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.

Sonic Spinball @ Alton Towers in February

I'm sure many of you have probably already heard about this by now, but it couldn't be more appropriate to mention here, what with all our nostalgia fueled posts about London's old SegaWorld park and the reveal of Sega Republic in Dubai. While it's hardly the same as having a new Sega park here in the UK again, it's about as close as we're gonna get at this point: a Sonic Ride at Alton Towers!


Apparently this ride has been here for years already under the name 'Spinball Wizard', so naming it after the Mega Drive pinball game makes perfect sense. No photos of how it will look after the re-theme are out yet, so we don't know to what extent it'll be Sonic themed though the press release does mention the ride will contain 'Sonic's favorite music' so with any luck Green Hill Zone tunes will be blasting out of it rather than say...Bentley Jones. Ugh.

A Sonic themed room in the Alton Towers hotel is also planned, which again we have nothing but this cheesy photos of the derp-derp-derp Sonic costume guy above. The deal with Sega is set for three years and the lanuch of all this is the 13th of Feb. The logo of the ride is a nice touch: it's a sort of re-make of the original Mega Drive game logo. Kind of.

More news on this when it pops up, including photos with any luck!

New Sega Themepark under Construction ...in Dubai

We all know about Segas theme park ventures over the years, including the still running Joypolis in Japan, Gameworks in America and the no longer existing Sega World parks in London and Australia. Well it looks like Sega hasn't given up on building brand new parks as they are now construing one called "Sega Republic" in a huge Mall in Dubai, of all places. Sonic Retro has the info:

"SEGA Republic, is a two-level, 76,000 square feet indoor theme park, featuring a diverse line-up of rides and amusements. It will be the first of its kind in the region, and will serve as a benchmark for future SEGA indoor theme park developments across the Middle East and North Africa region and the Indian Subcontinent. With zones themed to reflect the experiences on offer, from the thrill of the ‘Speed Zone’, the active ‘Sports Zone’, the major rides and simulators, and huge redemption zone."

Concept art of the 'Sonic Hopper'

"SEGA Republic offers visitors of all ages the opportunity to discover the worlds they wish to explore through a variety of themed zones: Wild Adventure Zone, Speed Zone, Cyberpop Zone, Sports Zone and the Redemption Zone. Near the entry, is ‘Sonic Hopper’ (pictured) a drop tower offering thrills for all age groups in a family-free-fall experience. The ‘Wild Adventure’ zone includes motion simulated rides with an extreme adventure theme such as ‘Wild Wing’ that allows visitors to experience a dramatic aerial tour of the countryside or also explore nature up-close on ‘Wild Jungle’. SEGA Republic® also features ‘Spin Gear’, a full-scale indoor horizontal spinning-coaster offering several surprise twists and turns. In the Sports Zone, visitors can enjoy games and rides based on real-world sports, such as the signature attraction, ‘Halfpipe Canyon’."

"Another large attraction at the SEGA Republic is the ‘Redemption Zone’, a themed arcade and gaming zone, where tickets can be won and redeemed for a large range of merchandise. SEGA Republic at The Dubai Mall is a fully-themed indoor environment and will be one of the largest of its kind in the region. From the roller coaster, to the ride simulators, and arcade games, from its redemption activities to the physical sports games, SEGA Republic will thrill all its visitors."

Along with this info, photos of the park currently in construction can be seen over at this thread on Theme Park Review. One photo shows a Robotnik styled coaster cart. All this park needs now is some bottomless pits and they could call it "Eggman land".

No, really, Japan still likes Sega Pt. 1

Right, as one or two of you may recall, I did promise an article ages ago about my trip to Japan, specifically about Sega stuff there (because noone wants to know about the arduous cultural stuff and the epic journeys I entailed climbing up mountains, walking around a volcano and staying in a very dodgy capsule hotel in Osaka’s probable red light district). Well, I finally got around to writing the article which, like Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, definitely isn’t worth the wait but should be mildly enjoyable none the less!

^ Authentic photo taken by me. ‘Deckss’ was the name given to this huge department store-esque complex assembled in Odaiba.

More after the jump.

Staying in Tokyo for a rather significant portion of my trip, I did get a chance to visit the Sega Joypolis located in the Odaiba area (which is an amazing area in itself, built on land ‘reclaimed from the sea’, adorned with the rather awesome looking Fuji TV building amongst various other things).

^ An actual picture of the actual tickets I used on my actual visits. I love that the first one is dated 10^th of May, when I only arrived on the 9^th. Clearly I waste no time.

In fact, I actually went there twice as I ‘book-ended’ my Japan trip with Tokyo and figured why not go again? Now, I have to say, the Joypolis isn’t amazing. It isn’t bad either mind, but it wasn’t quite as mind blowing as Sega World London. It was fairly pricey, though.

^ Picture definitely stolen from some guy on Flickr. Cheers!

Sega Joypolis Tokyo is effectively a rather elaborate arcade, adorned with lots of games (both video and prize-earning) and the occasional indoor amusement park ride, which were actually rather nifty. However, each one cost £4 a pop I believe, which was somewhat steep having also paid an entrance fee of around a fiver as well. Add rides to arcade prices and if you’re on a cheap travelling budget, you’re basically not eating for a few days. Stingy rant aside, what were the ‘rides’ like? They were pretty good, actually. There was this ‘Bullet Ride’ sort of roller coaster thing that was actually quite frightening in that I was almost fully confident that the thing was going to break and I would fall to my death. Definitely added that extra fear factor, that’s for sure. Quite fun mind, but what was far better was The House of the Dead 4 Special.

^ Picture again very much stolen from someone on Flickr. When I went there, they had actually moved things around a bit, but whatever.

Basically, HotD4S is an extra mission to HotD4. Everything was in Japanese, so of course I had no clue what the plot was or anything of that ilk – I was really just there to shoot some zombies. But what makes it different to normal HotD shenanigans? Well, first you go into a small darkened ‘cubicle’ thing and strap yourself in to the two seater chair (there were two of us, don’t worry; I wasn’t staring longingly at the empty seat beside me wishing I had a travel companion). Then the screen in front of you will light up and you will see some normal HotD tomfoolery, at which point you pick up your gun and get ready to blow things up. Now things finally get interesting. The chair rocks as you get hit and will move about to simulate what’s going on on-screen. Furthermore, there is fantastic surround sound and little bits of smoke emitted (although, it is very possible that didn’t happen and my memory just added it in it’s rose-tinted glory), at appropriate moments, sort of ushering illusions of that ‘4D’ concept that used to be so big half a decade or so ago. The best part however is when your characters are just walking along and hear something behind you, and woosh – your two-seater chair just swivels around to reveal another screen behind you, showing what would be behind you in-game. There’s a lot of switching from back and forth and it does a great job at immersing you in the experience. Unfortunately, if you’re a bit shit at HotD4S (like we were), the joyous experience doesn’t last very long. Still, it was pretty fantastic and I’d love to see one of these machines hit the UK (although I have a feeling that would be fairly unlikely).

Arcades are pretty standard everywhere in Japan and most of them seemed to stock the same games. Taito Drum Master, Pop N’ Music, Virtua Fighter 6, Tekken 6 etc. and Sega Joypolis was no different (although, they might have omitted Tekken 6 now that I think about it). However, one machine did stick out to me when wondering around the Joypolis, exploring its delights.

^ Picture couldn’t be more stolen from Wikipedia if I tried.

Yes folks. Here it is. A The Typing of the Dead arcade machine. You can bet yourself that I immediately stopped everything I was doing to have a go on this. Unsurprisingly it plays exactly like the PC version, except using Japanese words instead of English. They were written in standard English characters however, so I actually managed to get fairly far (although after a while, it was very confusing to be typing rakamijikosho and things of that ilk… and no, that just isn’t real Japanese at all). Surprisingly, this wasn’t the only TotD machine I’d see on my travels. Oh no. The name of the city escapes me right now (which is bad on my part, as we did spend a couple of nights there), but another machine randomly appeared in a non-Sega arcade of this aforementioned city.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take many photos within the Joypolis itself, so a handful of these are stolen from other places, but as expected, everything was adorned with Sonic’s smug mug. Indeed, this is an understandably common trend in Sega-branded arcades and was pleasantly received by me. However, for all the Sonic imagery on the prize-grabbing machines downstairs, not one of them offered Sonic plushes, much to my infinitely nerdy disappointment. However, the Joypolis Shop rectified this issue slightly, selling not only plushes, but Sonic confectionary amongst other random goods. The confectionary was actually a bit outrageously priced so I decided to leave it, but I did come back with this little beanie for the decent price of a fiver.

It had to be done, really. The little git now adorns my computer desk. However, the crowning moment of the entire Joypolis visit was this;

^Yes, I am aware of how hilariously cheesy this photo is.

Check me out, desperately clinging on to my childhood. Fantastic times. I can’t help but feel the Japanese Sonic costume man at Joypolis is a billion times more impressive that the hilariously deformed Sonic from SegaWorld London. Anyway, that about wraps up this instalment. Hopefully the next part won’t take too long to finish, but I make no guarantees!

Sonic 6th Birthday event in Hamleys, 1997

Sonic the Comic were good to me. Hell, Sega in general have been good to me as a fan, but Sonic the Comic really did throw some good stuff my way when I was a wee lad. Not only did I win a Sonic 2 patch from them when I sent in some self drawn Sonic comics, get my artwork in an issues Graphic Zone section which won me a watch, but I also manged to win a competition they held in 1997 for a exclusive 6th Birthday party event in London. Only 100 invites could be won and you could take a mate along with you, so there was a total of 200 of us (excluding parents) going to this one-off party.

Here's the invite they sent me when I won. Yes, I still own it. How sad is that? I also have a letter they sent along with it..

 

Photos of the event after the jump! Whoopie!

Hamleys as you may already know is a huge toy shop in London on Regent Street with floors upon floors of the stuff. On the below ground bottom floor was a gaming section called Metropolis, which was Sega branded and had a bunch of arcade cabinets and a snack bar of some sort. My memory of the place is pretty fuzzy and I don't believe it's still there, and if it is I doubt Sega still has their name plastered everywhere (much like how Segaworld became 'Funland'), but it was further evidence that Sega were huge in the UK. You never saw anything like this run by Nintendo, that's for sure!

Game wise, they had a few Saturn cabinets set up with Sonic R running on them, about a month before the game was due out. There was a raffle to win a couple copies of the game early, along with some other Sonic stuff I can't remember exactly. I also remember there being a contest involving getting best scores on the arcade cabinets they had there, of which I only remember the Scud race machines which i gave a whirl and got no where in. There was goodie bags that came with a bunch of badges of Sonic running about on a Hamley's logo which I still have somewhere) as well as Sonic Jam and Sonic R posters. Neat.

The highlight of the event was a guy wandering about in a rather impressive Sonic costume (far better than the one that stumbled around SegaWorld), who was being helped around by some woman presumably due to not being able to see very well. I remember one moment when she disappeared for a bit and he manged to walk into a wall, causing Sonic 3D posters to fall all over him. How embarrassing. but I kind of wished we got that caught on camera, could of sent that to Who's Been Framed. He practically had to shove his face into the cake to even see it.

Aww, why so sad, Sonic? Maybe he just had a vision from the future of how far his games were to plummet. That or he just played Sonic Labyrinth on his Game Gear.

Haha, he's nicked my mates hat and....what the hell is that?

Oh god, is this really the Sonic fan base of the 90's, or is she just there for the ice cream?

What would a birthday party be without a cake? The cake was plain white with a picture of Sonic's head ala the Sonic 3D artwork that was on posters everywhere that got his spikes all wrong. Not exactly an amazing cake, but big enough to be cut up into 200 pieces for all the guests.

I didn't really want to post this photo as the public domain like nature of the Internet would possibly jump on this like a pack of hyenas, so I hid my face to save the embarrassment of a generally unflattering photo. What I really wanted to show off however was the bad-arse jacket covered in Sonic patches. When I grew out of the original jacket they were on, my nan knitted them onto a new bigger jacket. Oh hey, I just noticed my Tamagotchi watch I'm wearing too. If that doesn't throw you back to 1997 I don't know what will.


Photos not enough for you? Then how about some home video footage? Yeah, that's what I thought. If the kid above wasn't enough to scare the feck out of you just wait till you hear some of them. Watch as a kid goes ape shit mental while Sonic is helped to cut his cake. Feel the urge to punch the annoying twat of a parent giving Sonic instructions on how he wants a photo taken with his kid. Cringe as I honk Sonic's nose, which I'm pretty sure he probably didn't like and worst of all; feel your ears bleed as everyone sings happy birthday. You'll also see Sonic do a little dance then go into a strop for some reason. Maybe he doesn't like the Sonic 3D art on his cake. I blocked out most of the noise at the start with some Sonic R music to save your ears a little.

When the event was over, we popped over to SegaWorld, which you'll also see alittle bit of at the end of the video. This was the second time, and this time instead of paying about £12 each to get in with the rides included, it was only about £5, but you had to pay about £3 for the rides individually. (those photos I showed in an older Segaworld article must of been from a 3rd visit, as they're clearly laterThere was another guy in a Sonic costume walking around there, although that one wasn't quite as convincing: he had the hugest gob that looked like a tumor on his face. The highlight of the whole video, though? Mum filming some huge screen footage of the Spice Girls to show my sister, only for me to shout "Spice Girls, but not for long!" Take note this was a couple months before they split up. Ha ha ha!

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!

SegaWorld Part 4.5

Okay, well, I haven't actually got any new information for you readers regarding the wondrous SegaWorld unfortunately. However, I did dig these up;
First, the weird SegaWorld Sonic pom /banner thing. Apparently there were several different designs, but I only have this one myself. It proudly rests, stuck to my CD rack.
This is the glorious badge I was trying to get from the broken badge machine dispensing thing. Well, I got given it by staff along with the pom above as a friendly bonus.
And this is a pin I didn't know I had. I don't actually remember getting it, but I will make sure not to lose it now. Something about it's nice and stylish, even though it's just a little SegaWorld logo. I couldn't find the SegaWorld pen I used to have, but it wasn't all that fantastic. It was just a clicky white pen with the above Sonic / SegaWorld logo. So there you go, those a few of the pointless items I've acquired in my Sega fandom.

SegaWorld Part 4

Clearly SegaWorld was something extremely important to Sega fans. And by Sega fans, I mean Sonic freaks like Gagaman and myself. As such, I feel it’s only appropriate for me to write about this glorious place in my first entry for this blog.

(This is from my second visit, complete with my brother and his friend. I'm the hilarious one in yellow)

I actually lived in London whilst SegaWorld was up and running, which meant I got to visit it a good handful of times, which was great for me. However, I’m pretty sure these trips were about 7-9 years ago, so a lot of the details are hazy, but whatever – I can remember a few things.

I think what made this place so great for me was the absolutely ridiculous amount of Sonic imagery. The walls were plastered with the hedgehog’s face, statues adorned the various sections of the ‘theme park’ – even the bins had Sonic’s mug grinning at you. Then there was the fact that on my first visit there, I ran into Sonic Championship. Ohhh I wasted a lot of money on that game and I never managed to beat Espio whilst I was there. Stupid chameleon. Actually, now that I think about it, I remember also on my first visit I found a small corner which had monitors showing all the weird Sonic videos from Sonic Jam (this was before Sonic Jam had been released, mind you, so I decided to sit there and watch them) and an out-of-use Sega Sonic Arcade game (it wasn’t until my next visit that I got to play that – and for the record, the game is awesome and needs some kind of home release). Of course, there were lots of other great arcade games to play, but I’m not going to lie… I really remember very few of them.

(I don't want to visit Litter Zone)

What I do remember is the rides. As well as the under-the-sea virtual shooting game and the haunted house ride that Gaga described, I remember this one “scary” ride. Basically, you walked through a hall way which in some way was creepy (sorry the details are so vague, but all I remember is a dark hall – clearly I’m losing it at my old age) until you sat in these seats that were on a track (like a roller coaster only much slower and without the ‘coaster’ bit – basically moving seats). All through it, it was supposed to be that a maddened gorilla lived in this area and was stalking and chasing you. The seats would rock, there were maddened beast sounds and you could feel drips of saliva fall on you. Now, I was 8 or 9 at the time, so this ride actually scared the hell out of me. But hey, children are easy to frighten. Good times!

(Seriously. He was everywhere.)

I remember there was also an area that focussed on getting tickets for prizes and stuff. I was quite poor at getting tickets, so I didn’t win any prizes through conventional means. Instead, I had put money in a capsule machine that dispensed Sonic badges and nothing came out. So I got the attention of some staff people and not only did they give me the badge I so rightly deserved, but they gave me one of the token prizes as well – a small blue pom thing with Sonic’s face on it and a SegaWorld banner attached. It was awesome. I then found a photo booth machine that instead of giving you a traditional photo, gave you an ink stamp, complete with a small Sonic icon bordering the photo. That was a fun day. Somewhere along the way, I also got a SegaWorld pen. I don’t remember how.

At this point, I’m struggling to write something that wouldn’t just repeat exactly what Gaga said. However, the basic message is; SegaWorld was fantastic in every way. There were VR-rides, there was Sonic, there were video games and various other ways to enjoy yourself. SegaWorld is definitely one of my fondest memories.

(From my first visit - best photo ever)

One thing that has become incredibly apparent in writing this is I arguably liked Sonic a bit too much when I was a kid. Naaah.

Oh, it also seems that StC were hell bent on advertising SegaWorld, as I've found another article about the place different to Gaga's. It's below for viewing


P.S. Should I be sickened that I actually willingly listened to the Supersonic single whilst writing this article? Actually, don't answer that.

SegaWorld Part 3

While I have run out of photos I took myself of SegaWorld, I've stumbled across some more SegaWorld related stuff I had up in the loft with my countless other Sonic junk. Firstly, here's a three-page preview of the place featured in a 1996 Summer special Sonic comic, and contains many details (such as the names of the areas and rides) which I had forgotten. Just click to full view and try to ignore the awful 'radical' talk throughout it.

More after the jump.



I also found the ticket from my first visit. I scanned both the front and back.

And lastly here's a little plastic pin badge that you got as you came off one of the rides. Well, I'm not sure if everyone got these as it does say "Best Gunner", but I can't really remember. I also found some of the gift shop stuff, such as a keychain, a pen and another pen with a floaty Sonic that goes up and down. Memories~