Sonic the Hedgehog Monopoly - Unboxing

My Sonic the Hedgehog Monopoly arrived from Amazon today, so I thought I'd do a quick unboxing. I've yet to play it, but I'd assume it's like playing Monopoly, but a lot more fun thanks to the Sonic theme. There are a few fun nods to past games in the cards, but nothing mind blowing. Still, a very well put together set that I definitely recommend.

'The best Sega Fanboy video ever. Recorded in 1992'

I've just today been emailed over this huge 2 hour archive of Sega footage from UK TV in 1992, recorded on video back in the day and compiled now 20 years later by Youtube user DodgyKebaab. He wrote:

Hello, I used to be a huge Sega Fanboy back in the early 90's and I used to make VHS tapes of anything Sega related that I saw on TV.  Video game shows, TV adverts, promo tapes I managed to get my hands on, etc. All the footage is from British TV because that's where I live, anyway you can see the whole 2 hours worth of Sega rare footage here.

Included is clips from TV shows like Gamesmaster, Bad Influence and High Five, an ITV news report about the lanuch of Sonic 2, Chris Evans and the puppets Zig and Zag on the Big Breakfast show talking about the Mega CD and other games, promotional videos of games (one of which I recall owning), an episode of Adventures of Sonic and more. It's quite a mess, some adverts are featured several times in a row, and some are of Lego and other things, but well worth watching.

This right here is my childhood. List of highlights after the jump.

Summer of Sonic 2012 - Cosplay Contest

Sorry for the delay, here is some more video footage of Summer of Sonic 2012, this time of the cosplay contest! This time they did things differently: in previous years they had every single cosplayer go up on stage to be picked based on everyones cheering, which is kind of a hard thing to judge I would imagine, so this time they had a panel of judges give each cosplayer points throughout the day and the top 10 of those went up on the stage in the afternoon. This meant the contest on stage was a lot shorter than previous years.

The pair dressed as banjo and Kazooie are friends of mine who did it for a laugh, and despite being only very loosey related to anything Sonic (having been in the X-box 360 version of All-Stars Racing) still managed to get 4th place! As for the top winner, I'll give you a WILD guess (heh heh) but even if you don't like the character you got to admit that is a stunning costume. I asked the woman who wore it how long it took her to make, and she said about 4 or 5 months. Not surprised! I still don't get how the eyes seem to look forwards no matter what way the head turns, it's kinda spooky!

Summer of Sonic 2012 - Video Tour

The Summer of Sonic 2012 coverage here at Sega Memories begins here! In this first video you will see the queue outside the Brighton Centre early on, us walking into the venue, checking out the free goodie bag, watching some All-Stars Transformed gameplay, watching the event introduction on the screens and stage, and a tour of the 2nd floor, including what is in the merch booth this year! I have other videos coming soon, including the cosplay contest, the Jun Senoue jam session and I also have lots of photos to share, so stay tuned!

Sonic CD Developer Diary with Kazuyuki Hoshino!

Wow, this came out of no where. With Sonic CD due to be released this week there hasn't been a whole lot of marketing for it yet now Sega have released this rather special video. In it art director Kazuyuki Hoshino shows us a whole ton of concept art from the game, including a lot that has never been seen before! What a wonderful surprise for fans of the game! Now all I'm wondering is why the room he is sitting in is full of rocks..maybe he's in the past version of that room?

Check Out the "Virtua Tennis – 10 Years Gone" Documentary!

Out of nowhere, SEGA has released an awesome 40 minute long documentary to celebrate Virtua Tennis's tenth anniversary! Lots of emphasis on the mechanics of the game, and the history. Series creator Mie Kumagai even gets in front of the camera and shares her thoughts! Virtua Tennis has long been one of my favorite franchises, despite me having very little interest in the actual sport of tennis. It's just SUCH a SEGA game: the music, the arcade gameplay, the quirky mini-games and the fun SEGA references. Enjoy the documentary and make sure to play your favorite version of Virtua Tennis this week.

Summer of Sonic 2011 Documentary

Anthony Caulfield & Nicola Caulfield, the filmmakers who also put together the Birth of an Icon documentary were also working on this documentary for this years Summer of Sonic at the same time! Lots of interviews, including Svend, Kevin Eva, Nigel Kitching and Dobbyn, and many others. Cracking stuff.

Don't forget to check out all my previous coverage of Summer of Sonic 2011, 2010 and 2009 if you haven't already!

Sonic: History of an Icon Documentary now online.

Thanks to the Sonic Show, the documentary that is found in the Sonic Generations collector's Edition is now onlne for all to see. It's covers some similar ground and is not quite as slick as the documentary GameTap put out a couple of years ago, but at 36 minutes it's still well worth a look. Funny how you can clearly hear the likes of Yuji Naka say 'Mega Drive' but it's subtitled as 'Genesis'!

EDIT: Replaced video with the extended cut which features an additional 6 minutes of footage.

Sonic Generations Collector's Edition: Unboxing video

Put this video together real quick this morning when it arrived. This video is literally me opening it for the first time. There are much better unboxing videos of this about, including one Svend did for Sega's official blog which you can check out here.

Dreamroom UK 2011 is Today!

Watch live streaming video from gagaman at livestream.com

Today is the day before the 12th anniversary of 9/9/99 and because I won't have time to livestream tomorrow just before barry's one I've decided to dedicate today for my show!

I will be starting at 1pm UK time (7:00am Eastern Standard Time) will take a couple hour break somewhere between 3 and 5pm, then return continue on into the night! That's a lot of Dreamcast gameplay!

So make sure to come and visit at the video link above sometime today for the celebrations! Then tomorrow it will be Barry's turn for him to treat you to some Dreamcast gaming goodness!

EDIT: It's over! Thanks to everyone who popped in! If you missed out you can watch it in the 'Dreamroom UK 2011' folder here. It was running for roughly a total of 8 and a half hours! Here is a list of the games that were played throughout the day:

• Mars Matrix
• Segagaga
• Gundam E.F.F vs Zeon DX
• Marvel Vs Capcom 2
• Rush 2049
• Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
• Alien Front Online
• Daytona USA 2001
• Power Stone
• Pro Yakyu Team de Asobonet!
• Zombie Revenge (complete play-through of arcade mode)
• Densha Deo Go! 2
• Sengoku Turb - Fanfan I Love me Dunce doublentendre
• Fast Striker
• Heavy Metal Geomatrix
• 18 Wheeler

Summer of Sonic 2011 - Videos Part 3!

Here's the last of the footage I took on the day. My camcorder batteries ran out so I couldn't get as much as i would have liked but still. here you will see us joining the signing queue for Yuji Naka and Takashi Iizuka, of which we got to watch Never Mind the Buzz Bombers while in it. There is also footage of Frobman Sonic Heroes animation (watch the whole thing here) which I took so he could have video of how well it went down. Finally there some footage of the second Q&A session with Naka, Iizuka and Senour followed by a bit of the birthday cheer that was recorded for Sonic Generations. Enjoy!

Just remember: Even Iizuka, director of Sonic Adventure, hates Big the Cats fishing game.

Summer of Sonic 2011 - The Cosplay Contest

So here is (most) of the cosplay contest in a huge 22 minute video! I didn't get all of it because one of my camcorder batteries ran out half way through and at one point I thought I was recording and it turns out I wasn't, oops! Either way you can see most of the people that went up on stage to compete for the prize of the 20th Anniversary statue, including quite a few of my mates dressed up as Eggman Nega, Tails and Professor Pickle! The contest was on quite early in the day compared to previous years (about 2:30 in the afternoon) so i think a few cosplayers didn't make it in time to the contest, and there were many others that didn't go up on stage like Ulala and the SegaGaga guy. One more short video to go, coming soon!

Summer of Sonic 2011 - Videos Part 1!

So here's the first of three videos of the day itself! Here you will see where we arrived at about 9:30 to join the huge queue! That was just the queue for those who had reserved, the other queue for those who had not was even longer and some people were waiting outside until well into the afternoon, eep!

As we walk in I check out the merchandise stands just as Naka, Iizuka and Senoue took the stage for a Q&A (the first of two they did on the day), plus I have a quick chat with the Sonic the Comic Online guys and some cosplayers. You'll also get to see some karaoke including Darren Indeed from Sega Shiro's friend Daryl singing quite possibly the most miscellaneous Sonic song they could have picked! Plus there was an awesome Sonic the Comic inspired animation, which you can see in it entirely on Youtube here.

The next video will be the cosplay competition!

Summer of Sonic 2011 - The Party the Night Before

There was a party about 10 minutes away from Camden Center from 6pm that me and Stacey headed to the evening before. It was £15 to get in and all food and drink was included (until the tab ran out anyway) including Sonic and Shadow themed shots! Didn't try the Shadow one but the Sonic one was extremely minty and lovely, had a few of those. I had a big bacon cheese burger and Stacey had a Japanese dish called a Gyoza which she almost squirted all over a guy sitting beside us..

 ..who just so happened to be Mike Pollock, AKA the current voice actor of Dr. Robotnik! He was playing it very low key, chatting to people who came along knowing who he was, but we had been sitting next to him for ages not realizing who he was!

Soon after a Wii with Gamecube games was set up on a the big projection screen, and everyone took turns playing versus modes in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Sonic 3, Sonic 2, Sonic the Fighters and Sonic R. I had a go three times and won two of them: My round in battle was luck I think, and I still remember the track layouts in Sonic R too well, but had no idea how to play Fighters well haha. The video above mainly shows random gameplay throughout the night with me (maybe a little tipsy) rambling, shouting and even singing to some of the tunes, oh boy

The guys from Sega Shiro were also there, check out their big post on the night too, where they have a video of me playing Sonic R amongst and lots of photos!

Summer of Sonic coverage continues next week!

This Sonic collection is AMAZING.

Sonic Collectibles is rapidly becoming one of the best websites to check out for videos and updates about Sonic bits and bobs, updating far more often than we get to and with videos of individual pieces of rare merch popping up on the youtube account semi regularly as of late.

The owner of the site and channel Pete has just recently uploaded a 20th Anniversary video showing of his entire collection (I assume) that is all set up in a room full of glass boxes that honestly makes the one at Summer of Sonic look a bit feeble in comparison because they are just so cram,med full of ultra rare and exciting stuff!

I've been watching the Youtube account for some time and figured Pete's collection must be rather large but I could have never expected this! Almost anything you can think of is here: one of those 10th Anniversary wine glasses, the Super Sonic plush, loads of the Australian Sega World stuff, and many things that are one (or two) of a kind like an original SATAM group shot cel painting, a commissioned painting of Sonic by Milton Knight, and a statue that was owned by Tom Kalinske, CEO of Sega of America during the 90s!

Of everything on show here I think one of the main things I truly envy and adore is the Japanese classic Eggman statues and smaller toy he owns (see from about 10:55 in the video). Those are simply outstanding.

Summer of Sonic 2011 - Video of Swag & Signed Things!

Sega Memories' Summer of Sonic coverage starts here! Here's a video I put together today showing what I bought back from the event, as well as what I took with me to get scribbled on by famous Sonic type people! Next video will be of the party we went to the evening before!

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!

Super Sonic Statue Unboxing Video!

Will post some more photos and impressions soon!

Dreamcast Doujinshi Manga Comic

Cross posting this from the Dreamcast Junkyard, seeing as it is a Sega related comic though not an official one, and may be considered a not very common collectible to find on Ebay.

Probably the weirdest thing you'll ever see me feature for DCJY InsideOut, and actually a bit NSFW although unlike most Doujinshi (fan comics) it's not a flat out hentai porn comic, but it is in places a tad perverted with quite a few er..well you'll see. You have been warned.

The comic features short stories based on Shenmue, Space Channel 5, Code Veronica, Soul Calibur and many others, but they're pretty much all resort to rubbish and just plain weird jokes. The art is mixed, sometimes pretty decent and other times wonky.

Because  Maken X features in the Doujinshi I also decided to show off a Official  Maken X manga I bought years ago, which is just a tad more gory than I  recall the game being. So yeah, this one is defiantly not for the younger lot or easily offended this vid. :P

Streets of Rage Fleetway Comic Original Artwork

Hogfather on Youtube has got to be one of the most hardcore Sonic collectors on Youtube, it's a real shame he doesn't have a blog with photos of his stuff too. Not only does he own a massive collection of Nigel Dobbyn's Sonic the Comic artwork, but just recently he has uploaded a video of a collection of original artwork from S.T.C's Street of Rage comics, and had a chat with the artist Peter Richardson about them too! Jammy sod. Anyway, here's the video:

Make sure you check out Hogfather's Youtube for many more videos of rare and one-of-a-kind Sonic and Sega stuff.