Race them all the way! The Broken Sonic track set

Despite the utter disappointment of there still being no sign of the Dr.Robotnik soft toy Impact Innovations promised us on the boxes of their other soft toys, not to mention the constant delays and doubtful release of any of First4Figures range of lovely vinyl figures and that statue, the odd piece of stuff from this classic style Sonic range has crept out into the wild over Christmas. If you've stumbled into a busy GAME store lately you may of seen the console carry bag things with Sonic on them that sell for about £12 and £15 each, but there is also a racing track set, much like the one Impact had early designs of on their website a while back, out there which as far as I know is only available in Debenhams stores at the moment.

Gotta love how they wrote "SONIC BROKEN" on the box. I'm sure you guys will read a lot into that.

More after the jump..

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.

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.

Sonic The Chess Set (hopefully) coming soon

We can add another item to the expanding list of classic style Sonic gear we will probably never see. A German company has revealed concept art of a Sonic Chess set, with the pieces featuring Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy (her Sonic CD look, a rare sight nowadays) and a bunch of rings and chaos emeralds, all sitting on a nice green hill styled checker board. Release date is apparetly sometime in Feb/March next year for 40 Euros.

Source: Sega Nerds

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..

Is something afoot with the classic Sonic range?

So we're now in November, and the Sonic statue and vinyl figures from first4figures are still not out. Play.com has the statue listed for the 7th of December, but judging how they have given us random dates before only for it to be pushed further away, something tells me they have no idea when it will be available. As for the Vinyl toys...they don't even list them anymore. The Vinyls are still on play-asia, where they are still listed as nothing more than "Q4 2008". They list the statue as December. First4figures website says the same, so here's hoping.

On another note, remember how those classic Sonic plush toys that were released had a tag that stated "collect all four!", which included an image of Dr.Robotnik? We eventually got the Knuckles toy, but there has been no sign of the Eggman at all, not even an image of what it looks like? There's no evidence of it's existence even on the Impact Innovations site, so it looks like we'll never get one, let alone all of that other stuff they had planned, like USB drives, race track sets and radio controlled cars. Now would be a perfect time to release them, just in time for Christmas. What could possibly be a better present than a cuddly mad scientist that traps animals in machinery? I've always wanted one of those.

Meanwhile, a action figure of Sonic the Werehog (that new form of his in the upcoming game Sonic Unleashed) has been popping up on Ebay. All I know about it so far is it's a pre-order bonus in Australia, and apparently is "only in Toys R Us" in America. The toy isn't particularly brilliant (see above), but this might just be the start of a new toy chain, so who knows what will come from it? The werehog (shouldn't that be "Hedge-wolf"?) kind of reminds me of My pet Monster, so maybe they should do a Sonic version of that, complete with breaking chains.

Splendid Japanese Sonic plush toy of 1991

After my last plush toy find at a car boot sale led to this abomination, I was convinced that finding some of the nicer, older Japanese toys would be quite a long stretch (although I did mange to find a small Japanese one a while back with a SegaSonic tag on it which wasn't too bad). To my surprise the other week I found this one sitting amongst someones junk. I recognized it from one of Rhia's many photos of her collection and it was only a quid. An over abundance of photos ahoy (after the jump)!

Visualshock! Speedshock! Soundshock! The Mega Drive is 20 today.

On this day in 1988 the Mega Drive was released in Japan. It was actually about 2 and a half years from this point before Sonic The Hedgehog debuted on the system. Just take that into perspective for a moment: 2 and a half years was very much the Dreamcast's entire life span (if you don't count all those shmups released here and there afterwards, but I'll be going into the Dreamcast more next month for the Dreamcast's 10th Birthday) and yet in this time the Mega Drive had barely even started and would only get stronger and stronger from there on. It was Sega's most successful console in Europe and America, and longest living on the market worldwide. It was also the only console that managed to shake up Nintendo's stranglehold on the gaming market at the time and force them to push themselves to make their own 16-bit console. If it wasn't for the Mega Drive, Nintendo would of most likely of sat on the NES for much longer and wouldn't have felt pressured to make even better games which to the most heated and most exciting console "war" in it's history to date.

The Mega Drive still lives in many forms. The games are available on the Wii's Virtual console, on many Sega collection discs released, and in dozens of TV plug in and handheld devices, like this recently released tiny console that has 20 games built in and even a cartridge slot for the original. Mega Drive systems and games are also still sold in Brazil, where it even got some brand new games like a suprisenly well done port of Duke Nukem 3D.
Still, there is nothing quite like playing these games on the original hardware and you don't as much classy than the original model. The Mega Drive looked and feeled like a truly powerful and slick piece of hardware at the time, especially compared to the plastic lump that was the NES. It was also dark and not very toy-like at all, which was quite unusual for a console. There were many different kinds of Mega Drive models released in later years (The Wondermega, MegaJet, Mega Drive II and 3, the list goes on) but this will always be the most iconic.

Saying that, this is what I currently own and is my favorite model of the lot: The Multi Mega. At about half the size, with both the Mega Drive cart slot and a Mega CD disc drive, it is a wonderfully small but robust system. Combine this with a good scart cable for my LCD telly and a extra Master System converter makes it the ultimate retro system for me. The CD drive actually conked out on it a little while ago but I made sure to get it fixed, mainly because I'll never find one of these cheap again, I reckon. Did I mention it came from a car boot sale for £6.50? I probably did, because it's probably the best gaming related purchase I have ever made.

One of my other favorite things about the Mega Drive has to be it's controller. It's possibly one of the most comfortable to hold ever made, has a fantastic d-pad and great feeling buttons. Every thing about it just comes together beautifully. The six button controller they released later was a bit small for my tastes, but many claim it to be their favorite controller of all time.

Some things I can never say i liked was how Sega of America handled the Mega Drive. Simply put, the "Genesis" is a pretty dumb name, and the advertising, while very effective, was pretty obnoxious, often making up utter codswallop like "blast processing". I guess in that case I can see Nintendo fans who grew up in the US of A found Sega to be quite annoying and quite difficult to take seriously. Sega Europe were far more clever with their advertising (if a little batshit at times, see my Pirate TV articles), which is probably why is was even bigger over here still, although it also helps that Nintendo of Europe always were and always will be incompetent.

But in the end for me it was the games that really made the Mega Drive for me. The variety and quantity on offer was just something else. The excellent video above by youtube user Alianger does a very nice job at summing up what the Mega Drive was all about. If you don't have time to dust off your Mega Drive today to give it a play, at least watch this 10 minute epic.

Sega Fanart Showcase: Space Channel 5

Haven't done one of these in a long while, have I? Even though racketboy already did a Space Channel 5 art showcase, but he barely scraped the surface of just how much great art fopr this game there is floating about. The game is still well known despite not having a new game in years, mainly thanks to Sega giving her cameos in many of their recent games like Sega Superstars Tennis and the new Samba De Amigo. With any luck they may be considering giving Ulala the come back she truly deserves with a brand new game one of these days. Until then though, here's some brilliant art by the games many talented fans. Eniotna in particular has too much great SC5 fan art to include here, so I've just featured my favorites of his here.

- Bonjour Ev'rybody - by ~Eniotna

- Pudding Desu - by ~Eniotna

More after the jump..

I'm a terrible man

Long time, no post, I know. I've actually been back from Japan now for nearly two months, and I still haven't really got off my arse to sort out my article about the surprising prevelance of SEGA within Japan. What can I say, I am a tad lazy. It may be a little while yet before you see said article, but in the mean time, let me update you on the awesomeness that is Samba De Amigo for the Wii.



It has Sonic in it. That's a pretty groovy addition. Furthermore, Ulala of Space Channel 5 fame is included. I am really enjoying SEGA's recent trend of pretending the Dreamcast was the most succesful console in existence, and including references to it in its newest games. First we had SEGA Superstars Tennis, which was filled with fan service, left, right and possibly even centre, and now we have Ulala in the new Samba De Amigo game. It's like it's all coming together (just pretend Sonic & The Black Knight doesn't exist).

Okay, I realise this entire post is a big cop out on my part, but it is basically to inform you that I have intentions to make an article at some point. In the mean time, here is a small teaser image;


You saw it here first, Sonic is encouraging middle aged Japanese men to spend their hard earned yen in a very noisy gambling arcade, whilst he rocks out on a guitar and so on.

Sega of Americas Holy Grail

I'm sure if you browse gaming blogs you will have already seen this by now (most likely at Kotaku where they made up some rubbish about Sega forgetting all about it, either from mis-reading or an excuse to take a pop at Sega AKA gaming's whipping boy), but I can't NOT post about this archive of Sega's back catalog that they store at the American offices. Apparently it holds just about every game Sega has ever made or published, as well as all their consoles and peripherals. It truly is a beautiful sight to behold, and they have even more games stacked behind the ones shown in the photos!

A whole draw full of what look like Dreamcast GD-Rs. They even have a list for them all.

More after the jump!

Tiny Sega keychains of awesome

As you may of noticed, I have managed to stumble upon quite a few bits of Japanese Sega junk in recent months, from Gashapon Sega gal toys to that art book and the little NiGHTS pre-order bonus. A little while ago (the last few posts have mostly been backlog) I also got my hands on this set of Japanese Sega keychains. They were quite cheap and there was two sets all selaed up amongst them, although one of the designs shown on the card (a white Sega Saturn) was missing. Even though they're keychains you could easily take the chain part off and keep them as little figures, which I've done by sitting them along my Dreamcast game shelfs. They're rather neat, I must say. Photos after the jump!

Sega Art Book of Sheer Beauty Part 3: Wallpapers!

The same images you just saw the scans of, but now as wallpapers. They are all 1280 X 1024, so if they're too big just shrink and if they're too small, sorry! I could maybe make bigger sized versions of some of them if anyone wants them, but for now these will do.

More wallpapers after the jump!

Japanese Sega Art Book of Sheer Beauty Part 2: Scans!

As I promised here are some full scale scans from that wonderful Sega game illustrations book.

Here's a scanned example of one of the pages, which not only contains all that lovely felt-tip pen colored art from Sonic 1, but also talks of the characters' "charming and saucy nature". Hmm. No doubt the PAL Sonic 1 box art was nicer, though. More scans after the jump.

Japanese Sega Art Book of Sheer Beauty

Now, video game art books are by no means a rare thing in Japan, but Sega ones seem to be few and far between. However, I manged to find this one on Ebay some time ago and won it for about £12. The book contains a variety of artwork from many Mega Drive and Game Gear games, starring the main front cover art as full page spends and littered with character art from the lovely full colour manuals they got over there. More after the jump.

Classic Sonic Figures possibly delayed

Remember those rather fantastic classic style Sonic figures First4Figures announced some time ago? They were listed as due this month (and still are on Play-Asia) but on Play.com it now lists them for the 30th of September. Maybe the vague "July" date was just a placeholder but either way it means we've got a wait a bit longer to own what look like the nicest pieces of Sonic plastic ever made.


In other news the 12" limited edition statue of Sonic from the same range is up on both Play-Asia and Play.com, with the same date included. Above is a rather fancy picture of it as seen on First4Figures' website, where they state that preorders start on the 31st of this month. Since we saw it in those Toy fair photos it has gained a fancy Green Hill zone-like stand. My wallet is going to HURT when this stuff comes along in a few months time. Either way I've pre-ordered it with Play.com as it's £65 (and free postage) rather than the RRP of £85.That website is UK only though so sorry Americans!

Oh yeah, and remember those classic sonic range concept images from Impact Innovations? Well all those images have completely vanished from the website, replaced with simple "Coming soon!" buttons and no PDF file links. At least this most likely means those designs were far from complete and the final toys will look much nicer.

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.

Boot Sale Season: Another Megadrive Horde

(Apologies again for lack of updates. I actually have quite a back-log of unfinished articles to get working on. This one, for example, should have been posted about 3 weeks ago..)

Sometimes at boot sales you just get lucky. This horde of Mega Drive games here is one of those times. A bloke had a huge huge box full of about 50 Mega Drive games, many very good ones. In the end I picked out 19 of the, leaving the Sonic and sport games that show up all the time. He was selling them a pound each but let me have this lot for £16. Fantastic.

There's a good few games in here I haven't come across often, or at all, outside of Ebay. I had never even heard of Sub Terrania before but picked it up based on the sticker attached that quotes from a magazine: "Most polished gameplay since Gunstar Heroes" or something to that effect. Clayfighter would have been nice to own but sadly I could not get it to work at all. The highlight of the lot is probably Flink, as it's a very hard to find platformer by good old Psygnosis, before they were gobbled up by Sony. Another game of theirs, Puggsy, is also amongst this lot. Other highlights include Ranger-X, Wonder Boy in Monster World, Battletoads and MERCS. Most were mint but a odd game, including Flink, were unfortunately missing their manuals. Oh well.

The ugliest Sonic soft toy you will ever see.

After well over a month of silence, Sega Memories is back from the dead. Been far too busy up until now, and Smindas has been on Holiday to Japan, the jammy git.

Now there has been some tacky, crappy Sonic merchandise over the years, but this one I found at a car boot sale this morning does not only take the biscuit, but the whole ruddy jar. Some kid was given this and rightfully ripped holes in it before throwing it amongst whatever junk his/her mother shoved into her car boot, where I for some reason picked it up for 50p. More on this abortion of plush design after the jump.

More Sega Pirate TV ads!

The British Sega TV ad campain from the early 90's is under rated on this here internet of ours. Fussy old clips of the American Sega commercials from the same time are everywhere for all to see, but the UK ones are harder to track down. Thanks to the odd Youtuber such as SegaMarkUK and Chrisofthetube though, they are slowly all being dug up again so they can give a new generation of viewers a good headache or a healthy old seizure. To say many of these make little sense and are batshit insane is probably a bit of an under statement.



First off, some huge budget epic, probably shown at half time of footie matches, that has Pirate TV regular Steve O'Donnell AKA Spudgun from Bottom fighting mutant pigs using a mega Drive II and games like Street Fighter II and Shinobi III amongst others, with the mega CD 2 thrown in for good (or bad, which ever way you look at it) measure. "This is the end!...and this is the other end!" Yes, I have no idea what they were thinking with this commercial either.



As if that commercial wasn't baffling enough, here's one for Sonic Spinball that blows your brains out with subliminal nonsense before finally showing off the game itself, all flashing by with rock music in 20 seconds flat.



The Mega Drive Aladdin game next, and much like the last one it whizzes by so quickly you barely get a chance to take anything in. It kind of looks like an episode of the Games master on fast forward. In this case the American ad was actually better because you know, it made sense.



This rather earlier one, when the campaign was a little less noisy, has that bloke on the rotating chair telly thing again talking us through the first Sonic game, which then goes into some odd ninja action scene and some guy that sounds a bit like Benny Hill talking over the top with Monty Python style animation.



Finally, an extended and very high quality transfer of that Mega CD commercial I linked to before, with a whole lot more brilliant animation of the skull character and more shit interactive games being shown off. £270? No wonder no one bought the bloody thing. One again, I have no idea what's going on by the time it goes into some war movie parody, but then again, either do the guys singing in it by the sounds of it. I think this could be the explanation as to way Sega eventually went close to bankruptcy, this commercial must of cost a bomb.

Random odd fact: While Sega had Steve O'Donnell as a regular for their 90's ads. Nintendo in the UK went with another star of Bottom: Rik Mayall. Oo-er.

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.

Sonic 3 Pins from CES 1994

There are lot of Sonic pin sets out there, but I cannot say I have ever seen these ones. Matt Hancock sent me these photos of a rather fancy five pin set promoting Sonic 3, apparently given away back at CES 1994 and bought in New Zealand.

I sure would have loved to have visted at least one gaming event when Sega were at the top of their game. They had Sega buses, celebrities holding Game Gears and everything. I'm sure those were magical times.

More upcoming Classic Sonic stuff from Impact Innovations

Decided to have a quick peek at Impact Innovations website to see if their Sonic page was still just a placeholder, and it appears they have completely updated it with the plush toys that are available to date, as well as bunch of new stuff, although a lot of them appear to be concept art at the moment, which is a relief as otherwise they would be rather ugly, some of them. They have Excel files with details on each product with additional images which I'll post here.

These, I take it, are early versions of the plush toys, as they look quite a bit different, especially the Sonic one.

many more after the jump.

The Itty Bitty NiGHTS Toy from Japan

When that new NiGHTS game came out for the Wii in Japan last December, many of the first copies came with a little NiGHTS toy as a bonus of some sort (as seen in the commercial above). When the game popped up over here however, we weren't treated to this little extra gift, much in the same way that we don't get a lot of things Japan does, like expensive box sets for anime games full of spoons and pillows. If you look around on Ebay for long enough, however, you may just come across one of these little figures separate from the game. Considering I only paid £20 for the game itself, paying £11 for the toy didn't seem like too bad a deal. They weren't kidding about it being small though, but with the amount of shelf space I have left maybe that's not such a bad thing.



The toy has been designed by besidegames as part of their PaPETCH range of little figures all based around the same template (in fact, it appears to be the first one released) and ever since this NiGHTS design it looks like video game companies have been jumping at the chance of having their characters re-created in tiny figure forms. Have a look at their line up and you'll see characters from Exit, the Kunio series and Hammerin' Harry. They also show artwork of a Reala toy, although it's hard to tell if that one has been released or how you could get it, though. maybe it's a special one you only get in the box if you're lucky (if someone could translate the text in red under Reala, that would be great as it could explain).

So not a lot can really be said about the toy, really. It's about 6cm tall, made of some kind of vinyl and comes with a little plastic stand so it doesn't topple over from it's large head. It's obviously a simplified version of the character's design but still a good likeness.

But what did I think of the game? Well, at first, it doesn't give off the best of first impressions. The FMV scene is the usual top north stuff we've come to expect from Sega games, but the in game cut scenes run at a low frame rate, look washed out and features voice acting that seems to be mostly done by one very annoying voice actor/actress. At least Reala and Wiseman's voices do their job well enough, but story scenes are really quite embarrassing to sit through and on the first run unskippable. Even the cut scenes from Sonic Adventure were a bit more bearable. Much like those 3D Sonic games, they also make you play away from the main fun of the game sometimes, with tedious missions and clunky exploring levels where you play as the children.

The main stages and bosses, however, are great. The visuals for some reason looks far better than the rest of the game here, as if all the extra stuff was thrown in near the end of production, and the game play is just like the original, if you ignore the fact that they changed the aim of each lap a bit. One thing that also bugged me at first were the Wii remote controls: the remote pointer is a joke and completely broken, and the Nunchuck mode doesn't quite feel right either because the analouge stick isn't quite up to the accurately needed for flying in circles, but once I had a go at using the Gamecube controller I never turned back.


As I got further into the game I found myself warming up to it, and the final stage and boss redeemed the whole game for me, and there was more beautifully animated FMV scenes to boot. I'm rambling on here but if you decide to buy this game and get put off by the start keep at it, as it gets progressively better and once you have completed the story you can go back to beat your scores (without having to see those cut scenes again), as well as have a go at the online racing mode, which is pretty limited but a nice addition. It's not the perfect sequel, but it's defiantly one of Sega's better games in recent memory. At least it was more fun than Sonic and the Secret Rings which almost drove me to drink from frustration. If you liked the Saturn game and can excuse some imperfections, get it. If you didn't play the original...play that first.

Boot Sale Season Returns: Megadrive Goldmine

The big car boots sales a short drive away finally started up again recently, and I went today after months of desperately trying to find bargains on Ebay. Anyone who knows me well enough will know of my jammy-git luck with finding some crazy cheap gaming stuff at them, like a game Boy Advance for £1, a Playstation 2 Slim with 16 games for £55 and my Sega Multi-Mega which set me back a measly £6.50, but these kinds of things very rarely happen, between week after week of the same old common shit (Read: Sports games. Anyone would think no ones buys anything else at these places). Oh how I have missed them for awesome shit like this raid I got today..

Here's a big blue box full of Mega Drive junk I bought today. What's in it, then?Find out after the jump!

More First4Figures Classic Sonic Goodness!

Oh wow. Chad at DeviantArt just pointed me towards these two sets of photos (Album 1 and Album 2) that were taken at a recent US Toy fair of not only the three upcoming Classic Sonic toys we saw earlier, but also some new even bigger pieces, including a Sonic "Wii Remote Holder" (a large figure that has a slot in his hand to hold a Wii remote) which according to a sign on the display is not due till July 2009 (I hope that's a misprint), and a even higer Sonic statue of some sort. They're all rather beautiful, yet bound to make my wallet cry with agony. Here are the photos, provided by the website Action-Figure.com

First off, the three figures we saw before, but in much clearer photos from many different angles. Sonic and Knuckles seem to have swapped names on the stands, though. Doh! Loads more photos after the jump.

A Goldmine of Sega Marketing waffle!

UK: Resistance, the original Sega nutters website and one of the main inspirations behind this blog, have stumbled across a video that pretty much sums up everything that made Sega so huge in the UK back in the 16-bit era, particularly in 1994. This two video spilt into two parts for Youtube and submitted there by Shenmueaddit, gives us a glimpse into all the marketing pies Sega had their fingers in at the time, from TV commercials (Remember the Pirate TV campaign I told you about? You'll see more of it here), radio competitions (Sonic CD music on the radio, folks!), merchandise, that awful Right Said Fred song, the Sega tour buses, the food promotions (Sonic tomato ketchup!), even the sponsorship with Damon Hill!

This, my friends, is why Sega ruled the world (or at least the UK), during my childhood. These videos pretty much sum up what this blog is all about, and the exact kind of content I've been looking for. If anyone can recall and bring up details on any of the stuff seen here (like photos, videos, magazine scans etc), please send it my way and I'll be more than happy to share it here. =)

Sega Fanart Showcase: gsliverfish Special

Michael Stearns (AKA "gsliverfish") is one of those artists on DeviantArt who is rather brilliant at capturing the atmosphere of the worlds you visted in the original Sonic Mega Drive game, including the obstacles you faced along the way. Each of these images seems to perfectly sum up each zone of the game with a distinctive perspective. Just looking at the art gets that levels' music stuck in my head! Make sure you check out his other works too!

More after the jump!

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!

The Classic Sonic brand is expanding! Oh god.

My wallet! The pain! It's bad enough I just blew £28 on the new Knuckles plush and set of 3 beanies that Play-Asia have started to sell, but now it has been announced that this Classic Sonic brand is expanding out into a vinyl toy series! A company called First 4 Figures, who have previously made rather nice Zelda and Metroid statues (and have quite possibly the slowest website on the planet right now), are dipping their feet into the Sonic licensing pool with a first wave of three figures of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles that are apparently due out around July. Here's the wonderful photos of them in all their 16-bit old school glory:


Wait, did that say FIRST wave? That's means there will most likely be even more to come! Here's hoping the second wave consists of Dr.Robotnik, Amy Rose and Metal Sonic in classic Sonic CD style. If so, HERE'S MY MONEY, TAKE IT.

This blog really was supposed to be about more than just collecting Sonic stuff, but recently they've made it hard to by putting out some of the best Sonic merchandise in years. You can apparently thank Jetix Europe for licensing out this new range, not Sega, which is kind of surprising as Jetix are the ones who screen Sonic X here in Europe. After years of cheap and tacky Sonic X junk, they seem to be treating us to some nostalgia pimping.

EDIT: The First 4 Figures site is working better now, so I've uploaded the bigger, better photos from there.