there that like free game downloads, I've just added links to free downloads of all the Mario and Sonic Flash games that I've designed so far to a new index page in MarioSonicGames.com here:

Mario and Sonic Flash games exclusive to MarioSonicGames.com

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

SEGA GENESIS! SEGA GENESIS!

For those tired of the "NINTENDO SIXTY FOUR!!!" kid, please enjoy this Sega alternative.



Bonus points for cheering each individual game and accessory.

...

"IT COMES WITH SONIC 2!"

"YEAHHHH!!!"

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Sony have now fixed the PS3 problem

Sony say they have now fixed the worldwide PlayStation 3 problem. So that was a nice PS3-free 24 hours for most of the world then!

I was absolutely right - it was caused by PS3's wrongly thinking this year was a leap year, and then crashing when they discovered it wasn't February 29th after connecting to the PlayStation Network yesterday. Double Triple Doh!!!

Apparently you can all now safely switch on your PS3's and connect to the PlayStation Network, and the bug should go away automatically. If it doesn't, you will be able to reset your system clocks yourselves now, and that will fix everything.

Personally, I'd suggest selling your PS3 and getting yourslf a Nintendo Wii instead - Super Mario Galaxy 2 is due out this year, which will be the best game ever, for sure.

Sony have now fixed the PS3 problem

Sony say they have now fixed the worldwide PlayStation 3 problem. So that was a nice PS3-free 24 hours for most of the world then!

I was absolutely right - it was caused by PS3's wrongly thinking this year was a leap year, and then crashing when they discovered it wasn't February 29th after connecting to the PlayStation Network yesterday. Double Triple Doh!!!

Apparently you can all now safely switch on your PS3's and connect to the PlayStation Network, and the bug should go away automatically. If it doesn't, you will be able to reset your system clocks yourselves now, and that will fix everything.

Personally, I'd suggest selling your PS3 and getting yourslf a Nintendo Wii instead - Super Mario Galaxy 2 is due out this year, which will be the best game ever, for sure.

Monday, March 1, 2010

It's "World Sony PlayStation 3 Failure Day" today!

Every single original "fat" version of Sony's flagship PlayStation 3 games console failed to work properly today, all over the world!

Apparently the newer slim model seems to be fine, but since most of the millions of PS3's sold so far are of the larger variety, that's not a lot of help. No-one anywhere with the original model can connect to the PlayStation Network, no games any of those people have ever downloaded from the network will work, and no disc-based games with trophy functionality (i.e. most games) will work either. Oops.

It seems a calendar bug of some sort in the firmware might be the cause of this rather epic system failure, because the problem only started today, March 1st. Is it some sort of leap year screw-up I wonder? It isn't a leap year this year of course, but perhaps part of the PS3 firmware thinks it's February 29th today resulting in an unresolvable conflict elsewhere in the system. When I used to work in IT for big blue-chip corporations complex programming errors like that would slip through testing unnoticed from time to time, because not too many people would think to test for the relevant erroneous scenarios in advance of them actually happening.

Anyway, if you've got one of those original PS3's and you haven't recently switched it on and gone online, DON'T!!!

Keep checking the official US PlayStation blog (using your computer, not your PS3) and wait until Sony announce that they have fixed the bug!

Maybe now's a good time to buy one of the unaffected slim models:



It's "World Sony PlayStation 3 Failure Day" today!

Every single original "fat" version of Sony's flagship PlayStation 3 games console failed to work properly today, all over the world!

Apparently the newer slim model seems to be fine, but since most of the millions of PS3's sold so far are of the larger variety, that's not a lot of help. No-one anywhere with the original model can connect to the PlayStation Network, no games any of those people have ever downloaded from the network will work, and no disc-based games with trophy functionality (i.e. most games) will work either. Oops.

It seems a calendar bug of some sort in the firmware might be the cause of this rather epic system failure, because the problem only started today, March 1st. Is it some sort of leap year screw-up I wonder? It isn't a leap year this year of course, but perhaps part of the PS3 firmware thinks it's February 29th today resulting in an unresolvable conflict elsewhere in the system. When I used to work in IT for big blue-chip corporations complex programming errors like that would slip through testing unnoticed from time to time, because not too many people would think to test for the relevant erroneous scenarios in advance of them actually happening.

Anyway, if you've got one of those original PS3's and you haven't recently switched it on and gone online, DON'T!!!

Keep checking the official US PlayStation blog (using your computer, not your PS3) and wait until Sony announce that they have fixed the bug!

Maybe now's a good time to buy one of the unaffected slim models: