Rollerblades with ATTITUDE.

As a little brat I used to go roller-blading from time to time at one of those indoor places where a whole bunch of kids would be roller-blading in a big circle with a disco ball and whatever music was in at the time. I played Bomberman for the first time on an arcade cabinet there, but that's got nothing to do with this blog so er...hey look Sonic roller-blades! Or roller-skates, whatever you want to call them.

I had these at some point during my childhood but wherever or not I took them to that indoor thingy or if they gave you a pair to ride about in there I don't know. There was also a skateboard and a crash helmet from what I recall but the latter was only in adult size from what I recall, could be wrong though. I got the skateboard one Christmas but ended up takeing it back and using the money to get Sonic & Knuckles instead. More photos and rambling after the jump!

These are not my original pair, they were gone years ago, probably when I got bored of them/the roller-blade park shut down/they started to stink etc etc. I picked up this pair earlier this year from a car boot sale. I'm not sure why, I obviously wouldn't fit in them (or dare wear them even if they did fit) but I think it was just the sheer curiosity of seeing them again. That and they make a sort of interesting article here, do they not? Don't answer that.

Oh roller-BOOTS. I'm sorry, these things go by no many names!

I think the main draw was the fact they were boxed and were in rather good condition, unlike the skateboards I've seen from time to time which have always been wreaked. The box espcially caught my eye because of the unique artwork on it, I thought it looked familar and sure enough...

..it appaers they copied the art from this panel of Richard Elson's art from Sonic the Comic issue 10! well, the pose is the same although it not a direct trace of it. Elson drew this pose several times in these early issues, but the only thing that tips me off on it being from this panel in particular is that curve at the end of the spike on top of his head.

So that's the roller-blades. Not a lot to say about those except they have Sonic's face on them and this little quote on the sides, and the box art is kind of interesting. The early 90's were a time where you could buy just about anything with Sonic's mug on it. The same is almost happening again now, but no sign of a modern Sonic skateboard just yet.

Sonic & Knuckles, splashing in a puddle..

I sure do hold on to some pointless stuff. Pretty self explanatory: Wellington boots with the Sonic & Knuckles logo on them. Yep. They do exactly what they say on the tin, or rather...boot.

Now that I think about it I should have taken a photo of one of the boots with Sonic 3 sticking out of the top of it. Only then would these boots truly be complete. That or Sonic 1 so I could make a rubbish 'GET BLUE SPHERES' joke invovling heavy rain drops or something. Oh well.

The cutest Sonic clothes you'll ever see.

Awwww! Look at this widdle suit! You probably can't tell from the photo but this is tiny. It's sitting in the loft within my collection, and apparently there was matching tie that went with it which I cannot find. When I was a lil' kid I wore this once or twice at family parties. No, you're not seeing any photos.

It's by Marks & Spencers, like a lot of the old British Sonic clothes were. It's that same texture as that nice tie I've got that sort of glistens in the light, which is generally quite difficult to take good photos of. It's smothered in images of Sonic and little illustrated renditions of the green hill zone, which feature chunky white rings for some reason.

I'd imagine these rarely come up anymore so I thought I'd give it a show off. To be honest I think the only reason we kept it is because it was one of the more expensive pieces of Sonic clothing from back then. Obviosuly I didn't keep all the Sonic clothes I wore! I do remember having a jacket covered in sweet Sonic patches (different to those adult size ones I have), that when it didn't fir anymore, my nan stitched them onto a new bigger jacket. Bless!

Just a brief one

Okay, first things first, I am a bad person for neglecting Sega Memories for so long. I won't bother making excuses, but Gaga's posted some fantastic stuff whilst I've been off so it's not like you kids have been without. Anyway, I actually have a couple of updates nearly prepared to post (but not quite there yet), but in the mean time I thought I would follow on briefly from an article posted by Gaga a few days ago.

We all know that to a certain degree, Sonic clothes are ridiculous. And yet, despite that, I continue to think that anything stamped with the classic Sonic design is golden. They're ridiculous, but awesomely so. To that end, I thought those of you who have as many fashion issues as myself might want to check out the following link.

This shirt is awesome. Whilst trying not to be a secret advertisement for Play.com, they do seem to be the only people selling it. As overtly nerdy as it is, the shirt rocks mainly because it's a great picture that wraps around the entire t-shirt (nostalgic nerd memory #4359; this stock art of Sonic adorned the cover of the first issue of Sonic the Comic I ever bought. Epic as). Whilst perhaps not as amazing as the Uniqlo shirts (which I am still bitter I never managed to get one of those silhouette [probably sic] ones), it is a rather nice little item. Just be warned if you buy it, the shirt is not that grey colour, it's much more navy. It'd look better if it was that grey colour, but whatever.

So yeah. Go buy yourself a Sega related Christmas present. Just don't spill mulled wine on it, as it probably won't come out.

More clothes with Sonic on 'em

Here's some stuff I got a few months back that I took photos of but didn't get around to uploading here. Some bloke at a car boot sale had tons of Sonic promo gear, mainly t-shirts and hooded fleeces, but also caps, of which he only had one of left, and some Virtua Tennis...things. I bought up two of everything, but probably should have just made him an offer on the lot, as seconds after I walked away some obese woman did exactly that. I decided to keep one lot sealed up for the loft collection, and the other lot for wearing.

More photos after the jump..


All the gear was based on Sonic games from the last couple years, such as Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic Rivals and Sonic Riders. The designs are actually quite nice because they're quite minimalist and subtle. The Secret Rings t-shirt and fleece, for example, has a flame on the front, as if to say your heart is ON FIRE like Sonic's was in the game (or something like that), and the logo is on the back.

The Sonic Riders T-shirt (like the cap he only had one of these left) has a silhouette of Sonic on his surfboard thing from that game in multiple colours, though it could also be Sonic with his thumb mutating into Knuckles fist. The back has a nice full colour logo from the game and a Sega logo.

The Rivals shirt is in a sort of greenish Grey and has Sonic's disembodied head floating over the PSP game's logo. There's nothing on the back of this one., but there's a little sega logo lurking where the size is written. A bit less abstract than the other two designs but still quite decent despite being based on a sub par at best game.

The cap is also promoting Rivals, with the same Sonic head floating on it and the logo in orange and white sitting on the bill. Can't say I would wear it myself, mind.

Finally here's the Virtua Tennis thingys. I presume they hook onto a mobile phone or something, and they are promoting the PSP game World Tour. So exciting! The bloke only wanted 10p each for these.

Despite car boot sales being filled with nothing but junk 90% of the time, I do occasionally stumble among unusual stuff like this, as the only way you'd get this stuff normally is if you worked in a game shop or if you worked for Sega, I guess. I also have a Sega Rally (the recent one) red shirt that I ought to get a photo of at some point.

Possibly the greatest Sonic tie in the world (and some caps)

Ok, so that's maybe a exaggeration but it's still rather classy. I remember dad owning this back in the day, and on one day of sorting out from a pile of ties what to sell, my child self made sure he didn't get rid of this one. In all honestly for the last few years I had forgotten I even still had this lying around somewhere, but recently in a sort out of my wardrobe I found it tucked away in the corner where I evidentially never look, next to a pair of Sonic caps I also left down there to be forgotten about. More stuff after the jump.

I don't think the photos really do it justice, but as I already said: this tie is rather classy. The artwork appears to be that from one of those choose-your-Adventure books I used to read a lot, as if involving Sonic in every other form of entertainment I could find wasn't enough. In the original art the flash at the bottom was a bright orange, suggesting an explosion, but now it's a dark blue so looks more like a water splash. Either way the tie is a nice deep blue and very slick.

Out of all the Sonic ties I've seen about online (not many, actually) this is probably one of the most tasteful. The colours especially are very nice; Tails' fur is like a perfect inbetween of the orange from the games and the brown fur in SATAM. It has a very nice textured feel as well, and it glistens in the light. Hell, I may even wear it out one of these days, if I ever find the reason to wear a tie. Maybe not for going to the funeral of someone who drowned, mind.

Oh, and here's the back, if you're all that interested. Even the Sonic logo stitched into the little Tie Rack tag is very nicely done. I can actually imagine this was quite expensive when it came out, and most likely came from Marks & Sparks like a lot of that old Sonic clothing did.

Finally, here's the two caps that were hiding alongside the tie. The first one matches that big red Coca Cola jacket I've got, with the same artwork stitched on and in bright red. Much like the actual jacket I can't remember how or where I got this.

This other cap is a bit odd because it's all fluffy like, a very odd texture for a cap to have, and it has no size adjusting buttons on the back, it just stretches onto your head and generally feel quite horrible. Safe to say I've never worn this even as a kid as it was so irritable. Still, it has not one, not two, but three Sonic's stitched onto it in various places, all based on stock art. It also has a little Sonic logo tag thing stitched into it.

So compared to that tie this is kind of tacky, but I believe this also came from M&S if I remember rightly. They did a whole range of Sonic clothing and if I recall it never particularly cheap and only around for a short while.

I still have quite a backlog of stuff to show off here, and then maybe I finally finally start writing some actual articles about Sega-dom that don't involve Sonic stuff. Help me out here, Smindas!

Didn't you hear? Sega T-shirts are trendy now!

This is pretty old-ish news, anyone who follows Sega related stuff around to no abandon like I do (or just anyone who visits gaming blogs in general) may of already seen these fancy Sega T-Shirts from Japan that are now being sold on London's oxford street in fancy pants clothes shops are generally infested with trendy skinny types with jeans down to their toes. Now you may just end up seeing them walking about with Sonic, Virtua Fighter characters or House of the Dead Zombies hanging from their scrawny hairless chests.

If you decide to hunt these down, you can grab them from a shop called UNIQLO, who have about three stores on oxford street alone, and they'll set you back £13 each or 2 for £20, which doesn't seem like a bad deal for tastefully done game shirt designs with brilliant blocky polygon blokes on them. You can't miss one of these stores as it has huge manga art on the windows at the moment. Of course, you could always just buy them online if you don't want to go mincing around London. More after the jump.

With this and the classic Sonic the Hedgehog line of stuff going on this year, there seems to be quite a lot of loving for Sega going on around here. I for one welcome a craze of Sega branded retro junk, after having nothing but Nintendo stuff in stores for years on end.

Thanks goes to Perks for the info and photos.saves me the effort of awkwardly snapping photos when no one is looking at me wondering how sad I am taking photos of t-shirts containers.


Speaking of fancy designer Sega t-Shirts, another load from japan can now be bought online from a site called King of Games, and these ones are even more "retro" than the Virtua Fighter ones, based on games like Outrun, Fantasy Zone and After Burner. They're quite a bit more expensive at £24, though they're rather funky, although the After Burner design is a bit cack. Gotta love the Master System theme going through out these ones.

Been there, done that, worn the t-shirts.

Why just play Sonic games, read Sonic books and comics, listen to Sonic music and use Sonic shampoo when you could also wear Sonic clothes to really show Sega owns your soul? I know I had quite a lot of Sonic clothing when I was a kid, that's for sure. I remember having a jacket covered in Sonic patches when I was about seven, and when I grew out of the jacket I had my gran stitch the patches onto a new jacket. I can't remember a time I didn't have any sonic shirts, I made sure my mum bought the ones they only did in adult sizes long before I could fit in them, presuming I'd still want them once I was in my teens. I remember having some of the T-shirts shown in this ad I found in an issue of S.T.C.

I had that one in the bottom right corner for sure. That one was great because it was all pixelated up like the first game and has the Lives/Score/Rings hud on the arm. I remember also owning a Spring Yard design of some sort that had Sonic transforming from his sprite to full artwork while bouncing off a spring. It was awesome.

More after the jump..

I actually still own a couple pieces from way back then, which I kept as collectors pieces and have rarely worn, currently stored away. They're both heavy jackets covered in patches. I'm not sure how I got these but I do know these are pretty hard to find now and I have seen one of them go for decent money on Ebay before. Here's some pics..

This blue has that Sonic 2 patch I have so many of, along with a huge S on the front, a Sega logo patch on one arm, and two character patches on the other. Wait, does that say 'Professor Robotnik'? Never mind.

And then there is the red Coca Cola one. Again, no idea where it came from, but there was a cap that went with this too, which I don't seem to own anymore. There's another Sega patch on one arm, a Coca Cola one on the front and other arm, and a big patch on the back of Sonic holding one of those old glass bottles.

In the last couple years there it has become somewhat of a fad to like retro video games, and this has been taken advantage of with tons of new clothing based on Mario, Pac Man and Space Invaders. Sega has jumped on the bandwagon by licensing out retro Sonic art to be plastered onto a whole truck load of T-shirts. Here in the UK they're mostly found in Gamestation and GAME, and I have about eight designs now after getting a load more this Christmas. They use a lot of the same artwork multiple times and have that fake-tattered look to them.


At the moment, Play.com sell three designs at the moment for £8 each. GAME currently only have one design for £10 on the website, and Gamestation 's website has lots of designs but not a single one in stock, as they were selling them off at a fiver each with a three for two offer on top of that. No doubt they'll be new designs later this year, though.