Max Overload! UK Sega Comics beyond S.T.C!

What a cool thing to stumble upon. Toejam & Earl along with it's sequel Panic on Funkotron were re-released on the Playstation network and Xbox Live Arcade, and you should grab them, because they are excellent ports much like the other recent Sega Vintage Collection games, with awesome remix music on the menus, online co-op and challenges with leaderboards.

Anyway, these re-releases made me go do a search on Ebay for any Toejam and earl stuff I can find. I already have a rather awesome large badge of them, and own the two original Mega Drive games of course, but I also saw this magazine called Max Overload.

Apparently this Dark Horse joint only lasted for two issues in 1994, and so far no one has obtained a copy of the second issue. Thankfully, excellent comic book blog TwoHeaded Thingies has the first issue and has scanned the juiciest parts of the magazine...comic strips!

This was a a video game magazine with bonus comics, so like Sonic the Comic but with more magazine-y stuff like reviews. It was not strictly a Sega magazine, but two out of the four comics featured were based on Sega franchises, and the other two were also based on games well known on the Sega systems. Check out what those were after the jump!

Video game adaptations return in Sonic Super Special Magazine #3

Here at SEGA Memories we usually don't cover the Archie Sonic comics, except for special occasions and collection posts. Main reason is, I don't follow the series anymore and neither does Gagaman. However I did want to highlight the latest issue of the Sonic Super Special Magazine. Taking its title from the 48 page specials of the '90's, Sonic Super Special Magazines collect old materials and usually adds in a few new bits via short comics and articles. The magazines consist of harder covers, but inside is a softer newspaper-like paper. So despite the larger than comic book size, they are pretty light. The previous issue of the magazine collected the Archie adaptation of Sonic Adventure from the late '90's, which was quite a bizarre story arc at the time. Imagine the SatAM universe suddenly having to incorporate humans, Station Square, Chaos and massively contradictory Knuckles backstory. Suffice to say, it was a mess, but it was a fun mess. In this third issue, Archie decided to do a little marketing tie-in with the soon to be released Sonic 4 Episode 2. Since I'm a sucker for game adaptations and marketing tie-ins, I picked this issue up.

Sega Magazine Highlight: Surf's Up! Sega's website from 1995!

Here's another neat article found in the official UK Sega magazine, from issue 15 (March 1995) featuring Sega of America's website at the time! Would you look at that! I thought this would be an interesting thing to put up as there is no way to access far back anymore: the Way back machine can go as far back as late 1996 but even that site was no where near as basic as this! Look at all that stock clip art and flame text! I also quite dig the pixel art of Sonic and Knuckles with the Sega logo surrounded by a web. Get it? Because it's a WEB site? Oh boy.

What's more Richard Leadbetter sums up the Internet in a way that shows that it really hasn't changed much at all! He also complains that the site was really quite slow compared to other websites at the time, but also states that the site has only been online for around three months. Does that mean this is the first ever revision of the official Sega website? Haha, wow.

Sega Magazine Highlight: Sonic Merchandise Showcase

One of the best articles (at least for this blog) that I found in my new collection of the official UK Sega magazine was this two page article about Sonic Merchandise from Issue #5 (from May 1994). It shows off tons of the Sonic toys, clothes, stationary, books and even food from the era, most of it I either had (and in many cases still own) or at least remember, with many things I forgot all about but this article sent memories flooding back! Best part is they even tell you where to buy them and how much they were!

In particular interest (for me anyway) is the food items, as for obvious reasons next to no one would have thought to keep any of the packaging for that. I was a Sonic collector even back then, but I wasn't that sad! I do remember sticking the crisp packets into scrapbooks though. Who remembers the Daily Milk Easter Egg? The Chocolate rolls? How about the MEGA MILK, which sounds a bit too close to Chemical Planet Zone's purple water of death "Mega Mack"?

One thing I defiantly don't remember is the official Birthday cake from Sainsburys. For one of my birthday's I had a basic chocolate cake that had Sonic Pogs decorated on it. My mum knew exactly what stuff from this she bought me back then, including some of those daft looking trainers! Also lol, they don't know who Sally Acorn is.

BONUS! Found a news snippet in issue 8 featuring another Sonic food stuff I forgot all about...toffee biscuits! How exciting!

Sega Official UK Magazine 1994-95

So I've finally got my hands on a complete set of this magazine. A friend of mine is moving to Sweden soon and is selling a majority of his game collection, and he let me have these for nothing. I also bought a bunch of stuff from him including a pile of Game Gear games, a Sega Nomad and even a Tiger Game.com with Sonic Jam, because of reasons.

All 22 issues are here. it was a pretty short lived magazine at least by this name, as afterwards it was renamed to the official Sega Saturn magazine, of which I have all but a few of those. I did have a load of these mags as a kid, but you know how it is: they probably got binned due to lack of space. Also got some Mean Machines Sega mags including one with a bonus Comix Zone comic strip, which I have never seen before (want to scan this soon). Got a few of the freebies from the official mag too like a large 'History of Sonic' up to 1993 thing and a huge Virtua Fighter 1 poster in all it's blocky goodness.

My friend also found a Sonic sticker album which he is posting over to me. Not sure how many stickers it needs but we'll see! Either way as far as I can tell there are barely any scans of these mags online so I hope to get time to bring you scans of some highlights.

GamesMaster Presents Sonic Magazine - Video Preview

GamesMaster Presents Sonic finally arrived in the mail! So I picked up the camera and put this preview video together. Enjoy!

GamesMaster Sonic 20th Anniversary Magazine Special

Well didn't this pop up out of the blue! To celebrate Sonic's 20th Anniversary (I suspect you'll be hearing that a lot in the next few months but especially this month), GamesMaster has just released a special 130 page magazine dedicated to nothing but Sonic! I only heard about it today via twitter and pretty much ran over to WHSmith to see if they had and sure enough they had a whole pile of copies. It's £8 but trust me it's worth it. Hit the jump to see more..

Sonic Chess set Magazine is cancelled! :(

Oh bum. Look what showed up in the post this morning..

So yeah, looks like the Chess set magazine that was up for subscription some time back has been flat out canceled. All we get is a LED light key-chain? It doesn't even have Sonic on it, it's not even Sonic blue! Oddly enough the website along with the subscription form is still online so unsuspecting new visitors will think it's still available.

Boo! I was looking forward to this although I guess on the bright side it's a relief on my wallet as if they did ever get around to making the whole set it would have cost a pretty penny and they never took any money in advance, but I would of liked to of had at least one issue and some of those freebies out of it before they quit the idea. :(

UPDATE: Well this odd. According to peeps on Sonic Retro a couple copies of the first issue of the magazine were found and bought in random locations, presumably a test run though it seems silly to release them at all if they have no intention of doing any more, and so few copies of said issue at that. :T

Japanese Magazine Weekly Famitsu Goes SEGA Crazy

Weekly Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu is giving SEGA an awesome cover spread and 88 pages of coverage! Check out all the characters crammed on that cover! I see Ryo, Beat, Ristar, Waldo...

The issue is said to be chock full of interviews and new bits of info regarding future releases. Tsuyoshi Sawada, the man behind the Shining Force games, hints at a new title that is said to contain elements from the originals. The new Platinum Games title, Binary Domain, is also going to get a good deal of coverage. The issue will also contain a Yakuza series retrospective, featuring interviews with the development team. Of course, all of this will be in Japanese, so the best non-Japanese speakers/readers can hope for is a lot of pretty pictures.

UPDATE: The magazine was available to by at Play-Asia, but it appears to be sold out because I bought the last copy. Sorry!

Sonic Chess Set magazine in the UK!

Sometimes it is rather awesome being a UK based Sonic fan. In the last few years especially, what with Summer of Sonic, the Sonic Spinball ride at Alton Towers amongst other things. Now not long after we got a new sticker collection, we have one of those subscription based collectors magazines of Sonic, of a new chess set not to be confused with the chess set released some time ago, in fact I would say this set looks more interesting! See more after the jump!